Tag: palestine

Gazan aid-seekers ‘sniped in the head’ at GHF distribution center, witnesses say

Samir Shaat, a young man in his thirties, sits in the courtyard of Nasser Medical Complex, recounting what he describes as the worst day of his life. 

On Saturday morning, Shaat went to the al-Shakoush aid distribution site in Rafah city run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). After the closure of all other GHF sites across Gaza, this was the only one still operational. Shaat and his friend were there to bring back food for their families.

As soon as they arrived at 9:40 a.m., Shaat says, Israeli army tanks appeared on a high hill near the site and began firing with heavy machine guns at the thousands of civilians who were waiting for the U.S.-run company’s signal to enter the site. 

Instead of returning home carrying food, Shaat returned carrying his friend, who was shot directly in the head. He carried him for more than a kilometer on foot, running in the hope of saving him. By the time he reached the hospital, his friend had already died on his shoulders.

The Gaza Ministry of Health announced that 18 deaths and over 50 injuries were recorded at Nasser Hospital following today’s aid massacre at the GHF center. The Ministry said that the deaths bring the total number of people killed at these centers to 805, while the number of wounded at GHF sites stands at 5,252.

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Settlers said to disconnect water supply for 30 Palestinian villages in order to fill up pool

Settlers have taken over a spring that is used to supply water for 30 Palestinian villages in the Ramallah area, Haaretz reports.

The settlers dismantled the flow of the Ein Samia spring’s water to neighboring villages and instead connected it to a nearby pool, according to the report.

Ein Samia includes five wells that belong to the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Water Authority. The wells were vandalized four times in the past month.

Nonetheless, the IDF has not deployed troops to secure the spring, and no suspects have been arrested.

Settlers have damaged security cameras at Ein Samia and vandalized water infrastructure in what has caused prolonged water outages to the neighboring villages.

The pool that the settlers are using Ein Samia to fill is called “Shepherds Spring,” and is named after two Israelis who were killed in a 2023 terror attack.

In a video urging the public to donate to the pool, settlers say it has pumped water to the Ramallah area since 1965. “But we did not give up, and after significant efforts, Shepherds Spring is coming back to life,” says Micha Sudai, the owner of an illegal farm outpost nearby.

Responding to the Haaretz report, the IDF says that in recent days, troops received several reports of Israeli civilians damaging water infrastructure in the Ein Samia area. However, by the time troops arrived at the scene, the suspects had fled.

The army says it takes the issue seriously and has allowed PA municipal workers to conduct repairs at Ein Samia.

Arrests in incidents of settler violence are highly rare and convictions are even less likely in what has led a growing number of Western countries to impose sanctions against violent settlers.

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The Rise of the Jewish Dual State

Ever since the Six-Day-War (1967) and the occupation of Palestinian territories, Israel has witnessed the rise of the Messianic far-right settler Jews. In my The Fall of Israel, I describe in detail this process, which entered a new stage after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the effective demise of the “peace process.” 

The process also intensified the march of the settlers and their proponents into the Israeli institutions, while openly advocating the overthrow of Israel’s secular democracy, the Judeazation of the occupied territories (West Bank, Gaza), Jewish supremacy and racist violence, particularly against Palestinians. 

What made this quasi-legal infiltration of the democratic institutions possible was the continuous US military and diplomatic support, coupled with arms transfers and financing, and Europe’s effective indifference.

One way to look at the progression of the quasi-official state violence in Israel is the narrative describing the rise of the Messianic far-right as the march of lawlessness. Yet, such narratives do not adequately explain the existing tensions between the civil bureaucracies and the apocalyptic reformers in Israel.

In The Fall of Israel, I present an alternative way to depict that progression, based on the idea of a “dual state.” This is the notion that the famous German-Jewish lawyer Ernst Fraenkel used to explain how the Nazi party exploited democratic institutions, which it then undermined.

Emergency powers to undermine democracy

At the eve of World War II, Ernst Fraenkel fled from Nazi Germany to the United States, where he published his master treatise, The Dual State (1941). Fraenkel saw the analysis of the political system of the Nazi state as “a contribution to the theory of dictatorship.” 

Fraenkel knew the system intimately. In the Weimar Republic, he had been a leading socialist jurist. And as a lawyer he had represented political defendants in court, mainly Jews targeted by the Nazi regime. Eventually, as a dissident, he worked in the underground with several resistance groups until his immigration to America in the late 1930s.

What worried Fraenkel was the gradual perversion of the democratic institutions of the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1933. During that period, the Nazi Party took power as Hitler was able to use emergency powers to undermine constitutional governance and suspend civil liberties. 

How could it happen? How could democracy collapse and Germany end up under a one-party dictatorship? Fraenkel’s simple response was: the dual state. Democratic institutions remained, but mainly as pale shadows. In particular, he showed how the decisions of the courts – as façades rather than effective institutions – precipitated the progress of Nazism in Germany. 

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Greeks Grow Unfriendly To Israeli Tourists, Ships As Gaza War Grinds On

Though Greece is a highly popular international tourist destination for Israelis, the popularity of Israeli tourists is declining in Greece as Israel continues a war on Gaza marked by unusually high civilian casualties, imposed hunger, and the systematic and sweeping destruction of infrastructure. In addition to a string of incidents in which Greeks are verbally and physically clashing with Israeli tourists, protesters are targeting commercial ships seen as supplying Israel’s war on Gaza.     

The most widespread indication of Greeks giving Israelis a cold shoulder comes via signs and posters cropping up in tourist destinations. In addition to being mounted on utility poles, they’re also appearing in the front windows of some businesses. A few samples of the messaging: 

  • “All Israeli soldiers are war criminals. Occupiers, rapists, murderers. We don’t want you here!” 
  • “Israeli soldiers, you went on vacation but you will not escape the guilt. The beaches of Greece will not wash the blood off your hands”
  • “Israeli soldiers, colonizers, you are not welcome.”

Where personal confrontations are concerned, it’s not always clear who’s been initiating the hostilities. In the latest incident, a group of around 20 Israeli teenagers clashed with 10 to 30 Greeks on the popular island of Rhodes around 3 or 4 am on Tuesday. According to the Israelis’ accounts published in Hebrew media and shared on social media, anti-Israel demonstrators gathered outside a club the Israelis were patronizing. When the Israelis decided to leave the club, a Greek pretending to support Israel asked if they were Israelis. When they confirmed they were, the Greek summoned dozens of comrades who chased them down, kicking one of them. “I’ve never been so afraid in my life. We just wanted to go to a club to have fun, and suddenly people with knives were chasing us,” said a teen named Friedman. 

However, Greek newspaper Dimokratiki provides a far different account. Citing witness statements, video footage and other information, the paper reports that Hellenic Police say the fracas began when the Israelis started shouting pro-Israel slogans, which led to the Greeks calling them “murderers” and countering with pro-Palestinian chants. Police identified nine Israelis who were involved, and all of them were said to have departed by plane later the same morning. Authorities gave no confirmation of any assaults taking place. 

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Minister says Israel racing ahead to wipe out Gaza, will make it Jewish

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu says Israel is advancing the destruction of Gaza, and that the Strip will be made totally Jewish.

“The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu tells Haredi radio station Kol Barama. “Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on Mein Kampf.”

Eliyahu says Gaza will be cleared for Jewish settlement, but says Jewish towns won’t be “fenced in inside cantons.”

“All Gaza will be Jewish,” he says, though he clarifies that Arabs who are loyal to Israel will be tolerated.

“We aren’t racists,” the far-right Otzma Yehudit politician adds.

Eliyahu also denies that Gazans are not getting enough food, calling it a campaign against Israel, but notes that we are at war and trying to kill “these monsters.”

“There’s no hunger in Gaza,” he says. “But we don’t need to be concerned with hunger in the Strip. Let the world worry about it.”

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HYPOCRISY ON STEROIDS, about the Gaza genocide

The U.S. supplies 69% of the weapons, Germany supplies 30%, for Israel’s extermination of the Gazans, but on July 21st, America’s AP headlined “UK, Canada and 26 other countries say the war in Gaza ‘must end now’”, and reported that, “Twenty-eight countries including Britain, Japan and a host of European nations issued a joint statement Monday saying the war in Gaza ‘must end now’ — the latest sign of allies’ sharpening language as Israel’s isolation deepens.” America’s AP did not headline “Israel-allied countries support but also condemn the genocide against Gazans” — which would have been the full basic truth — they instead reported only that these countries (which the AP didn’t even completely list) were, in this “joint statement” (to which the AP provided no link, so that the actual document — which they were allegedly reporting about, was instead being actually hidden by the AP — censored-out by them) was “saying the war in Gaza ‘must end now’” INSTEAD OF that Israel and America and Germany must cease their perpetrating this genocide. The AP was saying that “the war in Gaza ‘must end now’” — as-if this ‘war’ ISN’T instead an extermination of Gazans, but just a war between Gazans and Israel, which latter Government is actually leading this Israel-U.S.-German-perpetrated genocide to get rid of Gazans. Israel is leading this extermination-campaign, just as Germany had led the one against Jews; and, just as Germany’s Government had participating foreign Governments helping them, so too does Israel’s.

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An Offensive Shield — for Impunity, and Genocide: The Iron Dome and U.S. Complicity in Slaughter of Gazans

The House of Representatives has approved giving Israel an additional $1.3 billion in “emergency defense assistance” for its Iron Dome missile defense program, another installment of countless billions sent from the United States to intensify a one-sided war against the Palestinian people.

The Iron Dome system intercepts short range rockets (launched from 2.5 to 43 miles) through the joint work of the IDF, Israeli contractors, and U.S. weapons manufacturers like Raytheon. Radar batteries detect incoming missiles, calculate direction and threat level, and, if necessary, target the menacing projectile and speed interceptors to destroy it.

The Iron Dome destroys incoming rockets at high altitude, but, since its emplacement in 2011, the system has also functioned to enable Israel to conduct ethnic cleansing and perpetuate genocide with impunity in Gaza and the West Bank.

It has underwritten an astonishingly deadly campaign of collective punishment, with lengthy, targeted air, drone, and guided missile strikes in densely populated areas. These deadly attacks are carried out against a people who have no army, no shield, and no means of response.

When we fund one-sided protection without justice, we destroy the possibility of peace for them, and for ourselves.

The Iron Dome, then, is not just a “defense” system. It is the preeminent strategic enabler of Israel’s asymmetric genocidal war against Palestinians. First the shield, then the sword.

It must be said clearly: Opposing genocide and illegal occupation is not antisemitic. It is the defense of humanity. The Israeli government’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, its collective punishment of a captive population, and its refusal to recognize a sovereign Palestinian people all constitute violations of international law.

To oppose this violence is not to oppose Jewish people. It is to stand against the machinery of oppression, just as we should for any people subjected to such inhumanity.

By eliminating the possibility of reprisal, the Iron Dome has insulated Israel from accountability, enabling it to continue inhumane policies of dispossession and aggression without consequence. This strategic impunity dulls domestic dissent and emboldens a government that continues to seize land and to erase Palestinian life.

War crime inquiries, censures, sanctions, none of it matters while the Netanyahu government pursues with single-minded intensity a “Greater Israel,” using the most advanced military technologies against people who cannot fight back.

That the whole of the United States is not consumed with outrage at the mass murder, the diabolical, Torquemadan cruelties of the IDF, the self-appointed agents of death who gleefully kill children, laugh while shooting starving people desperately scrapping for a morsel of food to survive, and bomb hospitals, mosques, churches, markets, cafes, even tents, — is a wrenching testimony to the psychic numbing that occurs with distance from the grim reality of war and the power of the dehumanizing narrative to which many Americans have succumbed. The capacity to emotionally respond to the agonizing suffering of Palestinians has been muted by distance and by relentless propaganda in the West.

I remember years ago, during the Vietnam War, daily news accounts of the carnage in Southeast Asia eventually dissolved into an undifferentiated mass of information, causing readers to turn the page or switch the channel. Information overload can normalize atrocity as it dulls cognition. Then, when battle scenes of U.S. soldiers being killed or injured were carried by US television networks, the powerful emotional impact drove home the true cost, propelled public opposition to the war and forced President Lyndon Johnson from office.

Spectators of events in Israel can become morally anesthetized as high technology is employed in mass murder, when journalists are targeted and killed, when civilian casualties roll up like an odometer at high speed. Except for random videos posted online, the only testimony is that of the IDF, which denies, denies, denies, cries “anti-Semitism” at exposure, and then, after a pause for a drink of limonana, efficiently continues the killing.

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Columbia University says it has suspended and expelled students who participated in protests

 Columbia University announced disciplinary action Tuesday against students who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the Ivy League school’s main library before final exams in May and an encampment during alumni weekend last year.

A student activist group said nearly 80 students were told they have been suspended for one to three years or expelled. The sanctions issued by a university judicial board also include probation and degree revocations, Columbia said in a statement.

The action comes as the Manhattan university is negotiating with President Donald Trump’s administration to restore $400 million in federal funding it has withheld from the Ivy League school over its handling of student protests against the war in Gaza. The administration pulled the funding, canceling grants and contracts, in March because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.

Columbia has since agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process and adopting a new definition of antisemitism.

“Our institution must focus on delivering on its academic mission for our community,” the university said Tuesday. “And to create a thriving academic community, there must be respect for each other and the institution’s fundamental work, policies, and rules. Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of University policies and Rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences.”

It did not disclose the names of the students who were disciplined.

Columbia in May said it would lay off nearly 180 staffers and scale back research in response to the loss of funding. Those receiving nonrenewal or termination notices represent about 20% of the employees funded in some manner by the terminated federal grants, the university said.

A student activist group said the newly announced disciplinary action exceeds sentencing precedent for prior protests. Suspended students would be required to submit apologies in order to be allowed back on campus or face expulsion, the group said, something some students will refuse to do.

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Fragmenting a Nation: Israel’s Enduring Pursuit of Palestinian Disunity

Israel is aggressively implementing plans to shape Palestine’s future and the broader region, sculpting its vision for the ‘day after’ its genocide in Gaza.

The latest, bizarre iteration of this strategy proposes fragmenting the occupied West Bank into so-called ’emirates,’ starting with the ’emirate of Hebron.’

This unexpected twist in Israel’s protracted search for alternative Palestinian leadership first surfaced in the staunchly pro-Israeli US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. It then quickly dominated all Israeli media.

The report details a letter from a person identified by the WSJ as “the leader of Hebron’s most influential clan.” Addressed to Nir Barakat, Jerusalem’s former Israeli mayor, the letter from Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari appeals for “cooperation with Israel” in the name of “co-existence.”

This “co-existence,” according to the “clan leader”, would materialize in the “Emirate of Hebron.” This “emirate” would “recognize the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people,” in exchange for reciprocal recognition of the “Emirate of Hebron as the Representative of the Arab residents in the Hebron District.”

The story may seem perplexing. This is because Palestinian discourse, regardless of geography or political affiliation, has never entertained such an absurd concept as united West Bank “emirates.”

Another element of absurdity is that Palestinian national identity and pride in their people’s unwavering resilience, especially in Gaza, are at an unprecedented apex. To float such clan-based alternatives to legitimate Palestinian leadership seems ill-conceived and is destined to fail.

Israel’s desperation is palpable. In Gaza, it cannot defeat Hamas and other Palestinian factions who have resisted the Israeli takeover of the Strip for 21 months. All attempts to engineer an alternative Palestinian leadership there have utterly collapsed.

This failure has compelled Israel to arm and fund a criminal gang that operated before October 7, 2023, in Gaza. This gang functions under the command of Yasser Abu Shabab.

The gang has been implicated in a litany of violent activities. These include hijacking humanitarian aid to perpetuate famine in Gaza and orchestrating violence associated with aid distribution, among other egregious crimes.

Like the clan leader of Hebron, the Abu Shabab criminal gang possesses no legitimacy and no public support among Palestinians. But why would Israel resort to such disreputable figures when the Palestinian Authority (PA), already engaged in “security coordination” with Israel in the West Bank, is ostensibly willing to comply?

The answer lies in the current Israeli extremist government’s adamant refusal to acknowledge Palestinians as a nation. Thus, even a collaborating Palestinian nationalist entity would be deemed problematic from an Israeli perspective.

While Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is not the first Israeli leadership to explore clan-based alternatives among Palestinians, the Israeli prime minister and his extremist allies are exceptionally determined to dismantle any Palestinian claim to nationhood. This was explicitly stated by extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. He famously declared in Paris, in March 2023, that a Palestinian nation is an “invention.”

Thus, despite the PA’s willingness to cooperate with Israel in controlling Gaza, Israel remains apprehensive. Empowering the PA as a nationalist model fundamentally contravenes Israel’s overarching objectives of denying the Palestinian people their very claim to nationhood and, consequently, statehood and sovereignty.

Though Israel has consistently failed to establish and sustain its own alternative Palestinian leadership, its repeated efforts have invariably proven disruptive and violent.

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MAGA Going to Israel for Propaganda Training

The Israel foreign ministry will spend $86,000 to finance a tour of Israel for 16 Americans to get them to use their vast online influence to craft more positive images of a nation openly engaged in genocide. 

The effort is being made as Israel reacts to a significant turn in public opinion against it, especially by Western youth. Tel Aviv realizes its usual methods of propaganda — and apparently its own inhouse troll army — are no longer working as they once did. 

The daily Haaretz reported: 

“Foreign Ministry officials say the tour delivers significant media, advocacy, and diplomatic benefits – and represents a strategic shift, as traditional outreach is no longer sufficient to shape public opinion. They aim to leverage the massive followings of young social media influencers to bolster Israel’s standing in the U.S.” 

The Americans, whose names have not been divulged, belong to the MAGA and America First movements, the newspaper said. They are all younger than 30 and each have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, a vast, target-rich environment for propaganda.  Israel intends to bring more than 500 “influencer delegations” to Israel this year, the ministry said.

It is paying an organization called Israel365 to organize the first American tour because it is in a “unique position to convey a pro-Israel stance that aligns entirely with the MAGA and America First agenda.” 

Israel365’s website says the group “stands unapologetically for the Jewish people’s God-given right to the entire Land of Israel,” calls the two-state solution a “delusion,” and says it’s defending “Western civilization against threats from both Progressive Left extremism and global jihad.” 

Israeli officials justified the no-bid contract with the organization because of its “experience and know-how in creating awareness, engagement, and mobilization of Christian audiences regarding their support for the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” Haaretz reported. 

Ministry officials told the newspaper that “while older Republicans and American conservatives still hold pro-Israel views, positive perspectives towards Israel are falling across all younger age groups.”

News of the tour comes after the U.S. national teachers union voted to ditch the Zionist curriculum of the Ant-Defamation League, which was influencing young American minds.

Western youth, including conservatives, have become increasingly aware of the history of Israel’s expulsion of Palestinian people from their land and of Israel’s stated genocidal intent and actions in Gaza today. It is a wave of understanding Israel needs to contain.

A ministry source said: “We’re working with influencers, sometimes with delegations of influencers. Their networks have huge followings, and their messages are more effective than if they came directly from the ministry.”

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