The Wall Street Journal revealed in an investigative report published on Friday that Israel launched an air strike last October 31 on the Jabalia camp, “aiming to kill Ibrahim al-Biyari, the leader of the Hamas battalion in the camp, who Israeli intelligence believed was directing the battles against the forces” which claimed the lives of dozens of innocent Palestinians in the camp,” according to what the Israeli army told the newspaper.

The newspaper says, "But targeting Al-Biyari was not without a price, as the attack resulted in the killing of at least 126 people, who were left under the rubble of destroyed buildings, in one of the attacks that was considered one of the bloodiest in the Gaza war, according to the "Air-Wars" organization. “It is a non-profit organization associated with the University of London that investigates the killing of civilian victims in conflict zones.”

The newspaper report describes how “the alley-like streets and closely packed buildings in the Block 6 neighborhood of the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza were filled with people on the afternoon of October 31. Some stood in a long line in front of the local bakery, while others were crammed more tightly than usual into small apartments.”

At approximately 3:30 p.m., Israeli warplanes dropped several large bombs in a tight pattern on the neighborhood. Satellite images showed that the explosions completely destroyed a rectangular block, leaving deep craters where more than a dozen buildings had stood. The strike killed Ibrahim Al-Biyari, the Hamas battalion commander in Jabalia, who Israeli intelligence believed was directing a nearby battle, and dozens of other operatives, according to the Israeli military.

The newspaper explains, “The decision to bomb a crowded urban neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon to kill an enemy commander was a signal early in the war that Israel was willing to use overwhelming force against the Hamas leadership, even if it meant risking large numbers of civilian casualties.

The newspaper notes that in the days and weeks that followed, Israeli forces penetrated deeper into Gaza, seeking to dismantle Hamas in response to the armed group’s surprise attack on October 7, which left more than 1,200 people dead in Israel. The Israeli attack has taken a heavy toll, with an estimated 21,000 people killed, according to Palestinian health officials, drawing condemnation from human rights groups and other countries. The Biden administration, a staunch ally of Israel, has repeatedly informed the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that its military operation is causing too many civilian casualties.

Based on an investigation conducted by the newspaper, based on interviews with survivors and senior officers in the Israeli army, the air strike in Jabalia shows that Israeli military planners made “a series of miscalculations based on insufficient information” that led to much greater destruction and loss of life than they expected.

The newspaper reached “three important results,” as it described it:

1- Israel decided not to warn civilians in the area of an imminent air strike by sending phone messages for fear of giving the militants time to evacuate the area.

2- The Israeli army used at least two of the largest bombs in its arsenal instead of smaller munitions.

3- Air Force commanders tried to limit collateral damage by directing bombs between buildings, using fuses to delay detonation so they could penetrate roofs, destroy tunnels and topple buildings standing above them.

The Israeli occupation army confirmed in a statement to the newspaper that it “adheres to international law, directs its strikes at military targets and invests significant resources to reduce harm to civilians,” which is refuted by the newspaper’s report.

In a written statement, the occupying army said that it "is committed to international law, directs its strikes at military targets and invests significant resources to reduce harm to civilians." The statement added that the army "does not launch attacks except when the expected harm to civilians is not excessive compared to the expected military advantage, based on the information available before the attack."

The newspaper quotes an occupation army official as saying that the "fog of war" prevents knowing the details.

The war is approaching its third month, as Israeli tanks advanced deep into a town in the central Gaza Strip, Thursday, after days of relentless bombardment that forced tens of thousands of already displaced Palestinian families to flee in a new wave of mass exodus, according to Reuters.

Israeli forces bombed the area surrounding a hospital in the heart of Khan Yunis, the main city in the southern Gaza Strip, where residents fear a new ground incursion into the lands crowded with families who were displaced during the war that has been going on for 12 weeks.

The Palestinian health authorities said earlier that 210 Palestinians were confirmed killed as a result of Israeli attacks during the past 24 hours, bringing the war death toll to 21,320 people, or approximately one percent of the population of the Strip. It is feared that there are thousands more dead under the rubble.

By Mouin Rabbani

Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are again publicly advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Their proposals are being presented as voluntary emigration schemes, in which Israel is merely playing the role of Good Samaritan, selflessly mediating with foreign governments to find new homes for destitute and desperate Palestinians. But it is ethnic cleansing all the same. 

Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza”. Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of “voluntary” displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open. Ethnic cleansing, or “transfer” as it is known in Israeli parlance, has a long pedigree that goes back to the late-nineteenth-century beginnings of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionists adopted the slogan, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land”, the evidence demonstrates that, from the very outset, their leaders knew better. More to the point, they clearly understood that the Palestinians formed the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This is for the simple reason that to them a “Jewish state” denotes one in which its Jewish population acquires and maintains unchallenged demographic, territorial, and political supremacy. Enter “transfer”. As early as 1895 Theodor Herzl, the founder of the contemporary Zionist movement, identified the necessity of removing the inhabitants of Palestine in the following terms: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country ... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” David Ben-Gurion (née Grün), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and later Israel’s first prime minister, was more blunt. In a 1937 letter to his son, he wrote: “We must expel the Arabs and take their place”. Writing in his diary in 1940 Yosef Weitz, a senior Jewish National Fund official who chaired the influential Transfer Committee before and during the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), and became known as the Architect of Transfer, put it thus: “The only solution is a Land of Israel devoid of Arabs. There is no room here for compromise. 

They must all be moved. Not one village, not one tribe can remain. Only through this transfer of the Arabs living in the Land of Israel will redemption come”. His diaries are littered with similar sentiments. The point of the above is not to demonstrate that individual Zionist leaders held such views, but that the senior leadership of the Zionist movement consistently considered the ethnic cleansing of Palestine an objective and priority. Initiatives such as the Transfer Committee, and Plan Dalet, initially formulated in 1944 and described by the pre-eminent Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi as the “Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine”, additionally demonstrate that the Zionist movement actively planned for it. 

The 1948 Nakba, during which more than four-fifths of Palestinians residing in territory that came under Israeli rule were ethnically cleansed, should therefore be seen as the fulfilment of a longstanding ambition and implementation of a key policy. A product of design, not of war. Historical Christmas footnote: the Palestinian town of Nazareth was spared a similar fate only because the commander of Israeli forces that seized the city, a Canadian Jew named Ben Dunkelman, disobeyed orders to expel the population. He was relieved of his command the following day.

That the Nakba was a product of design is further substantiated by the Transfer Committee’s terms of reference. These comprised not only proposals for the expulsion of the Palestinians but, just as importantly, active measures to prevent their return; destroy their homes and villages; expropriate their property; and resettle these territories with Jewish immigrants. Weitz, together with fellow Committee members Eliahu Sassoon and Ezra Danin, on 5 June 1948 presented a three-page blueprint, entitled “Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Problem in the State of Israel”, to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion to achieve these goals. According to leading Israeli historian Benny Morris, “there is no doubt Ben-Gurion agreed to Weitz’s scheme”, which included “what amounted to an enormous project of destruction” that saw more then 450 Palestinian villages razed to the ground.

The understandable focus on the expulsions of 1948 often overlooks the fact that ethnic cleansing remains incomplete unless its victims are barred from returning to their homes by a combination of armed force and legislation, and thereafter replaced by others. It is Israel’s determination to make Palestinian dispossession permanent that distinguishes Palestinian refugees from many other war refugees. After 1948 Israel put out a whole series of fabrications to shift responsibility for the transformation of the Palestinians into dispossessed and stateless refugees onto the Arab states and the refugees themselves. These included claims that the refugees voluntarily left (they were either expelled or fled in justified terror); that Arab radio broadcasts ordered the Palestinians to flee (in fact they were encouraged to stay put); that Israel conducted a population exchange with Arab states (there was nothing of the sort); and the bizarre argument that because they’re Arabs, Palestinians had numerous other states while Jews have only Israel (by the same logic Sikhs would be entitled to seize British Columbia and deport its population to either the rest of Canada or the United States). More importantly, even if uniformly substantiated none of these pretexts entitles Israel to prohibit the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes at the conclusion of hostilities. It is, furthermore, a right that was consecrated in United Nations General Assembly 194 of 11 December 1948, which has been re-affirmed repeatedly since.

In 1967 Israel seized the remaining 22 per cent of Mandatory Palestine – the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. Depopulation in these territories operated differently than in 1948. Most importantly Israel, in addition to prohibiting the return of Palestinians who fled hostilities during the 1967 June War, and encouraging others to leave (by for example providing a daily bus service from Gaza City to the Allenby Bridge connecting the West Bank to Jordan), during the summer of 1967 conducted a census. Any resident who was not present during the census was ineligible for an Israeli identity document and automatically lost their right of residency. As a result the population of these territories declined by more than twenty per cent overnight. Many of those thus displaced were already refugees from 1948. Aqbat Jabr Refugee Camp near Jericho for example, until 1967 the West Bank’s largest, became a virtual ghost town after almost all its inhabitants became refugees once again in Jordan. So many Palestinians from the Gaza Strip ended up in Jordan that a new refugee camp, Gaza Camp, was established on the outskirts of Jerash. 

The occupied Palestinian territories would not recover their 1967 population levels until the early 1980s.Within the West Bank there were also cases of mass expulsion. These included the town of Qalqilya, which was additionally slated for demolition but to which its residents were later permitted to return. Those of ‘Imwas (the Biblical Emmaus), Bayt Nuba, and Yalu in Jerusalem’s Latrun salient were less fortunate. They were summarily expelled (many today live in Ramallah’s Qaddura Refugee Camp), their villages demolished and annexed to Israel, and replaced by Canada Park, so named because the project was completed with donations from the Canadian Jewish community. Within Jerusalem’s Old City the historic Mughrabi Quarter, abutting the Haram al-Sharif, was summarily razed to make way for a plaza astride the Wailing Wall. With many residents given only minutes to evacuate their homes, several were killed when the bulldozers went to work. According to Eitan Ben-Moshe, an engineer who oversaw the atrocity, “We threw out the wreckage of houses together with the Arab corpses”.

In subsequent years Israel employed all kinds of administrative shenanigans to further reduce the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Until the 1993 Oslo Accords, for example, an exit permit from Israel’s military government was required to leave the occupied territories. It was valid for only three years, and thereafter renewable annually for a maximum of three additional years, for a fee, at an Israeli consulate. If a Palestinian lost an exit permit, or failed to renew an exit permit prior to its expiration for any reason (including bureaucratic foot-dragging), or couldn’t pay the renewal fee, or failed to return to Palestine prior to its expiration, that Palestinian automatically lost residency rights. Separately, Israel over the years deported numerous activists and community leaders, primarily to Jordan and Lebanon. During the late 1960s and 1970s it also exiled Gaza Palestinians accused of resisting the occupation, along with their families, to prison camps in the occupied Sinai Peninsula. Among those who spent time there was the iconic Palestinian leader Haidar Abdel-Shafi.

A particularly notable case of administrative deportations occurred in 1992, after Israeli special forces botched an operation to rescue an Israeli soldier who had been seized by Hamas to exchange him for their imprisoned leader, Shaikh Ahmad Yasin. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered the summary deportation of approximately 400 Palestinians, many of them prisoners affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad (PIJ), none accused of involvement in the incident that led to Rabin’s frenzied rage. In contrast to previous deportations, which were considered permanent, these were for one- and two-year terms. In its rush to carry out the deportations under cover of night, Israel expelled a number of Palestinians who were not on its list, and left behind others who were. Needless to say the mass expulsion was, as always in such matters, approved by Israel’s High Court of Justice after minor modifications. It ruled, among other things, that this was not a collective deportation but rather a collection of individual deportations. Perhaps more significantly the deportees were stuck in an inhospitable no-man’s land, Marj al-Zuhur, because Lebanon refused to facilitate the deportations by receiving them. During their involuntary residence in Marj al-Zuhur, assistance came primarily from Hizballah, and it was during this period that relations between Hamas, PIJ, and Hizballah were solidified.

With the focus in recent years on the intensified campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, it is often forgotten that for decades the primary target for depopulation was the Gaza Strip, and particularly its refugee population which accounts for approximately three-quarters of the territory’s residents. Even before it occupied Gaza in 1967, Israel regularly promoted initiatives to achieve the “thinning” of its refugee population, with destinations as far afield as Libya and Iraq. Not without reason, Israel’s leaders felt uncomfortable with the presence of so many ethnically-cleansed Palestinians within walking distance of their former homes. After 1967 it encouraged Palestinian emigration from the Gaza Strip to not only foreign countries but also the West Bank. In 1969 Israel even devised a scheme to send 60,000 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Paraguay with offers of lucrative employment. The plan was negotiated between Paraguay’s military dictator Alfredo Stroessner and Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency. It was of course purely coincidental that shortly thereafter Mossad discovered it no longer had the resources to hunt Nazi fugitives in Paraguay, which had been their destinations of choice. The scheme was discontinued when several of its victims, upon realizing the promise of a new life of comfort was all a sham, shot up the Israeli embassy in Asuncion, killing one of its staff. In the decades since, “transfer”, often presented as the encouragement of voluntary emigration either by providing material incentives or making the conditions of life impossible, has become increasingly mainstreamed in Israeli political life. In 2019, for example, a “senior government official”, quoted in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, expressed a willingness to help Palestinians emigrate from the Gaza Strip. Mass expulsion has been gaining its share of adherents as well, and it is a position that is today represented within Israel’s coalition government. 

As has the idea that “transfer" should include Palestinian citizens of Israel. Avigdor Lieberman for example, several years ago Israel’s Minister of Defense, is an advocate of not only emptying the West Bank and Gaza Strip of Palestinians, but of getting rid of Palestinian citizens of Israel as well. As one might expect from a minister in charge of the Israeli military, he is also an advocate of “beheading” disloyal Palestinian citizens of Israel with “an axe”.

Against this background Israel saw the attacks of 7 October as not only a threat but also as an opportunity. Fortified with unconditional US and European support, Israeli political and military leaders immediately began promoting the transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population to the Sinai desert. The proposal was enthusiastically embraced by the United States, and by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in particular. As ever hopelessly out of his depth when it comes to the Middle East, he appears to have genuinely believed he could recruit or pressure Washington’s Arab client regimes to make Israel’s wish a reality. Given Egyptian strongman Abdel-Fatah Sisi’s economic troubles, the fallout of the Menendez scandal, and looming Egyptian presidential elections, it was suggested to him by the Washington echo chamber that it would take only an IMF loan, debt relief, and a promise to file away Menendez to bring Cairo on board. As so often when it comes to the Middle East Blinken, armed only with Israel’s latest wish list, didn’t have a clue his indecent proposal would be categorically rejected, first and foremost by Egypt.  The fallback position is opposition to “forcible displacement” at the point of a gun, while anything else is fair game. This includes reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble in what may well be the most intensive bombing campaign in history; a genocidal assault on an entire society that has killed civilians at an unprecedentedly rapid pace; the deliberate destruction of an entire civilian infrastructure, including the targeted obliteration of its health and education sectors; the highest proportion of households in hunger crisis ever recorded globally and the real prospect of pre-meditated famine; severance of the water and electricity supply leading to acute thirst, widespread consumption of non-potable water, and termination of sewage treatment; and promotion of a sharp rise in infectious disease. One Israeli soldier has already died of a fungal infection resulting from the collapse in sanitation he helped bring about in the Gaza Strip. How many Palestinians have been consumed by similar illness we do not know, but it is reasonable to assume that children and the elderly are hit particularly hard.

In other words, if desperate Palestinians seek to flee this seventh circle of hell to save their skins, that’s considered voluntary emigration, their choice. If they cannot remain in the Gaza Strip because Israel has made it unfit for human habitation with US weapons, that is a voluntary choice that will be respected. And the US and Israel are only here to help, like Mother Theresa determined to assist every last one of them whether they like it or not. Danny Danon, a member of parliament who was previously Israel’s envoy to the United Nations (the guy who sounds like Elmer Fudd), recently held up the mass displacement of Syrians to multiple shores during the past decade as an example to be emulated. “Even if each country receives ten thousand, twenty thousand Gazans, this is significant”. Asked about Danon’s proposal at a Likud meeting on Christmas Day, Netanyahu responded, “We are working on it. Our problem is [finding] the countries that are willing to absorb [them].” As an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz put it on 27 December: “Israeli lawmakers keep pushing for transfer under the guise of humanitarian aid”.

Not to be outdone by the politicians, the Jerusalem Post ran an opinion piece entitled “Why Moving to the Sinai Peninsula is The Solution for Gaza’s Palestinians”. “Sinai”, its author Joel Roskin enthused, “comprises one of the most suitable places on Earth to provide the people of Gaza with hope and a peaceful future”. Not individual Gazans, but “the people of Gaza”. Notably, such proposals consistently take it as a given that those departing will never return. One waits with baited breath for the European Union is expected to respond to these calls for mass expulsion with further investigations of Palestinian textbooks.

While ethnic cleansing has been intrinsic to Zionist/Israeli ideology and practice from the very outset, it also has a flip side: the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians expanded what had been a conflict between the Zionist movement and the Palestinians into a regional, Arab-Israeli one. The second Nakba Israel is currently inflicting on the Gaza Strip similarly appears well on its way to instigating the renewal of hostilities across the Middle East. As importantly, the 1948 Nakba did not defeat the Palestinians, who initiated their struggle from the camps of exile, those in the Gaza Strip most prominently among them. It would take a Blinken level of foolishness to assume the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip would produce a different outcome.

Mouin Rabbani is a Dutch-Palestinian Middle East analyst specializing in the Arab-Israeli conflict and Palestinian affairs

Irish Deputy Prime Minister Michael Martin said that sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians in the West Bank should be more than just imposing travel bans on them.

The British :BA Media agency: reported that the United States and the United Kingdom announced that they would ban such extremist settlers from entering their countries, while European Union leaders are considering implementing similar proposals.

The Irish official continued in a press conference, "What is happening in the West Bank is shocking and is considered a violation of United Nations resolutions and international humanitarian law. We have constantly made clear within the United Nations and at other levels that this must stop immediately."

By approving the war waged by its government in the Gaza Strip, Israeli public opinion is endangering its own future and world peace, believes Lebanese writer Dominique Eddé in a column in “Le Monde”.

We are witnessing the death of empathy. To the triumph of censorship and powerlessness. To the spread of monsters that give birth to each other. Not one alarm is too much to give the measure of the danger weighing on the world.

There is no longer an adjective to describe the horror underway in Gaza. After hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, journalists (nearly 70 have been killed to date, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists), members of the medical services and the United Nations (136, according to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres), it is now the cemeteries which are being bombed [according to an investigation by the New York Times].

How can we not conclude that there is a desire to put an end to a people and not just Hamas? Israeli leaders do not hide it. Quoted by Le Monde, the Israel Hayom newspaper reports the objective of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as transmitted to his advisor Ron Dermer: “Reduce the population of Gaza to its lowest possible level. » Can we be clearer? By the hundreds of thousands, Gazans from the north were ordered to take refuge in the south. They are now invited to crowd at the door of their homes: in Rafah. What is the next step ?

What a large part of Israeli opinion persists in not understanding is that it is approving a policy which, under the pretext of protecting its people, will dispossess them of their future. The war against Hamas presented by his government serves the ruthless application of a plan of destruction, erasure, annexation. The Palestinians will survive as they have survived for the past seventy-five years. But at what cost, for them, for Israel and for world peace?

The monumental responsibility of the United States

How many children killed, amputated, sacrificed for the capture of a militiaman? How many families exterminated? How many desires to live transformed into desires to kill? Every day, every hour, every minute is too much in Gaza and for the rest of the world. Here in Lebanon and in neighboring countries, everyone's minds are racing. Each one, each one their hatred, their rage, their mourning. In this physical and mental massacre, the responsibility of American policy is monumental.

Unconditional support of the State of Israel, the most powerful democracy in the world has betrayed its role as guarantor of freedom. Its policy in the Middle East records a succession of nameless defeats and nothing related to the benefits it claimed to obtain. It does not protect Israel, it prevents it from growing, from overcoming the past, from converting to the present, from inventing a new time.

Who can think that Israelis will live in peace after the irreparable has been done? Who can believe that they will be able to overcome the consequences if they do not mobilize en masse to defeat Netanyahu and demand an immediate end to the war?

What stopped the Mossad from doing what it does so well: eliminating heads? What was stopping him from attacking Hamas leaders abroad before sending thousands of children to their deaths? I remember the landing of Ehud Barak, disguised as a woman, in the center of Beirut in April 1973.

The soldier and a small team had climbed the floors and liquidated three leaders of the Palestinian resistance in a quarter of an hour: Kamal Nasser, Youssef Al-Najjar and Kamal Adwan. It is precisely the name of the latter that the hospital now bombed in the north of the strip is named. The place where poor people, thirsty and hungry, undergo operations without anesthesia; where we see a father lying down receiving his dead baby in his arms; where the image of a dead child becomes more bearable than that of a living child, burned from head to toe.

Some still dare to speak of the “purity of arms” and lyrically praise the ethical scruples of the Israeli army. What is this morality that wants entire families to be massacred in the name of a potential armed presence in an apartment building? Should we remember that many more civilians died in Gaza in two months than in Ukraine in two years?

I heard on a major French news channel someone defending the continuation of the bombings by acquitting his conscience with a short sentence: “The Gazans are receiving trucks of aid”… This man persisted in believing that no suffering could not meet his. Does he know that the slow entry of trucks causes people to eat spoiled food, when they find it, to delay death?

A few words to heal resentment

If only the Israeli army would stop at nothing to get somewhere. But she moves forward in the void. There is nothing in these lines that in any way minimizes the appalling behavior of Hamas on October 7. The pain of the Israelis, their shock in the face of the atrocities which accompanied the disappearance of their own, the rapes, the torture, the brutal return of terror in our memories, the full extent of this misfortune inhabits my thoughts in the same way as the tragedy unfolding in Gaza. But how many Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs, like me, have had access to this memory traumatized by Western Nazism and anti-Semitism? How many had the means to take stock of it, even though they had nothing to do with it?

For my part, it was during an analysis session that I was able to take a giant step forward in my understanding of peace. “I owe you an apology,” my analyst, who was Jewish of Belarusian origin, told me. “I am one of those who believed that Israel was a land without people for a people without land,” he added. This sentence, believe me, changed my life. She showed me that sometimes it only takes a few words to heal resentment.

It is this phrase – this movement of humanity and recognition – which has been missing from all the “peace processes”. This lack now translates into the permission to forget that these are human beings that we have been crushing for eighty days. And what is the international community doing? It allows permission, it makes Einstein’s prediction more relevant than ever: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch and do nothing. »

As an individual dies several times in his or her life, the inhabitants of the region are called upon to die if they want to live: to give up part of the past in order to move forward. To find each other again. The Bible cannot continue to serve as a land register, nor the Koran as a political or military treatise. If God is not returned to God, a homeland to the Palestinians, humanity to itself, we will all become lost, no longer knowing who is who, who wants what, who has the right to what. Language will be reduced to self-reproducing with nothing and no one in it.

Dominique Eddé is a Lebanese writer and essayist. She is notably the author of “Edward Said. The novel of his thoughts” (La Fabrique, 2017)

Source: Le Monde

If there is a pendulum that regulates world affairs it is important to know which way it may be swinging in the year that is about to start. 

Seen from one angle, the pendulum looks like swinging towards uncertainty. In 2024, many countries with major roles in international affairs are facing dicey elections.

The United States looks set for what could be the most difficult election season in its history. Will President Joe Biden, with his physical and mental fitness questioned by some, be able to run the final mile to his party’s nomination? Or will his Democrat Party be forced to rally around Kamala Harris at the last moment and out of desperation? The Republicans face an even less predictable prospect.

Although Donald Trump continues to cast a large shadow on the whole process, a shadow is just a shadow after all. The alternative savior Ron DeSantis seems to be fading away, while Nikki Haley, a dark horse just a few weeks ago, is beginning to emerge as a serious pretender. Even then, and regardless of who would win the keys to the White House next November, the United States will be on pilot mode for much of 2024 and thus, unable to take the tough decisions that only a well-settled administration could take.

The United Kingdom is also facing what is seen as the most difficult general elections it has experienced at east since the Suez Crisis of 1956. The Conservative Party seems to be in letdown mode, while the Labour Party appears unable to seize the opportunity to make a big comeback. The prospect of a hung parliament, with Labour forced to depend on the Scottish National Party (SNP) to form a government, signals a period of uncertainty as far as strategic decisions are concerned.

In the European Union, the Netherlands is already without a stable government and is likely to remain so for months, while coalition-building goes on. In Germany, the EU’s big beast in economic terms, the shaky coalition led by Olaf Scholz could unravel at any moment, while the radical right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) waits to emerge as the arbiter of a divided political scene.

Even France now seems to be heading for a period of instability as President Emmanuel Macron’s shaky coalition begins to crumble, while his government is unable to secure a majority in the parliament. The prospect of dissolution of parliament and snap elections is hanging above the scene like the Damocles’ sword of the myth.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin seems set to easily sail to victory on his bid for a new presidential term. But even there, the elections are likely to lead to a major reshuffle of the ruling elite, including the top brass and the inner circle of household oligarchs. After all, the thinly disguised failure in Ukraine must be blamed on someone, someone other than good old Volodia.

The only major power to appear stable at the moment is the People’s Republic of China. But there too, President Xi Jinping appears more focused on managing economic slowdown and the purge of the party than being dragged into international problems that promise nothing but trouble.

The pendulum is also swinging more sharply towards conflict, instability and state failures. In 2023, the list of “ungoverned” countries was limited to Syria, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan and, according to some, Afghanistan. In 2024 Sudan, caught in a war between rival military factions, is certain to join the category, while Myanmar, with areas controlled by Karen rebels expanding, is heading in the same direction.

If you hope that the pendulum will swing towards peace, think again. In Ukraine both sides, that is to say Russia and NATO, appear in a zugzwang that keeps them in conflict for the foreseeable future.

The Gaza, war is set to continue in 2024. Even after Israel achieves its military objective, that is to say dismantling Hamas’ military machine, within weeks the gargantuan task of building a new status quo is certain to take much longer.

In the meantime, the Gaza war has already ricocheted to North Yemen, still under Houthi control, and parts of Lebanon, under Hezbollah’s total control. Fighting involving Iranian-controlled militias in Syria and Iraq with US-backed elements is also likely to get wider dimensions in Syria and Iraq.

There are indications that both Russia and Türkiye are also preparing for military action on a grander scale to secure the chunks of Syria under their control.

For its part, the Islamic Republic in Iran is likely to face a sharp swing of the pendulum towards uncertainty in both domestic and foreign policy areas.

Another case of the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction concerns the United Nations and diplomacy in general. The Security Council is likely to remain inoperative for the foreseeable future, while the Secretary-General, having tripped over the Gaza war, has lost much of his authority as arbiter of international conflicts.

At the end of the COP28 in Dubai earlier this month, there was much talk about multilateralism making a big comeback. But that may be nothing but wishful thinking. The coming year looks likely to see a further decline in multilateralism and an increase in bilateral efforts to deal with economic and security problems. In some cases, lone-ranger policymaking is finding more advocates.

Hungary under Viktor Orban, for example, is defying the EU by hosting a Chinese manufacturer of electrical cars to compete with EU producers. Despite an agreement to coordinate immigration policy, EU members are developing divergent strategies likely to lead to diplomatic clashes in 2024.A broader and potentially more important pendulum swing in 2024 would be away from the mushy consensus formed during the golden days of globalism. Almost everywhere we already witness a return to the narrowest concept of national interests. Fear of dependence on potentially hostile or unstable powers has forced many countries, especially in the EU, to lean towards economic nationalism and discard the “comparative advantage” argument.

France, for example, has just unveiled a plan for self-sufficiency in a number of areas, notably pharmaceuticals, microchips and batteries for electrical vehicles. In a more folkloric move away from globalization, France has just revived growing a number of plants used in textile industry.

Finally, the pendulum looks likely to swing in favor of small- and/or medium- sized nations capable of adopting non-ideological and effective policies in the interest of their people. After all, no nation is small or medium as such; it’s the leadership that makes a country small or great.

Source: Alsharq Alawsat

The Israeli army published the results of the investigation into the killing of 3 of its captured soldiers in Gaza by its forces’ fire during the war that has been ongoing in the Strip for about 3 months.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said that the army "regrets the killing of the three prisoners by fire from its forces, and that it has learned lessons and ordered the soldiers to respect the rules of engagement," as he put it.

For his part, Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy said that the killing of the three captured soldiers in Gaza was “a serious incident with very serious consequences.”

Halevy stressed that the Israeli army failed in its mission to rescue the prisoners in this incident, and added that the army leadership feels responsible for the killing of the captured soldiers during a failed attempt to free them.

They thought it was a trick

The Israeli army investigation revealed the presence of soldiers in the same building in which the three prisoners were mistakenly killed by Israeli bullets in Gaza, and they heard their cries for help in Hebrew 5 days before the incident.

While storming a building on December 10, the soldiers heard calls in Hebrew saying, “We are kidnapped” and “Help,” but they thought it was a ploy by fighters of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), to trap them in an ambush in the building in Shuja’iya. East of Gaza City.

The Israeli soldiers left the building believing it was a mine, and the investigation said that 5 Hamas members who were guarding the prisoners were killed by Israeli helicopter fire while trying to escape from the building.

The investigation suggested that the prisoners then fled the building, and after 5 days, Israeli soldiers opened fire on them after they considered them a “threat.”

The three prisoners were bare-chested and waving a white flag when they were shot, according to the investigation.

The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced the fall of 187 dead and 312 injured in the Strip during the past 24 hours, noting that the number of victims of the Israeli aggression had risen to 21,507 dead, in addition to 55,915 injured.

45 dead arrive at Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza

Medical sources in the Gaza Strip reported that 34 dead had arrived since this morning at Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, indicating that 11 others died of their wounds.

It was also announced that there were casualties as a result of an Israeli bombing that targeted a house near Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.

This Friday morning, dozens of citizens were killed and injured as a result of the renewed Israeli occupation bombing of several areas in the central and southern Gaza Strip.

Medical sources said that 20 citizens were killed as a result of the occupation aircraft and artillery bombing several homes in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.

The same sources added that there are dozens of missing people still under the rubble of homes targeted by the occupation forces.

In an infinite toll, the toll of the ongoing Israeli aggression against Gaza by land, sea and air since the seventh of last October has risen to more than 21,000 dead and about 55,000 injured, in addition to thousands of missing persons, the majority of whom are children and women.

The Iranian regime is not the first to seek to exploit the Palestine issue for its regional interests, to settle its scores, and to enhance its influence in the region, and it will not be the last. This just cause has always been a victim of those who seek to exploit it in every field and for every expense. Arab regimes that described themselves as “nationalist,” and parties and organizations that considered themselves “progressive,” all of them had the slogan of Palestine at the head of their programs, while their goals were seeking another direction.

It was not surprising that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced that the “Al-Aqsa Flood” was retaliation against Israel for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani. Despite the controversy raised by this announcement and Tehran’s efforts to “correct” it, the truth is that Tehran was looking for a way to take revenge that would satisfy its supporters at home and its supporters in the region. It was not easy to find a target for revenge equal to the man's importance in the Iranian military hierarchy until the Hamas operation came on October 7, as if it was that opportunity.

It is true that the “Revolutionary Guard” was quick to correct the “misunderstanding,” but the spokesman for the “Guard” corrected it with something worse, as he said that the “results” of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation were part of revenge for the assassination of Soleimani. However, these results, which Tehran views positively, and believes that they have damaged Israel’s prestige and struck at the core of its sense of security beyond its borders, were a human disaster for the residents of Gaza. Therefore, Hamas did well to quickly confirm its refusal to use the October 7 operation and the blood of thousands of victims who fell as a result of it in the service of Iran’s goals and project. The movement's response was extremely courageous, given the well-known close relationship it has with Tehran. I felt that Tehran’s attempt to dominate the objectives of that operation and exploit it in this way would lead to extremely negative reactions against Hamas in the Palestinian street, which would look at the victims, destruction, and state of misery that the Gaza Strip ended up in, on top of its inherited misery since the displacement of the Strip’s residents from their land and their homes since 1948, as the bill paid by Hamas to the Iranian regime, instead of for the sake of protecting Al-Aqsa Mosque and defending the rights of the Palestinians.

Since the announcement of the October 7 operation, Tehran and the movements operating under its auspices in the region have sought to disavow their connection to planning that operation. The Secretary-General of Hezbollah was quick to confirm that he was surprised by the operation and heard about it just as everyone heard on the day it occurred. Like Nasrallah, the Houthis in Yemen, the Hezbollah Brigades, and other pro-Iranian organizations in Iraq denied their prior knowledge or desire to claim responsibility for the decision of the “flood” that opened the fire of killing and destruction on the residents of Gaza.

However, the expansion of the participation of these organizations in the war under the slogan of “unity of the battlefields,” and Israel’s announcement that it is fighting on 7 fronts enumerated by Defense Minister Yoav Galant (Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran) put Iran in a position of confrontation through intermediary with Israel, without a declared war between both sides. A confrontation is taking place with Iranian arming and financing, while its consequences fall on the people of the land and its victims, that is, on the Palestinians, while Tehran seeks to confirm its keenness for “stability” and calm and prevent sliding into a large-scale regional war.

However, as I said previously, Iran is not the only country in the region that has sought to invest in the Palestinian issue. The cause is just and investing in it ensures winning populism and mobilizing the masses. Since the Arab countries declared that the Palestine issue is their “first issue,” they have opened the door to the bidding market and competition over its “fatherhood,” despite the large number of Palestinian “fathers” among the leaders of the resistance when it began. From the time of Nasserist up to the Baathist rule in Syria and Iraq, the Palestine issue was the marketing slogan in all adventures. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait under the pretext of defending Palestine, and Hafez al-Assad's forces take control of Lebanon to protect the Palestinian resistance. The Palestinians were not always innocent of this trade-off. They were paying the price for bad relations with Arab governments, and drowning in internal conflicts that took them away from Palestine, as happened in Jordan in 1970 and was repeated in Lebanon in its civil war, during which the Palestine issue turned into a card suitable for use and exploitation in the internal Lebanese conflict.

In calculating the results, the Arab regimes’ trade in the Palestine issue did not achieve impressive results for the benefit of the Palestinians. From the participation of the Arab countries in their first war against the establishment of Israel in 1948 to the resounding defeat in the 1967 war, the impact of which the Arabic language sought to mitigate and considered merely a “setback,” the Palestinians were the victims and the occupied areas of their land expanded in war after war.

The truth is that the difficult Palestinian circumstances that surrounded the emergence of the Palestinian resistance, without a land on which to stand or material or political support to turn its back on, did not leave it many options, which turned it into a card suitable for exploitation, and opened the appetite of the “steadfastness and confrontation” regimes to benefit from it. When Yasser Arafat realized the importance of the “independent Palestinian decision” and went towards Madrid and Oslo in search of exits and a foothold on the land of Palestine, he had some Arab regimes on the lookout for “treason,” and Netanyahu, on the other hand, was planning his major strike that eliminated Yitzhak Rabin and returned the conflict to the arena of bloody confrontation, the chapters of which continue on the scene of brutal massacres committed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

Source: Alsharq Alawsat

Egypt awaits responses to a proposal to end the war... and a new mass exodus in central Gaza

The Hamas movement announced that it had agreed with other Palestinian factions on a “national solution” based on the formation of a “unity government,” adding that the Palestinian factions expressed their rejection of the Israeli and Western post-war scenarios in Gaza.

The movement explained, in a statement yesterday (Thursday), that it and the other factions, namely: the “Islamic Jihad Movement,” the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command,” and the “Democratic Front,” agreed to submit several proposals. Among them is “a call for an inclusive and binding national meeting that includes all parties without exception, to implement what was agreed upon in previous national dialogues.” The factions also agreed to “develop and strengthen the Palestinian political system on democratic foundations through general elections (presidential, legislative council, and national council), according to the full proportional representation system in free, fair, and transparent elections in which everyone participates, in a way that rebuilds internal relations on the foundations and principles of the National Coalition.” And the national partnership.

The five Palestinian factions held a meeting in Beirut and also stressed “the necessity of a final ceasefire and all acts of Zionist aggression, and the withdrawal of the occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, as a condition before carrying out a prisoner exchange on the basis of all for all.”

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is expected to begin a new tour in the region, which will be his fourth since the outbreak of the war, while Egyptian-Qatari mediation efforts continue to reach a ceasefire agreement in the Strip.

Diaa Rashwan, head of the Egyptian Information Service, said in a statement yesterday, “Egypt confirms that it has not yet received any responses to the proposed framework from any of the concerned parties, and when the responses are received, the proposal will be elaborated in detail and announced in full to public opinion.” Without giving details. However, Egyptian security sources said earlier that the proposal includes a ceasefire in several stages, and that the idea of managing Gaza after the war had been raised.

In addition, yesterday, tens of thousands of families were displaced again in the midst of a new mass exodus in central Gaza, as Israel escalated its attack on areas crowded with those expelled from the northern Gaza Strip.

Thousands of protesters in New York City marched silently in solidarity with the Palestinian people who are being subjected to a devastating Israeli war.

The demonstrators started from Times Square and walked down the street leading to Bryant Park in the city.

The protesters carried models of infants in shrouds, in reference to the thousands of child victims who died as a result of the ongoing Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip.

The demonstrators demanded an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

A report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that the right-wing settler camp, “which has taken the Jewish nation hostage,” is determined to send messages that prohibit criticism of the government and the “saint” army soldiers and their leaders, and prohibit an end to the fighting.

The report prepared by Uri Misgav added that this camp considers the dead soldiers and hostages “a noble and worthwhile sacrifice on the path to salvation, and they are the silver platter on which the Jewish state will rise.”

This camp also considers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be the donkey of Christ, a useful fool, and they constantly warn him that the day he dares to stop fighting is the day his government will fall. He does not object to that for an ideological reason, but because his only belief is survival. in power.

In the past, Netanyahu avoided military operations out of respect for the custom that says that Israelis are sensitive to the killing of soldiers, but the map has changed, so that polls prove that Al-Qaeda wants blood, fire and plumes of smoke, and the daily body count is considered a divine destiny even by parties that did not support this nightmare government, according to the expression of the newspaper.

A very shaky position

Indeed, the hostages were sacrificed, as the hero of the “Messianic camp,” Brigadier General Barak Hiram, admitted without batting an eyelid that on October 7, he ordered a tank to fire on a house in Kibbutz Be’eri, inside which the “terrorists” were holding 14 hostages, and he was killed. All but two are in the bombing. The newspaper also says that the division commander who issued such an order should remain in prison.

The New York Times published the incident as part of a comprehensive investigation into the attack that took place in Be'eri, but the Israeli media, with the exception of Haaretz - as it says about itself - has no room to criticize the army, nor to consider a guerrilla war during which the army is drowning in the mud of Gaza. Without a diplomatic horizon and under an unfit leader.

Israel has become more cruel and stupid, and its international standing is very shaky, the writer says. While journalist Zvi Yehezkeli continues to repeat on Channel 13 News that 100,000 Gazans should have been killed in the first strike of the war, and who asserts that every resident of the Gaza Strip is linked to Hamas, in a call for genocide, he is nevertheless currently considered the spokesman Most popular in Israeli media.

Uri Misgav concluded that a society that sanctifies random death and murder loses its moral superiority and justification for its existence, considering that this is the second strong strike directed by Hamas against Israel, and it is more horrific than the first strike.

Source: Haaretz +Aljazeera

The Middle East Eye news website published an article that included a scathing attack on the West because of its support for the "genocide" committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

The article, written by British-Israeli journalist Jonathan Cook, said that the “desperate” smear campaign to defend Israel’s crimes highlights a mixture of “harmful lies” that have been the foundation of the liberal democratic system for decades.

The writer mentioned a British comic scene that took place during World War II, in which a Nazi officer near the front lines turns to a colleague, and in a sudden and comic moment of self-doubt, he asks: “Are we the bad guys?”

Cook said that we and many of us "felt as if we were living that same moment, which extended (for us) nearly 3 months, although there is nothing to laugh about." He added that Western leaders, in their statements and speeches, not only supported the genocidal war waged by Israel on the Gaza Strip, but also provided diplomatic cover, weapons and other military assistance.

The writer considered that the West is fully complicit in the "ethnic cleansing" of about two million Palestinians, in addition to killing more than 20,000 and wounding tens of thousands, the majority of whom are women and children.

Western politicians insist on "Israel's right to defend itself" even though it destroyed the infrastructure in Gaza, including government buildings, which led to the collapse of the health sector, and famine and diseases began to destroy the rest of the population.

Vile acts

According to the article, there is nowhere for the Palestinians of Gaza to flee to, and no hiding place to protect them from the bombs that the United States provides to Israel. If they are eventually allowed to flee, they will have no recourse other than neighboring Egypt, which will be their permanent “exile” after decades of displacement from their homeland.

While Western capitals try to justify what they call Israel's "despicable" actions by blaming the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Israeli leaders allow their soldiers and state-backed settler militias to invade the West Bank - "where Hamas does not exist" - to attack and kill Palestinians. .

Cook continues his frenetic attack, saying that Israel is waging an old-style "colonial war without shame" against the indigenous population, of the kind that preceded international humanitarian law, and Western leaders are applauding it. He wonders: Are we sure that we are not the bad guys?

He says that the Israeli attack on Gaza disgusts many people, and reveals what is “primitive and ugly” in the behavior of the West, which has been obscured for more than 70 years by deceptive manifestations of progress, by talking about the primacy of human rights, about developing international institutions and rules of war, and about claims of humanity.

Yes - Cook continues - these allegations have always been “false”, and nothing is more evident than the lies that promoted the wars in Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine.

The real goal of the United States and its NATO partners was to “plunder” other people’s resources, maintain Washington’s position as a world leader, and enrich Western elites.

But more importantly - in the opinion of the British-Israeli journalist - the “deception” was a comprehensive narrative that dragged many Westerners behind it, claiming that the wars were aimed at confronting the threat of Soviet communism, Islamic “terrorism,” or renewed Russian colonialism. It also aimed - ultimately - to liberate oppressed women, preserve human rights, and strengthen democracy.

Genocidal war

The writer believes that this narrative cover on the part of the West to justify its actions is of no use this time... “There is no humanity in bombing civilians trapped in Gaza, and turning their small prison into rubble, reminiscent of seismic disaster areas, but this time it is a man-made disaster alone.”

He denied that Hamas had the ability to send any type of warhead to Europe, adding that the Gaza Strip was never - even before its destruction - the heart of an Islamic empire preparing to attack the West and subject it to the provisions of Islamic Sharia. It is also almost impossible for Hamas, which consists of several thousand fighters stationed in Gaza, to pose a real threat to the way of life in the West.

According to the article, questioning Israel's right to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza, chanting a slogan calling on the Palestinians to break free from the occupation and siege, and demanding equal rights for everyone in the region, are all things that the West and the Israelis view as anti-Semitism.

Cook pointed out that the British House of Representatives passed, by an overwhelming majority, a resolution equating anti-Zionism - which in this case applies to those who oppose the "genocidal war" launched by Israel against Gaza - with anti-Semitism.

He described the collective smear campaign in the West as “so unleashed” that the Western elites began on their own to curb freedom of expression and thought in the institutions in which they are supposed to enjoy strong protection.

He concluded that the Gaza Strip is not only a front line in the genocidal war waged by Israel against the Palestinian people, but also a front line in the Western elites’ war on “our ability to think critically in order to develop sustainable ways of living, and to demand that others be treated with the dignity and humanity that we expect for ourselves.” . Kokak concluded by saying: “Yes, the battle lines are drawn, and anyone who refuses to stand with the evil ones is the enemy.”

Army spokesperson says they 'regret' casualties sustained alongside intended target in a refugee camp on Sunday

The Israeli army admitted on Thursday that it killed dozens of Palestinians in an air strike on the Maghazi refugee camp in Gaza on Christmas Eve. 

An army spokesperson told Kan news that the military regretted that the attack, which killed 70 people, had harmed people adjacent to the intended target".

A preliminary investigation revealed that during the attack, additional buildings were damaged adjacent to the targets that were [meant to be] attacked," the spokesperson told Kan."[This] apparently resulted in harm to those not involved... The IDF regrets the harm to those not involved."

Israel has previously bombed the camp, but the attack on Sunday was described as one of the "deadliest" since the start of the conflict in early October.

The bombing of the camp started just before midnight on Christmas Eve and continued into Christmas Day. Hamas called the attack "a horrific massacre" and "a new war crime".

On Wednesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said the death toll from Israel's operation had surpassed 21,000, most of them women and children.

Herzi Halevi, the head of the Israeli armed forces, said on Tuesday that the hostilities will continue for "many more months". At least 1.9 million Palestinians have been internally displaced since the beginning of the Gaza assault, according to UN estimates. Only limited amounts of aid have been allowed to enter Gaza since the beginning of the war as Israel has imposed a total blockade on the strip, including cutting off water and electricity supplies, causing severe shortages of water, fuel, food, and medicines.

The conflict in Gaza was triggered by the 7 October incursion by Hamas-led Palestinian fighters into southern Israel, which killed 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to the Israeli army.

During the operation, around 250 people were taken to Gaza as captives, of whom 129 remain in Gaza after a series of prisoner exchanges.

A young man died Thursday evening as a result of being hit by live bullets fired at him by the Israeli occupation army, west of Bethlehem.

The Ministry of Health announced thedeath of the young man, Muhammad Sayel Abdel Qader Al-Jundi (38 years old), from the town of Yatta, south of Hebron, after the occupation army shot him near the military tunnel checkpoint established on citizens’ lands west of Bethlehem.

By Amanda Gelender

Israel's use of religious symbols in its genocide of Palestinians is an affront to Judaism and has robbed Jews of a faith practice divorced from nationalist barbarism

Israel has stolen and appropriated Jewish symbols we hold dear, politicizing them as markers for state-sponsored genocide. Palestinians continue to suffer for western empire's spoils, under the guise of safeguarding the Jewish people.

After Palestinians, Zionism's next victim is the Jewish faith.

Israel and Zionists around the world weaponize Jewish symbols to intimidate, humiliate and lay claim to that which they deem theirs. Israeli soldiers have branded the face of a Palestinian prisoner with the Star of David. Israeli forces notoriously make blindfolded kidnapped Palestinians wave or wear the Israeli flag - emblazoned with a blue Star of David - videotaping the humiliation to disseminate online for Zionists to join in the jeering. 

Israelis taunt Palestinians with cheers for a "Happy Hanukkah" while launching air strikes on communities dying of starvation and disease. 

How is this honoring the Jewish faith? How will Jewish people being inextricably tied to mass murder "protect Jewish people" globally?  

'Symbol of violence' 

As Jews around the world prepared for the start of Hanukkah this year, Israel murdered a beloved powerhouse intellectual, a Palestinian professor who represented the soaring voice of Gaza. The poet and educator Dr Refaat Alareer - and six members of his family - were "surgically targeted" and assassinated by Israel in his sister's home in Gaza City. 

Zionist soldiers marked the first night of Hanukkah by erecting a gigantic menorah in the rubble of decimated homes, where bodies remain trapped   

As I and many other Jews made arrangements for our annual festival of lights, Israel brutally assassinated Refaat as part of an ongoing campaign to snuff out the storytellers and journalists of Gaza. They claim to do this in our names. Near the site where Israel assassinated Refaat, Zionist soldiers marked the first night of Hanukkah by erecting a gigantic menorah in the rubble of decimated homes, where the unrecovered bodies of loved ones remain trapped. Instead of the menorah representing the hope and spirit of our people at this moment, it proclaims to the world a colonial military victory - a symbol of violent conquest in a place where a poet's passionate dissent was exterminated by Israel's death machine. 

In the legendary story we celebrate every Hanukkah, a tiny amount of oil miraculously provided the Maccabees eight nights of fuel to keep their temple lit. It has become a celebration of their faith and perseverance as Jewish freedom fighters facing down violent tyranny. Refaat and so many others martyred by Israel echo the resistance of these Jewish rebels - immortal symbols of light in the face of state terror and a reminder that the Palestinian spirit can never be extinguished. Zionism was once a fringe nationalist political movement within Judaism: only when its interests aligned with western imperialism did it receive the necessary backing to colonize Palestine. But so long as Zionist nationalism has existed, so have anti-Zionist Jews, rejecting the notion that our people should murder and displace Palestinians to build a western-backed settler-colony.

This genocide is a ceaseless nightmare with frightening echoes of the Holocaust. Zionist weaponization of the Star of David is reminiscent of jeering Nazis who wielded the (stolen and appropriated) swastika symbol to humiliate Jews before mowing them down in the streets.

I am continually struck by the glee with which Zionists abuse Palestinians and make a mockery of our sacred symbols and prayers. The Israeli occupation forces recently raided a mosque, detaining and abusing Palestinians while hijacking the mosque's speaker system to sing Hebrew prayers.

This is an affront to the Muslim Palestinians praying in their sacred place of worship and an insult to every single Jewish person of conscience who rejects the weaponization of our faith by Israeli fascists.

'Politicising Judaism'

Zionists drag Judaism through the mud by graffitiing and searing the Star of David to assert dominance over Palestinians while holding a literal knife to the neck of our Torah scrolls. But the symbolic death of the soul of Judaism pales in comparison to the material, ongoing devastation of the Palestinian genocide. 

Zionism is no longer a fringe ideology within Judaism: we grapple with genocide and occupation that the majority of our community supports

Israel has murdered more than 20,000 Palestinians and counting. It has displaced almost two million people more and intentionally destroyed homes, the ecosystem and infrastructure to render Gaza uninhabitable for those who manage to survive starvation, dehydration and carpet bombing.

So long as Israel massacres Palestine using the Jewish faith as a weapon of war, people will falsely conflate the global Jewish community with Israel. In politicizing Judaism, Zionists have robbed Jews of a faith practice divorced from nationalist barbarism. Antisemitic western countries are completely satisfied to have Jewish people act as moral cover and human shields for their imperialism. These are the same countries like the US that rejected entry for Jewish Holocaust refugees but without hesitation poured billions into Israel's military expansion project. 

Zionism is no longer a fringe ideology within Judaism: we grapple with genocide and occupation that the majority of our community supports. This is a result of ongoing Zionist indoctrination that dehumanizes and erases Palestinian life, teaches entitlement to Palestinian land, centers fear and Islamophobia, and sanitizes Israel's brutality.

Part of stepping into Jewish anti-Zionism is accepting the fact that our religion has been hijacked by fascists who commit ongoing genocide on behalf of colonial powers.

If Jewish people don't want to be incorrectly associated with Israel's tyranny, the answer is to be vocally anti-Zionist and work to dismantle both Zionism and Israel's settler-colony. As an anti-Zionist Jew, I eagerly embrace integrating Palestinian liberation into my faith practice.

Decoupling Zionism from my Judaic rituals isn't a burden: it fills my Judaism with the divine energy of Tikkun Olam - the Jewish moral imperative to repair the world. Disentangling Zionism from Judaism deepens my connection with my Jewish ancestors who, like Palestinians, fought with every dying breath to resist annihilation. Judaism will outlive violent Zionist nationalism and when Palestine frees itself, it will free us all.

By Nicolas J S Davies , Medea Benjamin

Non-binding UN votes will never stop the Gaza genocide. Only boycotts, banning weapons sales and severing diplomatic ties will force Israel and the US to heed the clamor for peace

As the world looks forward to 2024, holiday celebrations are being overshadowed by humanity’s failure to halt the genocide in Gaza and the active complicity of the United States that enables it. As the rest of the world condemns the massacre as a genocide and a crime against humanity, Israel and the United States stand isolated in their insistence that their atrocities are somehow justified by the indiscriminate violence committed during Hamas’s break-out from Gaza on 7 October. On 8 December, the UN Security Council invoked article 99 for only the fifth time in UN history. Article 99 is an emergency provision that allows the secretary-general to summon the council to respond to a crisis that “threatens the maintenance of international peace and security”.

The previous occasions were the Belgian invasion of the Congo in 1960, in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971, the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Iran in 1979 and Lebanon’s civil war in 1989. 

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the security council that he had invoked article 99 to demand an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza because “we are at a breaking point”, with a “high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza”. The United Arab Emirates drafted a ceasefire resolution that quickly garnered 97 co-sponsors.

The World Food Program reported that Gaza was on the brink of mass starvation, with nine out of 10 people spending entire days with no food. In the two days before Guterres invoked article 99, Rafah was the only one of Gaza’s five districts to which the UN could deliver any aid at all.

The secretary-general stressed that “the brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people… international humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively. It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity”. Guterres concluded: “The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss… the eyes of the world - and the eyes of history - are watching. It’s time to act.” 

US Security Council vetoes 

UN members delivered eloquent, persuasive pleas for the immediate humanitarian ceasefire that the resolution called for, and the council voted 13 to one, with the UK abstaining, to approve the resolution. But the one vote against, by the US, one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, killed the resolution, leaving the council impotent to act as the secretary-general warned that it must. 

This was the 16th US Security Council veto since 2000 - and 14 of those vetoes have been used to shield Israel and/or US policy on Israel and Palestine from international action or accountability. While Russia and China have vetoed resolutions on a variety of issues around the world, from Myanmar to Venezuela, there is no parallel for the US’s extraordinary use of its veto primarily to provide exceptional impunity under international law for one other country. 

The consequences of this veto could hardly be more serious. As Brazil’s UN ambassador, Sergio Franca Danese, told the council, if the US hadn’t vetoed a previous resolution drafted by Brazil on 18 October, “thousands of lives would have been saved”. And as the Indonesian representative asked: “How many more must die before this relentless assault is halted? 20,000? 50,000? 100,000?”'

Israeli myth-making' 

After the US slammed the Security Council door in Palestine’s face on 8 December, the UN General Assembly took up an identical resolution on 12 December. 

The resolution passed by a vote of 153 to 10, with 33 more yes votes than a previous General Assembly vote in October. While General Assembly resolutions are not binding, they do carry political weight, and this one sent a clear message that the international community was disgusted by the carnage in Gaza.

On 13 December, the BBC spoke to Richard Dalton, former British Consul General in Jerusalem and ambassador to Libya and Iran, about the crisis and the US role in it. “The US is weak,” Dalton said. “It hasn’t used any leverage so far. It is bleating about potential strategic defeat for Israel and criticism of indiscriminate warfare, but not backing that up in any way. Israel is reading the United States’ intentions quite differently [as a green light]. I am deeply pessimistic.” “I think that one of the key difficulties for making peace is to roll back current Israeli myth-making,” Dalton continued. “We hear that it is not possible to find a partner for peace because the Palestinians want a state from the river to the sea. 

The conclusion that has been drawn from this in Israel is that it is they who should have the state from the river to the sea. "It is time for a much more robust attitude by all Israel’s allies to make clear that the two-state solution requires fundamental change: more change in Israel than on the Arab side.” As the death toll passed 20,000 and the UN human rights office published a report that Israeli forces had summarily executed at least 11 unarmed men in front of their families in Gaza City, diplomats at the UN Security Council spent the week before Christmas repeatedly postponing and rescheduling a vote on a new resolution that would be weak enough to avoid an Israeli-dictated US veto. By Friday 22 December, they appeared to have found a formula that the US and Israel could accept - but other countries objected that it was too weak to make a difference. The resolution did not order an immediate ceasefire, and it would allow Israel to keep blocking life-saving aid. 

Parallel ceasefire negotiations continued in Egypt, where Hamas refused to free any more Israeli hostages or prisoners of war before Israel ended the massacre, while Israel vowed only further escalation. 

Genocide convention

Another instrument the world can use to try to compel an end to the massacre is the genocide convention, which both Israel and the United States have ratified. It only takes one country to bring a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) under the convention and, while cases can drag on for years, the ICJ can take interim measures to protect the victims. On 23 January 2020, the court did exactly that, in a case brought by Gambia against Myanmar, alleging genocide against its Rohingya minority, after tens of thousands were killed, 740,000 had fled into Bangladesh and a UN-backed fact-finding mission found that the 600,000 who remained in Myanmar “may face a greater threat of genocide than ever”. China vetoed a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Security Council, so Gambia, itself recovering from 20 years of repression under a brutal dictator, submitted a case to the ICJ under the genocide convention. That opened the door for a unanimous preliminary ruling by the ICJ that Myanmar must prevent genocide against the Rohingya, as the genocide convention requires. Since its final ruling on the merits of the case might be many years away, the court ordered Myanmar to file a report every six months to detail how it was protecting the Rohingya, signaling serious ongoing scrutiny of Myanmar’s conduct.

So, will one country step up, as the Gambia did, to bring an ICJ case against Israel under the genocide convention? Activists are discussing that with a number of countries. Roots Action and World Beyond War have created an action alert that you can use to send messages to 10 of the most likely candidates (South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Jordan, Ireland, Belize, Turkey, Bolivia, Honduras and Brazil).There has also been increasing pressure on the ICC to take up the case against Israel. The ICC has been quick to investigate Hamas for war crimes but has been dragging its feet on investigating Israel. During a recent visit to the region, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was prevented from entering Gaza by Israel, and he was criticized by Palestinians for visiting areas attacked by Hamas on 7 October but not visiting the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank. 

After Ben Ferencz and others spent their lives campaigning for a court to enforce universal accountability for war crimes, this perpetuates a shameful pattern in which the ICC prosecutes only defendants from non-western countries. 

Having it both ways

As long as the world is faced with the US’s tragic and debilitating abuse and non-recognition of institutions the rest of the world depends on to enforce international law, economic and diplomatic actions by individual countries may have more impact than their collective actions through the UN and international courts. While about two dozen countries have never recognized Israel, Belize and Bolivia have also now severed ties with Israel over its assault on Gaza, while others - Bahrain, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Jordan, South Africa and Turkey - have withdrawn their ambassadors or diplomats. 

Other countries are trying to have it both ways - condemning Israel publicly but maintaining their economic interests. At the UN Security Council, Egypt explicitly accused Israel of genocide and the US of obstructing a ceasefire. And yet Egypt’s long-standing partnership with Israel in the blockade of Gaza and its continuing role, even now, in restricting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza through its own border crossing, make it complicit in the genocide it condemns. If Egypt means what it said in the Security Council, it must open its border crossings to all the humanitarian aid that is needed, end its cooperation with the Israeli blockade and reevaluate its obsequious and compromised relationships with Israel and the United States. 

Qatar, which has worked hard to negotiate ceasefires in Gaza, was eloquent in its denunciation of Israeli genocide in the security council. But Qatar was speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. Under the so-called Abraham Accords, the sheikhs of Bahrain and the UAE have turned their backs on Palestine to sign up to a toxic brew of self-serving commercial relations and hundred-million-dollar arms deals with Israel, while Saudi Arabia was until recently preparing to follow in their footsteps. 

The UAE sponsored the 8 December resolution in the Security Council, where its representative declared: “The international system is teetering on the brink. For this war signals that might makes right, that compliance with international humanitarian law depends on the identity of the victim and the perpetrator.” And yet neither the UAE nor Bahrain has renounced their Abraham deals with Israel, nor their roles in the US's “might makes right” policies that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East for decades.

Over a thousand US Air Force personnel and dozens of US warplanes are still based at al-Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi, while Manama in Bahrain, which the US Navy has used as a base since 1941, remains the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.

Boycott, divestment and sanctions

One government that has followed through on its support for Palestine is the Houthi government of Yemen, which is enforcing a blockade of the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the south end of the Red Sea against Israeli ships and ships bound to or from Israel.

After it fired at, boarded or detained several ships, four of the five largest shipping firms in the world are rerouting their ships around the Horn of Africa to avoid mushrooming insurance premiums and dangers to their ships and crew. Many experts compare apartheid Israel to apartheid South Africa. UN resolutions helped to bring down South Africa’s apartheid regime, but real change didn’t come until countries around the world embraced a global campaign to economically and politically isolate it. 

The real disconnect at the root of this crisis is the one between the isolated looking-glass world of US and Israeli politics and the real world that is crying out for a ceasefire

The reason Israel’s die-hard supporters in the United States have tried to ban, or even criminalize, the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is precisely because boycotting, sanctioning and divesting from Israel may be an effective strategy to help bring down its genocidal, expansionist and unaccountable regime.

US Alternate Representative to the UN Robert Wood told the Security Council that there is a “fundamental disconnect between the discussions that we have been having in this chamber and the realities on the ground” in Gaza, implying that only Israeli and US views of the conflict deserve to be taken seriously. But the real disconnect at the root of this crisis is the one between the isolated looking-glass world of US and Israeli politics and the real world that is crying out for a ceasefire and justice for Palestinians. While Israel is killing and maiming thousands of innocent people with US bombs and howitzer shells, the rest of the world is appalled by these crimes against humanity. 

The grassroots clamor to end the massacre keeps building, but global leaders must move beyond non-binding votes and toothless investigations to boycotting Israeli products, putting an embargo on weapons sales, breaking off diplomatic relations and other measures that will force Israeli and American leaders to roll back the myths and lies they have conjured up to weaponize their peoples’ fears and justify endless atrocities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he is making contacts to return prisoners held by Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip.

This came during a meeting with the families of the prisoners at the headquarters of the Israeli Ministry of Defense in the city of Tel Aviv (central), according to a statement issued by Netanyahu’s office.

Netanyahu said: “We are in contact until this moment. The situation cannot be detailed, and we are working to recover them all.”

Netanyahu did not provide further details about these communications, their content, or the parties they included, according to the same source.

Families of Israelis detained in Gaza called for demonstrations in West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Thursday evening, demanding that the government work to return their families.

These families have been demanding for weeks a ceasefire in Gaza and the exchange of Israeli detainees for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.

For its part, the Hamas movement has stipulated, on more than one occasion, a comprehensive ceasefire in Gaza to begin prisoner exchange negotiations.

During the past few days, official Hebrew, private and Arab media reported on the existence of negotiations between Israel and Hamas, under Egyptian and Qatari sponsorship, regarding a prisoner exchange agreement between the two parties.

While neither Hamas, Egypt, nor Qatar issued official statements or positions regarding these negotiations or regarding the proposals presented to the factions and Israel.

In its attack on the Gaza Strip settlements on October 7, Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis, wounded about 5,431, and captured at least 239. It exchanged dozens of them with Israel during a temporary humanitarian truce that lasted 7 days and ended in early December. .

According to Hebrew media, the temporary truce resulted in the release of 105 civilians detained by Hamas, including 81 Israelis, 23 Thai citizens, and one Filipino.

Palestinian prisoners' institutions reported that, under the temporary truce, Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners from its prisons - 71 female prisoners and 169 children.

Israel estimates that there are about “137 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip,” according to identical media reports and statements by Israeli officials.

I remember when I read the novels “Bare Bread” by Muhammad Shukri and “Eastern Mediterranean” by Abdel Rahman Munif, during the years of hunger and tyranny, I was crying and cursing the twentieth century and its people, the century of freedom and human rights, repeating to myself: “What shame for this century in which there are still hungry people?” And another is devoured by the Pharaonic torture machine?

I thought that this was a remnant of previous centuries, but it seemed that I was living in an illusory hope. How could it not be when we see wounded Gaza?

I believe that there is nothing worth writing about Gaza except spreading our laundry saturated with dirt, mold, and unpleasant odors. We are the children of this time, the children of the twenty-first century in any corner of the earth, and we see death nesting in every corner of Gaza, the great grave, the destruction that it has not witnessed by contemporary humanity, flattened buildings, body parts scattered here and there: hands and arms, amputated feet and legs, heads flat and faceless, bodies lying on their stomachs covered in dust, children, women and men fleeing from bombing with faces covered in dust, the screams of children, women and men above the rubble, their calls for help. We dug them out with nails in search of neighbors and relatives, ambulances pulled by donkeys, non-stop funerals, mass graves, corpses wrapped in plastic, the towering numbers of dead and wounded, what the rubble hides, cold, hunger, thirst, and the multiple pains of those whose death date was postponed. Red earth with the blood of martyrs.

Gaza... the living scene that does not move us, the scene that reveals our death and our end. Today we are nothing but robots, the creation of machines, the result of artificial intelligence. We only see the world as virtual places and events. The pictures of Gaza before us are nothing more than black and white paintings in an old gallery, or they are pictures in a fictional movie on another planet that are watched for entertainment and to pass the time.

The pictures of Gaza are just data that cannot be seen by intelligence, nor by software and computer algorithms. Our world, the world of machines and buttons, the world of wood and metal, cannot see them. The pictures of Gaza are created by games and players, the sick and the obsessed, the deaf and the blind.

We are all the work of each one in his own way and with his own shabby weapons, from bombs to silence and indifference. So Gaza is a shame to us all. Our eternal shame that will not be erased. Our shame, which will be reinforced later by descendants who apologize for our primitiveness, betrayal, and inhumanity, our shame, which will be recorded in books, audio and video, which will make us immortalized as reprehensible, defeated by history and humanity.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that Italy refused to accept Israel’s appointment of a settlement leader as its ambassador to Rome.

The Israeli newspaper explained that Italy recently sent letters to "Israel" stating that it does not agree to appoint Benny Kashariel as ambassador to Rome, because he is a settler from the Maale Adumim settlement east of occupied Jerusalem.

Last summer, the occupation government approved the appointment of Kashriel, who was the mayor of Maale Adumim, and previously served as head of the Yesha settlement council, and is scheduled to assume his position after about six months.

According to the procedures, after the occupation government approves the appointment of the ambassador, the host government is supposed to approve it itself, but so far the required approval has not been received from Italy.

The Italians expressed, through diplomatic channels, their discomfort with the appointment of a person considered to be a senior settler leader, and that this would embarrass them in the European Union.

Italy's position surprises the Israeli government

The newspaper stated, “The unusual Italian position raised eyebrows among the Israeli government, given that Italy currently has a right-wing government led by Giorgio Malone, and is considered very friendly towards Tel Aviv, but its position on appointing the ambassador appears to be influenced by the broad consensus in the European Union regarding the settlements.” .

The newspaper indicated that the political level in the occupying state asked President Isaac Herzog to hold talks with Rome to resolve the problem.

The website referred to a similar incident, when Brazil refused to appoint Danny Dayan as Israeli ambassador to Brazil, due to his membership in the Yesha settlement council, and he was appointed by Netanyahu as consul general in New York.

The Hebrew website said that this "is not the only political appointment that may not go smoothly, as Tel Aviv agreed, on Sunday, to appoint former Knesset member Avraham Naoussa to the position of Israel's ambassador to Ethiopia."

However, sources familiar with Israeli-Ethiopian relations warn the Israeli newspaper that the Ethiopian government may not agree to appoint Naousa due to his activities supporting the migration of Falash Jews from Ethiopia to occupied Palestine.

On November 22, 2023, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that “Israel” needs to review the international perception of its attack on Hamas, and the method of achieving its goals, explaining that his message to Israel is the need to respect international law and deal seriously with civilians.

The Italian minister added, "There are a very large number of extremists in Israel, especially in the West Bank."

Türkiye has no debt to Israel or the Jews; Because it did not know anti-Semitism, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; In response to the West’s criticism of its positions in support of the rights of the Palestinian people. Indeed, neither Turkey nor the Arab world knew persecution of Jews. On the contrary, they were a haven for Jews who fled Europe. Because the reality is that anti-Semitism and anti-Jewishness is essentially a European phenomenon.

The failure of Western countries to stop the Israeli attacks on Gaza, which claimed the lives of more than 21,000 Palestinians, prompts the observer to link traditional Western support for Israel to the past, and to consider it as a debt paid by Europe, on whose lands “anti-Semitism” was born.

Europe's continued support of Israeli policies from the mid-twentieth century until today, and its silence regarding Israel's practices despite its violation of international law and human rights, raised many questions about the motives and goals of these positions.

A report by Anadolu Agency highlighted Western support for Israel, which comes as an attempt to atone for the bad conditions that Jews have experienced throughout history, especially in Europe, at the expense of the Palestinians.

The roots of anti-Semitism in Europe

In the Middle Ages, Europe imposed restrictions on Jews specializing in certain fields and professions, deprived them of university education and work in government sectors, and forced them to reside in specific areas.

During this period in which pressures and prejudices prevailed, the Jews chose “to be patient with living in exile” based on their belief about returning to “Zion.”

Although "Zionism" constitutes the largest part of Jewish religious life, there was no organizational structure for it until the late 19th century.

The competition between Christianity and Judaism formed the first foundations of the phenomenon of anti-Jewishness, and what led to the competition between the two religions was the supremacy of Christianity in the place of Mosaism.

Anti-Semitism

The Jews' rejection of Jesus, peace be upon him, was considered the greatest threat facing the Christian belief system.

Jews were subjected to many restrictions in medieval Europe. With the declaration of Christianity as the official faith of the Roman Empire in the fourth century AD, the Church gradually restricted the activities of the Jews.

By the sixth century, Jews were no longer allowed to employ Christian workers.

In the 13th century, Jews began to avoid engaging in religious controversy and debate with Christians, and France witnessed the burning of many Jewish holy books in public places.

Until the 16th century, Jews were subjected to displacement in many European countries, including Britain in 1291 and France in 1394.

They were expelled from Spain after their communities flourished in Andalusia

They were expelled from Spain in 1492 along with the Muslims, after the Jewish community enjoyed one of its greatest periods of prosperity during Islamic rule in Andalusia.

During the fourth Lateran Council meeting in 1215, church officials decided to prohibit Jews from being granted positions and jobs in government institutions and the army, requiring them to wear a hat and the Jewish badge.

The Basel Council meeting in 1434 witnessed a decision to universalize the special Jewish dress.

In 1555, Pope Paul IV approved, in the first official step, forcing Jews to live in specific areas, streets, and alleys, although there were previous examples in various parts of Europe.

The Ottoman Empire and the Arab countries were a destination for Jewish immigration

After being exposed to pressure and displacement policies in Europe, in 1299, Jews began to immigrate to the Ottoman Empire, which was in the process of expansion at the time, and Ottoman cities such as Istanbul and Izmir began to attract waves of Jewish immigration.

While living conditions were poor in the Jewish neighborhoods in Europe in the late 17th century, they enjoyed a free and decent life in the Ottoman Empire, which became a refuge for Jews, especially those suffering from pressure in Europe.

The Dreyfus case is a turning point

In the late Middle Ages, Christians began to view the Jews as “traitors” to Jesus, peace be upon him, and untrustworthy, and the best evidence of this is the “Dreyfus” case in France.

Alfred Dreyfus, an officer of Jewish origin, was arrested in September 1894 on charges of spying on the French army for the Germans.

Although no incriminating evidence was found during a month of investigations, Dreyfus was convicted and exiled to Devil's Island (a French colony in Guyana) as punishment.

The Dreyfus case was reconsidered in 1904 by a Supreme Court that acquitted the Jewish officer, and he was reinstated with the medals and positions he had been stripped of during his trial, before his death in Paris in 1935, after serving in the army again during World War I.

The Dreyfus case caused a new wave of anti-Semitism to erupt in France, and “Jewish hatred” began to spread more widely. The workers were the biggest victims of hatred, and it is claimed that the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, was influenced by it, despite being a secularist, and he was then convinced of the necessity of forming a national homeland for the Jews. 

"Antisemitism" in Eastern Europe provided Zionism with immigrants

In the 19th century, persecution of Jews was widespread in Russia and Poland, the two main centers of the Jewish diaspora.

Pogroms were committed against Jews in the Russian Empire, especially during the reigns of Alexander III (1881-1894) and Nicholas II (1894-1917), with the encouragement of the government.

During these periods, many parties defending anti-Semitism achieved impressive electoral success in Austria, France, Germany, and Hungary.

After being subjected to oppression and humiliation, many Eastern European Jews chose to start a new life by immigrating to the United States, and for those who were unable to do so, “Zionism” became an alternative hope for them to escape persecution.

Anti-Semitism turns into genocide during World War II

After World War I, as a result of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), most of the political rights were taken away from the Jews, who were declared scapegoats for all negatives. They were held responsible for inflation and the economic crisis in Germany.

Anti-Semitism, which has been widespread in Europe for years, reached its peak during the Nazi era in Germany (1933-1945).

Millions of Jews in Europe were systematically murdered or subjected to forced labor and torture in concentration camps during World War II.

The Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, launched a campaign to confiscate the property of Jews and expel them from their jobs in academia, the judiciary, the army, and the civil service. Their shops were closed, their places of worship were destroyed, and marriage was prohibited.

At the same time, Jewish communities were thriving in many Arab countries, and played a major role in trade in these countries.

What is the story of "Kristallnacht" that launched the Holocaust?

The Nazis carried out attacks against Jews on the night of November 9 and 10, 1938, known as "Kristallnacht."

During that night 91 people were killed, at least 267 synagogues were destroyed, many shops and homes were destroyed, and 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps.

The Nazis forced hundreds of thousands of Jews into forced labor in concentration camps to support the war, and expelled them from their neighborhoods as part of the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" plan, which was drawn up by Nazi officials in January 1942.

The victims were placed in train cars designed to transport animals and transported to killing centers and extermination camps - containing gas facilities - in Poland.

Industrial-style executions, using pesticide to kill rats, were carried out in camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka and Chelmno, run by the Nazi SS.

The elderly, minors, and the physically weak and unable to work were the first to be killed, and the strong were killed after they became weak and unable to work.

By mid-1943, almost all the Jews who had reached concentration and death camps had been killed, and when the Allied armies entered Germany and Poland, they rescued the rest of them.

This massacre, called the Holocaust, killed nearly two-thirds of the 9 million European Jews.

Europe pays the debt of guilt at the expense of the Arabs

Following policies of discrimination and "anti-Semitism" against Jews in Europe before World War I, and genocide in World War II, European countries supported Jewish immigration to Palestine to establish the State of Israel.

After World War II, the United States adopted the idea of settling the surviving Jews in Palestine.

The question is always raised whether the reason behind the European position on Israel's policies and actions after the establishment of its state, even though they constitute a war crime, is a "sense of guilt" from the past.

But this feeling of guilt, instead of translating into European repentance for the persecution of minorities in general, turned into an attempt to please global Zionism at the expense of the Palestinians and Arabs. Today, it has even turned into the persecution of Muslims in Europe instead of the persecution of the Jews.

Source: Arabic Post

An Israeli military court sentenced an 18-year-old Israeli teenager to 30 days in prison for refusing to conscript into the Israeli occupation army in protest against the war on the Gaza Strip, according to what the Jerusalem Post reported, noting that his refusal to conscript came because of his “conscientious objection to the war on agitation".

The newspaper added: “Tal Mitnick, a resident of Tel Aviv, entered an army center to announce his refusal to conscription, and thus he is the first Israeli conscientious objector to military service to be imprisoned since the start of Operation Iron Swords (Al-Aqsa Flood)” That is, the war on Gaza.

"Conscientious objectors"!

According to a report by the newspaper, published on the evening of Wednesday, December 27, 2023, “Mitnik entered the recruitment center in Tel Hashomer (central Israel) accompanied by other young activists from the Mesarvot network, a group of conscientious objectors in the country.”

The newspaper said: “After entering the base, he was exceptionally sentenced to 30 days in military prison after the trial,” noting that “Mitnick is expected to continue in prison for further sentences after his initial release, according to a statement issued by the teenager’s representatives.”

It quoted the young Israeli man as saying in a statement: “I refuse to believe that more violence will bring security, and I refuse to participate in a war of revenge. I grew up in a home where life is sacred, where debate is valued, and where dialogue and understanding always come before violent measures are taken.”

War is a way to silence criticism

He added: “In the world full of corrupt interests in which we live, violence and war are another way to increase support for the government and silence criticism.”

He continued: "We must realize that after weeks of the ground operation in Gaza, in the end, the negotiations and agreement led to the return of the hostages (to the Palestinian armed factions in Gaza). It was in fact the military action that caused their deaths."

He added: “Because of the criminal lie that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, hostages were shot, even those who were waving the white flag and chanting in Hebrew. I do not want to imagine how many similar cases have not been investigated because the victims were born on the wrong side.” From the fence," referring to the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Israeli occupation army announced earlier this month that it had mistakenly killed 3 Israeli prisoners in Gaza.

"The necessity of diplomacy and political effort"

Mitnick also considered that "the lack of ability to negotiate with Hamas is simply not true," calling for "the necessity of diplomacy and political effort."

At the same time, the newspaper pointed out that “more than 200 high school students, who are supposed to be on their way to conscription in the Israeli army in the near future, announced last August that they would refuse their conscription, and not only because of the judicial reform he proposes.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but also because of the occupation.”

For decades, Israelis have faced prison sentences for refusing to serve in the occupation army. Because of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Military service is compulsory in the Israeli army for males and females. According to Israeli law, the period of compulsory military service is 32 months for males over 18 years of age, and 24 months for females. A prison sentence is imposed on anyone who refuses compulsory military service.

Since last October 7, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, which, as of Wednesday, has left 21,300 dead and 55,243 wounded, most of them children and women, massive destruction of infrastructure, and an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, according to the Strip authorities. And the United Nations.

What happened so that, after October 7, Israel found itself in a political defensive position against attempts to impose the establishment of a Palestinian state on it? What happened to the State of Israel, after this terrible massacre and the greatest disaster in its history, when instead of reaping political and military achievements, it floundered without direction? The definitive answer to these two questions is the lack of action, the absence of real leadership, the abandonment of courage and boldness, and attention to the little things of internal political work in the Israeli governments headed by Netanyahu.

After the split of the October 7th fault line, that massive fault line, it was necessary for Israel to launch a political maneuver, act with determination in the international arena, and consolidate the steel principle of defensible borders. We had to declare, in light of this terrible tragedy and the "brutal" Palestinian terrorism, that the face of the Middle East must be changed. We shouldn't have said, "Never again!" And to announce the annexation of the Jordan Valley, and to offer Hezbollah a deadline, limited to a few months, to withdraw behind the Litani Line, in accordance with United Nations Resolution 1701, and to make clear to our friends and enemies, alike, that the price of this “terrible massacre,” in addition to the elimination of “ Hamas, which must include annexing areas of the Gaza Strip to Israel.

Israel, before the “massacre”, did not move, throughout the years of confusion and loss, decisively or creatively to provide political solutions to the Palestinian issue. It did not work to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, nor did it present a proposal for a solution in the form of developed self-rule, for example, in the areas of the West Bank, including at most Areas A and B, while consolidating our security control over the region. We did not try to involve Jordan. By dissolving some kind of confederation. We also did not work against Hamas, nor did we push for any solution that seeks to disarm the Strip.

At that stage, Netanyahu sat in the chair, just for the sake of sitting in the chair, and did not accomplish anything in the political and diplomatic arena, but rather was busy all the time with cheap politics, maintaining his position, and destroying Israeli society (see, for example, the issue of “judicial reforms” that was killed). This is what happens when a political acrobat and a person who only cares about his own political interests assumes the presidency of the government, instead of a leader and a politician assuming this position.

Not only did the man not amend the Oslo Accords, but he contributed to promoting them with all his might. In addition, he was not satisfied with implementing these agreements, and he neglected Area C throughout his rule, and allowed intensive and dangerous construction operations carried out by the Palestinians, even along the contact line. As for Gaza, and relying on lazy thinking, he says that the way to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state is to strengthen Hamas. Netanyahu treated this deadly organization as an asset to Israel, and allowed Qatar to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip, ignoring large-scale funding. Hamas, and intelligence information related to the movement’s intentions. Rather, he signed the Abraham Accords, as if he froze, for fear of the Americans putting pressure on him.

In addition, the farce related to Iranian nuclear armament is recorded in his name, because he did not prevent Iranian progress in this regard. The disgust of world leaders at his devious behavior contributed to weakening Israel's security. All that comes out of that man is empty talk, lies, clowning, empty talk and zero action.

Ironically, Netanyahu, who is desperately trying to resemble Winston Churchill, is the last person who could resemble that great British leader. If we search for a similarity between an Israeli leader and Churchill, we can of course find a similarity, namely Ben Gurion, and the fateful decisions he made. We can find political and military courage and boldness in Begin, Rabin, and Sharon, but the only similarity between Churchill and Netanyahu may be cigar smoking. Netanyahu has turned Israel into a country without a future, without hope, and without dreams.

There is no way to "explain" Israeli behavior in Gaza. The horrific scales of destruction, killing, starvation, and siege do not allow for an explanation anymore, not even through an effective propaganda machine, such as Israeli propaganda. 

The situation into which Israel has placed itself is not amenable to “propaganda interpretation,” the term coined by Israeli diplomat Yohanan Mroz.

No propaganda can cover up all this evil. Even Israel's constant combination of sacrifice, Jewish life, God's chosen people, and the Holocaust cannot obscure the image. The horrific events of October 7 have not been forgotten, but they do not justify the atrocities in Gaza. No one has yet been born who can explain the killing of 162 children in one day, the number published by social networks, without talking about the killing of about 10,000 children in two months.

Israel has created for itself an updated version of Yad Vashem [the Holocaust Memorial Museum]. Hundreds of Jewish businessmen from the United States arrive in airlifts to visit the burned-out kibbutzim in the south. Even Natan Sharansky [one of the most important advocates of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union to Israel, and who held ministerial positions] visited the Gaza envelope this week, to see what the “anti-Semites” had done to us. No official guest will arrive in the State of Israel without being forced to visit Kibbutz Be'eri, and if he dares to turn his gaze to the Gaza Strip, he will be accused of anti-Semitism.

Now, Israeli propaganda is an immoral tool. Anyone who is satisfied with the trauma they caused us, and ignores what we do with them since then, is a person without morals and without conscience. We cannot ignore what is happening in Gaza, and we can only begin to be shocked by what happened in the Gaza envelope. It is clear that it is our duty to show up and tell the world what Hamas did to us. But for the novel to begin and end here, without narrating its sequel, is a despicable act.

In addition to the horrific Israeli suffering, the importance of which cannot be underestimated, now, there is the much greater suffering in the Gaza Strip. Suffering of enormous proportions, which inspires despair, has no explanation, and there is no need for it. 

The reports that come out of Gaza and are broadcast around the world are sufficient, except for a small country with its eyes closed and its heart of stone.

Israeli propaganda is a deception. It tells a story that does not represent the complete truth. Propaganda work becomes disgraceful if more than half the truth is hidden. But apparently, not in Israel. Here, a ridiculous character, like Noa Chibi [an Israeli actress whose photo was published in newspapers with Benny Gantz kissing her on the cheek], turns into the heroine of the moment. The stupid attack on Benny Gantz because he attended a party at Elle Feldman's house, in honor of his daughter who was killed on October 7, while smiling, holding a glass of wine in one hand, and hugging Chibi in the other, did not understand the basic matter.

The main thing is that those who mislead have become heroes here. I'm browsing Noa Chibi's page on the X platform, and I feel like vomiting. Pictures of Nathalie Dadon [model and actress] with tears and Hollywood smiles straight from the cover. An immigrant who has just arrived in Israel says, “The Jewish people are the original people in Israel. We are from here.” Immediately upon her arrival from the airport, she rushed to the shelter and filmed herself there in order to influence the hearts of “Israel’s friends” and make them cry.

...Do you want to know what the Middle East will look like after the elimination of Hamas? Gaza is completely destroyed, and two million people are homeless in the face of an apartheid state.

Today, Hebrew Channel 13 revealed a new American-Israeli proposal stipulating that Israel withdraw from residential areas, allow the return of residents to the northern Gaza Strip, and bring in humanitarian aid and medicines.

According to the Israeli-American proposal, in the first phase, Israel will withdraw from populated areas, and at the same time more medical equipment will enter the Strip.

In the second stage, Hamas will release the women and soldiers and hand over the Israeli bodies, after which the Israeli army will prepare to draw new lines (a buffer zone) in the Gaza Strip, and talk about the day after the war, while Israel will implement a ceasefire.

In the third phase, which is a particularly problematic phase for Israel, it will include the release of men and soldiers, in exchange for Israel releasing Palestinian prisoners, the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip and reaching a comprehensive ceasefire, according to Russia Today.

The channel indicated that the Hamas movement rejected the Israeli proposal, which included a new exchange deal before the ceasefire.

Last Thursday, Israeli media reported that Israel announced its readiness to conclude a truce with Hamas for two weeks in the Gaza Strip, in exchange for the release of dozens of detainees in the Strip, but the movement rejected the proposal.

CNN reported that the Israeli government presented a new offer to the Hamas movement, stipulating a cessation of fighting in the Gaza Strip for a week in exchange for the release of 35 hostages.

According to an American official, this group includes the three elderly men who were captured from Kibbutz “Nir Oz” near the Gaza border and who recently appeared in a video broadcast by the “Al-Qassam Brigades,” during which they called for action to secure their release.

For his part, Hamas leader Osama Hamdan confirmed that the movement had received initiatives and proposals from several countries regarding organizing negotiations with Israel regarding the exchange of prisoners and detainees in Gaza.

The leader stressed once again that the movement’s priority remains “ending the aggression against the Palestinian people,” explaining that the Palestinians are not waiting for a temporary truce, but rather a complete cessation of hostilities.

On December 5, Osama Hamdan, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said, “The movement will not release the remaining prisoners until Israel stops its aggression against Gaza.”

The powder keg on which the Middle East region stands is on the verge of exploding, turning the ongoing war between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Palestinian Gaza Strip into a broader conflict in the region, with the strikes directed by the United States on targets in Iraq, which it said were specific to armed factions linked to Iran, in the time when the Yemeni Houthi group intensified its targeting of commercial ships heading to Israel through the Red Sea.

Last Monday evening, the US Department of Defense announced the bombing of 3 facilities linked to the Iranian-backed Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, which Washington says was behind an attack that injured three Americans in Iraq.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement: “Although we do not seek to escalate the conflict in the region, we are committed to being fully prepared to take any necessary measures to protect our personnel and facilities”.

The next day, the Houthi group, also supported by Iran, renewed its attacks on ships in the Red Sea, and the MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company confirmed that its container ship, MSC United, had been attacked on its way to Pakistan.

Although Iran denied providing assistance to the attacks launched by the Houthis on ships in the Red Sea, it pledged to make Israel pay the price for its killing of General Reza Mousavi, a leader in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in an aerial bombardment that targeted a suburb of Damascus.

Aaron David Miller, a former American diplomat and research fellow at the Carnegie Peace Research Institute, warns that “it has become clear that the longer the war between Israel and Hamas continues with such intensity, the greater the possibility of escalation of the regional conflict.”

In an analysis published by Bloomberg News Agency, American political analyst Ian Marlow said that the number of unofficial armed groups and unexpected military operations by Israel, and the potential Iranian response to them, make it difficult to predict when any incident will occur that could ignite a broader conflict. But Miller said that the United States may have to act more harshly if any of the armed groups in the region kill American soldiers, adding: “If we were directly attacked, and Americans died, a bigger and heavier response would be necessary.”

Marlow, a former correspondent for the Global and Mail newspaper in the Asia-Pacific region, adds that the attacks and other recent developments in the region highlight the increasing difficulty facing the administration of US President Joe Biden in moving in a balanced manner, while supporting Israel in its war with the movement. Hamas and other Palestinian factions launched an attack on Israeli settlements and military bases in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, on October 7th.

The United States deployed aircraft carrier groups in the region with the aim of deterring regional powers loyal to Iran from attacking Israel, which is waging a ground war against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the martyrdom of about 21,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

On a related level; Ron Dermer, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, visited Washington and met with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, where the talks dealt with the war in Gaza, efforts to release Israeli detainees and prisoners held by Palestinian factions in Gaza, and reducing losses among Palestinian civilians. According to the White House, in addition to the future of the Gaza Strip after the end of the war.

To Israeli officials, who are concerned about attacks by Lebanese Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli armed groups in the region, the current conflict already looks like the broader war that Washington is trying to avoid.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant told the Israeli Knesset that Israel is fighting a multi-front war, and that it is under attack from 7 fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran, adding that Israel “is already responding on 6 of the seven fronts.” We will now say with the utmost clarity that anyone who takes action against us will become a potential target.”

Finally, Ian Marlow believes that all indications indicate that the situation in the Middle East is approaching the moment of a big explosion in light of the continuation of the war in Gaza and the attacks of armed groups opposed to both Israel and the United States and the two countries’ response to them.

Source: Sama News

The Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced, on Thursday, that the death toll from the Israeli war on the Strip had risen to 21,320 dead and 55,603 wounded.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said in a statement: “The toll of the aggression against Gaza has risen to 21,320 dead and 55,603 wounded since the seventh of last October.”

Al-Qudra added: "The occupation forces committed 20 massacres against entire families, claiming 210 dead and 360 injuries during the past 24 hours."

He pointed out that the Israeli army is increasing its targeting of the vicinity of "Al-Amal" Hospital and the Nasser Medical Complex in the city of Khan Yunis, expressing his fear that "the same scenario that happened in the Al-Shifa Medical Complex will be repeated against the hospital."

On the morning of October 15, the Israeli army raided Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest health facility in the Gaza Strip, where thousands of patients and displaced civilians are located.

At that time, Israel provided some rusty individual weapons and several cameras as evidence of its claims, through which it confirmed that “Al-Shifa” contained Hamas leadership headquarters, tunnels, and ammunition depots, which sparked widespread criticism, and the occupation forces withdrew from the hospital after destroying some of its parts after 10 days of its occupation.

Al-Qudra called on international institutions to "take effective and urgent steps to ensure the protection of Al-Amal Hospital and Nasser Medical Complex, their medical staff, the wounded and sick, and thousands of displaced people there."

During the past two days, Israeli warplanes launched violent raids in the vicinity of Nasser Medical Complex and “Al-Amal” Hospital in central Khan Yunis.

He also called on international institutions to intervene urgently in order to "restart the operation of the largest Al-Shifa Medical Complex in the Gaza Strip."

He pointed out the arrival of specialized medical teams, in cooperation with international health institutions, to work in the “Al-Aqsa Martyrs” (center) and “Nasser” and “European Gaza” hospitals (south).

Al-Qudra said, “The Israeli violations against the health system led to the death of 312 health personnel, some of whom were of rare specialized capabilities.”

He added, "The Israeli occupation deliberately destroyed 104 ambulances and put them out of service. It also deliberately targeted 142 health institutions and put 23 hospitals and 53 health centers out of service."

On the other hand, he warned that “the humanitarian and health conditions of the displaced have reached catastrophic levels beyond description,” explaining that more than 1.9 million displaced people lack water, food, and medicine.

He stated that "50,000 pregnant women suffer from thirst, malnutrition, and poor health care in shelter centers."

He pointed out that 50 percent of the displaced children are exposed to dehydration, malnutrition, respiratory and skin diseases, extreme cold, and the lack of vaccinations for newborns.

Al-Qudra said, "The mechanism for leaving the wounded is ineffective and does not respond to the large numbers of casualties. We need to provide a new mechanism that allows hundreds of wounded to leave every day."

He added: "The urgent priority currently is for 5,000 wounded people with serious and complex cases to leave for treatment abroad to save their lives."

The Israeli occupation army is escalating its war on the Gaza Strip’s hospitals and health teams, as part of a devastating war on Gaza that it has been waging since last October 7, which has left material and human losses, massive infrastructure destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, according to the Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said on Thursday that 150,000 Palestinians forced by Israel to emigrate from the central areas of the Gaza Strip “have no place to go.”

This came in a blog post published by the UN agency on its account on the “X” platform.

The agency added, "The evacuation order recently issued by the Israeli authorities causes continued forced displacement in the central parts of Gaza."

It stressed that "more than 150,000 people, including young people, children, women with infants, the elderly and the disabled, have nowhere to go."

It noted that "most of these displaced people had to move for the second time during the war."

UNRWA also included photos of Palestinians who left their homes and were displaced due to Israeli attacks.

Regarding the difficulties facing Gaza residents, UNRWA said, “The only hope remaining is a ceasefire for humanitarian reasons.”

On December 22, the Israeli army asked residents of the Bureij camp and other areas in the central Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes immediately and head to the city of Deir al-Balah.

Israeli army spokesman Avichai Adraee said, through his account on the “X” platform: “To the residents of Al-Bureij Camp and the neighborhoods of Badr, the North Coast, Al-Nuzha, Al-Zahra, Al-Buraq, Al-Rawda, and Al-Safa in the areas south of Wadi Gaza: For your safety, you must move immediately to the shelter in Deir Al-Balah.”

Every year around this time, I devote this space to an end-of-year post, in which I review the year that has passed, speculate about the year to come, and always about US policy toward the Palestinians. 

The late year speaks for itself: There is no need to examine what the administration of US President Joe Biden did in its policy towards the Palestinians, as the entire world sees that Biden and his government had the final say in empowering Israel in its ongoing massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians, wounding thousands of them, and destroying their homes on the ground on  their heads in the besieged Gaza and the forced displacement of nearly two million citizens.

Only 11 days after the sudden Hamas attacks on October 7 that shook the world, US President Biden was in Tel Aviv carrying a message to the Israelis shocked by the Hamas strike, saying: “Oh Israel, you are not alone...the United States stands by your side” To give Israel the weapons and ammunition it needs and international cover to move forward with its successive massacres.

Of course, President Biden has not differed from his predecessors since 1948, noting that he is the only one who is publicly proud of saying, “He is an avid Zionist,” “If there had been no Israel, we would have created it,” and other expressions that he repeats as if he wants to pass a test regarding the credibility of his Zionism.

Since October 7, the world has been watching Israel bomb Gaza tens of thousands of times, without stopping, under the cover granted by Biden that Israel has the right to “self-defense” and its right to “fulfill its desire to eliminate the Hamas movement,” so it struck hospitals, residential neighborhoods, and schools and bakeries and crowded displacement sites where they told Palestinians they were “safe” places.

There is no doubt that the influx of images showing Israeli, and possible American, atrocities led to hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets (and are still taking to the streets) in large numbers, in the West and in the East, and pushed the majority of people and countries to call for a ceasefire that clashed, and collides with Biden’s refusal to stop the bloodshed.

Biden and his administration remained extremely committed to standing by Israel, and Biden used his veto power in the Security Council time after time, and sent tens of thousands of tons of munitions to ensure that the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians did not stop even for a moment, which made demonstrators around the world, as well as in front of the White House, denounce him with a slogan. “Joe Biden, the man of genocide,” is a slogan that has stuck like the smell of sulfur to the resident of the White House, despite the protests of his officials that this is not appropriate.

Of course, it was not appropriate for US President Biden (or any other president) to repeat the lies of the Israeli story about the “headless Israeli infants” that he claimed to have seen with his own eyes (10/12), or the evidence of “mass rapes committed by Hamas,” which the president claimed to have verified it himself. But there is no injustice, no lie, whether small or large, is wasted for the sake of Israel. Where Biden said with emphasis and artificial and exaggerated drama, to his listeners from the American Jewish community at the Hanukkah celebration at the White House on December 11, that: “Reports talk about the rape of women (on October 7 by Hamas) - repeated rape - and the mutilation of their bodies while they were alive”, desecrate women's bodies, and inflict as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible by Hamas terrorists, then kill them.”

Other than his comprehensive and detailed description of Hamas's "horrific attack" on Israel and the Israeli victims... Biden rarely spoke about Palestinian children torn apart, two million displaced people, or hundreds of thousands of people without water or food, let alone his justification for storming all of Gaza's hospitals under false pretenses. . Biden and figures of his administration, such as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, or his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, when they talk about the Palestinians, they talk about them as if they were victims of an earthquake or a natural disaster, without mentioning Israel.

White House officials keep reminding us that Biden has said more than once that “Israel must do everything in its power, as difficult as it is, to protect innocent civilians,” and has also made repeated calls for increased aid to Gaza to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinians.

At the US State Department, which I go to (almost) daily, the department's spokesman, Matthew Miller, continues - with boring repetition - to insist that Israel does not intentionally target civilians. With US drones flying over Gaza daily, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visual evidence that the overwhelming bombing of civilian buildings is killing innocent civilians.

Evidence of this is found in the ruins of hospitals, health clinics, ambulances, schools, libraries, places of worship, markets, water pipes, houses, apartment buildings and piles of unburied corpses eaten by stray dogs. All of this information is in the possession of the Biden administration.

Not to mention that the Biden administration, and their colleagues thirsting for Palestinian bloodshed in the US Congress, were warned when Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant and other Israeli officials on October 8 shouted horrific genocidal orders to their army: “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water. “We are fighting human animals and they will behave accordingly.”

There has been a lot of talk in Washington about a possible ceasefire, perhaps by the end of the year, and perhaps after that. But regardless of whether a ceasefire occurs or not, the Biden administration's callous indifference, and its active and dedicated support for Israel's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing, will tarnish America's reputation around the world for generations to come. The fact that Biden admits that he did not even ask for a ceasefire in his last conversation with Netanyahu (on Saturday, December 23) says a lot about the cruel and immoral approach taken by the US administration towards the genocide in Gaza in particular, and the Palestinians in general.

But the pinnacle of American hypocrisy came when US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, complained in his annual press conference on December 20, 2023, about global criticism of the United States’ support for the mass killing campaign launched by Israel in Gaza.

Blinken protested and became angry. He said angrily: “I do not actually hear anyone demanding that Hamas stop hiding behind civilians, lay down its weapons, and surrender. This war will end tomorrow if Hamas does that,” Blinken complained. “How is it possible that there are no demands from the aggressor (Hamas), but only from the victim (Israel)?”

Blinken's statement, which mocks human minds, that Israel is the victim and Hamas is the aggressor, is a clear endorsement of the Israeli massacres, and confirms its basic logic that Israel is free to slaughter Palestinian civilians until the armed resistance among them offers "surrender."

We will not wait for the White House or the US Congress to admit their bloody guilt. But that will surely come later, with history judging Washington's unconditional support for Israel's war of annihilation against what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has repeatedly called the "completely defenseless people" in Gaza.

Today, Thursday, dozens of settlers stormed the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque, under the protection of the occupation police.

Eyewitnesses reported that dozens of settlers stormed Al-Aqsa, from the direction of the Mughrabi Gate, carried out provocative tours of its courtyards, and performed Talmudic rituals.

The occupation police continue to prevent citizens from entering the Old City or Al-Aqsa Mosque, causing a decrease in the number of worshipers.

Although the war waged by Israel on the Gaza Strip is approaching its third month, and despite the ground incursion of the occupation army into it, and despite the campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide against our people in Gaza and the persistent attempts at forced displacement, the one struggling for survival is Israeli society. 

This is because the level of hatred is rising within it against the people of Gaza and their valiant Palestinian resistance, as polls indicated that it has reached unprecedented levels. It constituted 96% of Israeli society, which was divided against itself for many months, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to reduce the powers of the Supreme Court, and he held huge demonstrations against the judicial coup project, a bloc today against the Palestinians. You can hardly find Israeli voices opposing this war, or at least demanding that the War Council stop committing massacres and genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, which caused the bloodshed of more than twenty thousand dead, the majority of whom were women, children and the elderly, and the injuries of tens of thousands and more than eight thousand missing under the rubble, in addition to the destruction of more than 70% of buildings, homes, property and infrastructure, under the eyes and cameras of the world, including the eyes of Israeli society.

The rising level of hatred for the Palestinian people in this society is explained by two main reasons: fear, and breaking the collective narcissism that expressed itself in the arrogance of force in the face of any threat in which this narcissism was combined with the statements of its narcissistic leaders, first and foremost Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant, and then the war council generals after the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation, which broke the myth of the “invincible army.” As arrogance increased after the extreme Zionist religious right (Ben Gvir) and the extreme Zionist nationalist right (Smotrich) took control of power in partnership with Netanyahu as a result of the elections a year ago, the occupation army and settlers subsequently attacked the Palestinians in the West Bank in daily violations and killings unprecedented before the Gaza war. 

And the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, and before the coup against the Israeli Supreme Court according to the American humanist philosopher and social psychologist, Erich Fromm (of German-Jewish origin), “collective narcissism” sometimes wears the guise of nationalism, and at other times wears the mask of religious narcissism, when the followers of a certain religion firmly believe that they are dearer to God, and that they are more deserving of Paradise than others, and that they are more upright than others because they were born to this religion (God’s chosen people). This is an explanation that fully applies to Israeli society, which in recent years and decades has tended toward the right and the extreme right, according to opinion polls, especially among young people. This is what was expressed in the elections that brought most extreme and racist right-wing government in the history of Israel since its founding.

There is no longer a place for deep discussion and conflicting certainties have increased, which has made matters worse in the rise of collective narcissism.

According to Fromm, collective narcissism can also appear in other forms of collective identification depending on the circumstances of time and place. In every case, a person satisfies his narcissism by belonging to the group and linking his identity to it. Accordingly, his greatness is not achieved by his being, as he is a nobody, but rather by his belonging to the most wonderful group on earth. Social media and digital communications in the world (and not just in Israel) have accelerated the pace of collective narcissism, where deep discussion no longer has a place and conflicting certainties have increased. This has made matters worse in the rise of collective narcissism across the world, making Europe, finally, steadily moving toward right. This explains the arrogance that has characterized Israeli society for many decades. Otherwise, how can we understand the silence of Israeli society towards the continuing violations against the Palestinians, and even its overwhelming support for the brutal war on Gaza and the campaign of genocide that is taking place day and night before the eyes of this society, while Millions of people in the world  protest against this genocide. 

Protests in which many young Jews in the United States and descendants of Holocaust survivors participate. Which makes us wonder, as we remember the huge demonstrations in Tel Aviv, in protest against the Sabra and Shatila massacre committed by Israel and its Lebanese Forces allies in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. What has changed since those protests? Why is Israeli society silent about the genocidal war waged by its state against the Palestinians, the first signs of which began in the West Bank at the beginning of this year, and the settlers’ burning of the town of Huwwara in the Nablus Governorate twice? The silence reached its peak in the aggression against Gaza following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, as a war of revenge. The Israeli government, and behind it the majority of Israeli society, seeks revenge on the people of Gaza for daring to resist, oppose the occupation, and not submit to it and submit like slaves. While Israel was surprised by this huge and creative offensive operation, and the shock paralyzed the ability to believe that this besieged and occupied people was able to break the arrogance of the occupation, its separation wall, and its security and intelligence services with all their branches within a few hours in a brilliant military plan, the details of which exceed even imagination. The most resistant people in the history of national liberation movements around the world, especially a people who have been subjected to a stifling siege for more than 16 years.

Perhaps they are leaders and a society that did not expect, due to the arrogance of power and their collective narcissism, that the Palestinians would rise up against the occupation and its brutal violations. Perhaps they have not yet realized that the Palestinian people also love life. Rather, the violations committed by the occupation against them increased his determination to resist and confront all attempts to undermine his dignity and break his will since the Nakba of 1948.

Any solution that Israeli society seeks to get rid of its sense of existential impasse requires that it hold itself accountable

Is it the existential impasse that is growing day after day, spreading fear in the souls of Israeli society, pushing it to right-wing extremism and to delve into the blood of Palestinians, male and female? Or is it collective narcissism that overwhelms their behavior, and makes them live the lies of God’s chosen people, and justify their occupation of Palestine as a “return to the Promised Land,” or for their leaders to lie to the entire world and to their people as well when they brought them as immigrants in 1948 according to the saying, “They are a people without a land who came for a land without a people,” and they committed ethnic cleansing in which they displaced two-thirds of the population of Palestine outside and inside their land, when there were no cameras broadcasting the truth live on television, or when their grandfathers and fathers were brought on board cargo ships to Palestine fleeing from the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, and they did not have the luxury of denying what they truly found of an authentic people rooted in their land. What if we knew that the Zionist state’s education programs were keen, from the beginning, to plant illusions and lies to justify their replacement settler occupation, and to glorify the narcissistic character of the Israeli generations through the saying of God’s chosen people. But the irony is that the majority of those who founded the State of Israel are secularists and left-wing atheists to begin with.

Scientifically, the characteristics of a narcissistic personality include “an exaggerated sense of importance, a need for attention and flattery from others, a desire to control and domineer, and to hide behind lies to hide their faults or exalt their image, even if they fabricate lies for the sake of it.” People (or narcissistic society) with this disorder may lack Psychosocial refers to the ability to understand and care about the feelings of others, as in the case of the genocide that the Palestinian people are subjected to in the Gaza Strip. Israel has lied to the world, and is lying to its people and its generations in light of the militarization of society, which has become nourished by repeated wars against the Arab environment in general and the Palestinians in particular.

What happens when the narcissistic personality is revealed and its image is broken? When the individual or collective narcissistic personality is broken, as happened during the Al-Aqsa Flood operation it may suffer from a type of depression, which makes it feel extremely weak and retreat backwards, or panic may cause it to commit blatant violence against its victims (a war of extermination), along with blackmailing her victims emotionally and psychologically for further exploitation and oppression (the right to self-defense), so that the proverb “He hit me and cried before me and complained” applies to it, as if it were the victim and not the executioner.

It is no longer acceptable for them to continue lying, stealing Palestinian lands, and continuing violations and wars of extermination

Perhaps this leads us to the conclusion that any solution that Israeli society seeks to get rid of the feeling of existential impasse requires that it subject itself to accountability, at least to get out of the cycle of lies if it is truly seeking salvation. Even if there are rational people among them, and there are certainly rational people, even if they are few, they would believe the Israeli society’s saying, “The seeds of the existential predicament they are living in are at the core of the components of their society, and that the main threat comes from these components and the lies and crimes that are committed in its name... and all they have to do is abandon them.” And they must be honest with themselves in order to live internal peace, otherwise they will not be able to live in peace on this land. 

The Palestinian people do not stop, remain silent, or surrender, because they have a right. They are in a neighboring Arab environment and are bound by intuitive organic, cultural, and historical ties, while this environment is hostile to the State of Israel and supports the Palestinian cause. Rather, it represents its central cause in its quest for liberation and advancement. Otherwise, how can we understand the demonstrations that spread across many Arab countries in protest against the aggression against Gaza and in support of the Palestinian people?

Immigration to Palestine and the Zionist movement’s blackmail of Jewish survivors of the horror of the Nazi Holocaust and the transformation of their fathers and grandfathers into slaves in what was called the “Israeli Defense Army” are the root of the problem. The global Zionist movement, and behind it the colonial West, invested in the suffering of the Jews and ignited the suffering of Palestinians who had nothing to do with it. They have nothing to do with the Nazi Holocaust that was committed against the Jews. It is time for their children and grandchildren to acknowledge these facts, if they want to live in peace with themselves first and/or with the Palestinian people, in order to rid themselves of the dark fate that awaits them if they continue to identify with the Zionist project and follow the path of the arrogance of force and continue to shed the blood of Palestinian men and women without accountability or any feeling of embarrassment, shame, or remorse.

It is no longer acceptable for them to continue lying, stealing Palestinian lands, and continuing violations and wars of extermination. 

The peoples of the earth have spoken and the matter has been exposed. All they have to do is exercise reason, swallow their shame, and stop following the criminal Zionist colonialist movement and false leaders who are dragging them to hell. The Palestinians must work side by side with the resistance on a discourse against the Zionist movement, so that the Israelis understand the facts behind their existential predicament, and review their individual and collective self if they want to live in peace, and they are inevitably coming to this.

source: Alaraby Aljadeed