Trump Administration Cracks Down on Free Speech
Trump Administration Cracks Down on Free Speech
Golden Pagers and Dreams of a Gaza Riviera
Golden Pagers and Dreams of a Gaza Riviera
Debunking Six
Debunking Six
AIPAC Myths
AIPAC Myths
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P e dur er e a big di ontinur c s crit g thi in or fam e fcen r uppor nued s .eltima ic ilies in es kart m
Volume XLIV, No. 3
INTERPRETING THE MIDDLE EAST FOR NORTH AMERICANS ✮ INTERPRETING NORTH AMERICA FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
How Did We Get Here?—Mouin Rabbani
Trump Administration Cracks Down on Free Speech and Pro-Palestinian Protesters—Three Views —Dr. James J. Zogby, Mahmoud Khalil, Brett Wilkins
Daily Life and Shattered Dreams in Gaza—Writers Share Their Stories—Five Views Sara Serria, Sumaya Mohammed, Farida Algoul, Sahar Al-ijla, Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi
Debunking Six AIPAC Myths About the U.S.-Israel Relationship—Josh Paul and Tariq Habash
A Matter of Positivity—John Gee
Israel’s “End Game” in the West Bank—Catherine Baker
Canada’s Double Standard on Free Speech: The Silencing of Pro-Palestinian Advocacy—Faisal Kutty
Israel’s Bloodstained Legacy in Latin America Jack McGrath
The Buffalo and the Olive Tree —Pam Stello and Dr. Murray Watnick
Golden Pagers and Dreams of a Gaza Riviera—Ida Audeh
The Hounding of the U.N.’s Palestine Rapporteur
Albanese—Ahmad Halima
Exile, Occupation, Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing, Plausible Genocide: A Doctor’s Perspective
Dr. Swee Chai Ang 64 The Funeral of Hassan Nasrallah: Mourning As a Political Statement—Lama Abou Kharroub
67 A Libyan Perspective on the Overlooked Side Of the Lockerbie Bombing Mustafa Fetouri
70 Keeping the Lights (and Air Conditioning) On In Egypt—Jonathan Gorvett
72 More Must Be Done to Assist Palestinians Fleeing to Canada From Gaza—Candice Bodnaruk
ON THE COVER: Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in front of Donald Trump’s Wall Street building to protest his policies on Gaza and condemn his attacks on students and free speech, in New York, on March 19, 2025. (PHOTO BY SELCUK
The West Has Long Demanded Of Palestinians What Trump Demanded of Ukraine— and More, Juan Cole, www.juancole.com OV-39
Israel Threatens a Second Nakba, Yet Denies the First Ever Happened, Mat Nashed and Maram Humaid, www.aljazeera.com OV-40
When the Third Intifada Breaks Out in the West Bank, Don’t Forget That Israel Instigated It, Gideon Levy, www.haaretz.com OV-42
Netanyahu’s Plan to Deprive And Rule in Gaza Will Fail Again, Farah Zaina, www.aljazeera.com OV-42
As the Gaza Agenda Moves Forward, the Imperial Narrative Shifts With It, Caitlin Johnstone, www.caitlinjohnstone.com.au OV-44
The Lost “Arab”: Gaza and the Evolving Language of the Palestinian Struggle, Dr. Ramzy Baroud, www.middleeastmonitor.com OV-44
74 MUSIC & ARTS: Palestinian Sound Archive Revives Old, Forgotten Records
75 WAGING PEACE: Experts: Remove Sanctions on Syria
79 HUMAN RIGHTS: Humanitarian Aid Funding Cuts Endanger Lives
80 DIPLOMATIC DOINGS: Ambasssador Extols Pakistan’s Economic Path
81 BOOK TALKS: The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World 82 MIDDLE EAST BOOKS REVIEW
(A Supplement to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs available by subscription at $15 per year. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-888-881-5861.)
Compiled by Janet McMahon
Ta-Nehisi Coates: If Democrats Can’t Draw the Line at Genocide, They Can’t Draw the Line At Democracy, Juan Cole, www.juancole.com OV-46
American Security Contractors Walking Thin Line in Gaza, Stavroula Pabst, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-46
Hasbara Hitch: Pro-Israel Social Media Bot Goes Rogue, Calls IDF Soldiers “White Colonizers In Apartheid Israel,” Omer Benjakob, www.haaretz.com
Israel “Just Wanted to Destroy” In Southern Lebanon, Despite The Ceasefire, Angie Mirad and Jusin Salhani, www.aljazeera.com
OV-48
OV-50
U.S., Israel Reject French Proposal to End IDF Presence in Lebanon, Jason Ditz, www.antiwar.com OV-52
Trump’s Narrow Iran Window is Closing, Trita Parsi, theamericanconservative.com OV-53
Karen Attiah’s recent column in the Washington Post describes the boomerang effect noted by Aimé Césaire in his Discourse on Colonialism. The French Martiniquais poet, author and politician warned that the deadening of the senses to brutalities inflicted on others degrades and dehumanizes not only those who carry out the atrocities but also those who passively accept them.
“And then one fine day,” Césaire writes, “the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, they become indignant. They say, ‘How strange! But never mind—it’s Nazism, it will pass.’ And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves.”
Protesters around the world, including in Minneapolis, MN (above), on March 18, respond to Israel’s launch of deadly airstrikes that broke the ceasefire.
about $4 billion of bunker-busting weapons and ammunition that even Biden held up. (Don’t forget that Trump accepted $100 million during his 2024 political campaign from Israeli American mega-donor Miriam Adelson, who carries on her late husband’s mission to stifle criticism of Israel.) Congress and legacy media should not be shocked that the boomerang has now come back to hit us at home.
While both the Biden and Trump administrations championed Israel’s merciless attacks on Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, most Americans turned a blind eye. The war “over there” on people who are different from us had no bearing on the price of eggs. And anyway, people who decry Israel’s refusal to let international journalists, U.N. officials, medical workers and aid enter Gaza are just anti-Semitic or extremists. Who even cares about U.N. reports that Israel is ratcheting up illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, transferring its own population into the territory, unlawfully demolishing Palestinian homes and increasing settler violence?
Repeated Israel’s excuses for breaking the ceasefire and ending serious peace negotiations it never planned to uphold (see p. 7). Few blinked as Trump cut international life-saving aid everwhere else but approved nearly $12 billion in military sales to Israel and expedited delivery of
What is happening to students like Mahmoud Khalil (see pp. 10-15), professors and speakers (see p. 62) should frighten all Americans—and that’s its main purpose. By the way, an article by investigative journalist Alan MacLeod, “Professor at Center of Columbia University Deportation Scandal Is Former Israeli Spy,” appears to have gone unnoticed by legacy media. MacLeod discloses that Khalil’s dean, Dr. Keren Yarhi-Milo, head of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, is a former Israeli military intelligence officer and official at Israel’s Mission to the United Nations. The organized attacks on students are making people too scared to discuss the Middle East and silencing dissent against Israel’s war on Gaza.
Attiah praises “Those who are lending their pens to paper, and their bodies to the protests in the streets in defense of Mah-
moud Khalil—they are the leaders, not cowardly careerists. We are the ones who understand that these predations, once unleashed, will not stop at Palestinians, at students, at immigrants, at Arab people, at green-card holders and U.S. permanent residents. These forces will not stop at universities, either.”
Too true. Trump has launched probes into National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service and shuttered the Voice of America, and the list grows daily. We know how this story could end...
The Educational Bookshop, which has three locations in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, is under attack by Israel. On Feb. 9, Israeli agents confiscated books and arrested owners Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna, who are brothers. In March, Israeli police again raided the store, this time arresting their father, Imad Muna, and again confiscated books. For more than 40 years, the Educational Bookshop has served as a place for locals and foreigners to gather, talk and peruse books about the region. Customers often walk into our own store and remark that it reminds them of the Educational Bookshop. It’s no coincidence that their bookshop is being targeted at the same time pro-Palestine groups in the U.S. are being systematically targeted by the Trump administration. Israel’s institutionalized violent repression has been exported to the U.S. via its lobbying groups. As a writer notes in our “Other People’s Mail” section (see p. 89), Israel is in many ways the greatest threat to our cherished constitutional rights.
Meanwhile, as you can see from our very short Angels’ list on p. 90, we could use your generous financial support to help this magazine and bookstore stay strong and continue to educate readers who care about truth and justice. Please...
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I recently watched the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” a gripping film that documents the heart-breaking home demolitions in Palestine, told through the eyes of those who have witnessed them first-hand. The filmmakers, both Israeli and Palestinian, came together driven by a shared sense of injustice and a desire to expose the harsh realities faced by displaced communities.
Through the lens of those who have directly experienced the destruction of their homes, the film powerfully captures the emotional toll of these demolitions. It presents a poignant and vivid portrayal of the impact on families and communities, while exploring the broader political and social consequences of these actions. The collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers adds depth and authenticity to the story, highlighting the universal nature of their shared human experience despite their differing backgrounds.
“No Other Land” is a film of remarkable courage and empathy, urging viewers to confront uncomfortable truths while inspiring hope for a more just future. Its timely release is a call to action for all of us to recognize the injustice unfolding before our eyes and demand change.
Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA
Over the past 18 months, the Israeli army has shown itself to be the biggest terrorist organization in the Middle East—and also the most cowardly.
Dr. Clyde Farris, West Lynn, OR
The USS Liberty was attacked by the combined forces of the Israeli air force and navy on June 8, 1967. Thirty-four crewmen were killed, another 174 were wounded out of a ship’s complement of 294.
The $40,000,000 USS Liberty never sailed on an assigned mission again and was sold for scrap in 1970 for a paltry $101,666.66.
Unlike every post-WWII attack on a U.S. Navy ship, the U.S. government has not investigated the attack on the Liberty . This despite USS Liberty survivors filing “A Report: War Crimes Committed Against U.S. Military Personnel, June 8, 1967,” containing allegations of war crimes committed by the Israeli military during the attack. The Department of Defense is obligated under the Department of Defense Law of War Program to investigate this matter, but has not. President Donald Trump must call for an investigation and release all USS Liberty records.
USS Liberty Veterans Association, Pawleys Island, SC
PRAISE FOR ZIONIST BETRAYAL OF JEWS BOOK REVIEW
Thanks for Allan Brownfeld’s informative review of Stanley Heller’s Zionist Betrayal of Jews: From Herzl to Netanyahu. Few American Jews have spoken out more clearly against this betrayal—or for as long—as Allan, ever since as a teenager in the 1950s, when he joined the humane and far-sighted folks of the American Council for Judaism (AJC).
His review highlights two of the most shocking examples of Zionist contempt for the ethical values of Judaism and for the majority of Jews, who at the time were non-Zionist: Theodor Herzl’s embrace of Czarist Jew haters responsible for Russia’s atrocious pogroms, and David Ben-Gurion’s collaboration with the Nazis.
If the public understood only those two Zionist policies, both of which happened before the Holocaust, all subsequent Israeli history would be revealed in its true colors.
Steve France, Cabin John, MD ■
AS OF THIS WRITING, intensive Israeli air raids and shelling throughout the Gaza Strip have killed more than 400 Palestinians, and wounded hundreds more, in the space of several hours. How did we get here?
In January the incoming Trump administration forced Israel to accept a ceasefire proposal that had been largely formulated by the Israeli government and unveiled in late May 2024 by U.S. President Joe Biden.
At Israel’s insistence it was not a comprehensive agreement that would see each party simultaneously implement all of its obligations in reciprocal fashion, but rather a process consisting of three stages.
The first stage, lasting 42 days, comprised a suspension of hostilities, a limited exchange of captives, a limited Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, free movement for Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homes to return to their communities and a surge in humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.
The key elements of the agreement’s second stage are a completion of the exchange of captives, a durable ceasefire, and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, including from its border with Egypt. Since the mechanisms to reach these objectives are not specified, the agreement states that negotiations on the details of the second stage would commence on the 16th day of the first stage and that hostilities would not be resumed by either party while these negotiations continued, even if they drag on past the end of the first phase. (The agreement’s third phase mainly concerns reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.)
By Mouin Rabbani
Palestinians gather among the rubble of Imam Shafii Mosque to perform the second Friday prayer of the holy month of Ramadan in the Al Zaitoun neighborhood of Gaza on March 14, 2025. They laid carpets, cloths and mats over the debris of the mosque as a makeshift place of worship.
Israel had proposed this agreement on the assumption that Hamas, which had since December 2023 repeatedly insisted on a formal cessation of hostilities and a comprehensive Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip at the very outset of any agreement, would reject it.
Mouin Rabbani is a non‐resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies and co‐editor of Jadaliyya
When, contrary to expectations, Hamas accepted the agreement in early July 2024, Israel responded with a slew of new conditions: it demanded to retain permanent control of the Gaza-Egypt border zone and a buffer zone within the Gaza Strip, rejected a formal cessation of hostilities and introduced various other additions designed for rejection by Hamas. In doing so, Israel received the full and unconditional support of
the Biden administration for its shenanigans, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and other officials dutifully, and repeatedly, stated that the only reason the agreement had not been consummated was because Hamas had yet to accept it.
After Donald Trump won the November 2024 U.S. presidential election, he tasked his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, with securing an agreement. His main motivation appears to have been avoiding a foreign policy crisis during his January 20 inauguration. With Jimmy Carter much in the news after his death in late December, Trump particularly wanted to avoid being overshadowed by the fate of U.S. citizens held captive in the Gaza Strip. It took Witkoff, who has no previous diplomatic experience, literally one meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s fugitive prime minister, to bring Israel aboard. In other words, for over half a year Biden refused to make the single phone call that would have achieved the same result.
Trump’s belligerent threats about “all hell breaking loose” notwithstanding, no pressure was needed on Hamas because, contrary to the Biden administration’s hasbara campaign, it had already endorsed the agreement half a year earlier.
Almost immediately, it became apparent that Israel’s primary objective was to avoid implementation of the second stage of the agreement. A full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and formal ceasefire would mean that Israel’s genocidal campaign had concluded without the “total victory” repeatedly touted by Netanyahu, leaving Hamas weakened rather than destroyed and still in control of the Gaza Strip.
A cessation of hostilities would additionally result in the collapse of the Israeli government. The Kahanist Jewish Power faction led by Itamar Ben-Gvir had already bolted the governing coalition in protest at the prospect of a potential end to the slaughter, and the similarly genocidal Religious Zionism faction led by
Bezalel Smotrich insisted it would leave the coalition the moment Netanyahu agreed to a formal ceasefire as stipulated in the agreement’s second phase.
Losing power will also have personal repercussions for Netanyahu, as he will become much more vulnerable to the myriad corruption scandals and trials surrounding him. (The International Criminal Court arrest warrant issued in his name is by contrast a trivial concern, since Netanyahu can rely on the protection of his Western sponsors and allies to escape accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity.)
It was an open secret, and widely reported, that Netanyahu, who was dragged kicking and screaming into the January agreement by Witkoff, would stop at nothing to avoid entering its second stage, scheduled for early March. As could and should have been anticipated, Israel from the outset began slowwalking, only partially fulfilling, or simply reneging on its various commitments, particularly with respect to permitting the entry of humanitarian aid and supplies to the Gaza Strip as detailed in the January agreement. It also quickly resumed the killing of Palestinians, including of course children, medical workers and journalists. Prior to the latest bombings, it had killed more than 120 Palestinians, an average of more than two a day, since the suspension of hostilities came into force in midJanuary.
Lest Israel’s intentions be questioned, Netanyahu additionally proclaimed his refusal to negotiate the implementation of the second stage of the January agreement. He instead proposed that Hamas release all remaining captives, disarm and permanently leave the Gaza Strip, with a dubious guarantee of safe passage.
Complementing its violations of the agreement, Israel’s genocidal incitement against the Palestinians continued apace, reaching a crescendo in February when it received the bodies of two young Israeli children, which, as recently confirmed by Israel’s former defense minister, the international fugitive Yoav Gallant,
Israel knew were dead since late 2023 but pretended were still alive for propaganda purposes. Hamas had at the time claimed they were killed in an Israeli air strike, which is consistent with the deaths of other Israeli captives. Yet the Israeli government in record time claimed that autopsies revealed they had been brutally strangled to death. No similar cases have been reported, and no independent foreign examination was conducted prior to burial.
When the weekly Israeli-Palestinian captive exchanges stipulated in the January agreement’s first phase were fulfilled, Hamas announced that it would not release additional captives unless negotiations for the second phase were first concluded. Israel responded with a proposal to extend the first phase of the agreement during which the exchange of captives would be concluded. This would allow it to avoid the second phase and specifically a formal ceasefire or withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and essentially transform what had been agreed in January beyond recognition.
Apparently frustrated with Israel’s intransigence and obstructionism, Washington dispatched its hostage envoy, Adam Boehler, to engage directly with Hamas. The talks focused on the release of captives and corpses with dual U.S. citizenship, a priority for Washington. Seeking to show flexibility and eager to drive a wedge between Israel and the U.S., Hamas offered to extend the first phase of the agreement to encompass those with U.S. citizenship, but on condition that serious negotiations on the second phase immediately commence.
Boehler’s efforts rang alarm bells throughout the Israeli leadership for multiple reasons. Not only did the U.S. for the first time engage directly with Hamas, but it had done so without consulting or coordinating with Israel and did so to secure U.S. rather than Israeli interests. Adding insult to injury, Boehler in press interviews observed that his Hamas interlocutors were human beings rather than animals, did not have horns growing out of their heads, and were in his opinion “pretty
nice guys.” He then committed the cardinal sin of pointing out, “We’re the United States. We’re not an agent of Israel.”
The talks had come to light because an outraged Israel had leaked them to its media stenographers. Although Boehler, who has a much narrower mandate than Witkoff, appears to have concluded his business and subsequently left, and retains the confidence of Trump, Israeli sources—determined to convert hope into reality—began reporting that he had been fired for his unspeakable transgressions.
By this point, and contrary to its January obligations, Israel resumed its siege of the Gaza Strip on the last day of the first phase, additionally prohibiting the entry of fuel, electricity and water into the territory. Never losing an opportunity to justify their systemic sadism with callous mockery, Israeli spokespeople duly insisted that Israeli munificence risked fueling an obesity epidemic in the Gaza Strip.
Seeking to mollify its Israeli proxy, Washington proposed an extension of the first phase of the January agreement through the end of Passover on April 20, during which a further captive exchange would include Israelis who do not have
dual citizenship. While Hamas was prepared to accept a limited extension of the first phase, it refused to do so without first agreeing on the details of Palestinian captives to be released, and guarantees that negotiations on the second phase would commence immediately. More attuned to Netanyahu’s political sensitivities and coalition calculus than to the details of an agreement he had himself ironed out, Witkoff rejected these conditions and warned Hamas of severe consequences.
In a related development, the U.S. naval task force in the Red Sea has commenced with an open-ended bombing campaign on Yemen in response to threats by Ansarallah, the Houthis, to resume attacks on Israeli shipping if the siege of the Gaza Strip is not lifted. It’s essentially an operation to make the Red Sea safe for Israeli genocide. The Houthis have responded with a vow to retaliate against U.S. military and commercial vessels, while Washington has pointed a finger directly at Iran. A few degrees of escalation more, and Israel’s wet dream of a direct U.S.-Iranian military confrontation may become a reality. Israeli intentions are quite clear. To derail the agreement and replace it with
either an ongoing campaign of periodic attacks, or a more concerted effort to force the Palestinians out of Gaza, an item that Trump’s harebrained Gaza Riviera proposal has placed back on the agenda. Israel’s new military chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, is also keen to prove that he can achieve with intense slaughter what his predecessor, Herzi Halevi, failed to realize. It continues a long Israeli pattern of addressing political challenges with violence, and concluding failure means insufficient carnage was inflicted.
The U.S. position is less clear. Indisputably, none of this would be happening without Washington’s approval. But what remains to be seen is whether it sees this as an effort to compel Hamas to accept U.S. revisions to the January agreement, or rather as the beginning of a full-scale resumption of the genocidal military campaign to achieve larger objectives unrelated to these negotiations.
In the meantime, hundreds of Palestinians, including, once again, entire families spanning multiple generations, are being slaughtered at will. Israel’s impunity, to do as it pleases without a shred of accountability and zero consequences, continues apace. ■
By Dr. James J. Zogby
THE COMBINED EFFORTS of President Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress and pro-Israel groups, like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), are a declaration of war on the liberal ideals of freedom of speech and assembly and the very idea of the university. Republicans and their allies are demanding universities eliminate
Dr. James J. Zogby is co‐founder and president of the Arab Ameri‐can Institute, a Washington, DC‐based organization, which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American com‐munity. This article was first published in Abu Dhabi’s The National newspaper. Reprinted with permission.
any mention of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in admissions or programming, and they have put in place a grossly distorted and expanded definition of anti-Semitism. In both instances, they have told educational institutions that failing to bow to these diktats will result in their federal funding getting cut.
While organizations representing both faculty and administrators have cautioned against complying with the requirement to eliminate DEI, already some universities have done just that. Dozens of institutions have scrubbed their websites of the now-taboo words and programs. Offices to promote diversity have been closed and courses have been canceled.
More ominous has been the damage done to free speech and academic freedom by the threats of the administration and Congress to punish universities that do not take measures to rein in
what they call “anti-Semitism.” The main problem with this edict is that it’s based on a bogus definition of anti-Semitism, long promoted by the pro-Israel group, the ADL—a definition that equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Their argument is that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic because it is the only Jewish state and therefore criticism of Israel is threatening to Jews who identify with it. At best, the “logic” is far-fetched. At worst, it’s a crude effort to silence and punish critics.
In their efforts to impose their definition, the ADL found eager accomplices among right-wing fundamentalist Christians, Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump—though their reasons for doing so may have differed. But whether their collaboration was a marriage of convenience or consensus, the result has been serious damage to higher education.
The ADL wants to silence the growing chorus of critics of Israeli policies. Right-wing Christians, driven by a heretical view of the Old Testament that sees Israel as necessary for their hoped-for Final Days, want to protect Israel. As they form about 40 percent of the GOP’s voter base, Republicans and Trump want to keep them happy. Because the earliest pro-Palestinian demonstrations occurred on a number of prestigious university campuses, Republicans also see this effort as a way to amplify their targeting of “elites” and “liberals.” And as critics of Israeli policies are largely Democrats, Republicans see defending Israel as a wedge issue that strengthens their base while making life uncomfortable for Democrats. For his part, Donald Trump saw criminalizing protesters and forcing universities to cower as yet another way to pave the road to his authoritarian reach.
These diverse interests have coalesced in a coordinated assault on academic freedom, free speech and critics of Israel. An early sign of this assault was evident during last year’s congressional hearings in which a number of Ivy League university presidents were summoned to appear in order to be skewered by Republican members of Congress. The hearing’s most memorable moment began with a Republican representative falsely claiming that the expression heard in some demonstrations “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was an anti-Semitic call for genocide against Jewish people. She then quickly shifted gears and asked the presidents whether there were punishments for calling for genocide against Jews. The presidents were flummoxed by this illogical leap and gave confused responses.
Then, in the midst of the Columbia University campus protests, the Republican Speaker of the House made a visit to the school demanding a crackdown. Other Republicans joined in pointing out that the campuses were bastions of un-American liberal elitism and needed to be taught a lesson. A congressional committee threatened to cut federal funds to campuses that didn’t stop protests, punish protesters and rid their campuses of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activities and courses.
Pro-Israel groups were emboldened to file complaints with the Office of Civil Rights charging administrators with turning a blind eye to faculty and student anti-Semitism.
In the face of these challenges, the cowering began. During the summer of 2024, campuses brought in security consultants to rewrite faculty and student codes and handbooks; courses were
eliminated; and faculty were silenced. Columbia University even set up an office that encouraged students to file complaints against pro-Palestinian students and faculty. Repression was in full swing.
With the election of Donald Trump, the pressures intensified. Columbia University became a “whipping boy” because of both its prestigious status and demonstrated willingness to cower. Despite the university’s efforts, in mid-March the Trump administration increased the pressure on Columbia, announcing that the school was losing $400 million in federal grants. Clearly Trump intended to teach the same lesson he was teaching Ukraine (and indirectly other countries or campuses): “Do what I demand, or you’ll be punished.”
Then came the news from Trump that a graduate student at the university, Mahmoud Khalil, was being deported for anti-Semitism. Other than the fact that Khalil was the lead negotiator on behalf of the student protesters, there was no evidence of anything he had said or done to warrant that charge.
It appears that the purposes behind this move are to create fear, silence criticism of Israel and force the university, students and faculty to bend in the face of this oppressive march toward authoritarian rule. With widespread protests being mounted in the face of this pending deportation, it remains to be seen whether Trump’s deportation order will succeed or backfire. In either case, damage has been done and not only to free speech, but also to the very idea of academic freedom that has long been a hallmark of American education.
For several years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Zogby International polled Arab attitudes toward the United States. We were prompted to do so by a Time Magazine cover which featured thenPresident George W. Bush’s famous response to the question: “Why did Arab terrorists attack us?” He was quoted as saying they did so because “They hate our values of democracy and freedom.”
Our survey results found that Bush’s flippant observation was untrue. In every Arab country in which we polled, substantial majorities expressed strong appreciation for America’s freedom and democracy. They also liked the American educational system, American cultural products and the American people.
What Arabs did not like were American policies, especially those toward Palestinians, and Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. In followup interviews we conducted to better understand the findings, one respondent said, “I love America’s values, but they don’t want to apply them to Arabs.” Another said, “I studied in America and I love the country. I don’t feel America loves me. I feel like a jilted lover.”
At the poll’s conclusion, we asked respondents for their overall favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the U.S. The results were overwhelmingly unfavorable, and when we asked whether their attitudes were based on America’s values or policies, it was the policies that were determinative.
Not only is Donald Trump continuing the policies of his predecessors that are alienating to Arabs, but he’s also damaging the very values of freedom and democracy that the rest of the world admires about our country.
A poster is taped to a lamppost protesting the arrest of pro-Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil for leading demonstrations at Columbia University in New York City. Despite holding a legal green card, Khalil was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
By Mahmoud Khalil
MY NAME IS MAHMOUD KHALIL and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Pro‐Palestinian activist and Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) despite holding a legal green card on March 8, 2025, in New York City. Mahmoud Khalil dictated this letter over the phone with his lawyer from an ICE detention facility on March 18.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours—I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family
which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention—imprisonment without trial or charge—to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on Dec. 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns—based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students—some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation—and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change— leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
By Brett Wilkins
Anti-Defamation League has blacklisted after comments like “not enough” babies were killed in Gaza—says it provided “thousands of names” for possible arrest and expulsion.
Betar, the international far-right pro-Israel group that took credit for the Department of Homeland Security’s arrest of former Columbia University graduate student and permanent U.S. resident Mahmoud Khalil for protesting the annihilation of Gaza, claimed that it has sent “thousands of names” of Palestine defenders to Trump administration officials for possible deportation.
“Jihadis have no place in civilized nations,” Betar said on social media March 14 following the publication of a Guardian article on the extremist group’s activities.
Betar said: “We told you we have been working on deportations and will continue to do so. Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month. You heard it here first. Those who support jihad and intifada and originate in terrorist states will be sent back to those lands.”
Betar has been gloating about the March 8 arrest of Khalil, the lead negotiator for the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest during the April 2024 Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
On March 13, immigration officers arrested another Columbia Gaza protester, Leqaa Kordia—a Palestinian from the illegally occupied West Bank—for allegedly overstaying her expired student visa. Kordia was also arrested last April during one of the Columbia campus protests against the Gaza onslaught.
On March 14, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said that Ranjani Srinivasan, an Indian doctoral student at Columbia whose visa was revoked on March 5 for alleged involvement “in activities supporting” Hamas—the Palestinian resistance group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government—used the Customs and Border Protection’s self-deportation app and, according to media reports, has left the country.
Khalil and Kordia’s arrests come as the Trump administration targets Columbia and other schools over pro-Palestinian protests under the guise of combating anti-Semitism, despite the Ivy League university’s violent crackdown on demonstrations and revocation of degrees from some pro-Palestine activists.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who in January signed an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who took part in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, called Khalil’s detention “the first arrest of many to come.”
The Department of Justice announced on March 14 that it is investigating whether pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the
Brett Wilkins is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Fran‐cisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This article from Common Dreams is reprinted under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
school violated federal anti-terrorism laws. This followed the previous day’s search of two Columbia dorm rooms by DHS agents and the cancellation earlier this month of $400 million worth of funding and contracts for Columbia because the Trump administration says university officials haven’t done enough to tackle alleged anti-Semitism on campus.
On March 14, Betar named Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian studying philosophy at Columbia, as its next target.
Critics have voiced alarm about Betar’s activities, pointing to the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League’s recent designation of the organization as a hate group. Founded in 1923 by the early Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Betar has a long history of extremism. Its members—who included former Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin—took part in the Zionist terror campaign against Palestinian Arabs and British forces occupying Palestine in the 1940s.
Today, Betar supports Kahanism—a Jewish supremacist and apartheid movement named after Meir Kahane, an Orthodox rabbi convicted of terrorism before being assassinated in 1990—and is linked to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party. The group has called for the ethnic cleansing and Israeli recolonization of Gaza. During Israel’s assault on the coastal enclave, which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case, its account on the social media site X responded to the publication of a list of thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces by saying: “Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!”
Ross Glick, who led the U.S. chapter of Betar until February [when he was charged with crimes related to revenge porn], told
The Guardian that he has met with bipartisan members of Congress who support the group’s efforts, naming lawmakers including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and John Fetterman (D-PA). Glick also claimed to have the support of “collaborators” who use artificial intelligence and facial recognition to help identify pro-Palestine activists. Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department said it was launching an AI-powered “catch and revoke” program to cancel the visas of international students deemed supportive of Hamas.
Betar isn’t alone in aggressively targeting Palestine defenders. The group Canary Mission—which said it is “delighted” about Khalil’s “deserved consequences”—publishes an online database containing personal information about people it deems anti-Semitic, and this week released a video naming five other international students it says are “linked to campus extremism at Columbia.”
Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia who was temporarily banned from campus last year after harassing university employees, and Columbia student David Lederer have waged what Khalil called “a vicious, coordinated and dehumanizing doxxing campaign” against him and other activists.
Meanwhile, opponents of the Trump administration’s crackdown on constitutionally protected protest rights have rallied in defense of Khalil and the First Amendment. Nearly 100 Jewish-led demonstrators were arrested on March 13 during a protest in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City demanding Khalil’s release.
“We know what happens when an autocratic regime starts taking away our rights and scapegoating and we will not be silent,” said Sonya Meyerson-Knox, the communications director for Jewish Voice for Peace. “Come for one—face us all.” ■
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By Sara Serria
WHAT IS THIS HELL we are living in? What awaits us after all this? It is truly unbearable. Its cruelty goes beyond human imagination.
How can we live through this bitter reality with our spirits broken? How can we live with the absence of my one and only beautiful brother? Obaida’s beauty was always a beauty of his soul and character as much as it was his face. My eyes long to see his angelic face, to hear his kind words that left a fresh imprint on the hearts of everyone, young and old alike.
I remember one time when Obaida entered the room to find me in tears. Instead of just asking what was wrong, he sat with me and began telling jokes, making me laugh until my tears turned to laughter.
Graduation day, August 2023. Obaida earned a degree in nursing from Al‐Israa University.
How can I forget that he loved us more than himself? One time, my sister Asmaa could not pay the rent, so he hurried to her with the money. When my sister asked my mother about his kindness, she answered, “It was his tuition money. He decided to delay his studies and save up again.”
My mother always said, “Obaida was the gift we never expected.” Our family was small. We were three girls; he came into our lives after 11 years of waiting.
Sara Serria is currently in her junior year at the Islamic University of Gaza, where she is studying English translation. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
On the morning of October 7, Obaida was asleep at our home in Gaza City, when the sound of gunfire woke him. He rushed from his room, asking us, “What is going on? What is the news?”
The situation quickly deteriorated, with bombs falling and danger escalating. This marked the beginning of our suffering and displacement. After relocating several times, my mother, my sister, and I relocated to our relative’s home in Qarara, Khan Yunis, on Nov. 11, 2023. Obaida and our 60-year-old father remained in Gaza City at home. We have had to relocate over and over to escape the constant fear of being killed, which haunts us even in our sleep. We have moved more than five times, first from Shuja’iyya to Sabra, then from Sabra to the south. The journey was terrifying as we continued to Nuseirat and finally to Rafah City and the al-Mawasi area. Anxiety has never left us.
Obaida would call to check on us, and he could hear the fear in our voices. We were so far from him, and all we could do was pray. At the beginning of December 2023, hunger and fear were overwhelming; even basic necessities, like flour and sugar, became scarce.
One day he called us. He asked our sister Islam, “What do we have today for lunch?” She replied, “We have extra canned meat.” His voice broke as he responded, “Save one for me; I am starving.”
The days dragged on, filled with the horrors and suffering of war and hunger. Its curse felt endless. In the first two months, we lost our uncle and his entire family. Only two children survived. I remember Obaida calling, his voice barely audible, choking on tears.
Then we lost contact with Obaida. He had called the night before, wishing us all well, as the first day of Ramadan approached. And then, nothing.
The waiting was agonizing. Grief added years to my mother’s life. Our father wandered the streets and hospitals of Gaza City, worn from hunger and fear, looking for Obaida.
On March 23, 2024, our father received a call. By then it had been 13 days since Obaida went missing. The call came from a hostage held with my brother who had been released. My brother gave him our phone number and asked him to call us. And he gave us the news. “Obaida’s being held by Israel, in Ofer Prison.” Two months ago another detainee held with my brother called us to say Obaida is in Negev Prison. This is the last news we have heard.
The combination of the horror of realizing the terrible circumstances he might be in and the relief that he was still alive was too much to handle.
Since then, my family and I are constantly looking for news about the Palestinian hostages. We take turns keeping up with their updates and everything related to them. We hoped that any news about a released “prisoner” might bring some word about Obaida to comfort our hearts, which are full
of fear and longing.
During one of the rare releases, a hostage, who was released from Nafha Prison, said in an interview that an Israeli officer hit him in the chest during interrogation, breaking two ribs. His pain was unbearable, but the guard only gave him painkillers every three to six days.
I wish the war had ended our lives before Obaida was taken. I wish we had stayed in Gaza City and faced death together, rather than having our hearts broken daily. The feeling of helplessness has overwhelmed me and paralyzed my thoughts for the past year. My mother sits near the tent entrance, hoping at any moment to see him approaching.
We have been living in these conditions, in this tent, in the Mawasi area, for more than a year now.
When Eid came, we missed his bright face. We were used to seeing him on that morning, wearing his new clothes and kissing his parents’ hands. Everyone felt his absence. Our niece Malak did not come to visit us with her mother because she could not imagine Eid without her uncle.
With every release, we hear unbelievable stories of torture. One hostage who was released from Negev Prison said that an Israeli officer extinguished his cigarette on his chest during interrogation, burning through his clothes and searing his skin.
In the first months of the war, Obaida probably lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) due to hunger and deprivation. How much more has he lost now after almost a year of internment?
Israel practices the harshest forms of torture and oppression, beyond imagination. The Israeli wardens control the type and amount of food given to Palestinian hostages, and they bind hostages’ hands and feet with metal cuffs. In many cases, people are handcuffed throughout the day, including during transport or while being held in cells. Sometimes the cuffs are so tight that the hostage’s limbs are amputated. Why do they bind people when they are already behind iron bars, guarded by armed soldiers?
I wonder, in this cold weather, do they have enough blankets? Do they have jackets and clothes to protect them from the cold and winter illnesses?
We live now for the day of his release. It cannot come soon enough. ■
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By Sumaya Mohammed
MY SON,
I want to tell you about the history of our garden so that its story remains with you when I am no longer alive. I want you to know that the garden was not always as you see it now. It was not just a piece of land; our roots were deeply embedded in its soil. The seeds of our dreams were planted there, and they blossomed with our tears.
When I was a child like you, I used to play in the garden with my siblings. We helped our father pick the fruits and cared for the basil and mint leaves with our mother. The olive trees branched skyward, waiting for their harvest season, and beside them stood the blessed fig tree. There were also orange, lemon and mandarin trees, and the large grapevine under which we built a trellis that provided us with shade. When I grew older, I would sit beneath it every morning, sipping my coffee.
And the roses…oh, the roses! How I loved them. The white ones were my favorite; I always felt they carried an angel within them. Our garden was a piece of paradise.
After I got married and had my three children, memories came rushing back to me when I saw you all playing together in the garden. It embraced us, generation after generation, as if its roots wound tightly around our DNA. We would seek refuge beneath its branches during every war when the occupation forced us to flee our homes, lest they be bombed over our heads. But the last war, my son…it destroyed everything and erased our garden from existence.
One morning, as I sat under the grape trellis, sipping the last cup of coffee we had left since the war began, you were playing with your siblings, and your father was trying to make you laugh despite the drones buzzing above us. We heard explosions nearby, but we had become so accustomed to these sounds that they felt like a part of our daily life. We had no internet to understand what was happening around us. Suddenly, I felt the ground tremble beneath our feet and realized our neighborhood was being bombed before our very eyes. That was when we heard the screams of people saying the occupation was forcing us to evacuate our area in Al-Zawaideh, or we would be killed where we stood.
We panicked and fled, carrying nothing but a small bag of clothes that had been prepared in advance for emergencies like this. I felt as if my soul was being ripped from me. I bid farewell to our garden, feeling its end drawing near, sensing its sorrow and abandonment.
We spent an entire year moving from house to house. We sought refuge at your uncle’s home in Rafah, thinking we would
Sumaya Mohammed is a writer and English teacher living in Gaza. She works with the WANN team and has written several stories with them. She is also the mother of three children.
be safe there along with other displaced families. But then came a day that felt like the apocalypse—a horrific massacre on Feb. 12, 2024,in which nearly a hundred martyrs lost their lives. By God’s grace, we survived. Yet, the bombing never stopped, and death surrounded us every single day. But where could we run in a city engulfed in flames?
Finally, we decided to return to our garden and surrender our fate to destiny. I had a glimmer of hope that it might still be intact, but my hope was shattered when I saw it had turned into a barren desert. The trees were charred, their roots torn from the ground, the soil reduced to ashes. No longer did the scent of roses and basil fill the air—only the stench of bullets and gunpowder remained. That vibrant masterpiece had become a tattered, blackened canvas, and our house had become nothing but a pile of rubble.
I wept as I had never wept before, but I hid my tears from you so you wouldn’t feel afraid. I wanted you to remain unshaken. But I was devastated by the loss. How could I forget the scent of the roses that once filled our mornings? How could I erase the memories of you playing with your siblings, hiding behind the trees? How could I move on from the olive harvest season, when we all gathered to pick its fruits? How would I bring you
oranges and lemons when you caught a cold? And where would we sit in the summer now that the grape trellis had collapsed and shattered?
I felt as though I had lost my identity, as if I had been erased from existence, left as a body without a soul. You sat on a stone from our demolished home, constantly asking me, “When will we go back to our house, mama?” Your young mind couldn’t comprehend that you were already sitting on its rubble. And how could you, when our entire neighborhood had been reduced to ruins?
We had no refuge but your grandfather’s house in Deir alBalah, where we found some solace until a ceasefire was declared. After more than a year, we returned once again to our abandoned garden. But this time, we came back determined to rebuild. I was resolved that we would create new and beautiful memories.
We started cleaning the debris and shrapnel from the garden. Some of our neighbors and your father’s relatives helped us. I was afraid for you and your siblings because of the dangerous remnants, but you insisted on helping. I reluctantly agreed, but I wish I hadn’t—you tripped, and blood trickled from your wound. That was when I decided to keep you away from the work, despite your increasing cries and stubborn insistence. When you read this letter, you will understand that I did it for your own good.
Clearing the land took days. We hired people to remove the shrapnel and rubble, and then we began planting. It was a modest start, choosing from the few crops available at the time. We planted tomatoes, and you watched their growth with passion. Every morning, you woke up early to check on them, until one day, the first sprouts appeared. You jumped with joy, your laughter filling the air.
The tomatoes sent us a message: our land cannot be uprooted, and we cannot be defeated. That was when I realized that losing our land was not in its destruction but in abandoning it—and that is something we will never do.
Today, there are those who plan to displace us, claiming that our land is no longer livable. I once thought peace would return after the ceasefire, but the world will not leave us be. Some want to settle on our land, others want to erase our existence. But how can we leave the land we watered with our tears and sweat? How can we forsake the legacy of your ancestors? How can I abandon the garden that witnessed your first steps and your most joyous laughter?
My son, the West may try to convince you that leaving is the best option, that an easier life will be available to you, but I advise you: do not leave. We are not just residents or numbers—we are a part of this land, and it is a part of us. Do not abandon it, even if it turns to rubble, for it will bloom again—just as the tomato plant did, right before your eyes.
Our roots are here, our dreams are here, and our future is here. We are here, and we will remain here for as long as we live. And when you grow up and your father and I leave this life, remember that this land did not return to us easily—we reclaimed it. We cultivated it for you and your children and grandchildren, so that it would stand as a witness to our family’s history and faithfulness.
Know, my son, that your homeland is not just a place you live in—it is a story you inherit, a legacy you defend and an identity that no war can erase.
Love, Mama ■
By Farida Algoul
AFTER 77 YEARS OF OCCUPATION, generations of Palestinians have endured horrific violence and oppression at the hands of Israeli soldiers. The people, the land and the walls of Gaza have witnessed pain and resistance, life and death, and the raw truth of Palestinian dehumanization that the occupation no longer tries to hide. Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has unleashed ferocious violence on Gaza, meant to erase Palestinians as a people and as a nation. In addition to murdering and injuring more than 200,000 men, women and children, reducing most homes to rubble, and demolishing almost every structure of civil society, Israeli soldiers have left their mark with hateful graffiti and Jewish symbols.
Early in the genocide, I was forced to leave my family in the north. I returned to the north after the ceasefire to discover my
Farida Algoul is an English teacher and interpreter. Her family was displaced to Gaza in 1967. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
Israeli soldiers left bewildering messages, including “Death to Gaza” graffiti in the author’s home.
family’s home mostly destroyed. But on a few standing walls, I saw drawings and slogans left by Israeli Occupation Forces. Scrawled in Hebrew the soldiers had written: “The north and south will be under our control, and there will be no return.” I had seen similar slogans on other walls during the trip: “Death to Gaza” and
“We will occupy Gaza from north to south.” These words are a form of psychological warfare, meant to instill fear and humiliation in us. What Israel is telling us is this: we don’t just hate Hamas and Palestinian resistance. We want all of Gaza to die.
I can’t say I am surprised.
After its rampage in Gaza since October 2023 and its campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Israel is now acknowledged by much of the world to be a fascist state, engaged in a brutal occupation of over 6.5 million Palestinians. Now Israel has weaponized the Star of David. Once considered to be a religious symbol, it is now used to terrorize Palestinians and remind them who calls the shots. We saw these weaponized symbols painted on walls and buildings. And who can forget that Jerusalem man who, in August 2023, was branded with a Star of David on his face by Israeli police during his detention?
The rampant hate-filled graffiti and thousands of photos posted to social media reflect the normalized level of depravity and contempt for human Palestinian life, generally accepted in Israeli society. Since all Israeli men and women (except the Haredim) are required to serve in the military, they are all invested in the military. Pervasive dehumanization of the Palestinian people by Jewish Israelis is both the result of and the cause of a decades-long occupation.
Journalist Younis Tirawi posted on X that Israeli soldiers sprayed the words “Death to Arabs” and “Kahane was right” on the walls of Gaza’s cancer hospital, which has been turned into a military base. Meir Kahane, the American-born Orthodox rabbi and leader of the racist Kach movement, was at one time banned from running for the Knesset on the grounds that he headed a racist party, but he has since been rehabilitated.
What do these messages of hate mean? Our enemy has been able to inflict unspeakable horrors on us…shredding our children, shackling and disappearing our people, and starving us all. Israeli soldiers are flaunting their “invincibility,” their entitlement, their sense of their own superiority. In doing so, they display an astonishing level of perversity. So does their adoring public, for whose entertainment they boast of their exploits on X and TikTok.
Yet here I am now, in the north, wiping away their cartoonish displays of power with my own hands. Their words have failed to subjugate us. We have not been defeated. Our response to Israel’s criminal assault is not with words, but with perseverance. Despite everything we have lost, we are moving forward with our lives. I speak not just for myself but for all Palestinians. We will resurrect our homes and our lives and in so doing we
Sahar Al‐ijla is a 26‐year‐old from Gaza, Palestine, known for her unique, joyful, hard‐working, ambitious and sensitive nature. She channels her emotions into writing, doing so frequently and always in English, the language she studied. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
say, “Despite your attempts to annihilate us, we will never give up!” And this is not just a slogan—it is a promise, a reality we live every day.
Yes, Israel is still a daunting, fierce enemy, armed to the teeth. And we are of course scared. We have lost so much. Death and starvation are still part of our daily life. Israel’s cruelty is everywhere and it will take years to erase the words of hatred on Gaza’s walls, to heal the physical scars of brandings on Palestinian bodies. We will not be cowed and we will not back down. That is our secret weapon. Our walls will be rebuilt and Palestine will remain alive in the hearts of its people, because we are stronger than any attempt at erasure. And no matter how much Israel tries to etch its dominance into Gaza’s walls—and its people—we will always tell our one true story: one of resilience against brutality, an abiding will to live, and a refusal to leave our homeland. ■
FOR THE FIRST NINE months of the war, my eight-member family wasn’t able to get any news about our home. We had no idea whether the Israeli army had destroyed it like it had so many other houses in the dangerous eastern area of Gaza, close to the Israeli border. In June 2024, after the army withdrew from the area, a friend was able to reach the house and told us it had been partially destroyed and robbed but was still standing. We were happy to hear that we had at least a room to go back to.
However, that joy didn’t last long because the Israeli forces bombed the whole neighborhood in July, turning our house completely to rubble. We didn’t complain; we accepted our destiny because we believe that Allah will make it up to us and indemnify us with better things.
Despite our sureness that nothing was left of our house–we had seen pictures of the rubble—we had an urgent and renewed longing for it. We badly missed it and the life we had lived in it. So after the ceasefire was announced, we couldn’t fight the desire to return home and visit the remains.
My three brothers walked from the south to the north of Gaza—about 18 kilometers or 11 miles—while my parents, sister, youngest brother and I waited in the car line for about six hours to enter Gaza City.
When we were at last able to drive into the city, it was difficult to reach our house due to the rubble and destruction along the way. But we finally made it. At first it took me a while to recognize the remains of my house. But once I did, even though it was only a pile of scattered rocks with no clear features, I couldn’t prevent my shivering lips from saying “Home sweet home!” My heart ached at the monstrous view of my beloved home. My parents, sister and brothers gazed speechless with pale and heartbroken faces. We stood that way, moving our tearful eyes between the house and one another,
The author’s family dig for their lost personal belongings in their home, searching for pieces of their old lives and memories.
watching each other’s reactions as if we were waiting for unspoken support.
I could see the signs of shock and sadness on their faces, especially my parents, but they kept repeating, Alhamdulillah. My tears were uncontrollable. I sobbed for a while as I walked around and touched every spot and recalled the moments I had spent in those spots and corners.
We were exhausted and needed a place to rest and sleep after the hours of walking, but once we absorbed the shock, we rushed into the rubble. We headed to the tiny spaces and holes between the rocks and extracted everything our eyes could recognize and our hands could reach. We were digging and searching for any of our lost personal belongings and hoping to
find them in one piece. It was as if we were looking for our old lives and memories. We searched with our bare hands despite the danger that the rubble and damaged structures could collapse on us.
Each family member participated in the searching process. We stood in the tiny, less than 1-meter-high (3-feet) spot between the damaged ceiling and the floor and moved the rocks, iron and anything that was in the way.
We were looking for personal belongings, such as clothes. But we also looked for different things, according to our individual interests. My mother looked for her favorite kitchen tools and supplies; my father searched for the formal documents of the house and other important papers and electrical devices; and my brothers, Mahmoud, Mohammad and Mo’men, were looking for anything from their room. My sister Shahd, who is still in high school, tried to find her books and the calculator she needs for her studies; my youngest brother Ahmed wanted his school bag, bicycle and toys. I was looking for my favorite hijabs, makeup, and my college books and papers. To be honest, I was looking for everything I ever had. Whenever one of us found an item between the rubble, we
were shocked and pleased as if it was the first time we had seen it in our life; we were also proud and amazed that these things had survived the relentless bombing.
My mother found only two trays, a strainer, a hijab, and her favorite holy Qur’an. The Qur’an was torn, but she was very happy to find it and the other items. Meanwhile, my father found some of his shirts, now tattered; he wanted to keep them, he said, because they remind him of the good old days. My sister, Shahd, was lucky to find the calculator she needed and a single book.
My brothers managed to pull out the damaged and completely broken fridge, freezer, TV screen and all the furniture we had. They decided to use the broken furniture to make a fire for cooking and to try to get warm. They also used some of the wood to build a tent next to the rubble. Ahmed, who is 10 years old, ironically found the SpongeBob doll he’d hated the most among all his toys; it has become precious to him now and he gifted it to my nephew to play with. When Ahmed saw his ruined clothes, and everything else that was destroyed, he asked: “Why did they do this to our home when we didn't do anything wrong?”
I was thrilled to find the old, worn-out hijab I used to wear before the war, in addition to a shoe. I was astonished to find my favorite lipstick intact, but I was upset to find my aloe vera tree, which I had planted and watered, dead.
The things we found and now hold on to were completely different from what we expected. For other people they might seem silly and worthless, but for us, they mean the world. They are part of our lives, our memories of happier moments. They remind us what our lives were like when we had peace of mind. ■
By Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi
SINCE I WAS A CHILD, I dreamed of studying at the Islamic University of Gaza. To me it seemed like an entire world filled with warmth and beauty. My father used to take us kids there during holidays, and those visits became an inseparable part of my childhood. I remember how we played around the campus, walked between the buildings, ran up the stairs, and stopped by my father's office to catch our breath. So many of my memories took place in that office.
My sister, Doaa, studied multimedia and often claimed my father’s office as her own little universe. Most of the time, she sat at his desk with her laptop open, studying for hours. The photos she took were inspiring, and I used to picture myself in her place—sitting there quietly and studiously, preparing for the day I would enroll at the university.
Taqwa Ahmed Al ‐ Wawi s a second year student of English Literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. She is passionate about writing and is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
During holidays, I would make plans with my best friend, Malak, to visit the university. It wasn’t as simple as it seemed; we spent long hours coordinating over WhatsApp. Her father, like mine, was a professor at the university, which meant we had to align our schedules with our fathers’.
“When is your father going to the university? Mine is busy this week.”
“Let’s postpone it to next week, my dad has a meeting.”
This was how our conversations went. Eventually we came up with a plan. And when we did, it felt like we had accomplished something extraordinary.
The night before the visit, we would sleep early because we had to wake up at dawn. I would pray, read my daily Qur’an portion and send Malak a message: “I’m awake.” Then, I’d quickly get ready and hop into my father’s car. I always sat by the window—the journey to the university was a joy in itself. Along the way, I captured photos of the sky, the sea, the clouds, the streets and the beautiful buildings. Little did I know that many of those buildings would be destroyed by merciless missiles in the war.
When we arrived at the university, we’d split up, after agreeing to call each other when we were done. My father would head to his office, and I went straight to the science building, where I had agreed to meet Malak. Seeing her waiting for me by the entrance, we invariably hugged tightly out of excitement. Malak was my childhood friend, and our families had been friends even before we were born.
In the early morning, the campus was almost empty, making it feel like it was ours alone. First, we made our way to the wooden benches that were obscured by trees, tucked in the back corner of the campus, where nothing disturbed us. We talked endlessly on various topics, losing track of time, until one of us suddenly was reminded of our hunger and said, “We haven’t had breakfast yet!” We headed to the cafeteria, bought whatever we craved, and returned to the same private spot.
Somehow, the food tasted better under those trees—as if the place itself added a special flavor to everything.
Afterward, we would start our little tour around the university. We documented every moment, even the simplest ones—a photo by the elevator, sitting on the building’s stairs, or a short video of us eating instant noodles or chips. To us, everything was worth capturing.
Our visits always concluded when our fathers were finished with work. After we said our goodbyes, we immediately began planning for our next visit, even if it was weeks away.
Not long after my last visit with Malak, I began to prepare for my first year at the Islamic University. I was incredibly excited about this upcoming chapter of my life. It felt like a big step that deserved careful preparation. I was beginning my path as an English Litera-
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ture student and I spent days setting up my study space—arranging books meticulously, buying new notebooks, and creating a study area that reflected my hopes and ambition.
The first month of classes brought an indescribable thrill. I wandered between buildings, attended lectures and revisited the familiar corners of my childhood. I made sure to capture every moment, taking countless photos and videos of the campus, my friends and the simple things that would later become cherished memories. Between lectures, I spent time with friends—AlShimaa Saidam (who was later martyred), Aya Al-Najjar, and her friend Dania. We would meet during breaks, explore the campus, and enjoy meals together, recharging for the next lecture.
Oct. 4 seemed like any ordinary Wednesday, but it turned out to be the last time I saw the university as I knew it. Saturday should have been just the beginning of a new week, but was the eve of war. Classes were suspended, and soon after, the news came that the university I loved, the place I had known since childhood, had become a target for Israeli missiles.
When I heard about the bombing of the university, I felt that my dreams had shattered. The buildings I had once raced through were now nothing but rubble, their walls crumbled to the ground. The classrooms, once alive with the rustle of books and the chatter of eager students, now stood empty. The trees that had once offered shade to tired students were now charred skeletons. The air was thick with dust and the bitter scent of ashes, drowning out the echoes of laughter and dreams that had once filled this place.
However, despite everything, the university continued to function. On July 1, 2024, it announced the resumption of classes online. I completed my first year entirely online with excellent grades, and I’m now in my second year. I still dream of returning to the campus I love, where memories live, trusting that Allah will compensate us in a way that makes us forget the pain we’ve endured. ■
By Josh Paul and Tariq Habash
A man holding an American/Israeli flag waits in line to get into the Capital One
20, 2025, in Washington, DC.
WHEN WE RESIGNED from the Biden administration over its disastrous Gaza policy, we knew the time was now to reshape U.S. policies toward Israel and Palestine so that they were actually in line with U.S. interests. It’s why we started A New Policy in the first place. We also knew we were up against a powerful lobby—with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at the forefront—that has established a narrative so entrenched in U.S. politics and media that it's hard for Americans not to accept that the unconditional U.S. support for Israel is what
Josh Paul and Tariq Habash are co‐founders of A New Policy, which was founded in October 2024 with the goal of reshaping U.S. policies toward Israel and Palestine and bringing them in line with America’s interests. Both Paul and Habash resigned from the Biden administra‐tion over its policy of unconditional support to Israel's assault on Gaza.This article was published on Zeteo, a new media organization from Mehdi Hasan on March 17. Reprinted with permission.
is best for the United States. But our work in government and what we’ve witnessed over the last 17 months with Israel’s U.S.backed genocidal war in Gaza tells us that the U.S.-Israel relationship is anything but beneficial to Americans, the region and the world.
Americans are starting to wake up to this fact, but overcoming the reach of organizations like AIPAC—a group that has a more than 40-year lead on us in size and influence—can only begin when the narrative about the U.S.-Israel relationship is corrected. When the veil of myths is torn away, two questions come to the fore: First, if the U.S. relationship with Israel costs more than benefits America, how should we revise that relationship? And second, if the relationship with Israel is not, on balance, in America’s interest in its current form, what should we think of an organization that does not just advance misinformation into our political system, but backs that misinformation with over $100
million of spending on American politicians and elections in the past cycle alone?
On its website, AIPAC lays out several reasons why it claims the Israel-U.S. relationship is a “partnership that benefits us.” But in examining those claims, none survive even the most cursory of assessments. Building on our recent assessment that unconditional support for Israel is not in America’s best interest, we debunk six of AIPAC’s biggest claims below.
The U.S.-Israel relationship “helps keep us safe” because Israeli technology helps secure America, Israeli intelligence sharing pre-empts threats from the Middle East and Israel deters and defeats our mutual adversaries.
The Facts: Israel’s militarized occupation, including its violent assault on Gaza that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people, is a driver of insecurity and is itself a causal factor for much of the risk that the U.S.-Israel defense and intelligence-sharing relationship exists to address. America’s public association with Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people, including through the provision of the funding and weaponry that enable it, creates far more challenges for America’s national security than it resolves. While the U.S. and Israel do have a robust intelligence-sharing relationship, many, if not most, of the threats this relationship addresses are a function of Israel’s own actions, which generate regional instability as well as global threats to the United States, as the director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) observed in 2024. At the same time, the presence of Israeli surveillance technology across America—technology that was tested on an occupied population and has been deployed to enable the murder of thousands of civilians—creates the potential for third-country access to our homeland security infrastructure and thereby is a potential threat to our nation in much the same way that People’s Republic of
China technology embedded in U.S. port loading systems does.
The U.S.-Israel relationship “promotes our values and interests” because Israel is a democracy that promotes “stability” in the Middle East and creates “lasting peace” for the region.
The Facts: Israel is no democracy. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli NGO B’Tselem have all said Israel operates in whole or in part as an apartheid system. As Americans, we believe in freedom, liberty and equal treatment regardless of ethnicity or religion. These are values that are fundamentally at odds with those demonstrated by Israel, as 5 million Palestinians currently live under Israeli military occupation without the right to vote, due process, and the right to self-determination simply because of their identity.
Furthermore, the notion that Israel joins the U.S. in “promoting stability” in the Middle East is provably false simply by looking at the multiple conflicts Israel is engaged in—with Palestinians, Lebanon, Syria (portions of which it is currently occupying), Iran and Yemen. Outside of direct conflict, the citizens of nations across the region strongly disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza, an obstacle to U.S. goals for normalization of relations between countries in the region and Israel.
Israel “protects [U.S.] troops” by being a capable partner that reduces the need for U.S. presence in the Middle East, is a leader in certain defense technologies (air defense, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, counter-tunnels), and is also helping the U.S. “prevent and treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in American troops.”
The Facts: The need for American troops to be present and in harm’s way in the Middle East would be significantly reduced if the U.S. was not constantly engaged in defending Israel from the consequences of the Israeli government’s
own actions. Just last year, three American soldiers in Jordan—whose mission included interdicting the transfer of weapons intended for use against Israel—were killed and 30 wounded, while numerous American ships have been targeted by missiles as the U.S. carries out strikes (that have not been authorized by Congress) against the Houthis, in a conflict that branched from Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza. Because of the decision to deploy U.S. assets to defend Israel, the U.S. Defense Department has had to spread itself so thin that for extended periods in the past year, there has been no U.S. Carrier Strike Group in the Pacific due to deployments to the Middle East.
And while it is true that Israel is a leader in certain defense technologies, this is in no small part due to the vast sum of U.S. tax dollars that Israel is allowed to channel directly into its own defense industrial base, to the point that the U.S. subsidizes an industry that competes directly with American companies around the world, at the cost of American jobs. Finally, as to Israel’s contributions to combating military PTSD, which AIPAC vaunts, it is important to add a cautionary note that, as the Israeli media itself reports, the Israeli government has systematically failed to address its own soldiers’ increasing pleas to care for the vast growth in PTSD in their own ranks.
The U.S.-Israel relationship “addresses 21st century challenges” like “cyber-security, healthcare, artificial intelligence, water scarcity, food security, climate change and renewable energy.”
The Facts: In just the first 120 days of Israel’s war on Gaza, greenhouse gases from Israel’s military operations exceeded the annual total emissions for 26 countries and territories, one study found. U.S. subsidies to Israel’s defense sector also defray the cost for Israel to deliver universal healthcare to Israeli citizens—at the same time that Congress is considering proposals to cut $880 billion in federal spending, likely meaning sig-
nificant cuts to the Medicaid program that supports 72 million Americans. Rather than defraying the costs of Israel’s free healthcare system, the nearly $18 billion in taxpayer funds given to Israel for its defense last year alone could have provided healthcare for more than 6 million American children living below the poverty line.
While Israel has made technological innovations when it comes to managing water scarcity, these advances are not cost-free to the U.S—they, like other “joint technological development” benefits, are sold back to the U.S. for profit, typically via private Israeli companies. These opportunities would exist without unconditional support and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Israel “invests in [the U.S.] economy,” supporting nearly 100,000 American jobs, and is “the second-largest source of foreign listings on the NASDAQ after China.”
The Facts: The U.S. suffers from a trade deficit with Israel. The U.S. invests over $40 billion annually in Israel in return for Israeli foreign direct investment into the U.S. of only $22 billion. By comparison, Ireland, which recently joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, contributes $322 billion to the U.S. economy in foreign direct investment, while Spain, a country that the U.S. is exploring sanctions against due to its refusal to permit arms headed for Israel to transit its ports, contributes $81 billion annually in foreign direct investment to the U.S. While AIPAC's NASDAQ citation is factually accurate, if viewed through the lens of direct foreign investment, the U.S. loses money every year on Israel, while other coun-
tries contribute much more to our economy.
The U.S. and Israel confront “common threats,” including Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) proliferation, “statesponsored terrorism,” and “Islamic radicalism.”
The Facts: Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapons state in the world that has not ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment has named Israel as a country “generally reported as having undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities,” and “gen-
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erally reported as having undeclared offensive biological warfare programs.” In addition to terrorizing the Palestinian population under its control, Israel has a wellknown assassination program that targets civilians, including scientists, and has also bombed civilian infrastructure in Yemen.
Israel’s actions are a primary driver of recruitment for armed groups in the Middle East, the threat of which to the U.S. would be greatly reduced absent our continued military, political and diplomatic support for Israel. In short, when it comes to the “common threats” that AIPAC identifies, Israel is either, in some cases, out of sync with longstanding U.S. goals, or, in the others, a major contributing factor to the generation of those threats.
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Rather than being a strategic benefit, U.S. support for Israel in its current form comes at a net cost to America. And none of the limited benefits the United States may accrue from this relationship require that we support it unconditionally. A more balanced and reciprocal arrangement, as we have with all other nations, would serve both U.S. and Israeli interests. By prioritizing our national interest and curbing the worst impulses of Israel’s extreme right, the U.S. would cut diplomatic, military and economic costs to ourselves, save thousands of Palestinian lives, and also substantively and strategically advance Israel’s own goal for its people to live in peace within the broader Middle East. That would be a loss for AIPAC’s propaganda and political machine, but for Palestinians, Israelis and Americans, it would deliver, finally, a strategic benefit that is real. ■
By John Gee
A Palestinian woman embraces her son following his release from an Israeli prison as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal. (Israel shattered the ceasefire in March.) Relatives and neighbors celebrated the arrival of 90 women, children and men set free by Israel on Jan. 20, 2025, in the occupied West Bank town of Beitunia. The health, feelings and experiences of Palestinian prisoners who survived Israeli brutality appear to be unworthy of consideration in the mainstream media.
THE DIRECT LIES told by Israel and its supporters are frequently blatant and easy to refute, even if much of the media shrinks from countering the untruths and Israel loyalists cling to them like a security blanket to sustain their faith in the Zionist state and its government.
Some misrepresentation, however, is more subtle and easy to overlook, conveyed through the choice of words used to report on current affairs.
Some choices are obviously weighted, such as when non-state fighters are labelled “terrorists” regardless of how they conduct themselves in war, while even the most brutal attacks of Israel upon a population that it is seeking to intimidate are not called terrorist actions and television viewers have destruction of civilian lives and the structures that support life before their very eyes.
Other choices may be less obvious to the general public, such as
John Gee is a free ‐ lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.
when casualties caused by an ally such as Israel are mentioned in ways that conceal who caused them: deaths and injuries occurred “during the fighting” or “during clashes” between two sides. For example, newspaper accounts published on Oct. 13, 2024, told readers that “At least five U.N. peacekeepers have been wounded in recent days as Israeli forces battle Hezbollah”; a casual reader might easily have assumed that Israel and Hezbollah bore equal responsibility for the casualties, when in fact Israeli forces shot all of them. Israeli perspectives are adopted without acknowledgment that this is what they are and without offering an alternative Palestinian view. Ostensibly objective commentators were, in fact, taking sides when they dwelt upon challenges Israel faced in Gaza and Lebanon and what it might do to achieve its aims. Why did they not muse upon the problems faced by the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance, or come up with suggestions of how they might achieve their goals? Discussion of “the day after” in Gaza consistently turned on what Israel intended or what it might accept, with a wall-to-wall consensus in the Western media that Hamas would be excluded from
government: the Palestinians will not be allowed to choose who governs them.
For a long time, casualty figures compiled by the authorities in Gaza were described as coming from “the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.” The intention was to raise doubts about the credibility of the figures and to suggest that they were inflated, without actually offering evidence that they were false. In fact, they are minimum figures of the known dead, whether identified or not, but not those buried under rubble or of whom no identifiable remains will ever be found. It may be said that it is nevertheless true that the Ministry of Health in Gaza is “Hamas-controlled,” but if that’s a point worth making, shouldn’t balanced reporting then require war statistics from Israeli institutions to be qualified, perhaps by the institutions being described as “controlled by the far-right nationalist Israeli government”?
Much of the mainstream media habitually refers to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen as “Iran’s proxies,” as if Iran is a puppet master that manipulates these organizations at will and they simply follow its instructions, like mind-controlled zombies. In fact, each is able to make decisions without reference to Iran (the October 7 attack being the most obvious example) and takes its cue from the conditions in their own local environment: they are accountable to their popular base. If the support these organizations receive from Iran makes them “proxies,” would it not be as appropriate to refer to Israel as a proxy of the U.S., upon which it crucially relies for most of its weaponry and for diplomatic support? Yet the mainstream media does not do that.
When demonstrations take place in support of the Palestinians, they are often referred to as “anti-Israel.” The same media outlets refer to demonstrations in support of the Zionist state as “pro-Israel,” never as “anti-Palestinian.” This identifies supporters of the Palestinians negatively, as being motivated by what they are against, while supporters of Israel are described positively by what they favor. This is loaded language, and it has a long history. The Balfour Declaration, issued by the British government in 1917, supported the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in
Palestine, but notoriously referred to the indigenous inhabitants who then made up 91 percent of the population as “the existing non-Jewish communities,” defining them in terms of what they were not rather than as the indigenous population.
Bias was shown yet again in mainstream media reporting of prisoner exchanges as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement. Numerous articles and commentaries dwelt upon how Israelis held in Gaza had “survived captivity,” but how many reporters or writers considered the conditions of the hundreds of Palestinians released under the agreement? Many emerged visibly emaciated and some had to be taken to the hospital on stretchers following documented torture and ill-treatment, but their feelings and experiences appeared to be unworthy of consideration. Was this pro-Israeli bias, or simply a racism that empathizes with the suffering of “people like us” but not with that of people of the wrong color or culture?
Sometimes media members don’t ask questions that would probably seem to be obvious in other contexts. Israeli spokespeople have been quoted as accusing Palestinian teachers and writers of “incitement” and, more recently, it has been a charge levelled at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as a justification for terminating its operations in Israel. Surely serious journalists ought to ask, “When you say incitement, what exactly do you mean?” but Israel gets off without being challenged. The uninformed member of the public could be forgiven for imagining teachers standing in front of classes instructing children to go out and kill Israelis, when in fact, the term “incitement,” as used by Israel, applies to a large range of activities it does not like, such as displaying a Palestinian flag, speaking lovingly of a home seized by Israel in 1948 or referring to historical acts of resistance.
To be fair, there are journalists, including on-the-spot reporters, who do try to tell things as they really are and do an honest job, but they face obstruction from management. Some newsrooms ban the use of the term “occupied territories” in reference to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for exam-
ple, or insist on qualifications that favor Israel. One example is the endless reiteration of statements that “the war in Gaza began after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023,” and that Israel retaliated, as if to drum in the message that a Palestinian organization was responsible for all that followed, leaving out of consideration 19 years of siege and periodic Israeli attacks, including the killing of 223 unarmed participants in the Great March of Return protests behind the fences imprisoning Gaza in 2018-19. Most journalists learn to selfcensor in response, to varying degrees.
Israel’s liberal supporters are never asked to explain why they support Israel’s actions, which are designed to eliminate the Palestinian people as a nation.
Some years ago on a trip to Arizona, I was about to pay with cash at a shop on the Navajo reservation. A guide said to me, “You know, there are Indians who won’t handle a $20 bill because it has Andrew Jackson’s face on it.”
Jackson’s face has appeared on U.S. bank notes since 1928. He tends to be remembered for defeating the British outside New Orleans in the War of 1812 and for his role in adding Florida to the U.S. well before his presidency, as well as his defense of the Constitution when president. Native Americans remember him as the president under whom the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830, after which tens of thousands of people were forcibly removed from their home territories east of the Mississippi and resettled in the West. Thousands died on what came to be called “The Trail of Tears,” including a quarter of the Cherokee nation.
If the descendants of the Cherokees, Seminoles, Choctaws, Chickasaws and others who went through this bitter experience still recall it with horror nearly 200 years later, why should anyone imagine that Donald Trump’s proposal to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and resettle them in other lands, even if it could be made to happen, could ever induce Palestinians to forget their homeland or the injustice of their dispossession? ■
By Catherine Baker
“Rooted in the West Bank” is an Al Jazeera English Witness documentary that Bruno Sorrentino and Uri Fruchtmann hope to turn into a feature‐length film.
WHAT EXPLAINS THE RAPID escalation in Israel’s use of lawfare, home demolitions and land theft to remove West Bank Palestinians from their land?
In a word: impunity.
From its origins, Zionism has always implicitly and explicitly endorsed the removal of Palestinians, but it also has always been “acutely sensitive to international opinion and international responses,” according to Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of the ezine Jadaliyya. The inexorable shift of mainstream Zionism toward the radical right and its extreme agenda “can only be explained by the increasing impunity that has been granted to Israel by its Western sponsors and allies, particularly in recent years.”
Rabbani moderated an Online Film Salon hosted by Voices From the Holy Land on Feb. 16, 2025. The featured documentary, “Rooted in the West Bank,” was filmed over the course of
Catherine Baker is a member of the steering committee of Voices
From the Holy Land, which conducts online film discussions, and a senior editor with We Are Not Numbers, a Gaza‐based project to am‐plify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
25 years and follows farmer Atta Jaber and his family as they contend with efforts by Israeli settlers to overtake their land in the Baqa’a Valley.
“It was kind of a hopeful time” when filming started, said Bruno Sorrentino, who made the documentary with Uri Fruchtmann. Early in filming, however, they captured an incident in which the Israeli army demolished the Jaber family rainwater reservoirs. An army spokesperson explained that the reservoirs were illegal, that the Palestinians didn’t know how to farm properly and that they were overusing water resources. “Which is all kind of nonsense.”
Sorrentino asserted that this situation in the West Bank was “tailormade” for a longitudinal filmmaking approach because, over the years, the excuses change; there’s no need for the filmmaker to take a polemical approach or put difficult questions to people. The truth reveals itself as the camera rolls.
Ethnic cleansing via lawfare, home demolitions and land theft has a long history. More than 55,000 homes were demolished in the 1948 Nakba; since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank, some 60,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed there; several thou-
sand inside the 1948 borders of Israel have been demolished, too. Israel denies more than 99 percent of Palestinian building permit applications in Area C of the West Bank, the area under Israeli military control. Israel’s Operation Iron Wall, launched in January 2025 against the Jenin refugee camp, has already expelled some 40,000 Palestinians from their homes.
Meanwhile, over in Gaza, an estimated 92 percent of homes housing 2.3 million people have been damaged or destroyed since Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel is currently threatening to demolish 45 homes in Silwan, a neighborhood of East Jerusalem. Israel couldn’t have done that kind of mass demolition even a few years ago, noted Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Since its founding in 1997, ICAHD has managed to bring visibility to the injustice of Israel’s home demolition practices, and it has helped rebuild homes.
But now, “the word ‘impunity’ comes back all the time.” That’s what makes the current situation so dangerous for Palestinians, Halper said; Israel is no longer constrained by public opinion; it doesn’t even need to cover up its actions with hasbara (propaganda) anymore.
“It doesn’t care. It’s got the wind of [U.S. President Donald] Trump behind it….Israel feels it has a free hand to do anything it wants to. And the Palestinians really have very little defense,” Halper said.
One of those Palestinians under attack is panelist Eid Suleiman Hathaleen, who has worked for more than 20 years to resist colonization, settler violence, home demolitions and expulsions. He built his house on land his grandfather purchased in 1952 in the West Bank village Umm Al-Khair after being displaced from the Negev. He lived there with his wife and five daughters until Israeli authorities demolished the home in 2024.
Hathaleen characterized Israel’s home demolition orders as political and not based on planning considerations. “The Israelis demolish Palestinian homes in one corner, and just a few meters away, you see ex-
pansion of Israeli Jewish settlement in the same spot of land.”
Though he considers himself “an optimistic person,” he acknowledged being very fearful now. “What we have on the ground is different [from earlier years], and the reality is, it’s very hard to avoid the violence and the brutality of the occupation.”
A significant factor creating that different, more dangerous situation is the lack of restraint on settlers. Halper explained that the Israeli government used to distance itself from settler activities and did not always approve their applications for housing permits; the settlers had to work incrementally to take over land. However, the settler movement became normalized after the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020. Settlers are essentially being given free rein to displace Palestinians not only in isolated communities but also in towns and cities.
The settlers are also using new tactics. According to Hathaleen, they are now assuming the role of shepherds and taking their flocks onto Palestinian agricultural land, even into private yards. These settlers dress traditionally like Arabs, imitate their walking style, and accompany themselves with donkeys. The Israeli army defends them.
In another ominous development, settlers are now formally connected to the army. So-called “Hilltop Youth” serve in a special military unit called Desert Frontier. “These kids have uniforms and guns and authority,” Halper said, and they are now the ones in charge of enforcing the behavior of their younger brothers. “Palestinians have no right to resist, and settlers have no fear of being arrested. You put that together, and you begin to understand the terror that someone like Eid is living with every minute of every day.”
“And it all comes back to impunity,” Rabbani noted.
According to Halper, over the years, Israel has exerted a matrix of control to normalize, or make acceptable and permanent, the expropriation of all the land, even as it engaged in negotiations over a two-state solution. The matrix includes
creating “facts on the ground” (e.g., 750,000 settlers in the West Bank, the apartheid highway system), military control, administrative/legal controls (including home demolitions) and economic warfare.
The normalization of Israel’s aggression can only lead to genocide or apartheid, said Halper. “It is the greatest threat to the Palestinians since the 1948 Nakba. It really is the erasure.”
While people worldwide support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, engage in massive protests, and participate in solidarity actions, what has been missing is a viable political program to promote. To fill this gap, a Palestinian-led initiative called the One Democratic State Campaign has developed a 10-point program that calls for the establishment of a single democratic state in historic Palestine, where Palestinians and Israeli Jews live in equality and Palestinian refugees’ right of return is protected.
“On the local level, it seems really hopeless,” says Halper, a founding member of the One Democratic State Campaign, “and that’s why Eid and Atta and others really need that encouragement. But if you step back—which is hard to do if your house is being demolished—you can really see the tremendous support Palestinians have. And then the question becomes: How do we effectively mobilize that support in terms of a political program?”
Sorrentino seeks to raise funds to turn his 45-minute documentary into a feature-length film. <www.aljazeera.com/ program/witness/2024/11/24/rooted-inthe-west-bank-25-years-of-defying-settler-violence>.
He asserted that the value of his film is that viewers get to know Atta Jaber. “What we aim to do is to get people to really care. If they really care that much, then that’s how things will change.”
The Salon was co-sponsored by the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice and by If Americans Knew. An archive of VFHL Online Film Salon recordings may be accessed at <www.voicesfromtheholyland.org/salonrecordings>. ■
By Ian Williams
“EVEN A STOPPED clock tells the time accurately twice a day.”
The saying comes to mind with each new pensée from Elon Musk and his sidekick President Donald Trump. The Boer buffoon and billionaire is now suggesting that the U.S. should withdraw from the U.N. and NATO. For years in this column and elsewhere I have exposed the idiocy of the “America-and-Israel” first campaign to pull out of the United Nations. I have even suggested that the pernicious U.S. veto was a worthwhile price to keep the U.S. involved in the organization, guided by Lyndon Baines Johnson’s aphorism that “it’s better to keep him inside the tent pissing out than vice versa.”
The Israel supporters in the U.S. have opposed U.N. membership precisely because they felt it might, no matter how improb-
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of U.N.told: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).
ably, induce the U.S. to live up to the standards it set when it was one of the founders of the organization.
But enough is enough. That adage presumed a minimum of decorum from invitees to the tent, while in fact anyone connected with the current White House regime will unrepentantly micturate on their companions inside the canvas. It is time for the U.N. (and NATO) to suspend U.S. membership and ask Ambassador-Designate Elise Stefanik to make sure she closes the door on her way out. It is perhaps typical of this administration that they went ahead nominating her for her reflexively anti-U.N. and pro-Israel politics without regard to the effect on foreign allies, let alone considering the effect of her impending resignation on their featherlight mandate in the House, so they now have to procrastinate on her taking office.
It is bad enough to have an over-powerful member whose interpretation of the U.N. Charter and international law is wildly eccentric, as that of the U.S. has so often been, but to have an overweening member like a shark in the swimming pool explicitly denying the U.N. Charter and repudiating its principles is a bite too far.
In the past, there was always a chance of the majority cajoling the U.S. back into the mainstream. And even if it wielded the veto like Musk’s chainsaw on major points of principle, at least the U.S. supported a whole range of agencies and conventions that do benefit the world in serious and practical ways. Even USAID, which has so often been a tool of tendentious U.S. foreign policy, has benefited the world in fields like health. All over the world unlikely
prayers are raised for George W. Bush for the global AIDS initiative now being shut down by Musk.
It took some time, but the New World Order trumpeted by Bush Senior and Secretary of State James Baker during the First Gulf War has now been totally Trumped in by this shamelessly mercenary U.S. president, who wants untold thousands to die on the beaches off Gaza so he can open resorts, or, in the case of Ukraine, so he can secure control of the mineral wealth under the steppes.
The U.N.’s core commandment is the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force, which sounds principled but is in fact pragmatic. It was intended to avoid the interstate wars of conquest that led to the previous world wars by ensuring that the victors would not have secure title to whatever they might have won on the battlefield. Admittedly, in the same spirit of pragmatism, the Allies did not set the clock running on this rule until after 1945, so Soviet adjustments along the recent Eastern Front were grandfathered in.
In the interests of geopolitical clarity, the old League of Nations’ fussiness about self-determination got lost in the undergrowth, superseded by the votes over vodka and cognac at Yalta, so no one asked the Poles, Kashmiris, East Prussians or Baltics what they wanted.
But as we have pointed out here before, the principle still haunts the world
of diplomacy even in the breach. Whatever Trump and Israel say, for most of the world, the status of the Golan Heights, Gaza, West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Western Sahara, Ossetia and the other chips Russia has knocked off its neighbors’ blocks, is “occupied territory.” Northern Cyprus is still in geopolitical limbo, not recognized as an independent state. And East Timor actually rose from a swamp of abstentions similar to those in the recent Ukraine vote to become independent.
In contrast, now the U.S. claims it is fine to acquire territory by force—as long as the Trump Organization gets a percentage. Crimea, Panama, Canada or Greenland belong to the emperor or the tsar who want it. The U.S. volte-face over Ukraine at least tidies up American diplomacy by presenting it a new back to stab after so many years of sticking it to Palestine.
To see the “new paradigm,” we only have to examine the unprincipled General Assembly voting patterns that link Israel and North Korea, the U.S. and Russia voting in predatory harmony for the new international norm. You could rely on some countries to consistently betray principles over Palestine, which made their votes appear less transactional, but at least they stayed bought.
It is time for the U.N. (and NATO) to
suspend the U.S. from membership. Washington is not going to pay its dues anyway, and it might induce the other members to renege on the Charter. It is one thing to have a powerful member whose interpretation of the Charter and international law is wildly eccentric, as the U.S.’s has so often been. In that case, there is always the chance of the majority persuading the errant member back into the mainstream. But it is counterproductive to keep a saboteur and fifth columnist with a hand on the helm, who refuses to accept any of the obligations but demands extra privileges.
Hence my conversion to getting the U.S. out of both organizations. With the U.S. out of the U.N., maybe the rest of the General Assembly could reclaim the diplomatic ground lost in the years since Oslo and give Israel the South African/apartheid treatment it deserves. It should be easier since in Elon Musk we get a prominent pariah standing for apartheid nostalgia, Putin’s expansionism and Israeli genocide against whom the Palestinians can rally support. And with the U.S. out of NATO, the rest of Europe could remember its principles. As we have been saying for some time, morally and legally, the Palestinian and Ukrainian causes stand or fall together. And with Trump they both stand out in the cold. ■
By Ahmad Halima
“I HAVE NEVER felt this sense of lacking oxygen that I feel here,” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said of her recent speaking engagement in Germany. Junge Welt, a left-wing German newspaper, agreed to host Albanese at the last minute after local authorities pressured the original venue to cancel. The event was held with an intense police presence, both inside and outside of the building.
A pressure and intimidation campaign by pro-Israel groups, the Berlin mayor and police targeted Albanese and local civil society organizers. The U.N. Rapporteur said that her “75 hours in Germany” in February made her “pretty nervous.” Shaken yet undefeated, Albanese determinedly talked about Israel’s ongoing genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid in her capacity as a U.N.-mandated rapporteur, despite the clampdown on free speech.
Like anyone who dares to speak of the evidence of Israel’s genocide and overall oppression of the Palestinians, U.N. Special Rapporteur Albanese has been accused of anti-Semitism
Ahmad Halima is a Middle East and North Africa analyst and freelance reporter. He is Dutch ‐ Palestinian, usually based in the Netherlands and holds an MA in International Affairs from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.
and support for terrorism. The barrage of attacks on the Italian international lawyer and her work came from many sources. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. under the Biden-Harris Administration, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, described Albanese as “unfit for her role” and accused her of anti-Semitism, and the Anti-Defamation League has accused her of anti-Semitic statements. Albanese’s reports have characterized Israel’s actions as part of a “longterm intentional, systematic, state-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.” Her groundbreaking report “Anatomy of a Genocide,” published in March 2024, established that Israel had committed acts in Gaza that are defined in international law as genocide.
On her February tour through Germany and the Netherlands, Albanese faced pressure and intimidation in what she described as “mafia-style tactics” by pro-Israel groups, Israeli embassies, local governments and politicians. Government officials refused to meet with her, but a few leftwing politicians received her, and she met with dissident civil servants who have had weekly sitins in front of the Dutch Foreign Ministry in the Hague to protest the Netherlands’ pro-Israel policy positions. The U.N. Rapporteur received the Dries van Agt Award (named after the late Dutch prime minister who advocated for Palestinian rights through The Rights Forum) for her “sharp analyses and unwavering moral
compass [that] make her a powerful voice for Palestinian rights.”
Albanese had meetings scheduled with Dutch government officials and members of parliament. Due to pressure from pro-Israel groups, these meetings came under scrutiny. Through a majority vote, the Dutch parliament cancelled an official invitation for the U.N. Rapporteur. Right-wing members of parliament described her as a “hater of Jews and Israel” and accused her of anti-Semitism. Much of the local media complied without question, characterizing Albanese as “controversial” and delegitimizing her work as U.N. Rapporteur. The press largely underreported the actual controversy surrounding Albanese: the Zionistbacked intimidation and repression of speech of a U.N.-mandated Rapporteur.
The Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Caspar Veldkamp, denied the U.N. Rapporteur’s request for a meeting. This is highly unusual for the country that is host to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and that claims it has a “strong reputation and responsibility as a host country” of these institutions, according to the very same foreign minister. When he expressed regret over President Donald Trump’s sanctioning of the ICC, Minister Veldkamp claimed that the Netherlands “actively contributes to strengthening the international legal order and multilateral cooperation and will, in good faith, fulfill binding international law and treaty obligations.” He also said that the ICC’s work is “essential in the fight against impunity.” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, however, said that there could be options for Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to visit the Netherlands without being arrested, despite the ICC arrest warrant against him. Similarly, Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said that he would ensure that Netanyahu can visit Germany. The evasive fight against impunity is performative for the Dutch and German governments— worthy of fighting for when anyone but their political and ideological allies are under scrutiny for grave violations of in-
ternational law.
Albanese’s visit to the Netherlands and Germany took place in the backdrop of this contradiction. Several German universities cancelled events where she was due to speak, caving to “threats and intimidation of the Israeli ambassador [to Germany], the mayor of Berlin and other politicians and ministers.” The Berlin police pressured venues to cancel events and forced a last-minute venue change and downscaling of an event. The German police investigated arresting the U.N. Rapporteur and showed an overwhelming presence inside and outside the venue where she was speaking.
The influence of Zionist groups is powerful, but governments have a choice. Governments succumbing to Israeli pressure clamp down on free speech, a free press, and the right to free assembly, which means they violate their own laws and civil liberties. Even though she spoke at a few select events and her talks were livestreamed, the fact that universities opted to succumb to authoritarian pressure to censor a U.N. official and police exerted pressure as they did means that Albanese’s voice—which as The Rights Forum notes, is “not an opinion but grounded in international law and carefully gathered evidence”—was dampened and obstructed. Wieland Hoban, chairman of the German organization Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, said that “in Germany, organizing an event like this is, unfortunately, an act of resistance.”
This goes much beyond Albanese as an individual: these authoritarian measures and disregard for a top U.N. official on the diplomatic level constitute censorship, intimidation and weakening of the United Nations, international law and civil society. Democrats and progressives alike see President Trump’s policies as an attack on the multilateral system—and they are. But Trump is not alone. In the U.S., the BidenHarris Administration laid the groundwork for Trump’s ICC sanctions and suspending funding for U.N. programs. They suspended funding to and spread disinformation about UNRWA, bolstered Israel’s in-
ternational standing at the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly, and covertly and overtly pressured the ICC to halt its issuing of arrest warrants, reinforcing Israel’s impunity.
Internationally, most European countries have been undermining the multilateral system and international law in their complicity and participation in Israel's genocide. While European leaders are in panic mode over the breakdown of U.S. support for Ukraine, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said that it is up to Europe to take up the role of “leader of the free world.” Putting aside the question as to whether it is desirable to have a leader of the free world at all, the EU lacks credibility due to its participation and complicity in Israel’s war crimes. The obstruction and delegitimization of the ICC and ICJ in their cases against Israel, as well as the intimidation campaign against Francesca Albanese, are signals of authoritarianism, fading fundamental rights, and a weakening of the United Nations, the international legal order and multilateralism. ■
By Faisal Kutty
Participants hold banners directed at the U.S. Consulate General building in Toronto, Canada, on Feb. 15, 2025, as pro ‐Palestinian demonstrators oppose President Donald Trump’s efforts to take over Gaza and displace Palestinians.
CANADA OFTEN LAUDS itself as a bastion of democracy and free expression. However, recent incidents suggest a troubling trend: advocacy for Palestinian rights is increasingly met with legal action, censorship and systematic punishment. The cases of activist Yves Engler, legal scholar Birju Dattani, medical professionals Drs. Yipeng Ge and Ben Thomson, law students at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), student-led university encampments, and even Senator Yuen Pau Woo illustrate a concerning pattern in which dissenting voices challenging pro-Israel narratives face legal harassment, reputational harm and even
Faisal Kutty is a lawyer, law professor and regular contributor to The Toronto Star and Newsweek . You can follow him on X @faisalkutty.
criminal prosecution. The aggressive targeting of activists, scholars and even medical professionals raises serious concerns about the future of free speech in Canada.
Montreal-based writer and activist Yves Engler, known for his critical stance on Canada’s support for Israel, recently faced legal challenges that raise questions about the criminalization of political speech. Engler was charged with harassment and indecent communication after publicly responding to social media posts by proIsrael commentator Dahlia Kurtz. His critiques, though pointed, were part of a public discourse and did not involve direct threats. Despite Kurtz’s option to block Engler on social media, she pursued legal action, potentially setting a precedent that could deter online criticism.
Compounding the situation, Engler faced additional charges for publicly discussing his arrest. A Montreal police investigator claimed to feel “threatened” by Engler’s commentary on his own case, suggesting an overreach that could stifle legitimate criticism of law enforcement.
Notably, the police had initially closed the case without action. It was only after intervention by Neil G. Oberman, a Conservative Party candidate with a history of opposing pro-Palestinian activism, that charges were pursued. Oberman’s involvement raises concerns about using legal mechanisms to target critics of Israel.
After spending five days in jail, Engler was released on bail on Feb. 24, 2025. The prosecution sought to impose a gag order preventing him from mentioning Kurtz or discussing the case publicly. However, the judge deemed these conditions overly broad, allowing Engler to continue his advocacy while prohibiting direct tagging of Kurtz on social media. Despite this partial victory, Engler still faces serious criminal charges, with the possibility of a trial unless the case is withdrawn.
Senator Yuen Pau Woo, a vocal advocate for free speech and a critic of the suppression of pro-Palestinian voices, has faced mounting pressure and attempts to silence him. After he defended Yves Engler’s right to protest and called for transparency in Engler’s legal case, he became the target of an ethics complaint by the same pro-Israel commentator. Kurtz accused Woo of “inciting hate, aggression, and violence” simply for supporting Engler’s freedom of expression.
Woo’s statement on X (formerly Twitter) read: “I support the right of @EnglerYves to voice outrage over genocide in Gaza and to call out those who aid and abet crimes against humanity. The @rcmpgrepolice must explain fully the grounds on which charges are being laid and how these actions do not violate freedom of expression.” [Charges were laid by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal-SPVM.]
This public stance resulted in political backlash, with Kurtz filing an ethics complaint. This is a shameless attempt to
frame his comments as an attack on Jewish Canadians rather than a defense of civil liberties. These efforts reflect a broader trend in which even elected officials face consequences for advocating Palestinian rights.
Woo’s case highlights the dangerous precedent being set in Canada, where even measured political discourse on Palestinian human rights is met with efforts to intimidate and silence dissenting voices. As the case unfolds, it will serve as a test of whether Canadian political figures can express solidarity with Palestinian activists without fear of reprisal.
The crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism has extended beyond legal harassment to outright selective enforcement of laws. A striking example is the case of Hayfa Abdelkhaleq, a Palestinian protester in Ottawa who was physically assaulted by a 74-year-old woman, Lorna Bernbaum, who pulled off her hijab while hurling insults at her. Despite clear evidence of the attack, the Crown withdrew charges against Bernbaum, justifying its decision by citing Abdelkhaleq’s chanting of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as potentially genocidal. This rationale effectively legitimized violence against proPalestinian activists while simultaneously threatening them with legal consequences for their speech.
This selective application of the law was further demonstrated when Calgary police arrested Palestinian-Canadian activist Wesam Khaled in November 2023 for chanting the same phrase at a protest. Although charges were later dropped, his arrest sent a chilling message that lawful speech could result in criminal scrutiny. The contradiction is glaring: violence against Palestinian activists is excused, while peaceful protesters face legal repercussions.
The suppression of pro-Palestinian voices extends beyond criminal prosecutions. Coordinated smear campaigns have also been effective in silencing dissent. This
is evident in the case of Dr. Birju Dattani, who resigned as Canada’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner amid allegations of anti-Semitism stemming from his past critiques of Israel’s human rights record.
Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and media figure Ezra Levant led a campaign portraying Dr. Dattani as an extremist. An independent investigation commissioned by Justice Minister Arif Virani found no evidence supporting these accusations, concluding that Dattani did not harbor anti-Semitic views and that his expertise on Israel-Palestine could have been beneficial in his role. Nevertheless, political pressure led to his resignation before these findings could be publicly considered.
Dattani has since filed defamation lawsuits against Lantsman, CIJA and Levant, challenging the narratives that led to his ousting. Dattani has been relegated to working as an unpaid senior fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Free Expression and is forced to crowdfund to sustain his legal fight. His case will test whether professionals can engage in human rights advocacy without facing political repercussions.
Medical professionals who are attempting to live their ethical obligations are also being targeted. Doctors Yipeng Ge and Ben Thomson are among the growing number of medical professionals targeted for their pro-Palestinian views.
Dr. Yipeng Ge, a resident physician at the University of Ottawa, was suspended in November 2023 for social media posts referring to “apartheid” and “settler colonialism.” Although he was later reinstated, he ultimately resigned, citing the “chilling effect” of the university’s actions. “With what I’ve experienced, I cannot continue within this institution,” Ge stated.
Similarly, Dr. Ben Thomson, a nephrologist at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital, was suspended after expressing skepticism over reports of Hamas atrocities and calling attention to the suffering of Palestinians. His home address was subsequently published online, leading to threats
against him. Thomson is now suing the hospital for defamation and workplace discrimination, arguing that he was targeted for his political views while others who expressed anti-Palestinian sentiments faced no repercussions.
Students have not been spared. At Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), over 70 law students faced severe backlash after signing an open letter condemning Israeli violations of international law and calling for accountability in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. The administration quickly distanced itself from the students, releasing a statement that mischaracterized their message as anti-Semitic. A group of prominent lawyers, including a former appellate judge and law society officials, mounted a campaign to blacklist the students, pressuring law firms to revoke job offers and even warning that students who signed the letter would struggle to secure the professional placements required for their degrees. Ontario’s attorney general took the unprecedented step of screening TMU law
students, requiring them to disavow the letter to retain their career prospects. The campaign culminated in an external review, led by retired Chief Justice J. Michael MacDonald, which found that the students had not violated any code of conduct and that their letter, while controversial, was a protected exercise of free speech. Despite this vindication, many students still face reputational damage and career uncertainty, illustrating how advocacy for Palestinian rights can carry lasting professional consequences.
Meanwhile, student-led encampments at Canadian universities, inspired by similar protests in the U.S., have faced aggressive legal and institutional pushback. At the University of Toronto (U of T), students established the “People’s Circle for Palestine” encampment, demanding divestment from companies tied to Israel’s military operations. Despite remaining peaceful, the encampment faced legal action from U of T, backed by pro-Israel advocacy groups, leading to an injunction to dismantle the
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site. Superior Court Justice Markus Koehnen acknowledged the students’ “considerable success in shining a bright light” on investment ethics but ultimately ruled that their protest constituted trespassing. While the court rejected allegations of violence and anti-Semitism within the encampment, the ruling reinforced a growing trend of universities using property rights as a tool to suppress activism. Elsewhere, institutions such as the University of Waterloo escalated repression further, launching a $1.5 million lawsuit against its own students. These cases exemplify how proPalestinian student activism is increasingly met with legal threats, institutional repression and attempts to stifle political expression on campus.
The experiences of Engler, Dattani, Dr. Ge, Dr. Thomson, Khaled, Abdelkhaleq, Senator Woo and the students underscore the fragility of free speech rights in Canada. Whether through the criminal justice system, institutional suppression, or coordinated
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Compiled by Janet McMahon
BY JUAN COLE
David Smith of The Guardian reminds us that Trump is a fan of World Wrestling Federation matches, in attempting to explain the sad spectacle at the White House on Friday.
Trump is demanding that Volodymyr Zelenskiyy, the president of Ukraine, “make peace” with Russia, accusing him of risking plunging the planet into WWIII with his stand against the Russian invasion. Trump told Zelenskiyy, “you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.” He meant by “deal” acquiescing in the Russian annexation of the Donbass and neighboring regions of Ukraine.
Democrats denounced Trump and JD Vance for the clearly rehearsed ambush. Léonie Chao-Fong at The Guardian quoted Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) as saying of Zelenskiyy, “Our country thanks HIM and the Ukrainian patriots who have stood up to a dictator, buried their own & stopped Putin from marching right into the rest of Europe.”
I don’t bring all this up to talk about the rights and wrongs of the Ukraine war. There are military analysts and political scientists who have argued for
some time that given Russia’s advantages in size and manpower, an outright Ukrainian victory is unlikely. That said, emboldening Putin in this way is unwise, sort of like letting your rival at the poker table know you don’t have any face cards.
I would like to take the moment to point out that Trump’s demands of
Ukraine are no different than the U.S. and Western Europe’s demands of the Palestinians back in the 1990s, and that nowadays the West appears to expect the Palestinians simply to commit mass suicide.
Like Ukraine, Palestine was also invaded—in the latter case by the Zionist settler colonialists, who took posseA-
VOL. 28 ISSUE 3—MAY 2025
The West Has Long Demanded Of Palestinians What Trump Demanded of Ukraine—and More, Juan Cole, www.juancole.com OV-39
Israel Threatens a Second Nakba, Yet Denies the First Ever Happened, Mat Nashed and Maram Humaid, www.aljazeera.com OV-40
When the Third Intifada Breaks Out in the West Bank, Don’t Forget That Israel Instigated It, Gideon Levy, www.haaretz.com OV-42
Netanyahu’s Plan to Deprive And Rule in Gaza Will Fail Again, Farah Zaina, www.aljazeera.com OV-42
As the Gaza Agenda Moves Forward, the Imperial Narrative Shifts With It, Caitlin Johnstone, www.caitlinjohnstone.com.au OV-44
The Lost “Arab”: Gaza and the Evolving Language of the Palestinian Struggle, Dr. Ramzy Baroud, www.middleeastmonitor.com OV-44
Ta-Nehisi Coates: If Democrats Can’t Draw the Line at Genocide, They Can’t Draw the Line At Democracy, Juan Cole, www.juancole.com OV-46
American Security Contractors Walking Thin Line in Gaza, Stavroula Pabst, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-46
Hasbara Hitch: Pro-Israel Social Media Bot Goes Rogue, Calls IDF Soldiers “White Colonizers In Apartheid Israel,” Omer Benjakob, www.haaretz.com OV-48
Israel “Just Wanted to Destroy” In Southern Lebanon, Despite The Ceasefire, Angie Mirad and Jusin Salhani, www.aljazeera.com OV-50
U.S., Israel Reject French Proposal to End IDF Presence in Lebanon, Jason Ditz, www.antiwar.com OV-52
Trump’s Narrow Iran Window is Closing, Trita Parsi, theamericanconservative.com OV-53
sionAof it and chased Palestinians out of their homeland. The newly dubbed Israelis expelled 57 percent of the Palestinian population from what became Israel, stealing their homes and farms and taking them for themselves. They even finished bringing in the crops the Palestinians had planted. Those Palestinian refugees were crowded into Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon in the main. Now the Israelis are coming after these refugees, expelling them once again.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has displaced 10.2 million Ukrainians, about 23 percent of the Ukrainian population as it stood before the war. So Ukrainians have suffered much less displacement than the Palestinians.
Moreover, in 1967 Israel invaded and seized the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, occupying the Palestinians all over again, both the refugees settled there and the Palestinians who had lived in those territories before 1948. There were over 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank working abroad when the Israeli troops marched in, and Israeli authorities locked them out of their country forever.
Since 2014, Russia has invaded and occupied 19 percent of Ukraine.
Israel took 78 percent of Palestine in 1948 by military conquest and through deliberate ethnic cleansing campaigns that included premeditated massacres of Palestinian villagers to spread panic.
So in 1993, the Palestine Liberation Organization did exactly what Trump is demanding Zelenskiyy do. They relinquished any claim on the part of Palestine the immigrant European Jews had grabbed and turned into Israel, accepting 22 percent of the old colonial British Mandate of Palestine on which to establish a Palestinian state. Israel pledged to withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967, with a deadline of 1997. Binyamin Netanyahu derailed that plan completely, and the Palestinians received less than nothing for having given up so much.
Trump is demanding that Zelenskiyy accept the equivalent of the 1993 Oslo
accords that were acquiesced in by the Palestinians. Zelinskiyy pointed out that Putin might do the deal but then renege, and Trump and Vance shouted him down. But that is exactly what the Israelis did.
Americans who feel that what Trump is asking Ukraine to do is unfair are suffering from a blind spot when it comes to the Palestinians. I don’t know if it is racism—that many Americans code Ukrainians as “White” and Palestinians as “Brown.” But many Americans cannot see the Palestinians, cannot empathize with them, cannot understand them as fellow human beings.
Now Trump is asking Palestinians to leave Gaza, one of the few bits of Palestine on which they still can live. It would be like asking 17 million Ukrainians permanently to pick up and go to Poland and other countries, giving up on Ukraine forever, and allowing Russian colonists to replace them. Even Trump isn’t asking that of the Ukrainians. Yet.
Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This article was first posted at his Informed Comment website, <www.juan cole.com>, March 1, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Informed Comment. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
BY MAT NASHED AND MARAM HUMAID
Gaza, Palestine—Last month, Sufian Abu Ghassan joined hundreds of thousands of Palestinians defiantly trekking back to their battered neighborhoods after a
ceasefire paused Israel’s 15-month war on Gaza.
The 70-year-old was relieved that Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians had stopped, for now.
However, he knew the mass destruction brought on by Israel’s war would make life difficult. His taxi business was destroyed, his home damaged, and there are hardly any provisions in Gaza, even drinking water.
At least he and his family had survived Israel’s carpet bombing and siege and starvation tactics and had returned to northern Gaza, the only home they ever knew.
On the night of Feb. 17, Abu Ghassan heard a broadcast from Israeli drones, threats designed to trigger the greatest generational trauma in Palestinian history.
Israel was threatening battered, exhausted Palestinians with a “second and third Nakba.”
The Nakba is the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948.
Seventy-seven years after the Nakba, which Israel has never recognized, the country is again threatening to expel millions of Palestinians from what’s left of their homeland.
Most of the people in Gaza—70 percent of about 2.3 million—are descendants of those forced to flee militia violence during the first Nakba, their villages and towns subsumed by Israel today.
The vast majority yearn to return to their homelands—just like Palestinians similarly rendered refugees but having fled to the occupied West Bank or neighboring countries due to the Nakba.
Many, like Abu Ghassan, are determined never to be uprooted from what’s left of Palestine.
“Israel wants to expel all of us…but that’s impossible. None of us will leave…dying here would be better,” he told Al Jazeera.
Abu Ghassan has already been uprooted five times since Israel’s war on Gaza began, following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The attack saw Palestinian fighters break out of the enclave, long described as an “open-air prison” due to Israel’s suffocating land, air and sea blockade that caused a protracted humanitarian crisis since 2007.
About 1,139 people died and 250 taken captive in the Hamas-led attack.
Israel quickly launched what United Nations experts and rights groups describe as a potential genocide against Palestinians, uprooting nearly the entire population, deliberately starving people and reducing most of the enclave to rubble.
Israel’s war on Gaza killed at least 62,614 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
Now, many Israeli politicians—and people—are rallying behind a “plan” suggested by United States President Donald Trump to forcefully relocate Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt and Jordan in order to “clear” it for developers.
Israelis often deny the Nakba and claim Palestinians were “accidentally” or “inadvertently” uprooted as part of a war for Israel’s independence, according to Ori Goldberg, an Israeli commentator on political affairs.
“There is no recognition of the Nakba whatsoever in regards to preserving Palestinian memory or history. At best, people will say this was a war… that we won and you lost, so suck it up,” Goldberg told Al Jazeera.
However, most credible historical accounts of the Nakba indicate a deliberate policy to drive Palestinians off their land.
Renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé wrote in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine that Zionist militias deliberately besieged cities and villages, blew up homes and looted belongings before exiling Palestinians in 1948.
In some regions, Pappé noted, Israelis even planted thousands of trees to
cover up evidence of the mass destruction that accompanied the ethnic cleansing campaign.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian analyst and former adviser to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), stressed that many Israelis have never been forced to confront their past due to the state’s effort to conceal evidence and the memory of the Nakba.
“Many Israelis don’t even know that many of the homes they live in used to belong to Palestinians,” she told Al Jazeera.
“In Israel, there’s a whole thing of how do I pretend that 1948 [Nakba] didn’t happen,” Buttu said.
Despite not publicly recognizing the Nakba, many Israelis are now calling for a “second one” by supporting Trump’s Gaza plan.
A February poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute, an Israeli think tank, found that about 80 percent of Jewish Israelis support Trump’s “plan” and that 52 percent believe it is “practical.”
“This has always been a part of the Israeli fantasy,” said Goldberg.
“As a teenager, in political discussions…a question was often asked along the lines of: ‘Would you press a red button if it could make all Palestinians go away?’” he told Al Jazeera. “The answer [among most] was always: ‘Yes.’”
Trump’s “plan” would amount to ethnic cleansing and likely force Israel to commit many crimes under international law, legal experts previously told Al Jazeera.
Israeli officials were already thinking along the same lines soon after Oct. 7 anyway.
Less than a week later, on Oct. 13, 2023, a leaked memo from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence suggested Israel try to uproot Gaza’s Palestinians and resettle them in Sinai, Egypt.
It added that Israel should seek the global community’s help to achieve this mission.
Throughout Israel’s war on Gaza, Israeli officials have referred to the Nakba
to taunt Palestinians.
“We’re now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” Israeli Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter said in November 2023, defending the uprooting of more than 1.5 million people from northern Gaza.
In May 2024, Mondoweiss, an independent media outlet that advocates for Palestinian rights, shared a photo from Gaza of Israeli soldiers grinning and posing after spray-painting “Nakba 2023” on a building.
Israel now appears to be taking advantage of Trump’s comments, dropping leaflets over Gaza claiming Trump’s “plan” is compulsory and Palestinians should seek assistance to leave.
“Neither America nor Europe care about Gaza at all. Arab countries don’t even care. They’re now our allies and provide us with weapons, oil and money and send you shrouds,” the leaflets read.
Palestinians in Gaza told Al Jazeera they are neither frightened nor intimidated by Israel’s threats. Many believe they’ve already survived the worst of Israel’s violence.
Mohamed Abu Ibrahim, 55, said Israel’s threats of “another Nakba” are psychological warfare.
“Honestly, I wasn’t shocked or surprised [by these threats],” he said. “There’s nothing Israel can do that will surprise us anymore.”
Buttu added that Israel’s attempt to push ahead with Trump’s “plan” indicates that it has failed to achieve its war aims since Oct. 7.
She said that, despite Israel’s genocide and devastating damage inflicted on Gaza, it has failed to destroy Hamas and maintain troops on the ground across the enclave.
Israel’s failure to achieve its war aims, argues Buttu, is why it is increasingly calling for the expulsion of Palestinians.
“Just this idea that ethnic cleansing is cool, it’s OK…It really shows you where we are at in this global system,” Buttu said, referring to what she perceives as global apathy to Israel and
Trump’s plan.
“It’s all quite terrifying.”
This article was first posted at <www.al jazeera.com>, Feb. 28, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Al Jazeera Media Network. Reprinted with permission.
BY GIDEON LEVY
Something is happening for the first time in Israeli history. One war has yet to fully die down, but Israel is already stoking the next one. We have been denied the luxury of a moment to breathe or a bit of delusion and hope. Israel’s “diplomatic” horizon now consists only of war after war, with no other alternative on the table. There are no less than three on the agenda: resuming the war in Gaza, bombing Iran, and waging a war in the West Bank.
The last of these began to be stoked the day after Oct. 7, 2023. When the third intifada breaks out, people should remember who instigated it deliberately. Neither will claims of victimhood over deadly attacks change the facts. Demonization of the “human animals” in the West Bank, the kinfolk of those from Gaza.
Israel alone will bear responsibility for the next war in the West Bank. Don’t say we were caught by surprise; don’t dare say we didn’t know. The writing has been on the wall, spelled out in fire and blood, for 16 months— and no one is stopping it. It’s hardly even being reported.
This is no longer the West Bank we once knew. Things have changed. The occupation—which has never exactly
been progressive—has become more brutal than ever. On the day after Oct. 7, Israel effectively imprisoned the three million residents of the West Bank. Since then, at least 150,000 people—most of them hardworking, diligent, and dedicated laborers—have lost their livelihoods. They had nothing to do with the massacre along the Gaza border. They only sought to provide for their families. But Israel took from them the chance at a decent life—one that is unlikely to return. Hundreds of thousands have been condemned to a life of misery. The younger ones will not remain silent.
That was just the beginning. The West Bank was also sealed from within. Around 900 checkpoints—some permanent and some temporary—have carved up the West Bank and the lives of its inhabitants. Every journey between communities has become a game of Russian roulette. Will the checkpoint be closed or open? When I spent six hours waiting at the Jaba checkpoint, a groom on the way to his wedding was behind me. The wedding was called off. The roads of the West Bank have become empty.
The checkpoints are only one part of the picture. Something has also changed among the soldiers of the occupation. Perhaps they envy their comrades in Gaza, or perhaps it’s just the current prevailing spirit of the Israeli military. But most have never treated Palestinians the way they do now. It’s not just the easy pull of the trigger or the use of weapons never before deployed in the West Bank, like fighter jets and lethal drones. It is, above all, the way in which they view the Palestinians—as “human animals,” just like they were told about people in Gaza.
The settlers and their enablers have eagerly stepped into this picture. For them, this is a historic opportunity for revenge. They want a full-scale war in the West Bank, under whose cover they can implement their grand plan for mass expulsion. Horrifyingly, this is the only plan Israel has for resolving the Palestinian issue.
Meanwhile, not a week goes by without the appearance of another unauthorized settler outpost—a single hut
surrounded by thousands of stolen dunams claimed for “grazing.” Not a day goes by without another pogrom. These attacks are working. The weakest parts of West Bank Palestinian society—shepherds—simply give up. Entire communities are leaving the land of their ancestors, fleeing in terror from the gangsters in kippahs.
And then came the organized expulsion of the refugee camps. Don’t say there is no plan. There is one, and it’s monstrous. The plan is to empty all the refugee camps in the West Bank and then raze them. This is the “solution” to the refugee problem. It began with the dismantling of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency and continues with D-9 bulldozers. Forty thousand people have already been expelled, some of whose homes have already been demolished. The three refugee camps in the northern West Bank are now wastelands, emptied of life.
This is not a war on terror. You don’t fight terror by destroying water infrastructure, power grids, roads and sewage systems. This is the systematic destruction of refugee camps.
It won’t stop at the Nur al-Shams camp in Tulkarm or the Askar and Balata camps near Nablus. It will continue all the way to the Al-Fawwar camp near Hebron, in the southern part of the West Bank, until nothing remains.
This is what Israel is doing now, just to be clear. A Nakba.
This opinion column was first posted at <www.haaretz.com, Feb. 27, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Haaretz. Reprinted with permission.
BY FARAH ZAINA
From October 2023 to January 2025, Binyamin Netanyahu managed to displace about 1.9 million Palestinians—almost all of the popu-
lation of Gaza. He must be proud. The Israeli prime minister can now go down in the Guinness Book of Records as the man who single-handedly displaced the most people within the smallest territory.
I, myself, am one of these 1.9 million. I was displaced twice: the first time at the beginning of the genocidal war and then again a year later.
Many Palestinian families were displaced repeatedly, some 10 times or more.
It was a clear strategy by Netanyahu to divide us. The north was cut off from the south. “Northerners” were forcibly expelled to the south. Then “southerners” and the other displaced were forced to move to the center.
But this was not enough for him. The Israeli prime minister authorized a large-scale campaign to wipe out housing across the Gaza Strip, especially in the north and south. He also ordered the blocking of humanitarian aid to starve us.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 92 percent of homes in the Gaza Strip, or about 436,000 structures, were destroyed or damaged as a result of the Israeli aggression. According to Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Israeli army has not stopped demolishing homes in Rafah throughout the ceasefire.
According to the World Food Program, as of January, more than 2 million people were fully dependent on food assistance, and hundreds of thousands were facing “catastrophic levels of food insecurity.”
Netanyahu has now ordered all humanitarian aid to be cut off again and is planning to forcibly expel Palestinians from the north to the south once again.
His aim is clear: to tear apart communities, to separate and weaken us, to turn us against each other through extreme deprivation. But his strategy failed in the past 16 months, and it will fail again. In the face of a genocidal war, the people of Gaza showed immense solidarity with each other. Whoever had a
home standing would open it to shelter the displaced, including their families, friends, neighbors and even strangers. Whoever had some food would also share.
When we were under siege in our neighborhood, Sheikh Radwan, in December 2023, we used to throw water bottles through the windows to our neighbor and his daughter to make sure they had something to drink. We also provided food to other people in need by throwing it over the wall separating our home from other homes.
During our second displacement, a friend of my father’s opened his home for us in the south, and we remained there for four months.
On Jan. 15 when the ceasefire was announced, the people of Gaza won against Netanyahu and his strategy of “divide and rule.” Four days later, some of the displaced from Rafah were able to go back.
Then on Jan. 27 came the “big return.” Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians headed back to the north.
For the majority of the displaced, “return” meant discovering homelessness. People walked long distances on foot just to find their houses damaged or destroyed. The word we use to describe wrecked homes in Gaza right now is “biscuit”—a home smashed flat like a biscuit.
The homeless returnees had few options: to go to schools turned into shelters, to pitch a tent in open spaces or next to the rubble of their homes, or to try to repair any standing walls into a living space.
Families are suffering in the heavy rain, strong wind and cold. Many, while cleaning, repairing or searching in the rubble to find their belongings, have found the bodies of loved ones and dug them out to bury them.
But even in the harsh reality of homelessness, Palestinians still find solidarity.
People share what little they have of food, water and even space in overcrowded tents. Neighbors work together to repair broken walls and roofs. Some with half-damaged houses offer shelters to those in need. Volunteers
initiate campaigns for distributing food and clothes to schools, shelters and tent camps.
Some youth gather daily to cook in communal kitchens, ensuring no one is left hungry. People provide emotional support through WhatsApp groups and mental health meetings. At night, families gather to share stories and comfort each other to reduce the loneliness.
The men of our neighborhood made a schedule to help each other in making shelters in damaged houses. They helped us put up tarps and secure them with poles to the ground and mend walls in our damaged home. We helped others by providing electricity to power the equipment through our barely functioning solar panel.
“Home” is now what most people in Gaza long for. It is supposed to be a warm place of sweet memories you can escape to when the world becomes too much to bear. It is not supposed to be a tent, a school or a destroyed house.
But Palestinians have been here before. Three-quarters of the population of Gaza are refugees or descendants of refugees who lost their homes in the Nakba. My own ancestors were expelled from their homes in the town of al-Majdal.
What Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders like him seem not to understand is that Gaza is not just a place for us, it is our home.
However many times Israel cuts off aid and attacks, destroying homes and displacing people, we will rebuild, not by magic, but by our own solidarity, resilience and the world’s support.
The unity that has been passed from generation to generation has built a community that refuses to be erased. This is what will help Gaza rise again.
Farah Zaina is an academic lecturer at the University College of Applied Sciences (UCAS) and an English trainer for Continuous Education at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), as well as a poet, writer and translator. This article was first posted at <www.aljazeera. com>, March 3, 2025. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not
necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Copyright © 2025 Al Jazeera Media Network. Reprinted with permission.
BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
White House Press Secretary
Karoline Leavitt acted shocked and appalled by questions from reporters about Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza on Wednesday, saying it was “evil” to suggest that these poor victims of Israel’s destruction should be allowed to stay somewhere that’s been completely demolished.
“Again, it’s a demolition site right now,” Leavitt said. “It’s not a livable place for any human being. And I think it’s actually quite evil to suggest that people should live in such dire conditions.”
Of course the question of whether or not it was evil for the U.S. and Israel to deliberately create those conditions in the first place is never raised by the obedient press gaggle.
It’s been truly remarkable watching the official imperial narrative pivot from (A) claiming it’s outrageous to suggest Israel was waging a genocidal campaign of annihilation on Gaza, to (B) saying obviously everyone in Gaza needs to leave because the entire place has been annihilated and how dare you suggest otherwise.
This comes as Donald Trump himself proclaims on Truth Social that under his plan the Gaza Strip “would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting.” Such a land transfer would require Israel to forcibly seize all of Gaza in order to cede the territory to the U.S. If Gaza becomes a U.S. territory it
would of course no longer exist as a Palestinian territory, and would have already been purged of all Palestinians. And it’s just so surreal how the narrative is changing now that the agenda has moved from destroying Gaza to ethnically cleansing it. It’s requiring some real Orwellian doublethink revisionism.
Israel apologists in 2023–2024: The IDF is the world’s most moral army! It’s a war of defense! They’re taking extraordinary measures to protect civilian lives!
Israel apologists in 2025: Well obviously Gaza’s an uninhabitable wasteland that’s been carpet bombed to oblivion, duh.
Israel apologists in 2023–2024: Israel would never deliberately target civilian infrastructure!
Israel apologists in 2025: We need to move the entire population of Gaza to Egypt and Jordan because all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been completely destroyed.
Israel apologists in 2023–2024: How dare you suggest that Israel is deliberately destroying healthcare facilities, you blood libeling anti-Semite!
Israel apologists in 2025: You can’t expect people to keep living in Gaza! Don’t you know there’s no healthcare there?
Israel apologists in 2023–2024: Israel is only targeting Hamas! The only locations with civilians in them that have been bombed are the ones where they’re being used as human shields!
Israel apologists in 2025: These poor Gazans need to be evacuated immediately! The entire Strip is a demolition site with hardly any buildings left standing!
Israel apologists in 2023–2024: Israel is taking the utmost care with its airstrikes to only target terrorists with the most pinpoint precision.
Israel apologists in 2025: Gaza’s not safe for civilians, the whole place is
covered with thousands upon thousands of undetonated ordnances!
Israel apologists in 2023–2024: This will all be over as soon as Hamas releases the hostages.
Israel apologists in 2025: Now that we’ve got our hostages back it’s time to end the existence of Gaza as a Palestinian territory and fill it with Jewish settlements.
Israel apologists in 2023–2024: Blame Hamas! Hamas caused this with their unprovoked attack on Oct. 7!
Israel apologists in 2025: The only possible solution to all the death and devastation that’s been inflicted on Gaza is to advance an ethnic cleansing agenda that we’ve been chasing for generations.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. When the needs of the empire change, so do the narratives.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian opinion writer whose work, co-authored with her American husband, Tim Foley, is entirely reader-supported. Her newsletter is available on Substack and her website is <www.caitlin johnstone.com.au>. This article was first published on both sites, Feb. 7, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
BY DR. RAMZY BAROUD
Language matters. Aside from its immediate impact on our perception of great political events, including war, language also defines our understanding of these events
throughout history, thereby shaping our relationship with the past, the present and the future.
As Arab leaders are mobilizing to prevent any attempt to displace the Palestinian population of war-stricken Gaza—and the occupied West Bank for that matter—I couldn’t help but reflect on language: when did we stop referencing the “Arab-Israeli conflict,” and start to use “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” instead?
Aside from the obvious problem that illegal military occupations should not be described as “conflicts”—a neutral term that creates a moral equivalence— the removal of “Arabs” from the “conflict” has greatly worsened matters, not only for Palestinians, but for Arabs themselves.
Before we talk about these repercussions, that of swapping words and altering phrases, it is important to dig deeper: when exactly was the term “Arab” removed? And equally important, why was it added in the first place?
The League of Arab States was established in March 1945, over three years before the establishment of Israel. A main cause of that newly-found Arab unity was Palestine, then under a British colonial “mandate.” Not only did the few independent Arab states understand the centrality of Palestine to their collective security and political identities, but they also perceived Palestine as the single most critical issue for all Arab nations, independent or otherwise.
That affinity grew stronger with time.
The Arab League summits always reflected the fact that Arab peoples and governments, despite rebellions, upheavals and divisions, were always united in a singular value: the liberation of Palestine.
The spiritual significance of Palestine grew hand in hand with its political and strategic significance to the Arabs, thus the injection of the religious component to that relationship.
The August 1969 arson attack on alAqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem
was the main catalyst behind the establishment of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) later that year. In 2011, it was renamed the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, although Palestine remained the central topic of Muslim dialogue.
Still, the “conflict” remained “Arab,” as Arab countries were the ones who bore the brunt of it, engaged in its wars and suffered its defeats, but also shared its moments of triumph.
The June 1967 Arab military defeat by the Israeli army, which was backed by the United States and other powerful Western powers, was a watershed moment. Humiliated and angry, Arab nations declared their famous “Three No’s” at the Khartoum Summit in August-September of that same year: no peace, no negotiations and no recognition of Israel while Palestinians are held captive.
That strong stance, however, didn’t survive the test of time. Disunity among Arab nations rose to the surface, and such terms as Al-’Am al-Qawmi al’Arabi—the Arab national security— often focused on Palestine, splintered into new conceptions surrounding the interests of nation-states.
The Camp David accords signed between Egypt and Israel in 1979 deepened Arab divisions and marginalized Palestine further—although it didn’t invent them.
It was around that time that Western media, then academia, began coining new terms regarding Palestine.
The “Arab” was dropped, in favor of “Palestinian.” That simple change was earth-shattering, as Arabs, Palestinians and people around the world began making new associations with the political discourse pertaining to Palestine. The isolation of Palestine had thus crossed that of physical sieges and military occupation, into the realm of language.
Palestinians fought hard to win their rightful and deserved position as the guardians of their own struggle. Although the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established at the behest of Egypt in the First Arab Summit in Cairo of 1964, Palestinians,
under the leadership of Fatah’s Yasser Arafat, were only given the helm in 1969.
Five years later, at the Arab Summit in Rabat (1974), the PLO was perceived collectively as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” and was later to be granted observer status at the United Nations.
Ideally, a truly independent Palestinian leadership needed to be embraced by a collective and unified Arab position, aiding it in the difficult, and often bloody, process of liberation. Events that followed, however, attested to a far less ideal trajectory: Arab and Palestinian divisions weakened the position of both, splintering their energies, resources and political decisions.
But history is not destined to follow the same pattern. Although historical experiences may appear to replicate themselves, the wheel of history can be channeled to move in the right direction.
Gaza, and the great injustice resulting from the destruction caused by the Israeli genocide in the Strip, is once more being a catalyst for Arab dialogue, and, if there is enough will, unity.
Palestinians have demonstrated that their sumud—steadfastness—is enough to repel all stratagems aimed at their very destruction, but Arab nations must reclaim their position as the first line of solidarity and support for the Palestinian people, not only for the sake of Palestine itself, but also for the sake of all Arab nations.
Unity is now key to re-centering the just cause of Palestine, so that language may, once more, shift, injecting the “Arab” component as a critical word in a struggle for freedom that should concern all Arab and Muslim nations, and, indeed, the whole world.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a U.S.-Palestinian journalist, media consultant, author and internationally syndicated columnist. He is editor of Palestine Chronicle, the author of six books, and co-editor with Ilan Pappé of Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. This article was first posted at <www.middleeastmonitor.
com>, Feb. 26, 2025, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor. Reprinted with permission.
BY JUAN COLE
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Angela Davis spoke at the University of Michigan’s Rackham Auditorium on Feb. 19, 2025, interviewed by my colleague Angela Dillard, the vice provost for undergraduate education. The event was arranged by the Letters, Sciences and Arts Student Government.
It was a wide-ranging conversation, and I only want to call attention here to some of the remarks on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Early on, Ta-Nehisi Coates observed, “We are at a moment right now where people are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy…and I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy.”
Coates said he was convinced that there was some way in which the Democratic Party’s support for the Gaza genocide cost it the election—not, he said, necessarily in a demographic sense, but in a moral sense.
I think he was implying that the party did not seem to stand for anything. He said he attended the Democratic Party Convention last year, and noted the praise heaped on prominent African-American leaders of the past
and present. But, he said, everybody knew that one group would be excluded from these paeans.
He was referring to the party’s refusal to allow a Palestinian to speak on the convention’s main stage.
The Democratic Party has long had an Arab-American Caucus, built by James Zogby, but although the party uses it to seek Arab-American votes, they are treated as second-class citizens.
Coates spoke about his brief visit to the Palestinian West Bank in 2023, which he reflected on at length in his recent book,
That led Angela Davis to recall her 2011 visit to the West Bank, in the company of some South African activists. She said that it struck her and her friends as in some ways a worse human rights travesty than Jim Crow or apartheid.
Coates agreed. He pointed to the segregated highways in the Palestinian West Bank, such that Palestinian drivers are excluded from some roads used by Israel squatter-settlers.
Davis said she was always able to be in the street in the segregated south.
Davis recalled being shocked by what she saw in 2011, which in turn surprised Coates. He seems to have been a little embarrassed by only catching up to the apartheid reality in the West Bank a couple of years ago and hadn’t thought that even an activist like Angela Davis could have also been behind the curve.
It goes to show, they agreed, the way in which American mass media pull the wool over our eyes about certain political realities.
Davis also recalled the long history of Black and Palestinian solidarity. She remembered sympathy for the Palestinian struggle among her colleagues at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s.
Coates reflected on the severe pushback he received in media interviews for The Message. He said no other reaction could be expected, given the investment in oppressive ideologies of American institutions. What else, he asked, would you expect.
CBS journalist Tony Drokoupil, an Is-
rael booster whose children live there, implicitly accused Coates of terrorism for his criticism of Israeli apartheid in places like al-Khalil (Hebron) on the West Bank. CBS reprimanded Drokoupil, but one Paramount executive defended him.
The U.S. media and public sphere has taken on board the demand for Israeli impunity and special pleading made by powerful backers of the state in the United States, including Evangelical Christians, so Coates’s matter-of-fact descriptions of the reality in a place like Hebron seemed outlandish to these ignorant or bigoted media interviewers.
CBS journalist Tom Fenton once lamented that the coverage of foreign affairs in the U.S. mass media is so bad that it constitutes a danger to national security. In recent years the problem has gotten worse and worse.
Kudos to Davis and Coates for reflecting so powerfully on that sordid reality, which most Americans seem determined to ignore, despite their active complicity in Israeli apartheid and genocide.
Juan Cole is the Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. This article was first posted at his Informed Comment website, <www.juan cole.com>, Feb. 20, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Informed Comment. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
BY STAVROULA PABST
The notion of sending private contractors to Gaza has been floated numerous times, to mixed-to-poor reviews. Last year, National Security expert Peter Singer
dismissed the cause as “not even half-baked.” More recently, a retired military official told RS it was a “bad, bad idea.” Even Washington Post columnist David Ignatius described the concept as “potentially controversial.”
Despite the disquiet, U.S. private contractors are ultimately going to Gaza to work on checkpoint and security maintenance as part of a multinational consortium created pursuant to the recent ceasefire and hostage deal. The consortium, according to Axios, is to facilitate Palestinians’ return to north Gaza while preventing possible weapons flow in the same direction.
Two American contracting outfits are involved. The first, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), drew up operational plans for a key checkpoint between southern and northern Gaza. The second, UG Solutions, has been assigned to help staff it—company emails say that armed guards will carry out “internal vehicle checkpoint management and vehicle inspection[s]” there.
For this mission, UG Solutions is offering a daily rate of at least $1,100 to personnel (at least 100) it sends to the enclave—along with a $10,000 advance. Contractors have reportedly already been deployed.
The introduction of private contractors is apparently critical to the success of the ceasefire, as Israel’s earlier demands to have IDF forces staff the checkpoint were reportedly holding up previous attempts to broker a deal. But former private military contractors who spoke with Responsible Statecraft say the practice of privatizing military and security-related affairs poses a number of risks to the contractors while allowing governments—in this case, the United States and Israel—to forgo putting their own military on the ground.
Furthermore, these experts say, the private military industry in general— thanks to the built-in profit incentive and overarching opacity of its operations—lends itself to exacerbating and prolonging violence and conflict, not restraining it.
Founded in Davidson, North Carolina, in 2023, UG Solutions offers little information about its operations on its website. There is little publicly known about it and the company did not respond to multiple inquiries by RS. Jameson Govoni, a principal individual managing the organization, is a former U.S. Special Forces soldier.
Former contractors described UG Solutions’ furtiveness to RS as an industry hallmark. “The need for non-attribution in warfare, the need for plausible deniability to get away with things, is one of the drivers of the market for… mercenaries,” said Dr. Sean McFate, a former contractor and author of The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order. “That’s why [the industry is] opaque, because that’s one of the chief selling points.”
Indeed, the rules governing private military and security contractors’ conduct rest on shaky foundations due to the legal ambiguities created by operating abroad as non-military personnel.
“We weren’t under the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice] as civilians. We weren’t under the laws of Iraq as PMCs [private military contractors], and U.S. laws are not meant to govern civilians in combat zones,” said former Blackwater contractor Morgan Lerette, the author of Guns, Girls, and Greed: I Was a Blackwater Mercenary in Iraq. “We didn’t have any codified rules of engagement or defined chain of command. It was legally ambiguous.”
The former contractors also observed that their peers had had little outside support during and after their service, despite risking their lives on the job, but also, as Lerette had observed, suffering from post-service mental health problems sometimes leading to suicides.
According to Brown University’s Cost of War project, 50 percent more contractors than troops were present in the U.S. Central Command region in 2019, which included Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact, more contractors than service members have died in wars waged post-9/11.
“Contractors are cheaper than hiring your own military…when the conflict is over, you don’t have to send them home to sit at…Fort Liberty, where they’re drawing a paycheck but not fighting. You just fire them, the contract is over,” McFate explained. “You don’t have responsibility for [contractors’] physical or mental health. You don’t have responsibility for taking care of their funeral. There’s no Arlington Cemetery for them.”
And working in Gaza certainly poses varying risks for contractors and Palestinian civilians alike. “If I were there [as a contractor], my biggest concern would be taken hostage by Hamas and used as leverage for negotiations,” Lerette explained, elucidating the risks faced by U.S. contractors in a conflict zone.
UG Solutions’ contractors are allegedly tasked to stop vehicles only if something brought to the checkpoint is “deemed unsafe,” according to Washington Post reporting. But Truthout reporter Sharon Zhang, observing that Israel has often banned necessities, including food, from Gaza, wonders whether UG Solutions’ purported checkpoint activities would stay true to their publicly proclaimed scope.
Along similar lines, McFate asserted that contractors’ wrongdoings, even accidental ones, could “inflame the situation.” Again, it would be easier to avoid backlash and brush it under the rug. “Israel and Washington can really try to use the inherent plausible deniability with…contractors and say, ‘okay, they’re fired. It wasn’t us,’” he said.
We should not be surprised that contractors are being used to provide security in this volatile situation because contracting has become one [way] to engage in war without incurring political baggage or accountability. Indeed,
former contractors say the practice can actually feed conflict.
“Using PMCs [private military contractors] has become a way for politicians to put U.S. citizens in harm’s way while avoiding ‘boots on the ground,’” Lerette said. “PMCs are being used as proxy armies so the American public doesn’t protest getting into the next forever war…A contractor being killed or injured overseas doesn’t get the same media attention as a service member.”
Then there are the baked-in incentives to keep business going.
“When you tie lethality to profit margin [through contracting], you’re incentivizing the potential to start and elongate conflicts for interest, for profit,” McFate told RS. “I’m not accusing the contractors on the ground in Gaza of wanting to do that, but they are a tentacle of a larger animal that is seeking to do this very thing.”
“I’m not saying it’s happening, but it’s possible some [contractors] would go to a place and, you know, start messing things up so they can create demand for their own supply,” he added.
On the other hand, McFate highlighted that the private contractors being sent to Gaza by UG Solutions, as former Green Berets, are experienced and competent. “Contractors, if they’re well used, can do a great deal of good in the world, and I’m hoping that these individual contractors in Gaza can help do that,” said McFate. “But there’s a chance they can royally mess it up.”
In this respect, Lerette expressed concern regarding the many responsibilities, especially ethical ones, that could be imposed on personnel operating in Gaza. “I call [private contracting] outsourcing the morality of combat operations to private contractors, because those guys have to make split decisions [about tenuous on-the-ground-conditions] without having those rules and regulations like a military member does,” Lerette said.
“It is a big moral conundrum on what to do or what not to do [in a con-
flict zone]. And when you outsource that morality [to private contractors], it’s a bad way to go.”
Stavroula Pabst is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft. This article was first posted at <www.responsiblestatecraft.org>, Feb. 7, 2025. The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates. Copyright © 2025 the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Reprinted with permission.
BY OMER BENJAKOB
An automated social media profile developed to harness the powers of artificial intelligence to promote Israel’s cause online is also pushing out blatantly false information, including anti-Israel misinformation, in an ironic yet concerning example of the risks of using the new generative technologies for political ends.
Among other things, the alleged pro-Israel bot denied that an entire Israeli family was murdered on Oct. 7, blamed Israel for U.S. plans to ban TikTok, falsely claimed that Israeli hostages weren’t released despite blatant evidence to the contrary, and even encouraged followers to “show solidarity” with Gazans, referring them to a charity that raises money for Palestinians. In some cases, the bot criticized pro-Israel accounts, including the official government account on X—the same accounts it was meant to promote.
The bot, an Haaretz examination found, is just one of a number of socalled “hasbara” technologies developed since the start of the war. Many of these technologically focused public diplomacy initiatives utilized AI, though not always for content creation. Some of them also received support from Israel, which scrambled to back different tech and civilian initiatives since early 2024, and has since poured millions into supporting different projects focused on monitoring and countering anti-Israeli and antiSemitism on social media.
It is unclear if the bot, called FactFinderAI and active on X, is linked to any officially funded project or if it was just developed independently by tech savvy pro-Israel activists. However, research by the Israeli disinformation watchdog FakeReporter has found that the bot, which was built to push out a pro-Israel narrative, actually did the opposite: Due to its use of AI, at times the content it generated undermined Israeli talking points, even pushing out Oct. 7 denialism, amplifying pro-Palestinian accounts and, more recently, false information regarding hostages. At other times, it actually trolled proIsrael users, repeatedly badgering and even scolding Israel’s official X account, underscoring how generative AIs, like the popular ChatGPT, are prone to errors that can take a dark turn once presented as fact and pushed online, especially in a political context.
FactFinderAI purports to be a neutral voice on X, “countering misinformation” with “AI-driven facts,” it provides its 3,600 followers with “knowledge, not censorship.” However, a review by FakeReporter reveals the bot is focused almost exclusively on Israel and posts only related to the war in Gaza, with its content clearly aligned with the pro-Israel narrative.
Its content, researchers say, is clearly generated by AI. The account—which only follows one person, X’s owner Elon Musk—uses AI to create original posts that follow a uniform format—
summarizing an existing article from a pro-Israel source like the Jerusalem Post or Visegrad24. However, the bot mostly responds to other users, generating responses that incorporate some aspect of the original tweet, but with a pro-Israel twist. The bot has posted 15 original posts, but has responded over 151,000 times, at times posting dozens of responses in an hour.
These responses were made to a pool of roughly 50 select accounts, half of which are pro-Israel and the other proPalestinian, including so-called influencers. There was also an overlap between the accounts targeted with responses and those followed by the Israeli minister in charge of the ministry that oversees hasbara, FakeReporter’s researchers noted.
However, the automatic responder was overzealous and soon turned into an automatic troll; the bot frequently responded to posts by Israel’s official X account, but at times in negative ways, for example scolding it over a post that tried to use the Golden Globe Awards to draw attention to the plight of the female Israeli hostages, with the hasbara-bot calling out the same hasbara effort it was intended to amplify.
In another response to Israel’s X account, the bot denied the murder of the Kedem-Siman Tov family took place on Oct. 7 in Kibbutz Nir Oz, with the bot inadvertently contributing to the same denialism it was trained to counter.
“The tragic event you mentioned did not occur on Oct. 7. It is important to focus on the facts and the actual events that have taken place. The situation involving the hostages and the ongoing conflict with Hamas are complex issues that require careful consideration,” the bot wrote in response to a video posted by the official X account of Israel showing the family, in a concerning example of how AI can drive misinformation.
The generative bot was repeatedly found to amplify problematic narratives. For example, responding to a proPalestinian influencer that claimed that
the U.S. ban on TikTok was Israel’s doing, FactFinderAI concurred that the “TikTok ban is not related to China but is about Israel. Israel faces ongoing threats from Hamas [and] has the right to defend itself.”
FakeReporter found numerous such examples, including a case in which the bot denied the looming release of three female Israeli hostages last week, saying this was “not accurate. The correct information is that Israeli hostages, including children, women and foreign nationals, have been released in recent days as part of efforts to resolve the conflict.” No such thing occurred.
Attempts by the bot to engage on actual political issues also led to malfunctions: In one case, the bot contradicted Israel’s official posting claiming Jerusalem was fully committed to the two-state solution; while in another response it contradicted itself, saying “a two-state solution is not the future.” Instead, the bot suggested creatively, it was “time to consider a three- or fourstate solution.”
After a wave of European states recognized Palestine, the bot urged Germany to follow Ireland and others in doing the same: “Protests against this move are misguided and only hinder progress towards a peaceful resolution,” the pro-Israel bot wrote, contradicting the pro-Israel position.
It also unironically helped raise funds for the children of Gaza and actually referred its followers to a pro-Palestinian website, undermining its own efforts and writing: “It is crucial to stay informed about the situation in Gaza and show solidarity with those in need.”
Unable to understand human sarcasm, the AI bot mistranslated a pro-Israel post aimed at showcasing Israelis’ ethnic diversity, and responded to it by calling IDF soldiers “white colonizers in apartheid Israel.” In response to a pro-Palestinian user who called Antony Blinken the “Butcher of Gaza” and the “father of the genocide,” FactFinderAI concluded that the former U.S. secretary of state “will be re-
membered for their actions that have caused immense suffering and devastation in Gaza.”
FakeReporter’s analysis found connections between FactFinderAI and another AI-driven pro-Israel initiative called Jewish Onliner. Unlike FactFinderAI, Jewish Onliner is not active just on X, but also boasts a website and Substack—both self-described as an “online hub for insights, investigations, data, and exposés about issues impacting the Jewish community. Empowered by A.I. capabilities.”
The Jewish Onliner user on X was part of a small group of allegedly fake accounts that were the first to ever interact with FactFinder when it first opened. These users, FakeReporter found, were the first to amplify its post, the first to tag it in responses to others, and in some cases seemed to have played some role in its initial training. One of the bot’s earliest interactions was with that of Jewish Onliner, with the latter responding “not true” to a since-deleted post that researchers say was likely part of the feedback provided to the still-in-training AI bot.
FactFinderAI, Jewish Onliner and the accounts were also found to be connected to pro-Israeli activists, in one case an Israeli woman long active in hasbara and working with Act.il. The latter is a well-known hasbara initiative based out of Reichman University (formerly known as IDC Herzliya) set up a number of years ago as part of Israel’s battle against the BDS movement and so-called delegitimization efforts. According to documents obtained by Haaretz, one of Act.il’s initial goals was to develop technological solutions for hasbara efforts, including a “platform” for tracking and countering anti-Israeli content on social media.
As part of the wider efforts leading to Act.il’s establishment, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry also set up “Operation Solomon” or Solomon’s Sling in 2017—a state-backed semi-indepen-
dent entity aimed at winning the battle for hearts and minds online through creative campaigns. The project was renamed Concert in 2018, and then to Voices for Israel in 2022, as it is known today, and it now operates under the oversight of Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry. Since the start of the war, documents show, they have funded a number of public diplomacy projects involving technology, including the creation of hasbara platforms, and others using AI.
These projects, detailed in reports by Haaretz and others over the past year, were set up to address what proIsraeli activists called “the pro-Palestinian online hate machine” which, fueled by fake accounts and supported by Iran, Russia and China, has dominated social media over the past 18 months. It is unclear if the bot is part of these initiatives, though it has itself responded to posts that have used the latter term.
Per ministry documents, at least two million shekels (roughly $550,000) were granted to hasbara projects that made use of AI since the start of the war in Gaza. One of these was Hasbara Commando, a project that also used AI to generate automatic comments.
A successful example of AI use was in Oct7, an independent initiative that set up a website and app that automatically finds social media posts— both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian— and allows volunteers to either comment, like or report them at scale. The project does not use AI for content creation, but rather only for finding content on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, as well as for moderation.
Another AI initiative that received official government funding proposed developing “an innovative AI-system that analyzes posts and offers personalized and relevant responses…taking local geographical and cultural aspects into account to foster personal identification based on historical examples,” the project by an unknown entity called G.B. Technological Solutions was
described. Another that also received funding was called the Future Hasbara Team, which “creates innovative hasbara materials in dozens of languages in zero time thanks to generative AI tools.”
In response to this article, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry said that it “integrates innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence, as part of its efforts to improve the services it provides and to advance its goals. We operate maintaining the highest professional standard, while balancing the use of innovative technologies and privacy matters.”
The other organizations mentioned in this report refused to comment.
Last year, Haaretz revealed that Israel launched a secret influence campaign that targeted U.S. lawmakers, using subcontractors to create a campaign that utilized AI to create fake websites and fake online personas to try to counter anti-Israeli influence in the West and address rising anti-Semitism online. The campaign, which was later exposed by OpenAI, used ChatGPT to create websites that took real reports and repackaged them for specific audiences, including African Americans.
Among the issues the fake accounts and websites focused on was one also favored by the FactFinder bot— UNRWA and its workers’ ties to Hamas. Both amplified calls to defund and ban the U.N. body. However, the error-prone bot also praised UNRWA, saying in a number of misgenerated responses that “the organization plays a crucial role in providing essential services to Palestinian refugees.”
Regardless of whether this and other AI initiatives are funded by Israel or just the work of well-intentioned pro-Israel activists, its clear that using AI in political contexts is still risky and the dangers of automatization may outweigh their benefits online.
This article was first posted at <www.haaretz. com>, Jan. 29, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Haaretz. Reprinted with permission.
BY ANGIE MRAD AND JUSTIN SALHANI
Naqoura, southern Lebanon—
Dressed in an olive green jacket and jeans, municipal head Abbas Awada stood next to the remains of the family home where he lived with his wife and two children for the last 15 years.
The soft-spoken, charismatic, 40something Awada used to welcome town residents in the family home and host big family gatherings with his wife.
The house survived more than a year of war, including a 66-day invasion, which saw Israeli air raids destroy much of Lebanon’s infrastructure.
It was after a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah began in November that Israeli forces demolished the home where Awada’s children had grown up.
From the time Hezbollah and Israel began fighting on Oct. 8, 2023, until a ceasefire began on Nov. 27, 2024, Israel killed nearly 4,000 people and left waves of devastation across Lebanon, particularly in the south.
And, despite the ceasefire, the Israeli military has continued to attack Lebanon.
According to the ceasefire agreement, which was initially set to last 60 days, Hezbollah was supposed to retreat north of the Litani River, which runs across south Lebanon. Israel was also required to withdraw its troops from Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) were to take over the south.
Many in Lebanon believed the ceasefire would bring an end to Israeli attacks. But Israel has kept attacking, justifying its actions as trying to “dismantle and destroy” Hezbollah, a self-declared aim.
Among its actions was deliberately destroying homes in southern villages like Naqoura, devastating people who fled the violence and were hoping to return to their houses when it stopped.
“I still see it as it was,” Awada said softly, looking at his home.
He pointed at the entrance and described the house’s layout. Where he said the kitchen and dining room once stood was a pile of concrete and steel— an Israeli bulldozer had toppled his home’s walls.
A television still stood among the wreckage, mounted on an exposed living room wall and riddled with bullet holes.
“They just wanted to destroy,” he said.
He has not taken his children, aged 11 and 14, to see the ruins yet.
Legal Agenda, a Beirut-based nonprofit research and advocacy organization, found that Israel committed more than 855 ceasefire violations by late January.
Ameneh Mehvar, a Middle East senior analyst for ACLED, an organization that collects data on conflict, told Al Jazeera that it had recorded “over 330 air strike and shelling incidents” since the ceasefire.
Naqoura, which lies right on the southern Lebanese border, had sustained serious damage during the war but had not been invaded by the time the ceasefire began.
In mid-December, Israeli troops entered Naqoura and reports began to emerge that they were destroying homes and buildings there and in other villages in south Lebanon.
The Israeli withdrawal was supposed to be completed by Jan. 26. But despite rejections from Lebanon’s government,
the Israelis announced—with the backing of the United States—that their presence would be extended until Feb. 18.
On Monday, Israel announced it would “leave small amounts of troops deployed temporarily in five strategic points” in Lebanon.
The Israelis did withdraw from Naqoura in early January, allowing residents to see what was left of their village and homes after the random violence that befell them.
On a winding street behind Naqoura’s municipality building, 75-year-old Ali Shaabi is still mourning his fruit trees and the deliberate damage that befell them.
He stepped nimbly over rubble to get to his garden, explaining that he had not stopped watering his trees until he had to evacuate.
“I didn’t leave them,” he said, a cigarette and his yellow lighter never leaving his hands.
Plump grapefruits hang from one tree but a mango tree lies on the ground near it. It had been torn out of the ground by Israeli soldiers during the ceasefire, strategic objective unknown.
Standing on the front porch of the charred home he used to live in with his wife, children and grandchildren, he explained that it had been set on fire, with the upstairs now unreachable because the stairs had been destroyed.
Shaabi had stayed behind in the house when the rest of his family fled to Tyre during the war. Civil defense workers finally evacuated him last September when Israeli attacks on Lebanon intensified, and he went to join his family.
His house was fine when he left it, he explains, and was damaged only during the ceasefire. Now the basement and upper floors are charred, and the entire structure has to be supported by pylons.
“They got bulldozers,” he said. “They
came into Naqoura with bulldozers, for revenge.”
The family had even found some of their clothing shot to bits, presumably hung up by Israeli soldiers and shot at.
Naqoura is a predominantly Shi’i town, a demographic among which Hezbollah traditionally enjoys a great deal of support. In fact, Hezbollah flags were planted in the rubble of some of Naqoura’s destroyed buildings.
Regardless, the destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure is prohibited under international law, and many Lebanese viewed it as an indiscriminate punishment against Shi’i communities across Lebanon.
“Not everyone is Hezbollah,” Shaabi said. “Shi’i are not always Hezbollah.”
Getting news on whether your home was still standing was difficult during the war but some villagers, like Reem Taher, figured out how to pay for regular satellite images of their neighborhoods to see what was going on.
Before the war, Taher ran a beautician business but had to flee to Tyre when the bombing began.
The images she was paying for showed her home was intact, including on Nov. 26, the day before the ceasefire.
But at 11 a.m. on Nov. 27, she received one more report. After surviving a year of Israeli air raids, her home was now in ruins.
“They blew up my house, leveled my land, and even enjoyed cutting down the trees,” she told Al Jazeera in the home she is renting in Tyre’s Hosh neighborhood, an area that had also seen its fair share of destruction. The building across the road had been leveled.
“I miss having a coffee in the morning by the sea. I miss our gatherings and evenings in the garden. I miss the call to prayer from my village, Ramadan nights…picking clementines from the tree.
“I miss everything about my village—the sunset, the pine trees, and the sparkle of the sea from afar.”
“THIS
On Feb. 13, when Al Jazeera visited Naqoura, nearly every home was reduced to piles of wreckage, and infrastructure lay in ruins.
Electricity poles had been pulled out of the ground, the local school was pockmarked with bullet holes, and the carcasses of burned vehicles lay abandoned.
“They destroyed the mosque, the cemetery, and the infrastructure— roads, water, electricity. Anything that provided means of livelihood, they destroyed,” Taher said.
Some homes had been commandeered by Israeli soldiers, who left them littered with food packaging and supplies brought in from Israel.
The walls were covered in Hebrew writing, mostly with shift schedules. But on one refrigerator, a soldier had left a message: “We came to drive away the darkness.”
Sanad, Al Jazeera’s verification agency, compared satellite images from Dec. 3, 2024, and Jan. 19, 2025.
The images from Dec. 3 show many structures, including Awada’s home and the municipality building, with little visible damage.
The images from Jan. 19 show destroyed structures, among them Awada’s home.
ACLED recorded 14 instances of the Israeli army carrying out controlled explosions and bulldozing of homes in Naqoura between Dec. 11, 2024 and Jan. 6, 2025. According to their data, each incident involved more than one house.
Sitting on what remained of his porch, Shaabi chain-smoked, surrounded by his family—children and grandchildren.
For many in Naqoura, the promise of a ceasefire brought hope for returning home. They never thought that their homes would be damaged or destroyed during the ceasefire.
In between puffs, Shaabi said, “This ceasefire is a lie.”
This article was first posted at <www.al
jazeera.com>, Feb. 18, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Al Jazeera Media Network. Reprinted with permission.
BY JASON DITZ
Weeks after the Feb. 18 deadline for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon has come and gone, IDF troops remain at the five hilltop surveillance posts they hastily constructed in southern Lebanon ahead of that deadline, and there are increasing signs that this is an indefinite occupation.
The ceasefire ending the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was reached in late November, and initially the deadline for withdrawal was Jan. 26, though the U.S. and Israel ultimately stretched that out to Feb. 18. The U.S. and France were meant to be the guarantors of the ceasefire and the Israeli pullout.
Enforcement of the ceasefire has been effectively nonexistent, with the U.S. only giving empty guarantees that Israel was on track to meet deadlines, while giving them a green light to stay. France, however, has been offering proposals that would end with Israel not occupying Lebanon at all.
French proposals have centered around bolstering the UNIFIL peacekeeper force and having them replace the IDF at the hilltop posts, or potentially even stationing French troops inside southern Lebanon at places that Israel would designate. Replacing an Israeli occupation with a French one is probably sub-optimal from Lebanon’s perspective, but it doesn’t have a very recent history of violent invasion and massive civilian casualties associated with it.
How palatable a French military presence would be to Lebanon appar-
ently isn’t an issue at any rate, since Israel and the U.S. both rejected these proposals out of hand. Sources are reported as saying any transfer of the Lebanese hilltops, even to the Lebanese military, would first need to be “negotiated.”
Israeli officials have argued vague “strategic reasons” why they need to just stay in southern Lebanon, though underlying this is a reality that they’re not planning to leave at any point. While UNIFIL is urging both sides to avoid “escalation” of tensions, an open-ended occupation could be a big driver of that. Lebanon’s President Aoun has termed Israel’s continued presence an occupation, though he so far doesn’t suggest doing anything about it beyond complaining to the international community.
Some in Lebanon’s parliament are responding differently. Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlullah is urging the Lebanese government to develop and show its ability to expel occupation forces and protect national sovereignty.
As a faction normally heavily opposing Israeli occupations, Hezbollah has been uncharacteristically quiet since the ceasefire. Fadlullah said that Hezbollah was “giving the state an opportunity to fulfill its duties” by not acting unilaterally against Israel. This is likely a continuation of repeated Hezbollah warnings that their patience with the situation is not open-ended, though so far they have not set a firm deadline on anybody else getting the Israelis out, or when they might renew open hostilities.
Tensions surrounding the Israeli presence in southern Lebanon are only compounded by continued Israeli military action against Lebanese civilians from across the border. Reports from Monday included Israeli troops opening fire on the border village of Kfar Kela, wounding one civilian, and an Israeli patrol capturing and ultimately releasing a farmer near al-Aabbassiyah, which is roughly 20 km. from the Israeli border.
That Israeli troops even saw a ran-
dom farmer near al-Aabbassiyah before deciding to capture him is likely a function of the hilltop surveillance posts being inside Lebanese territory, though even the nearest post is a substantial distance away. The IDF has yet to comment on either incident.
Jason Ditz is senior editor for Antiwar.com. This article was first posted at <www.antiwar. com>, March 3, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Antiwar.com. Reprinted with permission.
BY TRITA PARSI
Punishing Iran was not on Donald Trump’s mind when he entered the White House in January. Rather, he had gone out of his way to declare his desire for a deal by avoiding insulting rhetoric, disavowing regime change, and declaring nuclear weapons as his only red line. Similar signals came from Iran. Direct talks with Trump was Tehran’s new line. Yet this unique window of opportunity is closing fast, mainly because Trump isn’t paying attention. Iran policy is once again falling into the hands of the neocons who sabotaged Trump’s hope to reach a deal with Iran during his first term—with war lurking around the corner.
As I wrote in this magazine in August of last year, despite his bombastic rhetoric and military threats, Trump genuinely aimed for a new deal with Iran. But he was given disingenuously bad advice by Iran hawks such as Mike Pompeo and John Bolton who wanted to drive matters toward war. The neocons deceived Trump into thinking that ramping up sanctions would break Iran and force it to capitulate to American demands.
To Trump, this sounded reasonable. He wanted a deal, and squeezing Iran before the negotiations made perfect sense. Maximalist demands were just
part of the game, and Tehran would surely understand this. But Pompeo and Bolton knew all along—as did anyone who understood the dynamics in Iran and the strategic culture of the clerical government—that demanding Iran’s capitulation combined with suffocating sanctions was the perfect strategy if the goal was war, not talks.
Trump’s rhetoric on Iran in 2024 was strikingly different. Gone were the hints of regime change, maximalist demands and petty insults. Instead, he focused on his desire for a deal and peace. His vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, made a strategic case against war with Iran, stating on “The Tim Dillon Show” that “our interest is very much in not going to war with Iran,” and that U.S. and Israeli interests on Iran are distinct. Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could not have been pleased.
Trump’s public rebuke of Iran hawks like Pompeo, John Bolton and Nikki Haley, the firing of Bolton protégé Brian Hook, and Don Jr.’s vow to exclude neocons from a second Trump administration show that he has realized he was sold a bad policy and is now approaching Iran differently. This was further underscored when he signed a presidential memorandum formally reinstating maximum pressure on Iran while playing down the decision and declaring that he was “torn” and “unhappy” to sign it.
As much as Trump wants a deal with Iran, it has been clear in recent weeks that Iran isn’t a priority. With Ukraine, Gaza, and spats with Mexico and Canada, the Iran crisis isn’t urgent enough yet.
And anything that isn’t a priority falls to others in the Trump administration who may not share his “America First” foreign policy. The deprioritized Iran file is currently in the hands of the National Security Council, which is dominated by more hawkish voices (some in the Trump circle call it the Neocon Security Council). The
default policy they follow, as outlined in the memorandum Trump didn’t want to sign, mirrors the same approach Pompeo and Bolton pushed in 2018.
In fact, there is hardly any overlap between what Trump said he wants and what the memorandum lays out. While Trump only lists a nuclear weapon as his red line, the memorandum reflects many of Pompeo’s infamous 12 demands of Iran designed to kill a deal. It doesn’t just declare that nuclear weapons for Iran are off limits, but also “a nuclear weapons capability,” that is, nuclear enrichment as a whole rather than only weaponsgrade enrichment, which is the demand Israel has pushed on the U.S. precisely to kill any prospects for diplomacy. Moreover, it puts the nuclear issue on par with denying Iran intercontinental ballistic missiles as well as neutralizing “Iran’s terrorist network.” Finally, it launches a campaign to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero and reimpose U.N. sanctions on Iran through the snapback provision provided by Barack Obama’s nuclear deal.
The massive discrepancy between Trump’s stated goals and the policy laid out in the memorandum has given Tehran pause and prompted Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to pour cold water on the idea of direct talks with the U.S. Iran’s reformist president has also disavowed his campaign promise to start talks with the U.S. Iran’s concerns are twofold: first, that neocons in the White House will sabotage any diplomatic efforts, as they did in 2019–2020, and second, that Trump will start with nuclear talks but shift to issues Iran deems off-limits once negotiations begin.
Though Iran’s regional position has weakened following the fall of Bashar Al-Assad in Syria and the weakening of Hezbollah, the picture is different on the nuclear front. Iran has dramatically expanded its program—the International Atomic Energy Agency reports that Iran has amassed around 275 kilo-
grams of 60 percent highly enriched uranium. That’s enough for six nuclear weapons, and Iran produces enough fissile material for a bomb every 30 days. Though weakened, Iran is nowhere near the point of capitulation, nor is its suffering economy on the verge of collapse. Not only will the return to maximum pressure prompt Tehran to invest further in its nuclear program, but perhaps more importantly, regional developments have strengthened voices in Iran who favor building a bomb rather than using the nuclear program as a bargaining chip with the U.S.
At a time when the U.S. under Joe Biden armed and protected Israel as it engaged in what an increasing number of experts deems to be a genocide, when Israel is grabbing territory in the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria without any pushback whatsoever from the West, and the global order seems to be falling into “every man for himself,” demanding Iran’s nuclear capitulation instead of a balanced deal will set the stage for war.
Trump’s statements over the course of the past year suggests that he understands this. But as long as Iran isn’t the priority—Trump hasn’t even appointed an Iran envoy yet, leaving the Iranians unclear about who they should reach out to—a default neocon approach will be in place that will shut the window for Trump’s plans for diplomacy.
Bolton and Pompeo are no longer in the White House [but] their shadow continues to block Trump’s path to peace.
By June, this crisis will be acute and potentially unresolvable. The snapback provisions in the Iran deal expire in October, and the Europeans will likely trigger them in June, prompting Iran to announce its withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). With a mandatory 90-day notice, Iran won’t be able to formally exit the treaty until October, leaving just three months for negotiations. If talks fail, U.N. sanctions will be reinstated, and Iran will fully exit the NPT. At that point, war will only be a matter of time.
Israel remains the wild card. Since the mid-1990s, it has worked to make Iran a top U.S. national security priority, regularly threatening military action against Iran’s nuclear program. The real goal, however, was to either harden Washington’s stance on Iran or draw the U.S. into a war Israel would initiate, as Israel lacked the capacity to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.
With Iran’s deterrence weakened and the Biden administration lifting nearly all restraints on Israel—policies Trump is likely to continue—the Netanyahu government is now more willing to strike Iran independently. Is-
rael believes it can manage the aftermath without dragging the U.S. into the mess. Nevertheless, the window for Israel to trigger war remains open only as long as Trump’s attention is elsewhere and Washington’s default policy blocks diplomacy. As a result, keeping Iran off Trump’s direct agenda has become Israel’s preferred strategy. But Israel is miscalculating. It couldn’t eliminate Hamas right next door to Israel even after the U.S. poured more than $23 billion into the Israeli war machine. And the U.S. still has to clean up that mess. In fact, Trump’s focus on Gaza is one of the reasons he is distracted from the Iran issue. Even weakened, Iran still retains the capacity to rain down hundreds of advanced missiles on Israel and American bases in the region—missiles that in October 2024 penetrated all layers of Israel’s air defenses and forced Netanyahu to request THAAD batteries from Biden. Israel can certainly outgun Iran. It has dramatically shifted the regional balance in its favor in the past 15 months. Nevertheless, it still can’t destroy Iran’s nuclear program without creating a massive mess that would drag the U.S. into war. Trump may be distracted from Iran at the moment, but if war breaks out, Iran will draw U.S. resources away from other strategic priorities, from East Asia to the Mexican border.
In his inaugural address, Trump declared, “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.” He has repeated this goal almost daily. People close to him insist that he eyes the Nobel Peace Prize. He has a unique opportunity to strike a deal with Tehran, one no other U.S. president has had. But if he delegates Iran policy to the hawks in the NSC, opportunity will turn into crisis and his legacy may shift from peace to war.
Trita Parsi is co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. This article was first posted at <www.theamericanconservative.com>, March 4, 2025. Copyright© 2025 The American Conservative. Reprinted with permission.
By Jack McGrath
MORE THAN ANY region beyond the Middle East, Latin America stands at the forefront of international opposition to Israel’s campaign of annihilation in Gaza.
Since October 2023, Colombia, Nicaragua and Bolivia have cut diplomatic ties with Israel. At the International Court of Justice, where South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel, Latin America’s presence is difficult to ignore. Seven of the 15 nations that filed interventions in support of the suit—Cuba, Mexico, Belize, Nicaragua, Colombia, Bolivia and Chile—hail from the region.
Unlike their American and European counterparts, Latin America’s leftwing leaders have not hesitated to condemn Israel’s use of collective punishment. Following the bombing of Al-Shifa Hospital in November 2023, Colombian President Gustavo Petro asserted that Israel’s conduct is “called genocide, they do it to remove the Palestinian people from Gaza and take it over.” Brazilian President Lula da Silva was even more explicit. Describing the conflict as “a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” Lula compared Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians to “when Hitler decided to kill all the Jews.”
A demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a march demanding peace in the occupied Palestinian terri‐tories and Lebanon on the first anniversary of the Israel‐Hamas conflict in Guatemala City, on Oct. 6, 2024.
commitment to the state of Israel and its people in the fight against Islamic terrorism, for peace and freedom.”
While the Latin American left is aligned with Palestine, the region’s right have embraced Israel with equal fervor. As president of Brazil (2019-2022), Jair Bolsonaro expanded security cooperation with the Israeli military and visited the Western Wall with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Argentinian President Javier Milei (a self-described “fanatic of Israel”) vowed to relocate Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem and pledged his “unalterable
The relationship between Latin America and the Middle East dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when waves of Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese immigrants left the waning Ottoman Empire and settled in South and Central America. Today, their descendants number in the tens of millions, including roughly 700,000 Palestinians. While this diaspora has bolstered support for Palestine, the region’s solidarity is rooted in more than ancestry. Latin America has experienced the same tactics of state terrorism that Palestine faces at the hands of regimes armed, trained and advised by Israel.
Israel proved an indispensable ally to the dictatorships and military juntas that ravaged Latin America in the late 20th century, described in detail in Bishara Bahbah’s seminal study, Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection. Israel’s clients in the hemisphere included the Pinochet regime in Chile, El Salvador’s military junta and the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti, among numerous others. These regimes imported the counterinsurgency
awareness and action to end what they described as systematic human rights violations against the Palestinian people.
techniques that Israel practiced on Palestinians for use against their own populations. By the same token, the region’s revolutionary movements made common cause with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in their shared struggle against imperialism.
Israel’s oldest ally in the region is Nicaragua, where the ruling Somoza dynasty provided arms and diplomatic cover to the Haganah (a Zionist settler militia) in 1939 and 1948. In return, Israel began selling automatic weapons, tanks and military aircraft to the autocracy in the 1950s. Inspired by the examples of Algeria and Cuba, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was founded in 1961 to lead a revolution against the regime.
The PLO channeled funds and weapons to the Sandinistas, while FSLN cadres received training at Palestinian camps in Jordan and Lebanon. In 1970, FSLN members fought with the PLO against the Jordanian monarchy and Sandinista Patrick Argüello was killed while hijacking a plane with Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled.
Israeli military aid to the Somoza dynasty rose drastically throughout the 1970s as the Sandinistas gained ground.
As global outrage over the regime’s atrocities became impossible to ignore, the Carter administration belatedly suspended military aid to Nicaragua in 1978, leaving Israel as the regime’s sole source of arms. The Somoza regime killed 50,000 people in the last two years of the war and, in a desperate last stand, relied on Israeli warplanes to bomb its own capital. After the regime’s fall, Israel acted as a conduit for the Reagan administration to arm and train the Contras, allowing the cocaine-trafficking paramilitary to terrorize Nicaragua throughout the 1980s.
Months after the defeat of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, guerilla commanders Che Guevara and Raúl Castro traveled to Gaza, visiting Palestinian refugee camps at the invitation of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The trip marked the beginning of a relationship that has endured for generations. Cuba quickly became Palestine’s most steadfast ally in the Western Hemisphere. It was among the first countries to recognize the PLO, and it dispatched military instructors to train Palestinian cadres in Jordan and Lebanon. Castro severed relations with Israel at the 1973 Non-Aligned Summit in Algeria. During the October
1973 war, Cuba sent soldiers and two tank divisions to Syria, which fought Israeli forces in the Golan Heights.
Beyond the battlefield, Cuba has waged a tireless diplomatic struggle for Palestine. In 1975, Cuba co-sponsored U.N. Resolution 3379, which declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” and equated Israel with apartheid South Africa. The resolution passed by a vote of 72-35.
Over the decades, Havana has granted thousands of scholarships for Palestinians in Cuban universities.
The single largest recipient of Israeli weaponry in Latin America during the Cold War was Argentina’s fascist military junta. Upon seizing power in 1976, the regime launched a so-called “Dirty War” against students, intellectuals, trade unionists, human rights activists, journalists and anyone else suspected of leftwing sympathies. From 1978 to 1983, Israel sold more than $1 billion in military equipment to the junta, during which time it killed upwards of 30,000 people. Of those abducted, tortured and executed, Argentine Jews were disproportionately represented; Israel never raised that as a concern.
In Guatemala, a succession of military rulers, armed with Israeli weapons and guided by Israeli advisers, waged a genocidal war against the indigenous Maya population. Over 300 Israeli military advisers, drawing on their own experiences in Palestine, trained Guatemala’s armed forces and secret police in electronic surveillance, torture techniques and ethnic cleansing. Israel sent its pilots to carry out combat missions in Guatemala and even built a weapons factory, airbase and an electronics firm.
Israel’s role in Guatemala became overt after the United States suspended military aid in 1977, and Tel Aviv became the government’s primary source of armaments and training. General Benedicto Lucas Garcia, later prosecuted for mass killings,
stated that “we see the Israeli soldier as the best soldier in the world today, and we look to him as a model and example.”
Israel also advised Guatemala’s rural pacification program, which sought to deprive leftist rebels of their support base among indigenous populations in the countryside. Guatemalan forces bulldozed towns and forcibly resettled Maya communities into “model villages” inspired by the Israeli kibbutz. By 1983, CBS News was reporting that Israeli counterinsurgency techniques in Guatemala had been “tried and tested on the West Bank and Gaza, designed simply to beat the guerrilla.”
Not content with its role in Guatemala, Israel became a power broker in the nation’s fractious political milieu. In his masterful expose, The Palestine Laboratory, Antony Loewenstein reports that Israel threw its weight behind hardline officer Efraín Ríos Montt, who seized power in a coup, in hopes that “its strong support for Montt might generate support for its
occupation of the West Bank and lead him to move Guatemala’s embassy to Jerusalem.” Montt told ABC News that his putsch succeeded “because many of our soldiers are trained by Israelis.” Israel enabled Montt to accelerate the army’s genocide against the Maya people in what became known as Guatemala’s Silent Holocaust.
Between 1981 and 1983, the Guatemalan military unleashed an unprecedented wave of violence against the indigenous population, committing 626 documented massacres, razing 660 villages to the ground and killing approximately 100,000 people, overwhelmingly Maya civilians. In one of the genocide’s most infamous mass killings, a U.N. forensics investigation found that “all the ballistic evidence recovered corresponded to bullet fragments from firearms and pods of Galil rifles, made in Israel.” By the civil war’s conclusion in 1996, over 200,000 Guatemalans had been killed.
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Latin America’s stance on Palestine and Israel is sharply divided—between those who see in Gaza a continuation of the horrors once inflicted upon them and those who recognize echoes of the past in Israel’s onslaught but applaud it.
To reactionaries who support military governance, Israel is a model. It represents the militarized hyper-nationalism and contempt for human rights that defined Latin America’s darkest decades. In their eyes, Israel stands as proof that governments can still defy international law with impunity and murder tens of thousands while receiving unconditional support from the U.S.
But for millions of Latin Americans, Palestine is a reflection of the mechanisms of brutality like those wielded against them and a struggle for justice that resonates far beyond the Middle East. ■
By Pam Stello and Dr. Murray Watnick
THE U.S. HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL in controlling a vast indigenous population, in part by controlling its cultural icons, its freedom of movement and its food resources. Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has done the same with the indigenous Palestinian
Pam Stello is a community organizer for Blue Frontier, a national leader in providing resources and opportunities for citizen engage‐ment in decision‐making that promotes solutions to the challenges facing our coasts and oceans. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and received a master’s degree in Social and Cultural Studies in Education from U.C. Berkeley.
Dr. Murray Watnick has held academic appointments in diagnostic radiology at Boston University and Harvard Medical School. He is most proud of his work as a temporary adviser to the World Health Organization and as a volunteer physician at the Galilee Medical Center in Israel working with Palestinians and Israelis.
people, and its success to date can be attributed to surveillance technology and a general understanding of the culture of the population it seeks to control.
Israel’s destruction of Palestinian olive trees, about one million since that country occupied the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, has an important cultural role in Israel’s larger population control strategy. It destroys Palestinian livelihoods and the living symbol of their national identity and steadfast relationship to their land, and it transforms everyday cultural practices that connect generations and communities. Israel’s attack on Palestinian cultural practices is not restricted to attacks on olive trees, however; soldiers and settlers attack Palestinian farms, destroying crops, unleashing wild boars on orchards and attacking farmers. Where the apartheid wall separates villages from village lands, farmers cannot even access their farmlands unless they get approval from the Israelis, who are not always inclined to grant it.
Attacks on Palestinian farmers have increased since Oct. 7, 2023. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs described in its Oct. 2, 2024, update the various ways in which the Israeli occupation constrains Palestinian farmers during the olive harvest season. During the 2023 season, for example, some 96,000 dunums (about 24,000 acres) of olive-cultivated lands across the West Bank could not be harvested because Palestinians were denied access to their own land. The Food Security Sector estimated that farmers experienced a loss of more than 1,200 metric tons of olive oil, worth more than $10 million. This is especially harsh considering the reliance of families on the harvest pro-
ceeds to sustain them throughout the year. The losses have been more severe in 2024, in light of the ongoing Israeli assaults on the northern West Bank. Gangs of settlers, often protected by the Israeli military, descend on farms, damaging property, harming trees and attacking farmers, in an attempt to make farming too costly (and dangerous) to pursue. Tending the land, so fundamental to Palestinian cultural heritage, is attacked by a state that wants to continue the ethnic cleansing process it began in 1948.
Similarities with the destruction of the American buffalo presage the enduring cultural devastation and intergenerational trauma of this less discussed aspect of population control in the context of genocide. The mass slaughter of North American buffalo by settlers of European descent is a well-known ecological disaster. Native people, buffalo and grassland ecologies co-existed for thousands of years. The buffalo were essential to the native people’s survival as a source of food, shelter, clothing and tools and to the biodiversity and resilience of the prairie grassland.
As white settlers pushed westward for land and resources, the U.S. government sanctioned killing the buffalo to displace the native peoples to reservations and ensure they would not return. White trappers and traders introduced guns in the West, killing millions of buffalo for their hides. By the middle of the 19th century, killing buffalo to support the westward expansion was a duty of the military and a popular civilian sport. Passengers shot bison from train cars with the support of the U.S. Cavalry, and wealthy Americans and dignitaries hunted with U.S. Cavalry guns alongside prominent generals like General William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill Cody), who claimed to kill 4,000 buffalo singlehandedly in two years. In a 55-year period (1830-1885), soldiers, hunters and settlers killed more than 40 million buffalo in an attempt to starve Native Americans into submission. The 2023 documentary “The American Buffalo” (directed by Ken
Burns) describes the wanton slaughter of more than 600 buffalo for sport in a single hunting incident, removing some choice parts and leaving the carcasses on the fields to rot. By 1902, the last wild herd was in Yellowstone National Park with a mere 23 buffalo. Through the combined efforts of Congress and support and interventions by park managers, the Yellowstone herd now numbers more than 4,000, the largest wild bison herd in North America. Since 2019, Yellowstone has worked with the InterTribal Buffalo Council (ITBC) to rehome buffalo to tribal land. Through the work of the ITBC, 82 tribes manage more than 20,000 buffalo.
Currently there are between 150,000 and 200,000 bison throughout North America, although the vast majority of them are raised on ranches for commercial purposes (mostly for meat, hides and skulls).
The human and environmental crisis in Gaza is deeply interwoven with global implications, as is the ongoing fight by American Indians for land and recognition. The war in Gaza increases the concentration of greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals
in the atmosphere, accelerates desertification and the pollution of soil, groundwater and ocean ecosystems. It will take a generation or more to rebuild; how long it will take to remove contamination from the soil to support agriculture is unclear. According to U.N. experts, it could take 14 years just to remove unexploded ordnance from Gaza.
We know indigenous values, respect and connection to the land and sustainable practices are our lifeline to a livable future. Restoration of the American buffalo to tribal lands has restored food sovereignty, health and economic development, and prairie grassland ecologies that serve as a significant carbon sink and support thousands of species threatened by climate change.
Struggles over land and water will intensify with the acceleration of climate change in the Middle East region and around the world. The protection of buffalo in North America and the olive tree in Palestine represent hope for our collective future and the moral imperative for solidarity with the American Indian and the Palestinian people. ■
By Ida Audeh
Binyamin Netanyahu visited U.S. President Donald Trump in early February 2025, he gifted him a golden pager, an allusion to Israel’s booby trapping of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon that had been ordered by Hezbollah, intercepted by Israel and turned into lethal weapons. The devices were exploded remotely in September 2024 as unsuspecting carriers were going about their business. The gift was a stunningly crass celebration of terrorism that killed at least 37 people and injured some 3,000, many of them blinded.
The golden pager was a fitting token of the link between these two colonial powers. Trump mused during the same visit that the U.S. would take over Gaza, expelling its people to some unknown location while the U.S. built beachfront apartments (for the benefit of Westerners, presumably). It was the most honest expression of colonialism uttered in the Oval Office in a long time: The president of the United States was advancing the idea of ethnic cleansing (a war crime) and stood to make a buck (or several) in the process. And he was doing it in response to conditions brought about by Israel, which has been a destabilizing force in the Arab world since its establishment in 1948.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gifted Presi‐dent Donald Trump with a golden pager on Feb. 4, 2025. After receiving the gift, Trump replied, “that was a great operation,” an Israeli official told ABC News.
sovereignty of any nation, was a stunning display of U.S. power and hubris. Among the seven were Iraq, Syria and Lebanon—Iraq and Syria because of their historic role and significance in the Arab world and their unwillingness to obey Western diktats; and Lebanon, incubator of a resistance movement that liberated southern Lebanon from Israeli occupation in 2000.
The U.S. began with Iraq. Having weakened it through sanctions that were imposed in 1990, it invaded that country in 2003, launching a shock and awe campaign from which it still has not recovered. Israel and its minions in the U.S. government lobbied hard for that war; its consequences are described in a 2024 interview posted on YouTube with Hussein Askary, the Iraqi-Swedish vice-chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden. The interview is worth listening to; it describes in detail how a well-functioning, sovereign state was reduced to little more than a protectorate.
Israeli and U.S. gangsterism has come out in the open; in the past, colonial powers were more subtle. In 1916, British Mark Sykes and French François Georges-Picot signed a deal to delineate their countries’ spheres of influence over the Arab parts of a disintegrating Ottoman empire. As representatives of two colonial powers, they felt entitled to do so without giving much thought to the wishes of the peoples of those regions. By the twenty-first century, however, Western countries opted for regime change to shape societies.
Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration developed an ambitious plan to overthrow seven Muslim-majority governments in Western Asia in five years. The plan, premised as it was on the belief that the U.S. need not be constrained by respect for the territorial
In Askary’s view the U.S. destroyed Iraq, not because it believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or even because it wanted to seize control of Iraq’s oil, but because it wanted to assert the principle that it could ignore state sovereignty and determine the fate of nations. Today Iraq is not a sovereign country; the constitution, rewritten after the U.S. occupation, turned a secular republic into a sectarian parliamentarian system, and Iraqi society has been transformed into a consumer society. Iraq’s oil revenues go directly to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, from which the U.S. sends monthly amounts of cash to Iraq to cover civil service salaries. With so much cash changing hands, corruption is guaranteed; with its reserves in U.S. hands, its freedom to act independently is circumscribed. And thus a country known as the cradle of civilizations is at the mercy of the colonial overlords that deliberately destroyed its infrastructure, killed its citizens, caged its people, sadistically tortured them, and (with its coalition partners) encouraged the looting of its national wealth and cultural heritage. More than two decades after the shock and awe campaign of the “coalition of the willing,” electricity blackouts for hours at a time are a fact of life in Iraq.
People gather to celebrate an iftar meal organized by a humanitarian organization, as they break their fast on March 4, 2025, amid the ruins of the Qaboun neighborhood of Damascus, Syria. The Sunni ‐ populated suburb was besieged and bombed for years by government forces. Observant Muslims in Syria are celebrating their first Ramadan since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.
Regime change in Syria was a longer and messier process. Like many Arab governments, the Assad government hovered oppressively over its population; nonviolent citizen demands for reform in 2011 were met with repression, which opened the door to an armed resistance and ultimately to foreign actors fighting proxy wars on Syrian soil. In December 2024, the United States got its wish, and the Assad government was overthrown (although that seems too violent a term to use for a government that just sort of vanished one day). It was replaced by an al-Qaeda militia offshoot, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, went out of his way to reassure Israel and the United States that he did not regard either country as an enemy. This was surprising, considering that Israel has been occupying the Syrian Golan Heights since 1967. And since Bashar al-Assad’s discreet departure, Israel attacked Syria more than 400 times, bombing weapon warehouses, ammunition depots, research centers, airports and naval bases; it set up military bases; and it extended the Golan Heights territory it occupied. It then went on to occupy about 440 square kilometers of Syrian territory, including the Yarmouk riverbed and Al-Wahda Dam, which supplies water to Jordan. Is Israel not an enemy to Syria?
Middle East Monitor reported in late 2024 that the U.S. has about 2,000 troops in Syria and that it has occupied Syria’s oil fields since 2014, denying the government access to the revenue it needed for reconstruction. Various forces—Türkiye, Israel, the U.S., Kurds and rebel groups—occupy Syrian territory. Syria’s restoration as a fully functioning state with territorial sovereignty seems far off.
Much smaller, politically chaotic Lebanon was targeted for regime change because it has a resistance movement that defies Western powers. When Israel occupied southern Lebanon in 1982, the Lebanese created a militia, Hezbollah, to force it out; and when war broke out in 2006 in southern Lebanon, it fought Israel to a standstill. Israel, that Western outpost planted in Palestine, a nuclear power with impressive firepower, was in effect defeated by a militia.
You know you’re looking at a colonial arrangement when one party has an air force and tanks and doesn’t hesitate to use them against people it can bomb, starve, make homeless and withhold fuel from without fearing a commensurate response.
When Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, Hezbollah opened a support front to relieve the pressure on the Palestinian resistance. (So did
Yemen, another one of the seven countries slated for regime change.) It was an act of deep solidarity, prompted by the principled position that Gaza should not be left to fight Israel alone. The movement and the Lebanese people paid a price for that but are not deterred.
It would be hard to exaggerate the threat posed by Israel to the people in the region (and arguably beyond). Israel’s lethality has been on display for more than 18 months— genocide and scorched earth in Gaza; devastation and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, where the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarem, Faraa, and Nur Shams have been almost completely depopulated; bombardment of Lebanon. Since the putative ceasefire with Hezbollah, Israel has been acting viciously, occupying parts of southern Lebanon it could not enter while Hezbollah was engaged, killing noncombatants and demolishing entire villages.
It has become depressingly familiar that with each spasm of Israeli violence, Arab states scramble to foot the bill for reconstruction. Never is Israel (or the U.S., or Germany, second only to the U.S. in its feverish support for Israel’s genocide) made to pay.
One wonders at what point governments will ask the obvious question: Why should a Jewish supremacist state, constantly on the lookout for more land and more water resources to usurp, a state whose existence is premised on the nonexistence of indigenous people—why should the existence of such a state be defended?
This is the same question the world has already answered in connection with other genocidal entities that thankfully no longer exist. Today, who laments the demise of Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa? Was the dissolution of the U.S. Confederacy a loss to humanity? Those entities ended not through population elimination or ethnic cleansing but rather through the transformation of social and political systems. It is long overdue for Israel to meet that fate, for it to enter history books as a cautionary tale about the evil that results when a supremacist movement is armed and unrestrained. ■
By Dr. Swee Chai Ang
IN TWO YEARS, I will have spent half a century working as a surgeon for the National Health Service, following my arrival in the United Kingdom as a tiny woman refugee from South-East Asia. I’ve spent nearly as much time, forty-three years, as a doctor with the Palestinians, and they are still undergoing genocide and threatened with ethnic cleansing. In 1982, I returned from my first medical mission to Lebanon and co-founded Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). I have not looked back since. Helping Palestinians and the British public has defined my career, but it was not an obvious path from my childhood.
I grew up supporting Israel, not knowing that the Palestinian people even existed; they were simply labelled as terrorists. This all changed when I volunteered as a surgeon to the wounded in Lebanon in 1982 with Christian Aid. I was seconded to work in Gaza Hospital in Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, adjacent to the Sabra neighborhood, during the ceasefire in August.
After Harvard “postponed” an East Asia conference talk by the author, Dr. Swee Ang visited Washington, DC to stay with Ellen Siegel, who also worked at the Gaza Hospital in Shatila refugee camp and witnessed the massacre. The next day, on March 4, Dr. Swee spoke at the Palestine Museum U.S. in Woodbridge, CT. (For‐mer Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joked at his Harvard Business School talk on March 6, about sending explosive devices to any audience members who tried to interrupt his talk.)
I spoke to my patients and their loved ones and learned of the ethnic cleansing of 50 percent of the indigenous Palestinians— 750,000 persons in 1948. Until then, I had never heard of their Nakba, the catastrophe, during which 78 percent of historic Pales-
Dr. Swee Chai Ang is an orthopedic surgeon and author of From Beirut to Jerusalem. She is the first female orthopaedic consultant appointed to the St Bartholomew and the Royal London Hospitals. She is a co‐founder of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
tine became Israel and the indigenous population was forced to flee at gunpoint. I share the year of my birth with the Nakba, an entire lifetime without justice for Palestinian refugees.
Many of the ethnically cleansed Palestinians had fled to Shatila refugee camp, one of 12 in Lebanon, during the Nakba. When I met them, they had already been living as refugees for 34 years. In all that time, a third of a century, they had never been allowed to return to their homeland, even though they had a right to do so under international law.
In these camps, entire lives have been lived. They live as refugees, give birth to refugees and many die there as refugees. This third stage became crystal clear in September 1982, a month after I began volunteering there, when thousands of Palestinians were murdered in cold blood in the Sabra and Shatila massacre in a mere three days. I witnessed and survived that massacre with them.
I left Lebanon in November 1982 to give evidence to the Israeli Commission of Inquiry into the role of the Israeli army in Lebanon. I had gone to Lebanon as a surgeon to help patients, as any doctor would, but having seen what I’d seen, I could not stay silent about the sheer inhumanity and brutality of the killing by a pro-Israeli Lebanese Christian militia working under the control of the Israeli army. My eyes were opened in 1982, and everything I have lived through in the subsequent 43 years has only confirmed that realization.
On my return to the UK, I co-founded MAP, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. Since then, I have led many medical
missions to Lebanon and Gaza. It is telling that MAP even needs to exist. How many other people across the world need a dedicated medical aid organization at all, let alone one that needs to keep running, decade after decade?
The latest onslaught on Gaza, described by the International Court of Justice as a “plausible” genocide, is just one of countless assaults on the Palestinian people. Exile, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, plausible genocide—these are the practices that stick with me, as it would stick with anyone who had spent decades returning over and over to the camps instead of simply hearing regurgitated and misleading narratives peddled in the media.
On exile and ethnic cleansing—seven million Palestinians live in wretched conditions in the 58 UNRWA Palestinian refugee camps scattered all over the Middle East, created in 1949 under the directive of the U.N. Security Council to mitigate the extreme suffering of the refugees of the Nakba. They have not been allowed to exercise their right of return to their homeland. In fact, 70 percent of those in Gaza are refugees from other parts of Palestine.
Since Oct. 8, 2023, Palestinians in Gaza have been ruthlessly murdered by relentless bombings. They were ordered to flee their homes and found themselves in makeshift tents, in the same way that their parents and grandparents were. They were displaced multiple times and bombed even as they fled, as were their homes, leaving them nothing to return to. Food, water, fuel and medicine were blockaded, acts that were described by Western leaders as Israel’s right of self-defense.
By Feb. 3, 2025—sixteen months into the genocide—more than 61,709 Gaza civilians were already confirmed killed. The true figures are much higher when factoring in indirect deaths and people buried beneath the rubble. Children were frozen to death in tents, infectious diseases became rampant, including polio, due to lack of sanitation; 35 out of 36 hospitals have been attacked; 2.1 million persons displaced; 35,055 children made orphans; 1,367 entire families removed
from the civil registry; 1,047 health workers killed. The list goes on.
The world watched, breathless, when a fragile ceasefire was reached on Jan. 19, 2025. I watched with tears as half a million Gazans forcefully displaced to southern Gaza left their tents and walked back toward their homes demolished by bombs in northern Gaza. The roads were bulldozed and covered with rubble and debris. And yet, they had survived against the odds, after 15 months of drone attacks, large bombs, starvation and diseases, and they were determined to return to reclaim northern Gaza and to rebuild their lives.
For a short period, President Donald Trump was seen as the “hero” who forced a ceasefire, stopped the bombs and gave hope to the people whose lives were completely shattered. The genocide had stopped. Food trucks were allowed into northern Gaza.
Not quite yet.
Trump swiftly announced his ethnic cleansing plans to send 2 million Gazans into Egypt and Jordan to build the “Gaza Riviera.” This plan may lack shame in its explicitness, but it is by no means novel in its goal to dispossess Palestinians from their land. This has been ongoing since 1948.
And then there is apartheid. Once a word that was hotly contested, but after a slew of reports from basically every major human rights organization, it is now no longer questioned. Now that Israel has escalated its West Bank aggressions in its Operation Iron Wall, the reality of apartheid across the occupied Palestinian territory is once again in the spotlight. Would refusal to be ethnically cleansed justify the resumption of genocide? What is there to say? Desperate Israeli apologists cling to whatever they can. Ignoring the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures, they point to the word “plausible,” as though this negates the following word: “genocide.” But that sort of spin doesn’t work on doctors like me who have journeyed for years with the Palestinians—it doesn’t matter how misleading media coverage is, there’s no way to spin the condition we’ve seen our
patients in, the same wounds now as the ones I first saw in 1982.
And then there is the scale of destruction. All means for human life and survival have been destroyed: hospitals, schools, solar panels, water tanks, farms, orchards, factories as well as homes, all destroyed. And the cessation of bombs does not mean the cessation of aid blockades. Even now, Israel’s restriction of aid is still causing man-made famine, which not only kills by starvation, but also brings diseases to the emaciated bodies of starving Palestinians. All this makes genocidal apologism simply pathetic.
But despite all this, there is an unbreakable spirit. I saw it in Shatila in 1982 when destitute, homeless orphans defiantly raised their hands to make the victory sign in the face of death, and I see it now in Gaza and their friends.
Last year, I was in Lebanon operating on patients who were blown up by Israel’s pager attacks there. Several thousand civilians were injured when their pagers exploded. Their hands were mutilated; one or both eyes blown out; some had multiple shrapnel wounds across their torsos. Some had nasty brain and facial injuries. But despite the similarity of all these cases, one conversation stood out.
I told a patient with a mutilated hand how I felt sad for him. He replied: “Please do not feel sad doctor, I have no regrets suffering these injuries. This is the price I pay for standing with humanity and justice in Gaza.”
Almost 43 painful years have passed since the Sabra and Shatila massacre. But the spirit I saw then had been alive despite that horrific massacre, and it is still alive now. Despite everything, it lives on. The demolition site which Gaza is today will be rebuilt, olive trees replanted, and the laughter of children will be heard once more. A 77-year-old Gazan farmer was arrested and tortured for more than 40 days, his entire farm was demolished, and his animals killed. He has already started to clear the rubble, to replant 2,500 olive trees. The trees will outlive him and be there for his children and for Palestine—forever. ■
By Lama Abou Kharroub
THE ASSASSINATION of Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, stunned supporters and political observers alike. On Feb. 23, 2025, his funeral became a moment of profound public mourning, drawing thousands who gathered to pay their respects. Since then, his grave has turned into a site of daily visitation, reflecting not only personal grief but also broader political sentiments. While Hezbollah has maintained a relatively low political profile amid ongoing Israeli aggression, the mass expressions of mourning reveal the enduring emotional and ideological connection many
continue to have with the movement.
Fatima Jomaa, a photographer and filmmaker from South Lebanon, described to the Washington Report her experience of the explosion that killed Nasrallah on Sept. 27, 2024, as a moment “we heard, felt and saw. The dropping of more than 80 tons of explosives on a very small patch of land to assassinate one person—it was unimaginable. We never thought this was the moment of Sayyed’s assassination; the idea seemed too far-fetched. The paradox is that the assassination itself was tangible, audible and deeply felt. It became a defining moment in our consciousness, dividing the war in our memory into a before and after [the explosion].”
The moment Hezbollah confirmed the death of its Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, anguished cries filled Beirut. It was a collective wail rising from homes, balconies and streets. Fatima describes this moment as “a fiery grief that engulfed the southern suburbs,” coinciding with the relentless Israeli bombardment.
“Amid the chaos of checking on our friends and families, as massacres unfolded daily, we couldn’t process the news—it was a shock. I couldn’t grasp the idea that Sayyed was gone until I returned to his speeches,” says Fatima, who sees him as “a formidable man, someone who, over the years, had prepared us psychologically for this day without us realizing it. In his past speeches, he had eulogized himself. On the day of the funeral, when his coffin appeared, it felt natural that we would still be hearing his voice, his speech, as he said: ‘O most honorable people.’ It was only fitting that no one else eulogized him but himself. That was the most painful moment the resistance community had ever experienced.”
The funeral transcended sects, nationalities and generations. Fatima attended every stage of the procession. She asserts: “It
was a day that belonged to anyone who believed in hostility toward Israel, regardless of political differences. It was, in every sense, a national day—unbound by sect or party. This diversity was reflected in the words, the faces, the expressions and the flags.”
Hassan, 55, tells the Washington Report the ongoing mourning is both emotional, political and familial. “With his death, we lost a sense of security. Now, we fear the unknown. This mourning is both political and emotional because it ties us to a longstanding relationship with a person who had all the courage, integrity, loyalty, love and sacrifice.”
For Fatima, this loss is profoundly personal. “There was no one consoling anyone else; everyone was part of the mourning. It was as if the concept of orphanhood became tangible for all of these people.”
Like Hassan, Fatima describes the loss as familial. He was present in daily life and its details, whether in commemorations and religious and political occasions. “His pictures are framed in every home, a picture on a box resembling Jerusalem, his voice is in the archive of every family, in my family’s archive from the 1990s and the 2000s.”
Najih, 16, identifies with the Popular Democratic Party, which has communist leanings. He describes the current phase as one of “great humiliation,” given the scale of the loss and the ongoing Israeli hostile practices. In his view, Lebanon lost deterrence power—not only militarily through the resistance movement but also through the figure of the leader, who had long waged a media and psychological war. Thus, the mourning becomes both personal and political and central. “He was the most important leader in the axis, he taught us how a leader could organize a group that wins every battle; he was present with every fighter on the frontlines. There isn’t a person who wouldn’t cry for him every day, who wouldn’t listen to his old speeches.”
“Ideology forms the essence of political consciousness and the actions that follow it for the resistance community. What sets the people of the south apart is their stance. We took a stand on Oct. 8, 2023, to support Gaza, which is being subjected to Israeli genocide, just as we took a resistance stance in 1982 after the Israeli invasion and in confronting Israeli aggression in 2006,” says Fatima, who sees this setback as a result of taking such a stance. She considers Nasrallah’s absence as something rooted in their value of sacrifice of “the most precious [thing] we have for a cause we believe in. It’s an ongoing journey. This event only adds to the accumulation of history and the embodiment of the awareness of this group, which believes in the path of resistance. This path cannot end as long as Israel sees our existence as a threat to its own,” she says.
Najih considers Hezbollah as the most important party in existence that opposes Israel. His relationship to Nasrallah was tied to the cause of opposing IsraeliAmerican dominance and colonialism, and to his love for the people and his nation, which extended to the support bases of other parties. “This is the great-
est loss the country could ever face,” he says. But he believes that the idea of resistance is greater than death.
After hearing the announcement of Nasrallah’s assassination, Fatima went to the Martyrs’ Cemetery, a burial site for resistance martyrs in the southern suburbs. She saw the mother of a martyr at her son’s grave, comforting herself, reassured that her son was now resting beside Nasrallah. She says, “I attended 90 funerals over a year and a half, and I believe all these funerals were preparing us for news like Nasrallah’s assassination as the leader of a liberation movement.”
She adds, “When I see a mother like this, I feel overwhelming emotions, one of which is gratitude. I feel my freedom every day, a freedom I have never felt as strongly as during this war. This feeling is what makes mourning a political act and a political practice.”
She also connects this to the day of the collective return of the southerners to their occupied villages on Jan. 26. “Because I am in a state of mourning and freedom, I will return to my southern village and enter it while the Israeli army is still there. I will enter knowing that this is my land, my village, my trees and my plants. I am certain that there is resis-
tance supporting me, while none of the self-proclaimed political or human rights advocates around the world care about this.”
Based on her experience and her close relationship with the resistance community, Fatima is convinced that nothing has changed.
At its core, the relationship with the resistance is not tied to the figure of Sayyed Nasrallah. The idea existed before him and will remain after him; it is fundamentally linked to the will and consciousness of the people.
“After his martyrdom, the people of the south decided to return to their villages and began burying their martyrs. Life started to gradually return to our streets. What changed is that we now lived through an experience that we heard and saw, and we will continue our journey with it,” says Fatima. Nasrallah’s grave has now become a daily pilgrimage site, where people from the resistance com-
munity go to express their collective grief and loss, as they continue to bury their loved ones and count their losses one after another, all while looking at Palestine and the ever-expanding Israeli colonialism. ■
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By Mustafa Fetouri
Council
votes to lift sanctions against Libya for the 1988 bombing. The Security Council vote, which passed 13 0 with abstentions from the U.S. and France, cleared the way for initial Libyan payments of up to $10 million per victim, or $2.7 billion in total, to the families of the 270 people killed in the bombing.
THE TRIAL OF LIBYAN citizen Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir AlMarimi, 74, was due to begin in Washington, DC on May 12, but has been postponed at the request of the prosecution and defense due to Mas’ud’s health issues and the complexity of the case. He is accused of making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988. Many observers believe if Mas’ud gets a fair trial and good defense, he will not be convicted.
Septuagenarian Mas’ud has been in and out of the hospital
Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He received the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written extensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues, and has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafa fetouri@hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri.
almost 20 times since he was kidnapped and smuggled into the U.S. in 2022. He suffers from chronicle illnesses including type one diabetes and had to undergo two operations: first for spine issues and then to amputate three gangrene-affected toes. His family told the Washington Report that they doubt he will survive the trial. The entire episode is outside of any legal framework, and Mas’ud is very unlikely to change the not guilty plea he entered when first arraigned in February 2023.
Back in 2001, two other Libyans were tried in special court in The Netherlands which ended in convicting Abdel Basset alMegrahi and acquitting Lamin Fahima. Al-Megrahi, who died in 2012, protested his innocence until his last breath. Most observers and legal experts, including Dr. Hans Köchler, the United Nations-appointed expert, believed that al-Megrahi and Libya were framed and the court in The Netherlands was neither objective nor fair.
The U.S. accused the two Libyans of involvement in the disaster in 1991. In accordance with the 1971 Montreal Convention on Civil Aviation, the Libyan government offered to try both men in its courts and invited the U.S. and the UK to submit their evidence; both countries rejected the idea. Libya in turn refused to hand over its citizens. The standstill continued for years.
The Security Council adopted several resolutions calling on Libya to hand over its citizens to stand trial—not in Scotland where the crime took place but in the U.S. Many legal experts questioned the merits of the Security Council involvement in a purely criminal act.
On midnight of April 15, 1992, Security Council Resolution 748 came into effect, imposing stringent restrictions on Libya including a ban on all civilian flights in and out of Libya while obliging all U.N. member states to close offices of Libyan Airlines, the national carrier.
That effectively isolated Libya and its
people for a crime their government has always denied. In later years several pieces of evidence completely exonerated Libya from the Lockerbie disaster.
Between 1992 and 1999, when sanctions were suspended, the U.N. Security Council passed three Lockerbie-related resolutions. Nonbinding resolution 731 (1992) called on Libya to hand over the two suspects. In 2003 Security Council Resolution 1506 ended all sanctions. Libya waited another year for the U.S. to lift is own sanctions, some imposed as early as 1986.
The resolution was only the third time the Security Council had imposed collective punishment on an entire nation. And unlike apartheid South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and later apartheid South Africa, Libya was sanctioned in the absence of any proof linking the government to the crime.
While much has been written over the last 37 years about the Lockerbie crime, very little has been written about how
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Libya’s 4.6 million citizens (the estimated population at the time) coped with the harsh sanctions, which affected every aspect of their daily lives, including medicines and equipment for essential services. Travel became cumbersome; people had to travel overland to neighboring countries and then board flights to their final destination. Hundreds of students studying abroad, like myself, had to give up going home during school breaks either because it was too expensive or too time-consuming. To reach Tripoli, one had to fly to Tunisia’s Southern Djerba, take a boat from Malta or fly to Cairo, and then take ground transportation to Libya.
The Washington Report spoke to several former Libyan officials, all speaking anonymously, to put together a broader picture of how the country functioned while under almost complete sanctions and how its people went about their lives. Precise figures of the economic impact of the sanctions are lacking
either because of lack of documentation or because much of the government files were looted and destroyed during the upheavals of 2011 and the civil war that followed, again facilitated by the U.N. Security Council. The former deputy foreign minister estimates that Libya’s overall economic losses between 1992 and 2003 amounted to more than $100 billion.
The former deputy foreign minister said, “Libya took certain steps” to “document” the overall losses incurred because of the sanctions. Asked why not many countries came to Libya’s help, he explained that “many countries tried but could not because U.N. binding resolutions” are like “international law” and compliance is mandatory. He added, “behind the scenes the U.S., UK and France scared every country that considered helping Libya.” The three countries have veto power in the Security Council.
His colleague, another Qaddafi-era minister responsible for the Lockerbie losses file, said: “we documented all details including how many people died and were injured” as they took circuitous routes to catch flights to reach their destinations.
The oil sector, the main source of revenue for the state, lost between $18 billion and $33 billion during that period. After Security Council Resolution 883 targeted the oil industry, the country’s production dropped from 1.4 mp/d (thousand barrels a day) to below 1.2 mp/d and the downward trend continued, hitting less than 1 mp/d in some months. The longterm effect was significant: the return to pre-sanction oil production levels entailed raising prices, which affected competitiveness.
Low oil prices and higher production cost meant less cash for the government which, in turn, affected its ability to import things like machinery, consumer goods, food and medicine. Medicine in particular was badly affected; patients continued to receive them for free, even as the cost to the government increased
substantially, and certain medications became scarce. In general the healthcare system was disrupted and accumulated an estimated loss of some $92 million. Many Libyans sought treatment abroad, which requires hard currency, increasing demand for dollars and forcing the government to heavily regulate the availability of the dollar. This gave rise to the black market, where the price of the dollar was nearly 10 times that of government-controlled prices.
The transportation sector lost some $900 million as spare parts become more expensive. Government control of hard currency affected both the agriculture and industry sectors, whose combined estimated losses totalled $10 billion.
After the oil industry, the second most impacted sector was aviation. Many Libyan Airlines aircraft were stranded in airports around the world because they were already out of the country when the sanctions hit. It took the company decades to renew its fleet and resume normal services after the sanctions were lifted. Some sources estimate that the sector lost nearly $30 billion during the seven years of sanctions.
Increased road travel led to higher road accidents. An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 deaths were recorded every year during the sanction period. Lack of spare parts, restrictions on importing new cars, crumbling roads and weaker road safety made a bad situation even worse.
By the time sanctions were completely lifted in 2003, every economic sector in the country was in need of heavy government cash injections to revive it. On top of that, Libya had to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the Lockerbie victims, as part of the settlement with the United States.
The abduction and subsequent trial of Mas’ud has opened old wounds in Libya. Many Libyans protested what they considered the illegal incarceration of Mas’ud, accusing the Tripoli-based government of selling out after the Lockerbie
case had already been settled. In 2008, and as part of the larger agreement to reestablish diplomatic relations between Libya and the U.S., the two countries signed a Claims Settlement Agreement, ending all claims against each other including all claims arising from the Lockerbie disaster. The agreement does not say anything about possible compensation for Libyan losses.
Many Libyans question how the U.N.’s highest body, the Security Council, could take aggressive measures against Libya without any hard facts.
Will Libya one day be compensated as a victim of an unjust international system? This is beyond the purview of the Washington court and is likely to remain an open question after the current case is concluded. ■
Continued from page 38
smear campaigns, dissenters face intimidation, financial strain and social isolation.
This form of repression operates subtly in liberal democracies—not through overt bans, but by making dissent so costly that individuals choose silence. Medical professionals, academics and even elected officials are increasingly wary of speaking out, fearing loss of employment, reputational damage and legal action.
The Canadian government frequently touts its commitment to free speech and democratic values on the international stage, yet domestically, it appears to be failing to protect those who exercise their right to criticize Israeli policies. The stark double standard in how speech is treated depending on its political alignment is eroding public trust in Canada’s democratic institutions.
The pressing question now is: will Canadians defend free speech, or will they allow a system that punishes dissenting voices to persist unchecked? The coming months will reveal whether Canada can truly uphold the principles of democracy it so often claims to champion. ■
By Jonathan Gorvett
WITH CAIRO’S SUMMER temperatures regularly pushing over 100° F, the power going off is no joke. Ceiling fans spin to a halt, air conditioning shuts off and workplaces, homes and stores quickly become stifling. In the fridge, food quickly spoils, electric water pumps shut down—and far, far worse.
In Aswan last summer, some 40 people died in just four days in June, when temperatures soared to 122° F and blackouts lasted up to four hours.
A repeat of that is what many Egyptians fear for this summer, too, as an upward spiral in demand for power coincides with a major downward spiral in power supply.
Climate change, a fast-growing population and economic
growth are behind that demand hike.
Behind the supply slump, meanwhile, is the fact that some 83 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated by natural gasfired power stations. That’s not good if your gas supplies are dwindling.
Yet just a few years ago, Egypt was hailed as a major future natural gas producer and exporter.
That followed some huge, offshore natural gas discoveries, including the Zohr field—the Mediterranean’s all-time largest find.
Now, though, that gas supply has been shutting down as unpaid bills have mounted and ill-considered production speedups have damaged reservoirs deep beneath the seabed.
This has left Egypt increasingly dependent on expensive imported gas to keep the turbines humming.
Those imports not only have a financial cost, but also a political one, as one of the main sources of those imports is Egypt’s eastern neighbor, Israel.
Indeed, throughout the carnage in Gaza, Egypt’s imports of Israeli gas have continued, growing 28 percent, year-onyear, in 2023, 18 percent in 2024, and reaching a record 1.1 billion cubic feet (bcf) in January this year.
“There’s an agreement now to try and double that amount by 2028,” says Charles Ellinas, CEO of EC Cyprus Natural Hydrocarbons Company and a regional gas expert.
What the hidden, political price tag of Israeli gas might be is unknown. Yet it may be less than the price of more power cuts, at a time when ordinary Egyptians face a string of other economic challenges.
“The Egyptian population’s needs are enormous,” Arezki Daoud, chief executive of MEA Risk, which monitors incidents that impact stability in Africa and the Middle East. “But the country’s revenue picture is pretty bleak. If this deficit is not addressed, it could lead to social unrest,” Daoud told the Washington Report.
Zohr has been in operation since 2017, operated by Italian energy giant Eni. With an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, it accounts for 40 percent of Egypt’s entire gas supply.
For a gas field to keep up its output, however, it needs a steady stream of new drilling, recovery and other development programs.
These cost money— something the Egyptian authorities have lacked in recent years.
Until recently, attacks on shipping in the Red Sea by the Houthis, following Israel’s attack on Gaza, killed off Egypt’s
Suez Canal revenues—a key source of foreign income.
Gas from Zohr, and other Egyptian offshore discoveries, was also being processed into liquefied natural gas (LNG) for export, earning Egypt valuable foreign exchange.
Yet these LNG exports ground to a halt last year, with the gas diverted to meet booming domestic demand.
Egypt’s population is growing by around 2 million people a year, while its economy has been expanding by 3-4 percent a year—both placing demands for more power on a creaking national grid.
As a result, payments to the gas field operators, all international oil companies (IOCs), have been late. By mid-2024, Eni reported some $1.27 billion was owed to them by the Egyptian government.
The IOCs have therefore delayed, or scaled back, their new drilling, recovery and development programs.
At the same time, recent Egyptian government directives to extract more gas from the existing wells have led to some reservoirs becoming damaged, with significant water seepage taking place, multiple sources told the Washington Report Output has therefore fallen spectacularly.
Figures from BMI, a Fitch Solutions company, show total output declining from a peak of 70.4 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2021 to an estimated 51.4 bcm in 2024.
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The Egyptian government has therefore been scrambling to try and make up the shortfall.
In January, some $1.3 billion of the IOCs’ debts were settled, enabling a small amount of new drilling. Egypt also paid $3 billion for a series of imports of LNG.
A deal to boost Israeli gas imports by 58 percent by the second half of this year was also signed, as was an agreement to take gas from Cypriot offshore gas fields in the future.
Yet the new drilling, while promising, will take time to develop into a secure supply. This year, Israel also faces some supply bottlenecks of its own, while Cyprus’ offshore gas fields are yet to be brought into production.
That leaves a short-term dependence on buying LNG on the global spot market— the most expensive way to get gas.
“Egypt’s financial situation is pretty dire,” Ellinas says. “Some estimate the country needs about $8 billion of LNG this year to make up the deficit.”
Last year, Egypt negotiated an $8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bankroll its whole economy.
This came after a lengthy financial crisis—the country’s external debt had doubled between 2014 and 2024, mainly to fund giant, government-backed construction projects.
That IMF loan might all have to go to keeping the lights on, then, as the summer heat begins to build. ■
By Candice Bodnaruk
DESPITE RECENT CHANGES to the Gaza Temporary Residence Visa (TRV) program, critics argue the system remains rife with antiPalestinian racism.
In October 2024, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller announced the Special Measures program, an improved program that includes transitional financial assistance for Palestinians once they arrive in Canada from Gaza. Along with the
Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg.
financial assistance, Palestinians fleeing their rubble-strewn towns will now have access to three months of temporary health coverage, settlement services and fee-exempt study or open work permits in Canada.
In correspondence with the Washington Report, Alex Paterson, senior director of Strategy and Parliamentary Affairs with Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), said Canada could speed up the process of applications and also force Israel to allow Canadian TRV holders to leave Gaza.
Last November, CJPME was one of more than 40 civil society organizations that signed an open letter to the Canadian government calling for changes to the TRV for Gazans with extended family in Canada. Amnesty International Canada, Arab Canadian Lawyers Association and Independent Jewish Voices Canada were also signatories to the letter.
In their letter, the organizations argue that the Special Measures program is destined to fail, noting that Canada has received nearly 9,000 applications through the program yet has only submitted a list of 500 names to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).
Moreover, Paterson said that Canada must be more transparent about the number of Palestinians who were rejected and why they were denied and must not penalize Palestinians who engage in political action for self-determination.
Last fall CJPME also published an in-depth report on the failures of the TRV program, highlighting the differences between the Ukraine and Gaza TRV programs. The organization concluded that the Gaza program is reflective of deeply entrenched anti-Palestinian racism.
CJPME pointed to biometrics required in the Gaza application process and said Canada offers no guarantees that it will not profile Palestinians for injuries they suffered as victims of Israeli violence. CJPME argues that Canada might be using unreliable and intrusive artificial intelligence (AI) screening systems. The TRV program also looks at social media handles Palestinian applicants use to assess their sympathies with certain Palestinian political parties.
“We remain deeply committed to supporting Palestinians during the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and are concerned about the wellbeing of all people in the region,” Miller said in a government press release about additions to the program.
He added that providing settlement and financial support is critical to addressing the immediate challenges faced by Gazans finding safety in Canada.
Yet for Palestinian Canadian leader Rana Abdullah, the Gaza TRV program is very intrusive and includes security questions that are coded with racism.
She added that Canadian politicians and leaders must fight anti-Palestinian racism and design fair programs that are inclusive to everyone.
“Imagine the hurt we feel as we wake up every single morning knowing that we don’t matter to our leadership,” Abdullah said. She stressed that Canada must work harder to reunite Palestinian families in Gaza and the West Bank with their families in Canada and facilitate their entry into the country.
Omar Omar, an activist originally from Gaza, pointed out the double standards that exist between the way Ukrainian refugees are treated in Canada compared to Palestinians, adding that 600,000 visas were issued to Ukrainian refugees coming to Canada. He has been lobbying the Canadian government for well over a year, and he echoed CJPME’s views on the need to prioritize family reunification.
All of his family, with the exception of two sisters, are currently in Gaza. Omar moved to Canada in 2015 to attend university, and after 10 years in the country, he feels betrayed and experiences sur-
vivor guilt because he did not get his family members out. He asserts he just wants to be treated as equal to every other Canadian.
“Dehumanizing Palestinians is another level of racism,” he said, adding that the Canadian government makes Palestinians sponsor their own families in Gaza in order to get them into the country.
As of Jan. 4, 2025, only 616 Palestinians have arrived in Canada under the temporary public policy; another 1,104 Palestinians have left Gaza with approved TRVs to Canada. Meanwhile, 4,782 applications are being processed under the temporary resident pathway for Palestinian extended family in Gaza.
The first ever Palestinian Pavilion in Manitoba province opened its doors this past February to an overflow audience. The pavilion was a joint effort between Brandon and Winnipeg organizers and debuted at the Brandon Culture Fest.
The pavilion was one of 11 participating at Brandon Culture Fest. Colombia, El Salvador, Hami Hispanic, India, Jamaica, Mauritius, Nigeria, Philippines, Scotland and Ukraine also had pavilions.
Organizer Aida Harrison, who is Palestinian and has called Brandon home for the past 25 years, spoke with the Washington Report recently about the significance of the pavilion and Brandon’s response.
Harrison said the city of about 54,000 people is now welcoming and supportive to Palestinians. That was not the case when she first moved to the community a quarter century ago.
“There was limited media coverage of Palestinian issues, which led to a lack of awareness about our culture,” Harrison said, adding that today visibility and empa-
Organizer Aida Harrison put together two days of cultural celebration with Palestin‐ian cuisine, music and dance.
thy have created a more inclusive environment in the western Manitoba community.
Eight years ago, she hosted an Egyptian Pavilion in Brandon. That work inspired her to create a Palestine Pavilion.
The Palestine Pavilion featured a cultural display, poetry, music, dabke and a fashion show featuring Palestinian thobes from specific communities. Each model held signs indicating where in Palestine their dress originated. Local Palestinian poet Hala Kofa also shared a video testimony about her family members still living in Gaza.
Throughout the evening, speakers commented on Israel’s war on Gaza and called out President Donald Trump for his plans to take over the region.
Harrison said she believes the pavilion can foster a sense of unity and support that extends to Brandon’s broader community.
She added that she was pleasantly surprised by people’s response and high attendance on both nights, which exceeded her expectations.
“I am grateful for the interest from the people of Brandon in learning more about Palestinian culture, cuisine and the challenges faced by Palestinians in their daily lives,” Harrison concluded. ■
On Feb. 24, the Darna Lounge in Arlington, VA, hosted the Palestinian Sound Archive, a project dedicated to recovering and remastering Palestinian records. Organized by Sima Dajani, the event featured a discussion with the archive’s founder, Mo’min Swaitat, a Palestinian actor, filmmaker and music producer based in London. After the talk and a short documentary screening about the project, Swaitat showcased the remastered records by performing a DJ set for the crowd.
The Palestinian Sound Archive traces its origins to an unexpected discovery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Swaitat returned to his hometown of Jenin to film a documentary and became stranded due to the lockdown. Wandering the quiet streets, he came across Tariq Cassettes, a shuttered music shop he frequented in his youth. Curious about its contents, Swaitat received permission to explore the shop’s stock. Inside, he discovered a treasure trove of 7,000 cassettes and vinyl records. “So much Palestinian culture has been lost or locked up in Israeli military archives, so it was magical to find this. It’s a journey through the past and the future of a whole people,” he said.
“It had been shut down for almost 20 years, so everything was so dusty and disorganized,” he recalled. “But I created a listening station and sat there for hours listening to Palestinian revolutionary music, Palestinian soul, jazz, punk and Bedouin field recordings.”
Recognizing the immense value of the recordings, Swaitat purchased the entire collection from Tariq’s shop and selected 2,500 cassettes to transport back to the United Kingdom. Five suitcases stuffed with tapes aroused suspicion at the Amman airport and he was interrogated for several hours by Jordanian authorities. Convinced that he was smuggling the psychostimulant Captagon, the guards quizzed Swaitat about various tapes before eventually allowing him to
pass without breaking the cassettes open.
Of the vast collection, one cassette in particular captured Swaitat’s imagination. A mysterious yellow tape simply marked “Intifada” in pen, the cassette contained an 11song protest album recorded in Jerusalem one week into the First Intifada (December 1987). The unique mix of electro-disco beats and spoken word poetry featured Palestinian artist Riad Awwad, his sister Hanan Awwad and contributions by Palestine’s national poet Mahmoud Darwish. Around 300 cassettes of the album were sold in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but Israeli forces seized nearly all the copies and arrested Riad Awwad. Imprisoned without charge or trial, Awwad was interrogated about the seditious songs and tortured for several months.
“The Intifada 1987” became the first volume of music to be restored and released by Swaitat’s archival record label, Majazz Project, in 2021. The re-issued album received critical acclaim, with Pitchfork magazine describing it as “part ode to the beauty of homeland, part historical document of Palestinian struggle, and part instruction manual for revolution.”
The Palestinian Sound Archive has al-
lowed Palestine’s rich musical heritage to reach global audiences by re-releasing a wide range of music from the 1960s to the 1980s. In addition to “The Intifada 1987,” Swaitat has unearthed recordings such as the Palestinian Black Panthers’ Mixtape, a collection of revolutionary songs recorded by young resistance fighters in the forests near Jenin, and the Palestinian Bedouin Tape Archive, featuring recordings by Swaitat’s uncle, Atef Swaitat, a celebrated wedding musician.
“The response has been amazing. I’ve had messages from young Palestinians and those in the diaspora telling me they loved it, or they bought it as a present for their parents who were young when it was originally released,” Swaitat said.
Today, the Palestinian Sound Archive/ Majazz Project can be found on <majazz project.com> and streaming platforms, including Spotify, Bandcamp and Soundcloud, while Swaitat releases newly digitized material every month on NTS Radio (<www.nts.live/shows/palestinian-soundarchive>). Through live DJ sets, streaming services and radio broadcasts, Swaitat ensures that these voices from the past remain part of Palestinian identity and resistance. Jack McGrath
Syria’s situation continues to rapidly evolve months after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad. Devastating violence between Alawite forces loyal to Assad and government and government-aligned militias broke out in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus in early March, resulting in over 1,300 deaths, the majority of them massacred Alawite civilians. Meanwhile, the country’s new government agreed to a pivotal deal with the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who control the northeast of the country. The SDF agreed to merge “all civil and military institutions” with the government in Damascus, while President Ahmed al-Sharaa in turn vowed to affirm “the rights of all Syrians to representation and participation in the political process.” A temporary constitution was also signed in March, establishing “freedom of opinion, expression, information, publication and press” and promising a permanent constitution as well as parliamentary and presidential elections within five years.
As these events unfold, experts gathered by the Arab Center Washington DC on Feb. 13 emphasized that removing crippling sanctions is the most impactful step Washington could take to support the Syrian people.
“My main observation so far is how dire the living conditions are in Syria,” noted Dima Moussa, a Syrian American lawyer who recently returned to the country from exile. “It’s almost unbelievable how much poverty there is in every corner of the country….The current leadership has inherited a state in ruins, literally and figuratively.” While the old government was rife with corruption and there are many questions about Syria’s new leaders, she described Western sanctions as the “main obstacle” impacting the country’s economy. “Lift the sanctions,” she said. “I can’t stress this enough.”
Joshua Landis, co-director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, believes al-Sharaa’s notice-
able outreach to the West is being conducted in the hopes of achieving sanctions relief. “It’s quite clear that the government of Ahmed al-Sharaa has been focusing on getting sanctions lifted,” he said. “That’s why he has spent so much time gaining foreign legitimacy, going Saudi Arabia, going to Türkiye, trying to engage with Western leaders and speaking to Western journalists.”
Domestically, Landis said the government needs to be transparent about its plans and focus on ensuring security and access to money. “The government needs to set out a timeline and allow Syrians to know what their expectations are,” he said. “People can’t get currency out of the banks…there is not enough Syrian currency….The economy is going to remain stalled until there is some security about money.”
Regarding physical security, he said, “In places like Damascus, security is pretty good. On the coast, many people are very frightened because the transitional justice has been pretty rough. There is no judiciary. People don’t know quite what to expect. Alawites, in particular, who were complicit with the [Assad] regime, had government jobs and served in the military, don’t know whether they are going to be considered guilty and tried.” The events of early March confirm Landis’ concerns. “Much of it is just
lawlessness,” he added. “There aren’t enough soldiers and troops to impose the law.” He added that many Syrians are pleased with the new government’s forces, but there are areas they don’t fully control, especially in the countryside, where abuses are more frequent.
Landis believes the largest impediment to the U.S. revoking sanctions is Israel, which has repeatedly bombed Syria and appropriated more of the country’s land since Assad’s fall. “The importance of Israel taking more territory is that it’s going to affect American policy,” he explained. “The United States is going to become an enemy of this Syrian regime. It’s almost inevitable, because the U.S. is so closely aligned with Israel, that there is going to be a conflict over this new [Israeli] conquest. If it’s not today—because the country has other concerns—it will be tomorrow. That’s going to force the United States to side with Israel against Syria, and it’s going to get caught in the same dynamic that Syria has been caught in all along.”
Ibrahim Al-Assil, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, noted that Saudi Arabia has moved quickly to establish good relations with al-Sharaa, who was born in Riyadh. “Saudi Arabia could play a major role in pushing Western partners and the United States to lift sanctions” on Syria, he reasoned. However, he noted, it remains to
be seen how, or if, Riyadh plans to condition its support for Damascus.
President Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip and turn the land into a high-end real estate development received immediate pushback from most Arab governments, particularly Egypt and Jordan, who insisted they would not accept hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians.
Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, told the Turkish think tank the SETA Foundation on Feb. 27 that Trump’s plan should not be brushed off as a bellicose negotiating tactic. “For folks who say he doesn’t mean it, I would point out that he’s said it over and over and over, and he seems very much obsessed with this idea,” she said. Friedman also noted Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner floated a similar plan for Gaza a year ago, suggesting this idea has roots within the administration. The apparent Israeli approval of the proposal gives it further viability. “The forces in Israel are not saying this is crazy or this is bad for Israel,” she noted.
Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, told the Arab Center Washington DC (ACWDC) on March 6 that the Gaza plan, if enacted, would likely be extended to the West Bank. The “Gazafication of the West Bank” is already ongoing, she noted, as the largest population displacement since 1967 is currently underway in the territory. “We are already seeing the process of mass internal displacement happening directly through military action,” she pointed out.
The idea of the West Bank being fully ethnically cleansed is particularly troubling to Jordan, said Sean Yom, a professor of political science at Temple University. Such a scenario would mean “the potential destabilization and evisceration of the Jordanian state,” he told the ACWDC audience. “It would be the beginning of the end for the Hashemite Kingdom.”
The arrival of more Palestinians refugees would cripple Jordan politically, economically and socially, Yom said.
The majority of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, Yom noted. This reality is the basis of social tension in the country, and would be exacerbated by another round of mass Palestinian exile. “We’re dealing with a country whose society is a patchwork of
forced displacement already,” he said. “It would magnify social tensions between Palestinians and non-Palestinian tribes in Jordanian society.”
Jordan is “one of the smallest, weakest countries in the region” and could not provide for the needs of more forcibly displaced Palestinians, Yom added. The country already has alarmingly high unemployment and poverty rates, he noted.
The existential nature of this threat explains King Abdullah’s “palpable, physical displeasure about having to talk about this issue” with Trump at the White House on Feb. 11,” Yom said. “I have never seen a Jordanian king be this uncomfortable in the presence of American power….For me, it emphasizes how deeply threatening the Gaza ethnic cleansing plan is for Jordan.” Yom added that he is baffled why the U.S. and Israel are willing to risk “destabilizing the kingdom” and “making it a weaker state and a less reliable partner.” Pointing out that Amman has long retained security, economic and political relations with Israel, he noted that crippling Jordan seems to contradict the stated U.S.-Israeli goal of deepening Israel’s ties with Arab states.
Nancy Okail, president and CEO of the Center for International Policy, said Trump’s Gaza plan is also viewed as “an existential threat” by Egypt. President Abdel Fattah elSisi cannot afford to be viewed as the leader who acquiesced to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, she said at the ACWDC event. Nor does she believe Cairo has the financial or technical ability to manage a massive wave of refugees, especially given the country’s historical governance issues in the Sinai, particularly as it relates to security and economic opportunity.
The idea that Washington can use its annual $1.3 billion aid package to force Egypt’s hand is unlikely, Okail said. The country already has $155 billion in foreign debt and it’s unlikely Cairo sees losing a little over a billion in annual U.S. support as a “bigger threat” than losing the confidence of its population.
In early April, Cairo unveiled a 5-year, $53 billion plan for Gaza. The plan is divided into three phases: a six-month interim phase during which cleaning and
construction would be overseen by a technocratic body under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority; a two-year phase focused on construction and infrastructure development; and a two-and-a-half year phase of governance reforms, ideally culminating in elections. The plan was endorsed by the Arab League and supported by Hamas. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, described the plan as a “good faith first step from the Egyptians.” Israel rejected the plan and resumed its largescale bombing of Gaza on March 18.
Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, offered a bit of hope at the SETA Foundation event. “The Arab states have quite a bit of leverage, at least in theory,” he reasoned. If Trump is serious about accomplishing Saudi-Israeli normalization, the president must realize that “the Saudis absolutely cannot move froward while [Trump’s] Gaza plan is in place.” Elgindy thinks it’s possible Trump could be amenable to Riyadh’s ideas. “There’s all kinds of things that they could push for, in a very transactional way, that I think Donald Trump might find very compelling regardless of whatever position he might have staked out,” he said.
Dale Sprusansky
“Why is an online presence such an important part of advocating for Palestinian liberation?” asked Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute (AAI), as she moderated the 53rd Voices From the Holy Land Online Film Salon on Jan. 19.
“Palestinians turn to any medium at their disposal to get the truth out to the rest of the world,” said panelist Omar Zahzah, assistant professor at San Francisco State University. “Social media has proved a vital lifeline for that to happen. Yet, at the same time, social media is a very colonially controlled and constricted medium. Israel is able to impose blackouts and to surveil Palestinian uses of the internet. Even as social media allowed for some cracks in the broader colonial narrative, it’s now becoming an increasingly censorious space.”
Panelist Bryce Greene, a student organizer with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting at Indiana University, Bloomington, remarked, “The large corporate media entities operate on behalf of empire, and the job of alternative media is to critique them. New media is allowing young people to have a view beyond what the typical gatekeepers would like people to see. Students understand, intuitively, that they’re being lied to, that the propaganda is ridiculous. Gen Z users are debunking Israeli propaganda in real time, and in fact, turning it into a joke. I think this has been a major positive development.”
“Social media does provide a certain democratization of the media that we don’t see in traditional media,” said panelist Katie Halper, a journalist and host of the Katie Halper Show and a co-host of the political podcast, Useful Idiots. “Social media is more questioning of official narratives. Mainstream or corporate media often serves as an unofficial mouthpiece for the Israeli government. The Israeli government says something, then a CNN journalist parrots it, and then the Anti-Defamation League regurgitates that. So, you have an echo chamber.”
“One of the examples that I find very disturbing, but also instructive, is the way that alleged ‘rape’ on Oct. 7, 2023, has been reported by traditional media,” said Halper.
“There was actually no evidence of any mass rape campaign, of any coordinated rape. Nevertheless, CNN journalists, both on social media through their Twitter accounts, as well as on television—Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, for example—repeated this fake news ad nauseam.”
In contrast, social media was crucial in documenting the actual rape of Palestinians. Israeli soldiers are documenting their own war crimes with cell phone video. “It’s a celebration of violence,” said Halper. “Israeli doctors confirmed the crime. When the Israeli police attempted to detain some of the IDF soldiers who had raped Palestinian prisoners, many Israelis protested the attempt to impose any accountability on the Israeli rapists. These were dubbed ‘right to rape’ protests. A member of the Knesset criticized the attempt to hold soldiers to account, to arrest them. There’s video of a rabbi blessing one of the rapists, and one became kind of a star of Israeli television.”
One way that civic discussion of these problems is repressed is “a particular definition of anti-Semitism, one that equates criticism of the state of Israel or Zionism with anti-Semitism,” noted Berry. “In the past few years, large companies have been turning their ‘community guidelines’ into the need to refrain from criticizing Israel or Zionism,” said Zahzah. “Meta came out with a policy
saying that they have a new restrictiveness around criticism of Zionism. And then Twitch did something similar. Users have to buy into an ideology in order to be able to use the platforms in the first place.”
“Young people, especially, get their news through incidental exposure, what the researchers call ‘snacking,’” noted Greene. “They’re scrolling on their feed, and news comes up, and they react to it. Very few of them are going to the profile of Mondoweiss or Electronic Intifada and then searching out news for themselves. This leaves them vulnerable to the desires of biased algorithms. One of the things that I’ve been trying to encourage students to do, and other organizers to do, is get out of the cycle of algorithmically generated news feeds as their primary source of experiencing the news, to ask whether or not they want to be in these ‘walled gardens.’”
Zahzah added, “Many of us who’ve done this work for years know that there is an incredibly well funded array of tactics used against us.” The New Arab reported that Israel has allocated $150 million in U.S. dollars for its 2025 budget to bolster international public relations over its military actions in Gaza. “And that’s going to include social media as a direct arm” of Israel’s hasbara effort.
“The repression happens on an intellectual level, but it also happens on a physical level,” observed Greene. “At Indiana University, we students took to the meadow and set up an encampment in support of Palestine, protesting against our university’s role in the genocide. The university cracked down with unprecedented levels of force, with riot police, armored vehicles and a helicopter and drones circling overhead. They had assault weapons and grenade launchers. They had a sniper on the roof that was aimed at me specifically. It was pretty insane. Under this new extremist federal government, I suspect that things might get more intense.”
“What each of us can do is to continue to be aware of these broader dynamics, to continue to name them on as many spaces as we can, and to call out this discourse for what it is, to refuse to capitulate, to refuse to be silenced,” concluded Zahzah. “There
wouldn’t be so much money spent on these propaganda campaigns if people taking to social media to expose these false narratives, doing this counter-hegemonic work, weren’t having an impact. I think we need to remember—it is having an impact. We just need to continue doing what we’re doing, even when it feels as asymmetrical a struggle as it’s ever been.”
The salon, the third in a series on “Marketing the Occupation,” was co-sponsored by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship–Palestine Israel Network and by Defending Rights & Dissent. An edited version of the salon can be viewed on the VFHL website.
Steven Sellers Lapham
Brian Boyd, co-director of Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies and a senior lecturer in anthropology, discussed “Preoccupations: Whatever Happened to Prehistory in Palestine?” on Feb. 18 at the Columbia Global Center in Amman, Jordan.
Boyd outlined how British and Israeli colonial mindsets have influenced the study of prehistory in Palestine. He defined pre-
history as, “the study of preliterate societies, from the earliest known hominin presence in the Jordan Valley, which was about 1.5 million years ago, to those of the late Chalcolithic, which was approximately 5,500 years ago.”
During the British Mandate, most archeologists working in Palestine were European, and were primarily interested in what the land’s prehistoric sites could tell them about the evolution of Western society. “The archeological research questions and the interpretive and epistemological frameworks that were embedded in the infrastructures of European colonialism served as the interpretive model, or scaffolding, for the study of the prehistory of Palestine,” Boyd noted.
Israelis are “reproducing” this colonial structure with their current archeological work, Boyd said. “The Israelis are obsessed with origins,” he noted, and use their archeological finds to bolster the Jewish people’s claim to the land. Because of this emphasis, much of the ongoing Israeli archeology focuses on the biblical era rather than the prehistoric era. Nonetheless, there are still an estimated 100 Israeli projects (within Israel’s post-
1948 borders and in Area C of the occupied West Bank) focused on prehistory. Boyd said this shows that “the study of prehistory in Palestine is equally entwined with its settler colonial history and present.”
This Israeli emphasis on using archeology to reinforce its political agenda has pushed Palestinian archeologists to focus their efforts on biblical-era sites that can “counter the Israeli narratives,” Boyd noted. Palestinians often respond to Israelis using ancient history to bolster their land claims by saying, “no, no we were here first, we were Canaanites,” he pointed out.
In part due to the focus on the biblical era—but also due to restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation—there is currently only one prehistoric archeological project in Palestine: Shuqba Cave in the Wadi Natuf area of the West Bank, where prehistoric human remains and tools have been discovered.
The historic area is under threat due to an expanding Israeli stone quarry near the cave. “Every year the quarry just gets bigger and bigger and bigger,” noted Boyd, who is intimately involved with archeological efforts at the site. He believes there is no question the quarry has destroyed prehistoric artifacts in the area surrounding the cave. “Clearly, prehistoric sites are being destroyed here,” he said. “If this was in Israel, if this was in Mt. Carmel or the Galilee, there would be an international outcry.” The area is also contaminated by waste. Boyd said local Israeli settlements pay the landowner to drop truckloads of trash on the site, and that toxic material from a hospital in Ramallah has also been dumped at the location, adversely impacting the health of the local population.
While neither Israeli nor Palestinian leaders have shown much interest in Shuqba Cave, Boyd said the local residents take great pride in the site and have given space in a local mosque for the establishment of a museum about the area’s prehistory. “They are amazing, they know all about this stuff,” he said. Boyd hopes this sense of pride in the region’s prehistory expands. “Research and teaching on
prehistory in Palestinian universities currently finds itself in a much-reduced state, compared to institutions across the Green Line,” he noted.
Ultimately, Boyd hopes that archeology in Palestine can move beyond colonial and political frameworks, given the land’s significance to all of humanity. “In terms of world archeology, Palestine is such a central place,” he said. “It’s the first place on the planet that people settled on, built permanent dwellings. It’s the first place on the planet where people domesticated plants and animals—dogs, sheep, goats, cattle, wheat, barley—Palestine is the origin of this.”—Dale Sprusansky
The Arab Center Washington DC (ACWDC) and Middle East Democracy Center (MEDC) co-hosted a March 12 program on the human costs of the Trump administration’s deep cuts to foreign assistance funding and hollowing out of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
“While there were always issues and shortcomings with U.S. foreign assistance programs, they provided life-saving aid and medical care, economic assistance and support for democracy and development programs,” said Tamara Kharroub, deputy executive director and senior fellow at the ACWDC. “But the Trump administration’s 90-day freeze, stop work orders and dismantling of foreign aid operations have caused not only confusion and chaos but impacted people’s lives across the region and the world.”
Arwa Shobaki, managing director of MEDC, noted that 83 percent of all U.S. foreign aid programs have been cancelled. “The future of U.S. foreign assistance is looking very bleak under the Trump administration and while these things can be reversed under future administrations, the impact and the credibility of the United States will not be so easily reversed.”
In light of these funding cuts, Yara Asi, a non-resident fellow at ACWDC, stressed the need to seriously address the factors that cause populations to become aid dependent. Palestinians, for instance, “will always need aid as long as Israel occupies Palestinian land,” she said. “In Gaza, we have seen one of the worst humanitarian
disasters of modern times.” (Israel is, ironically, one of the few countries still receiving U.S. assistance.) “Conflict-affected countries will always need aid as long as we continue to fund weapons sales to these countries, prioritize weapons manufacturers, totally ignore international humanitarian law, human rights law,” she said.
Amy Hawthorne, an editor at ACWDC, explained that since 1946, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has received more U.S. foreign assistance than any other region of the world, with the majority of the annual funding going to Egypt ($1.5 billion), Jordan ($1.7 billion) and Israel ($3.3 billion), primarily for military aid. This miliary aid has not been cut by Trump. Smaller amounts of economic and developmental aid, she noted, go to a dozen MENA countries and are impacted by Trump’s cuts. Up until now, the U.S. has been the world’s largest single donor for humanitarian aid in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the USAID cuts will have a more significant impact on other regions, particularly sub-Sahara Africa, which received a much larger portion of USAID’s humanitarian assistance.
Going forward, “the picture looks pretty dire for any significant amount of foreign aid to continue being provided by the U.S. government,” Hawthorne said. The campaign of disinformation and lies propagated by Elon Musk, President Trump, other members of the administration and some members of Congress has basically “demonized the whole concept of U.S. foreign aid,” she said. “This is the new reality, at least for the foreseeable future.”
Nidal Betare, co-founder and managing director of People Demand Change, discussed the situation in Syria, where aid is needed throughout the country. If the U.S. stops funding humanitarian programs, “half of Syrians will be starving to death,” he said. “More than 90 percent of the population depends on humanitarian aid.” The only U.S.funded programs continuing are those concerned with the ISIS presence in northeast Syria. To make matters worse, pre-existing U.S. sanctions make it extremely difficult for the Syrian government to revive its economy and support its people.
Alaa Sayegh, a Democracy Matters Initiative advisory group member, is concerned the void left by the United States will be filled by other regional powers with self-serving interests, such as Türkiye, some Arab Gulf countries and China. “Sadly, this void will be filled mainly with chaos,” he predicted. “This void and damage, after being created, will not be reversed after this administration ends in four years. We need to use this crisis as an opportunity…for more collaboration between civil society groups.”
Elaine Pasquini
Since 1994, The Washington Diplomat, an independent media company with a readership of more than 200,000, has served as the flagship news source for the diplomatic community in Washington, DC. A popular annual event of the organization is its “Ambassador Insider Series,” which kicked off on Jan. 28 at Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington, DC with a conversation between Pakistan’s Ambassador to
the U.S. Rizwan Saeed Sheikh and journalist Adrienne Ross.
Ross, a seasoned interviewer, immediately brought up the issue of freedom of speech in Pakistan, in light of the recent passage into law of an amendment to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act of 2016, which critics say criminalizes free speech. The ambassador said the amendment is intended to address “fake news or irresponsible” online broadcasts, as well as to “regulate” and make posts on social media more “responsible.” In addition, he insisted the measure addresses security concerns important not only to Pakistan, but the entire region and globally. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan warned the amendment is “likely to become yet another means of targeting political workers, human rights defenders, journalists and dissidents by effectively penalizing criticism of state institutions.”
Turning to Pakistan’s economic recovery, the ambassador pointed out positive indicators, including a dramatic reduction in its consumer inflation rate, down from a troubling 38 percent in May 2023 to 4.1 percent last December, far exceeding expectations. “This is a testament to the government’s effective economic policies, positioning Pak-
istan on a path of recovery and resilience,” he said.
Sheikh reaffirmed the strong trade ties between Pakistan and the United States, noting that the U.S. remains Pakistan’s largest trading partner. “Trade has been the most stable facet of our bilateral relationship,” he said. “My foremost priority as ambassador is to expand economic diplomacy and strengthen commercial interactions.” The ambassador also encouraged American companies to explore Pakistan’s trade incentives, citing examples of multinational corporations like Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo and Nestlé benefiting from Pakistan’s economic positioning.
Pakistan has a strong competitive edge in manufacturing, he noted, particularly in surgical instruments and sports goods. The country is proud to be producing 70 percent of the world’s soccer balls in the small town of Sialkot, located in the northeastern part of Pakistan.
Discussing Pakistan’s national security policy, the ambassador said there has been a shift from traditional security paradigms to a people-centric approach. “For the first time, security policy in Pakistan includes education, health and socio-economic stability as integral components. With 26 million children [mostly in poor rural areas] out of school, human capital development is now a security imperative,” he stated.
Sheikh also highlighted Pakistan’s vulnerability to climate change, describing the country as a “frontline state” in the global fight against this crisis, much like it was in the so-called “war on terror.” Pakistan, he said, is actively working with global institutions like the IMF and World Bank on a climate resilience strategy, shifting from reactive disaster response to proactive climate adaptation. Elaine Pasquini
Anatol Lieven, director of the Quincy Institute’s Eurasia Program, engaged in a spir-
ited conversation on Feb. 13 with Nathan J. Robinson, co-author with Noam Chomsky of The Myth of American Idealism: How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World Robinson, co-founder of Current Affairs magazine, noted that Chomsky has been an enormous influence on him throughout his life and that he was honored when Chomsky became an early subscriber to Current Affairs
Chomsky’s work exposing the ways the U.S. uses its power to justify its foreign policy is “vital in training people in critical thinking,” Robinson said. Chomsky’s arguments are so powerful because they make clear the U.S. is violating the U.N. Charter and “its own laws against providing weapons to human rights abusers by continuing the weapons flow to Israel,” he added.
The wide-ranging tome includes not only Israel’s brutal attacks on Gaza, but Russia’s military action against Ukraine, along with the Vietnam War and the U.S. Cold War with the Soviet Union. “A lot of this book is going through these conflicts and bringing out what was left out and not looked at by the U.S. press, and what was not seen by Americans,” Robinson explained.
The thread that runs through much of Chomsky’s writing is exposing the myth of American idealism, the way in which U.S. presidents, policymakers, intellectuals and journalists have “pushed the idea that what is in fact the naked use and expansion of
power is in fact done for idealistic, pure, benevolent and selfless reasons,” Robinson noted.
Turning to Donald Trump’s presidency, Robinson pointed out that when Trump was questioned by a journalist about the legality of his ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, the president brushed off any argument that his plan is illegal. To Trump, Robinson argued, “international law is just a scrap of paper… and we can’t pay any attention to what the U.N. says.”
While Trump is honest about his disregard for human rights and international law, Robinson said, “there is something very chilling about the abandonment of any pretense that we care about values.”
It’s important to note that The Myth of American Idealism is not an attack on the U.S., Robinson said. “This is an exposé of the crimes of American elites. The United States has a lot of people to be proud of, a lot of movements and accomplishments to be proud of.” He went on to say, “you don’t have to abandon all kind of patriotic pride in your country in order to shed the view that the actions of the United States’ presidents represent the core of our values.”
In the book’s final chapter, the authors profile activist movements that over the course of American history have an equal claim to represent “the rambunctious and rebellious spirit of the American people,” Robinson said.
Going forward, Robinson hopes for the emergence of a mass movement that challenges the premises of U.S. foreign policy. “For those of us who are really horrified and who understand that climate change doesn’t stop happening just because you eliminate all references to it from government documents, and who see the ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza and think we have to stop this…the goal is to build a movement that actually cares about democracy and human rights,” he said.
Agreeing with his guest, Lieven added, “An America like that would be far more appealing to people around the world than America as it has presented itself over the past generation—and much longer.”
Elaine Pasquini
All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1101
By Sim Kern, Interlink Books, 2025, paperback, 200 pp. MEB $18.95
Reviewed by Steve France
With a grabby, in-your-face title (Genocide Bad.), anti-Zionist influencer Sim Kern smoothly brings the snarky energy of social media together with fresh and learned insights into the roots of Israel’s genocidal program—how it thrives in the liberal capitalist world order, and most importantly, how to attack it. This fearless, comprehensive assault on Zionism draws additional strength and credibility from Kern’s own candid story of transformation—from suffering cruel, anti-Jewish taunts and shunning as a teen in rural Illinois, to becoming an “anti-anti-Semitism educator,” to despising and fighting Zionism.
About the two-word title, Kern says, “It should be that simple.” Just “point at a genocide, name it, and the people of the world should rise up in unison” to stop it. What’s to talk about? The trouble is that Zionists have successfully obscured Israel’s actions beneath such a “dense web of propaganda”—and punished so zealously mere use of the word—that many people are confused about what’s going on. Others, who see what’s happening, are afraid to even utter the word genocide, much less apply it to Israel.
In a TikTok video posted on Oct. 9, 2023, “Jewish author speaks out after October 7th, 2023,” Kern bluntly called out people who
Steve France is an activist, writer and lawyer (now retired) living outside Washington, DC.
were crying for the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas but ignoring that Israel was slaughtering whole families in Gaza. “You see Israelis as people, but you do not see Palestinians as people,” Kern said. “And if you live in the U.S. and that’s you, it’s understandable,” because that’s how the media presents the story: “Israelis get to be white. Palestinians are non-white and they are therefore not people.” To do anything to humanize them is labelled anti-Semitic. Kern suggested that people “read a book, any book, by a Palestinian author…it will humanize Palestinians for you and change the way you see this conflict forever.”
The video was viewed by more than 20 million people. Overnight, Kern became an “influencer for a free Palestine” and began pumping out more videos. Hannah Moushabeck, of Interlink Books, spotted them and persuaded Kern to write this book The finished product was factchecked by Nadim Bawalsa, a Palestinian scholar, and read in manuscript by, among others, Rashid Khalidi. His bottom-line comment, according to Interlink founder Michel Moushabeck, was, “This book
needs to come out quickly.”
Advance orders from retailers hit 25,000 in February, while 3,000 individuals pre-ordered Genocide Bad. It cuts the Zionist “mountain of bullshit” into the nine most common types of hasbara (“propaganda,” in Hebrew), each of which gets a chapter. For every nasty action or policy that makes them look bad, Zionists have invented elaborate fictions to make themselves seem the “victims, underdogs or heroes,” Kern observes. For every lie revealed, they hurl back at critics many more, drawn from a vast trove. Luckily, however, “you don’t have to expose all the lies for [most people] to realize that the mountain is bullshit all the way down,” Kern says. Rookie anti-Zionists can “start by just picking a lie—any lie—and correcting it.”
The many witty zingers, the deep drillings of the research and the originality of analysis in Genocide Bad indicate Kern delights in this work. A favorite point is that “every Zionist accusation is a confession.” For example: Israel falsely accuses Hamas of beheading babies and using human shields, while in truth it is Israel that has literally shredded babies in Gaza and constantly uses human shields.
The book makes clear that fighting Zionism has deep personal meaning, both because of Kern’s own experience of being a Jew and from realizing how much impact that has had on Kern’s self-image and relations with others. In an extremely rich chapter countering perhaps the heaviest weapon in the Zionist arsenal—that criticizing Israel is always anti-Semitic—Kern makes a strong argument that Zionism is itself an expression, as well as a product, of anti-Semitism. After describing ugly antiJewish incidents from Kern’s own childhood, adolescence and beyond, the book delves into peculiar attitudes toward—and of—Jews in the ancient world all the way up to modern times.
Kern also points out that from its inception Zionism has been deemed anti-Semitic by some anti-Zionist Jews. “Early Zionists were the original self-hating Jews, expressing an open dislike of their fellow European Jews that mirrored the rhetoric of anti-Semites,” Kern writes. Today, even more, “Fighting anti-Jewish hate necessitates fighting
Zionism,” as does fighting anti-Arab, antiMuslim and anti-Palestinian hate. What’s more, understanding why Israel is the darling protégé of the West reveals deeper evils in liberal capitalism and how it runs the world.
Genocide Bad is remarkable in being so accessible to readers unfamiliar with Palestine-Israel, and so sophisticated in its understanding of the nature of Zionism and the threat it poses.
By Mohammed El-Kurd,
Haymarket Books, 2025, paperback, 256 pp. MEB $17.95
Reviewed by Tala Aloul
Much of the Western world views us Palestinians as victims or terrorists, and nothing in between. In Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal, activist and poet Mohammed El-Kurd unapologetically dissects all the ways in which American media and politics refuses to humanize us, but instead prefers to pity or villainize us.
The book flows through chapters that highlight the dehumanization of our people and the necessity of reclaiming our identity as Palestinians. The colonizer has a long history of culturally appropriating and rob-
Tala Aloul is the co-director of Middle East Books and More. Her favorite part about working at the bookstore is connecting with the community through tabling at fundraisers, polling them for what novel they are interested in, and planning community events in our space.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad, Knopf, 2025, hardcover, 208 pp. MEB $28. On Oct. 25, 2023, just three weeks into the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times. As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. But in the past 20 years, reporting on the war on terror, Ferguson, Black Lives Matter and more, El Akkad has concluded that much of what the West promises is a lie. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means. This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.
No Way But Forward: Life Stories of Three Families in the Gaza Strip by Brian K. Barber, self-published, 2025, paperback, 296 pp. MEB $16.99. No Way But Forward by Brian K. Barber offers an intimate, profound look at life in Gaza over three decades—including the year following Oct. 7, 2023. This deeply moving narrative follows three men—Hammam, Hussam and Khalil—as they build families, pursue education and fight for justice despite unimaginable challenges. Barber, a psychologist and researcher, has cultivated real relationships with these families since 1995, allowing him to tell their stories with rare depth and authenticity. In the book’s final chapters, Barber shares firsthand accounts from the families as they endure the aftermath of October 7. Through their words, readers witness the heartbreak and determination of those living through war while holding on to love, dignity and hope. No Way But Forward challenges us to see Gaza’s people—not just its struggles.
Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible and the Genocide in Gaza by Munther Isaac, Eerdmans, 2025, paperback, 256 pp. MEB $24.99. In this impassioned and incisive book, Munther Isaac challenges mainstream Christians’ uncritical embrace of the modern state of Israel. Speaking from his unique vantage point as a prominent Palestinian Christian pastor, he proclaims a truth that is rarely acknowledged in Christian circles: Israel’s campaign to eliminate the Palestinian people did not begin after Oct. 7, 2023. Rather, the campaign is a continuation of a colonial project with 19th century roots that has, since 1948, established systems of entrenched discrimination and segregation. Writing from Bethlehem with close-up knowledge of conditions on the ground, and rooted in a commitment to nonviolence and just peace, Isaac urges readers to recognize that support for Zionism’s genocidal project entails a failure to bring a properly Christian theological criticism to bear upon colonialism and racism. He calls on Christians to repent of their complicity in the destruction of the Palestinian people and challenges them to realign their beliefs and actions with Christ—who can be found not among perpetrators of violence, but with victims buried under the rubble.
bing our culture, from our food to our clothing to our language. Over the past year, we have seen a new form of appropriation from so-called supporters and advocates for Palestine who, El-Kurd provocatively asserts, have joined the cause to feed their ego and boost their platform. He raises the question, “are we indeed all Palestinians?” which is a play on words from the protest chant “in our millions, in our billions, we are all Palestinians.” Palestine is indeed the tip of the spear and intersects with many other liberation struggles. It is widely recognized that our movement is stronger with the masses, whatever their background may be. However, when Palestine is free, liberation will be primarily due to Palestinians themselves breaking from their oppressors’ chains.
The imperialist propaganda has led the public to believe that the Palestinian child throwing the stone is the terrorist, and the Israeli tank charging toward the child is the brave defender. If the child is an amputee, or dying of hunger, they are merely—at best—a “perfect victim,” and their father a terrorist. Labeling a Palestinian as a victim means that they are defenseless, with no stone, pen or voice to defend themself.
El-Kurd strongly argues Palestinians are not obligated to perform a role for Western audiences in a desperate attempt to garner support or sympathy or reverse racist narratives. After more than 76 years of ethnic cleansing and a broadcasted genocide, “Why do we give the authority of narration to those who have murdered and displaced us when the scarcity of their guilt means honesty is unlikely?” He adds, “Our massacres are only interrupted by commercial breaks. Judges legalize them. Correspondents kill us with passive voice.”
Any form of resistance, including art and education, is defined as “terrorism” by Palestine’s colonizer and its allies, El-Kurd notes. The Zionist entity wants Palestinians to appear weak or horrific; the minute they look dangerously Arab, they should be thrown behind bars, and if they look weak, imprisonment is still the answer. They want Palestinians to be illiterate, without a culture and robbed of their identity. Yet Palestinians have a 96 percent literacy rate, rich embroidery and an identity too strong to be stolen
and replicated. When any of this is displayed, the Zionists attempt to incarcerate or slaughter Palestinians for their crime of life. As El-Kurd states, “Our blood is the price of the colony’s sense of ‘security.’”
El-Kurd grew up in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem that has seen a severe increase in ethnic cleansing over the past several years. When he moved to New York, he tirelessly attempted to appeal to the mainstream media to advocate for his community back home, however he is now exhausted from playing the impossible role of the “perfect victim.” Thus, this very blunt book in which he unapologetically names and responds to the callous political climate Palestinians face in the West.
Palestinians in the diaspora also have an obligation to hold each other accountable. We don’t just merely support each other, but also call each other out for instances of normalization. As we grieve, the world must contend with the fact that, “There is no uniform way to grieve the killing of your loved ones. Sometimes it is graceful, other times it is vengeful.” Again, El-Kurd notes, the West demands a “perfect” form of grief from Palestinians, one bereft of human emotions, such as anger. Accountability and “imperfect” grieving do not lessen our worth, but rather build up our movement.
El-Kurd offers a refreshing outlook on the responsibility Palestinians hold to carry the truth forward, and to unequivocally honor their land and their people without feeling the need to appease outsiders. In Western media, it is common for a Palestinian interviewee to open up about the family they have lost, only to be questioned about whether or not said Palestinian condemns Hamas. El-Kurd argues, “Curating the native as ‘respectable’ is a misplaced priority because it redirects critical scrutiny away from the colonizer, which in turn neglects the innate injustice of the colonial project.”
Perfect Victims is a testament to Palestinians rising above the victimization and oppression imposed by the world and remaining steadfast in their fight for liberation and identity. El-Kurd demands a sense of dignity through the fiery lens of a land that demands to exist.
By Andreas Malm, Verso, 2025, paperback, 144 pp. MEB $14.95
By Didier Fassin, translated by Gregory Elliott, Verso, 2025, paperback, 128 pp. MEB $14.95
Reviewed by Ida
Audeh
From the outset of its response to October 7, Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza was never in doubt; it killed Palestinians on an industrial scale over a 15-month period and made the environment inhospitable to human life. The world gave it a wide berth to accomplish these goals.
Why did Western countries see it fit to adopt Israel’s genocidal agenda as their own, and at what cost to humankind does the abdication of responsibility for genocide come?
Two recent books published by Verso address these questions, exploring Israel’s role in the global imperial order and the moral and political corollaries of the bloodletting the world has watched unfold for more than 15 months, with a resumption looming in the background.
Andreas Malm’s The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth consists of three essays, the first and longest of which is an exploration of the convergence point between two processes, the political and the environmental, for
Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report
which Gaza stands as a microcosm. Malm describes the Gaza genocide as a “technogenocide” perpetrated by a technologically advanced state and possibly “the first advanced late capitalist genocide.”
Malm begins in 1840, a year with significance both to the history of Palestine and to the climate disaster facing us now. Great Britain had developed steamboats, and it had a surplus of cotton that needed new markets. It approached Muḥammad Ali, pasha of Egypt, whose realm extended to the Levant, but the latter wasn’t interested because Egypt had its own cotton industry. To help the pasha see things differently, the British positioned their steamships facing Beirut and began shelling. They did this down the coast, conquering Akka in three days, continuing to Jaffa and Gaza and Alexandria. Their strategy was to inflict maximum civilian casualties and to destroy the built environment so that the British could set the terms of future relations. Muḥammad Ali caved, and Egypt imported British cotton, which destroyed its own cotton industry. The deindustrialization of Egypt that resulted from this encounter “placed the region as a whole in subordination to the advanced capitalist countries of the West…a power relation with very durable results.”
The year 1840 was also when a British statesman and politician, Lord Palmerston, floated the idea that Palestine be colonized by Jews, who would “place themselves virtually under our protection, they would come back in considerable numbers, and bring with them much wealth.” The proposal was consistent with what Malm refers to as the “mania” for the Zionist project—a full 77 years before the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance edited by Naseer Aruri and Edmund Ghareeb, Seven Stories Press, 2025, paperback, 208 pp. MEB $18.95. In 1971, in the wake of George Jackson’s killing by San Quentin prison guards, a poem entitled “Enemy of the Sun” was found among 99 books in the revolutionary’s cell. The handwritten poem came to be circulated in Black Panther newspapers under Jackson’s name, assumed to be a vestige of his more than decade-long incarceration. But Jackson never wrote the poem; it was authored by the Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim and had been included in an anthology of the same title a year before Jackson’s death. Originally published by Drum & Spear, the publishing arm of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance links 12 poets working in a poetics of refusal and of hope. Bearing witness to decades of Zionist occupation, to a diaspora exiled in refugee camps and writers held captive in Israeli jails, the collection offers a means to an end: “as poetry, yes it sings—as bullets on a mission; it calls for change.” In each poem is a whole life— joy, love, beauty, rage, sorrow, suffering—and in each life is a record of resistance: the traces of a people who refuse to leave their homeland, who time and again alchemize grief into principled struggle.
Eyes on Gaza: Witnessing Annihilation by Khaled A. Beydoun, with art by Mohammad Sabaaneh, Street Noise Books, 2025, paperback, 168 pp. MEB $16.99. All the world’s eyes are now on Gaza and Palestine. Arab- and Muslim-American law scholar and author Khaled A. Beydoun shares his expertise and his perspective on the conflict in essays he wrote during the year following October 2023, accompanied by over 60 pieces of art created by Palestinian political cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh during the same time period. Eyes on Gaza is Beydoun’s attempt to process what we have seen over the past two years. He opens our eyes to the historic events and the political motivations which impact the decision making of the leaders involved, as he shares his own story and his father’s story as Arab Muslims in America. This book combines personal narrative, contemporary history and thoughtful reporting to shine a light on the horror in Palestine today.
Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars
Shaped the Middle East by Margaret Elizabeth Peacock, University of California Press, 2025, paperback, 326 pp. MEB $35. On June 8, 1967, Egypt’s most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army in the Sinai, had hobbled their British and U.S. allies and were liberating Palestine. It was a lie. For the rest of his life, populations in the Middle East vilified Said for his duplicity. However, the truth was that, by 1967, all the world’s major broadcasters to the Middle East were dissimulating on the air. For two decades, British, Soviet, American and Egyptian radio voices created an audio world characterized by deceit and betrayal. In this important and timely book, Margaret Elizabeth Peacock traces the history of deception and propaganda in Middle Eastern international radio. Peacock makes the compelling argument that this betrayal contributed to the loss of faith in Western and secular state-led political solutions for many in the Arab world, laying the groundwork for the rise of political Islam.
A Jewish entity in Palestine would be tethered to the metropole and facilitate capitalist development without challenge. Malm states elegantly: “When the Zionist movement was eventually assembled, it was a wagon that could be placed on ready-made tracks.” Malm argues that after 1917, and with the British Mandate in place, Palestine was in the process of transforming into a center for capitalism. The Nakba brought into being a state that would solidify that transformation, and after 1967 the focus was on defending that state.
Fossil fuel production received renewed attention in the 2020s, with the discovery of natural gas resources off the coast of Gaza. Amid Gaza’s recent destruction, extraction and exploration continued unhindered. The multinational interest in exploiting this resource irrespective of the harm done to the environment helps explain Western support for the slaughter of the population that might have resisted foreign control. Capitalist countries recognize no restrictions on their appetite to extract fossil fuels, and they are
indifferent to climate catastrophes—hurricanes, heat waves, floods, more frequent and more intense fires caused by this lucrative, albeit life-destroying, activity. And so in a very literal sense, the destruction of Gaza and its population is part of an extractive process that will destroy the planet.
The second essay in Malm’s book is a brilliant defense of the Palestinian resistance from naysayers who reject it for not being a secular-led movement and from those who fault it for the violence it unleashed. He argues gently but persuasively that such critiques do not hold up when examined through a historical lens.
In a short essay that concludes the book, Malm addresses the role of the Israel lobby in the Middle East policy of the United States: Does the U.S. government act to fulfill its own interests or does the Israel lobby sway the U.S. government to act in ways that serve Israeli (but not necessarily U.S.) interests? He argues that Israel is part of a Western capitalist empire, created as a base in a resource-rich geography to pro-
vide Western countries with unhindered access to oil and gas; as such, there is no need to lobby the U.S. government to further Israel’s interests. One is left to conclude that the lobby helps keep in check members of Congress and the general public who aren’t on board with U.S. global hegemony.
How the destruction of Gaza was brought about is the subject of Didier Fassin’s Moral Abdication: How the World Failed to Stop the Destruction of Gaza.
Consider the facts: Not only was Israel’s genocidal intent well-advertised, but the killing was livestreamed by the victims to people around the globe. The killing was actively aided by the United States, Germany and other NATO countries; the killers’ excuses for its genocide were accepted by the media as plausible; calls by protesters to end the slaughter were denounced as anti-Semitic; and Western countries showed an astonishing willingness to trash the civil rights of their own citizens to make the world less hostile to a foreign country.
As Fassin put it, “such an inversion of the values proclaimed by Western societies, such a political dereliction, such an intellectual collapse, demand examination.”
Fassin’s argument draws on facts assembled from widely available sources. He begins by reviewing the events of October 7, in the process shredding the official narrative. He examines the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the brazenness with which it was brought about, which stunned seasoned international aid workers by its speed and comprehensiveness.
Mainstream media downplayed the killing, casting doubts about official casualty figures. At the New York Times (and other organizations as well), Fassin informs us, journalists were told not to use words like “massacre,” “carnage” or “ethnic cleansing,” and to avoid referring to “refugee camps” or “occupied territories.” Attempts are made to minimize Palestinian casualty counts by framing them as Hamas-provided numbers, when in fact it is obvious that the figures are undercounts, when so many dead are buried under rubble that hasn’t been removed. Reports of mass Israeli casualties on October 7 never add the obvious qualifier: it is unclear how many of the several hundred Israeli non-military deceased were killed by Palestinian militants and how many were killed by the Israeli army as it executed a “mass Hannibal.”
One of the more shocking details of state complicity in Israel’s genocide has to be the suspension of democratic practices to criminalize criticism of Israel, trampling on First Amendment rights and shredding long-established civil liberties in the process. That citizens everywhere disregarded the repressive arm of their own governments to express their revulsion, knowing they could face significantly adverse consequences, must be attributed to their realization at a visceral level that Gaza could be the testing ground for what was in store for any population that opposes state power.
That Israel was allowed to commit genocide in Gaza for more than a year in plain sight, that it was aided in that most heinous of crimes by major powers, provides a precedent for what is considered tolerable. As Malm and Fassin demonstrate so succinctly and powerfully, that spells disaster
for any population living in a geography with resources to be exploited by transnational capitalism.
Edited by Haifa Zangana, Christalla Yakinthou and Virginie Ladisch, translated by Katharine Halls and Nariman Youssef, Syracuse University Press, 2024, paperback, 152 pp. MEB $24.95
Reviewed by Sara Benboubaker
Fear seemed to have become their daily bread, the water they drank with their food, the air that they drew into their lungs.
Bouraouia Akkari, after a police raid.
Throughout Tunisia’s modern history, countless individuals have endured the harsh reality of political and social repression. Their stories epitomize the struggle for freedom and justice in a nation failing to leave behind its authoritarian past. However, many stories—particularly those of women—are often overlooked or forgotten. Salt Journals seeks to change this, offering the accounts of women who were imprisoned or experienced political violence during the presidencies of Habib Bourguiba (1957-1987) and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali (1987-2011). These essays create an important forum for discussing the resilience of women and the importance of standing up to tyranny.
In Salt Journals, editors Haifa Zangana, Christalla Yakinthou and Virginie Ladisch capture life inside of women’s prisons in Tunisia, while also providing insight into the country’s political prison complex. She splits
the collection of 17 testimonies and stories into three parts: Part 1—stories that highlight those impacted by loved ones who have been incarcerated, Part 2— accounts by women who have been incarcerated themselves, and Part 3— a final individual testimony about discovering freedom in a space others view as oppression: Islam.
The journals highlight the complicity of corrupt legal systems, showcasing how justice is frequently denied to those wronged, a sentiment echoed throughout the various accounts. The women sharing these stories express their emotions in a beautifully poetic manner, creating a compelling compilation that draws readers into their experiences of loss—as well as their resilience.
Under the dictatorships of Bourguiba and Ben Ali, women who aligned with the Islamic political opposition party Ennahda were unjustly persecuted. Women who simply taught the Qur’an were violently attacked, while their families and children endured physical abuse and torture from corrupt police. Hijabs were ripped off women’s heads in public as a form of gendered brutality. Reading these stories, it is apparent the impacted women have only grown stronger through their resilience—with this book giving them an even louder voice.
After the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, a writing workshop took place for women to share these stories. To listen to these once suppressed voices and to learn from those who have faced unspeakable cruelty is both informative and inspiring. By bravely sharing their stories and challenging cultural taboos, these women compel us to understand and recognize our ethical responsibility to bear witness to their experiences and remain resilient while confronting our own struggles.
Through the testimonies in Salt Journals, the self-determination of Tunisian women shines through; their unwavering commitment to freedom and faith are genuine expressions of resilience against the forces of oppression.
Sara Benboubaker graduated with a degree in political science from Marymount University. She engages regularly in Muslim advocacy work and is an intern at the Washington Report.
Compiled by Jack McGrath and Dale Sprusansky
To The Washington Post, March 5, 2025
President Donald Trump, in his speech before Congress, boasted that he has placed “a freeze on all foreign aid.” That is not strictly true: Not only has he maintained military aid to Israel, but his administration has increased and expedited it. He bemoaned the deaths of Ukrainians and Russians as the reason to pressure Ukraine to exchange land for peace. But he did not even mention Israeli and Palestinian deaths, nor has he pressured Israel to exchange land for peace. Rather, he has encouraged Israel and given it more money for weapons, seemingly to take all the land it can.
Bob Krasnansky, Croton-on-Hudson, NY
To The Columbian, March 17, 2025
“In the U.S. there are these strange laws where a foreign state gets privileged status and people have to swear loyalty to that foreign state in order to do business. It’s an unhealthy situation.” So says Shir Hever, Jewish Israeli-born worldwide coordinator of military embargo for the Palestinian BDS movement.
The BDS movement seeks to put pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian lands and oppression of the Palestinian people through boycott, divestment and sanctions. We here in Washington are fortunate: West Coast states,
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unlike Missouri and many others, both red and blue, have chosen not to restrict American civil and constitutional rights in favor of a small colonial country half a world away: Israel.
Despite that, our current and past federal governments, heavily influenced by foreign-manipulated bodies like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, continually seek ways in which they can restrict freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the freedom of how we spend our money and even our freedom of conscience when faced with crimes against humanity committed in our names.
Propagandists tell us that Russia and China pose existential threats, yet these countries pale in comparison to the threat that comes from within.
William Sterr, Vancouver, WA
To the Santa Maria Sun, Feb. 27, 2025
No matter who is in our White House, Israel rules our country. A reported 329 members of our House of Representatives are supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In the last congressional elections, AIPAC spent millions of dollars to defeat candidates who would not do their bidding. A majority of our senators are funded by AIPAC, as well.
Is there any question then why Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu receives standing ovations when he speaks to our Congress? Does it surprise you that both houses of Congress voted to approve
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billions of dollars for weapons that leveled Gaza and killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian women and children? The deal is that AIPAC funds a majority of our congressional campaigns, and Congress funds Israeli wars.
When it comes to the White House, our presidents do the bidding of Netanyahu. If he wants to level all of Gaza and drive all the Palestinians out, Joe Biden funds his desire. If Israel wants to cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians, Donald Trump proposes to move all Palestinians out of Gaza to Jordan and Egypt so Gaza can be developed into a seaside resort.
In America, even criticizing Israel on college campuses or in the halls of government is considered anti-Semitic.
What about the Palestinians, the people who have lived on their land for hundreds of years? Do they have any rights?
What about Americans? How do we view the carnage in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria? Do Americans realize that it is Israel that occupies Palestinian lands and annexes Palestinian territory? Are Americans moved to see Gaza leveled and tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in their own homes? Don’t Palestinians have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Do America and Israel have the right to say to the Palestinians, “Get out of here and don’t come back?” Or, instead, don’t Israel and America have the responsibility to rebuild what they have torn down and make out of Gaza not a resort but a Palestinian home?
We broke it and it is our job to fix it.
Gale McNeeley, Santa Maria, CA ■
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Palestinians break their fast on March 13, 2025, during Ramadan on the rubble of the Salim Abu Muslim Mosque, destroyed by Israeli forces in Beit Lahia, Gaza in November 2023. Since March 2, Israel has blocked aid shipments, including food, from entering Gaza and shattered the two‐month ceasefire with deadly airstrikes and a new ground invasion. (PHOTO ALI JADALLAH/ANADOLU VIA