Joana Cavaco

Dec 6, 2024 | vashtimedia.com | Francesca Newton |Jacob E. Lazarus |Joana Cavaco |Kendall Gardner

The Pickle — 5 min read After bombing Lebanon for thirteen months and killing over 4,000 people, Israel is finally allowing Lebanese refugees to . On Wednesday of last week, Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Hezbollah, promising to withdraw its forces from the country within 60 days. Historically, Israel has ignored numerous promising ceasefire agreements, and, so far, this deal has proven no exception.

Dec 2, 2024 | vashtimedia.com | Francesca Newton |Jacob E. Lazarus |Joana Cavaco

In the mass of photographs and footage from pro-Palestine protests shared around the world this year, one group seems to have garnered particular attention: older women. They’ve been captured marching, demonstrating outside political institutions, targeting weapons factories, sharing lessons from earlier activism at university encampments, and standing up to the police, with captions and placards often making a point of their age and sex. To point this out is not, I hope, to be tokenistic.

Nov 29, 2024 | vashtimedia.com | Jacob E. Lazarus |Joana Cavaco |Francesca Newton |Martin Saps

The Pickle — 4 min read The question of assisted dying has a particularly Jewish dimension in my head, probably because the recently-retired rabbi of the shul I grew up in, Jonathan Romain, is also a prominent campaigner in its favour. As the former chair of Dignity in Dying, Romain has drawn on his experience supporting people at the end of life to argue that “letting go of life can be the right and moral decision.

Nov 27, 2024 | vashtimedia.com | Joana Cavaco |Francesca Newton |Martin Saps |Kate Greenberg

The olive harvest is a pivotal season in the Palestinian calendar, in both practical and spiritual terms. Families gather with friends and neighbours, climbing trees to reach the fruit high above and lounging on tarpaulins down below to separate olives from branches. The olive tree is a symbol of Palestinian resilience as old as time — its roots stretching deep into the land, some trees thousands of years old.

Nov 26, 2024 | vashtimedia.com | Francesca Newton |Martin Saps |Kate Greenberg |Joana Cavaco

Mokum: this Yiddish word is one of my favourite nicknames for the city of Amsterdam. It describes a place that, despite being cold, has become a warm nest for many wandering citizens of the world who are seeking somewhere safe to call home. It is not perfect. For many it is also a symbol of a brutal colonial past, of policy decisions that sideline the most vulnerable – the capital of a country deeply divided.