Tag: ethnic cleansing

Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv is a well-respected holy man in Israel with some devoted followers. He is a dayan, a judge in the rabbinical courts of Tel Aviv, dispensing wisdom in matters of religion and Jewish law. He’s also a reservist in the Seyeret Givati brigade of the IDF and is currently serving in Gaza. There, he has earned a degree of fame for his skills as an operator of the Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer, the IDF’s tool of choice for the erasure of Palestinian homes. He claims to average more than 50 demolitions a week. According to Zarbiv, his unit has learned to ‘play the D9’ like a musical instrument. 

Rabbi Zarbiv is part of the wider effort to lay waste to Gaza and render it uninhabitable for Palestinians. His stated motives are religious; war, for him, is a harbinger of the coming of the messiah. But he is one of many directly or indirectly employed to demolish buildings in Gaza. The motivation for others is more straightforward: money, revenge or, in a context where the demolition of Palestinians’ homes is seen as a service to one’s country, patriotic duty.

Domicide is a key aspect of the genocide in Gaza. According to recent reports, around 92% of homes and 70% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been severely damaged or destroyed. Gaza has a population of over 2 million and from the scale of the destruction, it appears that all houses are considered bases of resistance. If we put morality aside, as the IDF seems to have done, the scale of the flattening of Gaza is an impressive achievement, considered as an initial stage of population transfer. There is no access given to foreign journalists for a reason – Gaza is unrecognizable, the destruction wholesale. So, how do you transform such a vast area into a moonscape of concrete and ashes in under two years? Overwhelming air power certainly helps, but on the ground, two things have been particularly important: willing personnel, such as the good rabbi, and the right equipment.

It takes certain modifications for a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer manufactured in the US to become an armored D9. Israel Aerospace Industries [IAI], which offers an ‘extensive range of innovative solutions’ in ground combat situations, is responsible for these. The Israeli armored version of the Cat D9 has a mounted machine gun, grenade launcher and smoke projector. It is armoured to protect the operator and has, of course, been battle-tested over years of occupation. So familiar an asset is it, that the D9 has its own affectionate nickname in IDF slang: the ‘Doobie’, or Teddy Bear in English. Rachel Corrie died underneath one. Together with excavators, wheel loaders and other heavy machinery, it has been used for years in West Bank house demolitions. The D9 can not only demolish buildings but create the new ‘corridors’ of Gaza and clear border security zones. It has hardly been reported in the West but, with the aid of such equipment, whole villages in southern Lebanon along the international border have recently been erased, Gaza style.  

In wartime, the Israeli economy has been strikingly robust. The assault on Gaza has been a boost to certain sectors, and it has been especially profitable for those with initiative who can hire or invest in large machinery. As well as utilizing its own personnel for demolitions, the IDF has been shown to be outsourcing the destruction in Gaza. Lucrative work has been available for equipment operators. Owners of excavators can earn 5,000 shekels a day. Those who work as contractors with the Ministry of Defence are paid per number of houses demolished. This is war as a continuation of business by other means, as Brecht might have observed. Rabbi Zarbiv is merely the celebrity face of patriotic demolition. So many are working on the razing of Gaza that infrastructure projects in Israel are facing significant delays due to shortages of operators and equipment.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Thursday that Israel “intends to” take full control of the entire Gaza Strip to eliminate Hamas and transfer authority to non-hostile Arab forces, outlining his most comprehensive vision yet for ending the war as his security cabinet met to approve the operation.

Speaking to Fox News host Bill Hemmer ahead of the critical security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu laid out his vision for completely dismantling Hamas rule and transferring Gaza to new leadership.

“We have three missions: One, to eliminate Hamas as a governing and military power in Gaza, otherwise there’s no future for anyone and we will have many more kidnappings and hostages,” Netanyahu declared. “Second, achieve the liberation of all of our hostages. And third, make sure that Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel again.”

The prime minister emphasized that Israel’s goal is liberation, not occupation. “We don’t want to keep it; we want to have a security perimeter,” he said when asked about seizing control of the entire 26-mile Gaza Strip. “We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us, and give Gazans a good life.”

Netanyahu framed the military operation as a rescue mission for both Israelis and Palestinians. “We want to liberate ourselves, liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas,” he stated, describing Hamas as holding “two million Palestinian and Gazan hostages” under their tyrannical rule.

The prime minister forcefully defended Israel’s military tactics against international criticism, particularly charges of genocide. “If we are practicing genocide, we sure would be doing a very bad job of it,” Netanyahu said, citing Ambassador Mike Huckabee’s recent comments. “Because we could have basically eliminated the entire population of Gaza, but we went in the other direction.”

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In July 2025, the Massachusetts legislature’s Judiciary Committee heard testimony on a bill to make it the 38th state to follow the federal government, 45 other countries (almost all of them in the global North), and more than 50 U.S. local governments in adopting a strange definition of antisemitism.

In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a group of 35 mostly European countries, drafted what it called a working definition of antisemitism. The Alliance had been founded in 1998 to promote Holocaust education and, in its own words, to “strengthen governmental cooperation to work towards a world without genocide.” All too sadly, right now, its definition is being used to do the opposite: it’s helping to criminalize opposition to genocide.

Is It Really About Antisemitism?

Most anti-racist organizations, like the NAACP, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Stop Anti-Asian and Pacific Islander Hate, do not, in fact, offer a specific definition of racism. Instead, they simply work to combat discrimination and fight for equal opportunity and basic human and civil rights.

Jews in the United States don’t, in fact, face the same kinds of systemic racism the people that formed the above organizations face. Unlike them, Jews tend to be disproportionately high income, highly educated professionals.

So, in the IHRA’s list of examples of antisemitism, not one refers to inequality or structural discrimination. Instead, they focus mostly on ideas and speech — and in particular things said about Israel. And what those examples, in fact, tend to do is turn the definition of antisemitism into a thinly veiled tool for use in prohibiting criticism of any sort of Israel.

The IHRA’s definition itself appears relatively straightforward, even if it focuses on thought and speech rather than structures of racism: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

What follows, however, is a confusing and contradictory amalgam of 11 “examples of antisemitism in public life,” six of which focus on political debate that raises questions about Zionism, Israel as an ethnostate, or Israel’s actions.

Creating legal avenues to suppress what would otherwise be protected political speech about Israel is a major reason that the IHRA and its allies have felt the need to turn their definition into law. And advocates for the legal adoption of that definition claim that it’s necessary because antisemitism is on the rise in this country. But the expansive and confusing examples of antisemitism that the definition relies on actually make it impossible to know whether such a statement is, in fact, accurate. The organizations that use the IHRA definition to track antisemitism won’t tell us whether what is on the rise is actually antisemitism or simply opposition to Israel and its increasingly unnerving actions in the Middle East.

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Just days ago, the Israeli parliament Knesset passed a motion for the agenda to “apply sovereignty” to the West Bank. Though largely declarative, the motion is paving the way to a wider debate on West Bank annexation in the Knesset plenum or in committees.

The motion was initiated by MKs Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism), one of the architects of Israel’s move from secular and democratic state to Jewish autocracy; Oded Forer (Yisrael Beitenu), a revisionist Zionist and hardliner; Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit), a Kahanite far-right extremist famous for her vow “Kill the Arabs”; and Dan Illouz (Likud), the Canadian-born harsh-right supporter of a Jewish neoliberal autocracy. 

The vote passed 71-13 in the Knesset. Afterwards, Illouz declared, “The message is unequivocal: Judea and Samaria are not a bargaining chip. The time has come for sovereignty.” 

Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967. It is the longest military occupation in modern history. Following the destruction of the Gaza Strip and efforts at its ethnic cleansing, the status quo is changing in the West Bank, which is being incorporated into Israel.

As I show in The Fall of Israel, this process of expansionism is historical. In early 20th century, before the British Mandate, more than nine of ten residents of Palestine were Arabs. Even today, 85% of the West Bank’s population are Arabs and only 15% are Jewish. Consequently, the “sovereign” Israel that the Netanyahu cabinet supports is predicated on ethnic cleansing. Hence, the explosion of violence against Palestinian Arabs in the area.

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The Israeli military is drawing up plans to escalate its genocidal war in the Gaza Strip that will soon be presented to Israeli political leadership, Haaretz reported on Sunday.

An Israeli official said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is pushing for the release of hostages as part of a military resolution,” and he is set to discuss the matter with his cabinet on Tuesday. According to the Haaretz report, the idea is to extend ground operations into sensitive areas, including Gaza’s central refugee camps, where Israeli captives are believed to be held.

Israeli officials are now claiming that Hamas doesn’t want a deal, even though the group has long said it is willing to release all remaining Israeli captives in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. Officials are pointing to Hamas’s denial of a claim by US envoy Steve Witkoff, who said the group was willing to disarm. Hamas responded that it would only give up its weapons if an independent Palestinian state were established.

Witkoff was in Israel on Friday and Saturday and met with family members of Israelis being held in Gaza. He told them that President Trump no longer seeks a temporary ceasefire deal but wants a comprehensive one that will free the remaining 20 living Israeli captives. However, Netanyahu hasn’t shown interest in a deal, and there’s no sign that Trump is willing to put pressure on him.

The family members of Israeli captives in Gaza want a diplomatic solution and are against military escalation. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum has criticized the reported plans for the expansion of military operations, warning that “expanding the war endangers the lives of the hostages, who are already in immediate danger of death.”

Netanyahu claimed on Sunday that the videos of two emaciated Israeli captives released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) show that Hamas “doesn’t want a deal” and vowed that he would work to “eliminate” the Palestinian group. For its part, Hamas insisted that the Israeli prisoners eat “what our fighters and our people eat” and said that the Red Cross could deliver aid to them if Israel permanently opened humanitarian corridors and halted airstrikes during aid deliveries.

Israel has been under significant international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza as Palestinians are starving to death due to its blockade. The Haaretz report said that the US and Israel appear to be moving toward expanding Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution points in north Gaza, which would require Israel to occupy more territory.

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A United States citizen died in the West Bank Thursday, according to reports confirmed by the United States State Department.

Khamis Abdul Latif Ayyad, 41, died from smoke inhalation as a result of fires started by Israeli settlers who targeted cars and homes in his village late at night, according to the Miami Herald and a Palestinian news publication.

“We can confirm the death of a U.S. citizen in the town of Silwad in the West Bank. We offer condolences to the family on their loss and are providing consular assistance to them. We condemn criminal violence by any party in the West Bank,” a State Department spokesperson told the outlet.

According to Ayyad’s family, the fire was ignited by Israeli settlers who entered Silwad — a village located near several Israeli settlements in the central part of the West Bank — during the night and set both cars and homes on fire, the outlet noted.

A funeral for Ayyad was held Friday, and his family is awaiting an autopsy to determine his official cause of death, the outlet added.

Ayyad is the second U.S. citizen to be killed in the West Bank. Sayfollah Musallet, a 20-year-old Palestinian American, died July 11 after Israeli settlers beat him to death during violent outbreaks in the area. The violence began when “terrorists hurled rocks” at Israelis, causing minor injuries to two people, and then escalated into property damage, arson, physical confrontations, and further rock throwing, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) told Jewish News.  Musallet sustained injuries during the conflict, but was left without medical care for two hours because settlers blocked access for emergency responders, a friend told The Washington Post.

Ayyad was raised in Silwad, a small village in the West Bank, but relocated to the United States with his wife in 2008. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he and his family returned to the West Bank, according to the outlet.

Ayyad’s brother described him as a hardworking family man who was liked in his community.

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