Time to De-Zionize the Israeli Mind
What lies ahead is undoing or rejecting Zionist ideology that centers on Jewish nationalism and exclusivism, and replace it with alternative Jewish that emphasizes universalism, religious adherence, or political justice.
By W.O. Munce / August 1, 2025, https://www.thepostil.com/de-zionize-the-israeli-mind/
Israel is a deeply sick country which become monstrous. How is it that the descendants of the victims of Nazi atrocities feel that they can proudly film themselves carrying out similar atrocities? This is bitter fruit of cultivating the “Holocaust industry,” in which Jewish victimhood has been made so sacrosanct that it has created an entire generation that feels that it can do whatever it wants, that crimes can never be committed by Israelis.
Genocides do not happen in a vacuum. At least, when the Nazis were carrying out their murderous plans, they had the “decency” of trying to hide all their crimes, so the world would never know. But such is not the case with Israelis when it comes to the genocide in Gaza. Rather, it is now commonplace for ordinary Israelis to film their enthusiasm for genocide, and post it all on social media—because (a) they do not see killing Palestinians as a crime, and (b) they wear genocide as a badge of honor, because they see it as yet another expression of their exalted victimhood.
For example, videos and images have circulated showing Israelis, including soldiers and settlers, holding barbecue parties near the Gaza border, while—obviously—Palestinians inside Gaza starve. Multiple sources confirm footage of these barbecues near Gaza, while those deemed to be “less human” face famine and widespread starvation.
What kind of satisfaction do these Israelis derive from such behavior? What has the Israeli mindset become that it can imagine that this kind of criminality will meet with approval of the world?
Perhaps, the time has come to begin speaking of an urgent process—the minds of the Israelis have to be de-Zionized.
Fear and hatred play a central role in maintaining Zionist views by creating a psychological and emotional framework that sustains exclusivist national identity and resistance to change. Fear, rooted deeply in historical trauma including the Holocaust, is learned and collective among Israeli Jews. It fosters a sense that the Jewish people face an existential threat from Arabs and the wider world, framing conflicts as struggles for survival against enemies, intent on destruction. This fear is harnessed into a collective, fear-driven hatred directed at Palestinians, portrayed as a monolithic hostile force. Such emotions justify ongoing security measures, territorial claims, and resistance to peace efforts, reinforcing a binary worldview of “us vs. them” where people and states are either friends or enemies.
Hatred, as part of this emotional complex, promotes internal solidarity within Jewish Israelis, reinforces group boundaries, and inhibits empathy towards Palestinians. It can also justify violence and exclusionary policies as necessary defensive actions. The emotions of fear and hatred thus work together to entrench Zionist nationalist ideology by making alternative narratives or conciliatory approaches psychologically and emotionally difficult to accept.
The main psychological barriers to de-Zionizing the Israeli mindset are socio-psychological forces deeply embedded in Israeli Jewish society that inhibit the acceptance of alternative narratives and impede peace processes.
These are rigid, ideological beliefs that justify the continuation of nationalist and territorial claims, such as the belief that Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza is legitimate and that Jews are the main contributors to peacemaking efforts. Such beliefs strengthen exclusivist national identity and resistance to compromise or territorial withdrawal.
Negative emotions toward Palestinians, including fear of security threats and hatred, create emotional resistance to changing perspectives or accepting Palestinian narratives.
There is a biased, closed-minded tendency to selectively process information that supports the dominant Zionist narrative while rejecting or ignoring conflicting information about Palestinians or peace efforts.
Many Israelis sustain a strong sense of collective victimhood from historical trauma (such as the Holocaust or past wars), which fuels defensiveness and reluctance to acknowledge Palestinian suffering fully.
The idea that time is on Israel’s side discourages urgency or willingness to make territorial concessions, promoting a wait-and-see attitude that can reinforce inaction.
Traits that favor traditionalism and authority can increase in-group loyalty and delegitimize Palestinians, reducing openness to peace negotiations.
These barriers operate in an integrated way, involving cognitive, emotional, and motivational dimensions that combine to make shifts away from Zionist nationalist ideology psychologically difficult for many Israelis. They also perpetuate selective bias and resistance to change, complicating efforts to “de-Zionize” or fundamentally rethink the Israeli identity in more inclusive or non-nationalist terms.
What lies ahead is undoing or rejecting Zionist ideology that centers on Jewish nationalism and exclusivism, and replace it with alternative Jewish that emphasizes universalism, religious adherence, or political justice. This process is complex and varies widely depending on religious, political, or social perspective.
Groups like Neturei Karta reject Zionism as apostasy, arguing it undermines Jewish Law and faith by emphasizing secular Jewish nationalism over religious devotion. They seek to restore Judaism as primarily a religious identity, not a nationalistic or territorial one. This includes opposing the State of Israel’s Zionist foundation and advocating for alliances with Palestinians based on shared religious ethics rather than nationalism.
Some Jewish voices oppose Zionism on liberal or humanistic grounds, emphasizing justice and equality for all peoples, including Palestinians. Opposition here focuses on dismantling structures of racial and national exclusivity, advocating for a future Israeli society based on equal rights, democratic principles, and recognition of Palestinian national rights.
Former Zionists or Israelis disengaging from Zionism often describe a journey of critical reflection, learning about Palestinian histories and suffering, and rejecting exclusionary nationalism. This mental de-Zionization involves questioning nationalist narratives, recognizing the impact of occupation, and embracing solidarity with Palestinians.
Left-wing Israeli critics see de-Zionization as abolishing Jewish exclusiveness codified in laws like the Law of Return, ending imperialist ties, and transforming Israel into a multi-national democracy that grants equal rights to all inhabitants regardless of ethnicity or religion.
Perhaps the only path forward, then, is not to advocate for a two-state solution, because the question that must be answered by those who claim support for this idea is rather straight forward: Can a state that has committed genocide suddenly become acceptable by the world community?
The answer can only be—no.
More and more, it will become obvious that if this part of the world is to know any peace, then Israel must be de-Zionzed—and the only way to do that is to create a one state in the Levant, in which everyone can live equally, a state in which Zionism will be banned and illegal.
It is time for the Israeli mind to be freed from all notions of grandeur and superiority. Otherwise, Zionism will continue to produce atrocities.
If this is not done, then the slaughter will go on, generation after generation, until the world grows sick of such crimes—and what happens then will be a lot worse
Genocide’s Hard When You’ve Got a PR War to Win.
Israel is inviting over 500 delegations of social media influencers to tour Israel and learn the right message to spread to their millions of followers because Israel realizes it is losing the PR war.
For Israel this is the hard part: completing a genocide while making it look like you are not completing a genocide. In an age of mobile telephone cameras and wireless transmission of images from virtually anywhere by anyone, genocide while few are looking is a thing of the past.
Israel’s quest to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians through expulsion or extermination keeps getting interrupted for photo ops of aid airlifts or a few aid trucks to satisfy feigned Western grievance, writes Joe Lauria.
Joe Lauria, Consortium News, July 28, 2025, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/07/28/genocides-hard-when-you-have-to-win-the-pr-war-too/
Winning the public relations war is proving to be a lot more difficult for Israel than the genocide against the Palestinian people.
As the conscience of Western publics pushes their governments to stop supporting Israel’s historic crimes, U.S. and European governments are forced to make displays of scolding Israel.
But that act is getting old. The money and guns keep flowing as the killing and starvation keeps growing.
Western allies want Israel to make a gesture that it still has a shred of humanity left. At various junctures during the slaughter, U.S. and European governments have disingenuously leveled criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian civilians to keep their own populations at bay.
For instance, during the last U.S. presidential campaign, with a large number of Democrats condemning Israel for their actions, Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris had to issue criticism of Israel while insincerely repeating that they were working “tirelessly” for a ceasefire.
This was fake because if the Biden or now Trump administrations really want to stop the killing they can do it almost immediately: tell Israel no more guns and money if the killing doesn’t stop.
The German authorities, who seem to relish the opportunity to enforce a new genocide, could do the same, as Germany is Israel’s second largest arms supplier after the U.S.
Losing on the PR Front
Whenever Western governments start feeling the heat they tell Israel to cool it for a while and stage some kind of show of humanitarian aid.
Israel usually complies because they are fighting two wars: one of ethnic cleansing and/or extermination of the Palestinians, and the other a public relations war with the Western public, particularly its youth.
As Consortium News reported last week, Israel is inviting over 500 delegations of social media influencers to tour Israel and learn the right message to spread to their millions of followers because Israel realizes it is losing the PR war.
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. … 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.”
On Friday, Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement saying the Gaza “humanitarian catastrophe must end now.” They said Israel must “immediately lift restrictions on the flow of aid.”
“The humanitarian catastrophe that we are witnessing in Gaza must end now,” the joint statement says. “Withholding essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable.”
Italy separately said, “We can no longer accept carnage and famine.” Barack Obama chimed in too, also on Friday. On Monday, Donald Trump said: “There is real starvation in Gaza — you can’t fake that.”
France said it would recognize the State of Palestine, a step too far for Britain, Germany and Italy, and which the U.S. condemned.
These leaders’ consciences would be shocked if they indeed have a conscience. They’ve seen reports like this one from the BBC confirming that desperately starving people have been shot and killed as they try to reach the only food aid distribution points by the Israeli forces and private U.S. contractors.
And yet they keep sending 2,000 lbs. bombs and F-35 spare parts.
Nevertheless, Israel realizes it must win the PR war fought not against the Western leaders who back them, but against the Western public. (Western leaders are engaged in their own PR war with their people.) Thus on Sunday Israel announced it would begin an airlift of food into Gaza.
It’s surely part of a genocidal plan to occasionally respond to this criticism, hold some fire and make a big show of letting in aid before resuming the gruesome task. It sure makes finishing a genocide more difficult.
The Hard Part
For Israel this is the hard part: completing a genocide while making it look like you are not completing a genocide. In an age of mobile telephone cameras and wireless transmission of images from virtually anywhere by anyone, genocide while few are looking is a thing of the past.
One way to mislead the public is to kill at a pace intended to fool them into thinking there is more or less routine combat going on in Gaza and an unfortunate number of civilians are just being killed in the crossfire. (There was an uproar over the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week ignorantly reporting the deliberate murder of unarmed, starving civilians at the aid distribution points as having died in “the crossfire.”)
So Israel needs to keep the official daily death toll in Gaza to around 100. Don’t start wiping out entire encampments, killing thousands a day. Make it look more or less like a normal war. Leave doubt in people’s minds. Netanyahu did say this would take a very long time.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz openly says the plan is to concentrate the entire 2 million plus population of Gaza in a camp in the south to ready them for expulsion. And if Egypt and others refuse to take them? The rate of killing in this concentration camp may well explode if Western governments keep tolerating this evil.
But for now, the rate of killing allows a propagandist like Bret Stephens to argue in The New York Times that it can’t be genocide because the killing is too slow. He actually wrote this:
“If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal — if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans — why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths, as opposed to the nearly 60,000 that Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths, has cited so far in nearly two years of war? It’s not that Israel lacks the capacity to have meted vastly greater destruction than what it has inflicted so far.”
Quick, somebody show the Genocide Convention to Stephens. It defines genocide in black and white:
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Stephens falls prey to a common misconception of genocide, namely that it depends on the number of people killed. Acts must be “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part.”
The hardest part of proving genocide is intent. Israeli leaders have provided folders full of statements of genocidal intent. It was then followed by actions that systematically destroyed the conditions of life for the Palestinians of Gaza.
One by one they wiped out the infrastructure of Palestinian culture and civilization: schools, universities, mosques, churches, museums, theaters, libraries, hospitals and incalculable residential buildings, while people were still living in them. There has been a wholesale assassination of journalists, artists, academics and doctors — and an imposed starvation.
This is textbook genocide.
The Big Lie sent out from Israel, parroted almost word-for-word by the likes of Stephens and Alan Dershowitz, Israel-defender supremo, and by an Israeli zealot who appeared on Piers Morgan’s show last, week with piercing, fanatical eyes is this: This is war, unfortunately civilians get killed and there is no army in the world that takes greater care to avoid civilian casualties than Israel’s, none.
The zealot with Morgan went a step further to say he was “proud” of the conduct of the IDF in Gaza, to which Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, also on the panel, said, “I’m sorry, only Nazis spoke like that.”
There is also a Big Truth. If Western governments and media repeated it and more crucially acted upon it, it would cause Israel to lose both wars: public relations and the elimination of the Palestinian people.
The world is waiting.
Netanyahu Is Reportedly Planning to Annex Gaza Strip, With Trump Admin’s Backing
Israeli sources say the plan has already been presented to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and has the approval of the White House.
Israeli sources say the plan has already been presented to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and has the approval of the White House.
If Netanyahu’s plan goes forward, Israel will be in the process of annexing the entirety of Palestine.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, July 29, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/netanyahu-is-reportedly-planning-to-annex-gaza-strip-with-trump-admins-backing/
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly prepared to propose a plan to annex the entire Gaza Strip that has the backing of the Trump administration, signalling the next horrific phase in Israel’s genocide as it also moves forward with annexing the occupied West Bank.
On Tuesday, Israeli outlet Haaretz reported that Netanyahu is expected to propose the plan to his cabinet soon. The plan would entail giving Hamas a few days to accept a ceasefire deal — likely one designed for Hamas to reject, given Netanyahu’s history — and beginning annexation if Hamas rejects the deal.
The Israeli military would first annex parts of the “buffer zone,” an area spanning all of Gaza’s border created by the military amid its genocide. The zone encompasses over half of Gaza’s land area, and Israeli forces have bulldozed everything inside it, including homes, schools, farming sites, and more.
The military would then move to annex parts of northern Gaza, which Israel has worked diligently to isolate from the rest of Gaza, and move gradually until Israel has annexed the entirety of the Gaza Strip, Haaretz reports.
Netanyahu is reportedly presenting the plan in order to keep Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in his government, following the prime minister’s longtime pattern of taking drastic military actions in order to maintain his coalition and stay in power. Citing sources familiar, Haaretz says that Smotrich has said that he will stay in his position if the annexation plan goes forward.
Israeli sources say the plan has already been presented to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and has the approval of the White House.
Numerous military officials in Netanyahu’s government have said in recent months that annexation has long been the goal of Israel’s genocide, forcible removal of Palestinians, and near-complete destruction of Gaza. Israel has previously distanced itself from an Israeli general’s comments about Israel’s intentions for total occupation in the Strip, but has recently become even more emboldened.
The genocide has accelerated in the past weeks, with Israel’s near-total blockade on all basic resources reaching a breaking point last week, causing at least dozens of starvation deaths.
If Netanyahu’s plan goes forward, Israel will formally begin the process of annexing the entirety of Palestine. In many ways, however, Israel has already been carrying out an annexation plan in all but name.
Israeli officials have vastly accelerated settlement-building and violence in the occupied West Bank throughout their genocide, and last week, the Israeli Knesset passed a nonbinding measure calling for the annexation of the West Bank. Smotrich is a key architect of this plan, and has been pushing for annexation alongside many of the most extremist Israeli politicians for years.
In light of Israel accelerating its genocide and moving to annex Palestine, human rights advocates and experts have issued urgent calls for the world to act.
“The absolute incapacity of Western leaders to enforce international law when it comes to Israel is EPIC,” said UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese on Tuesday. “Ministers, Prime Ministers, Presidents of Republic: Doing NOTHING, diverting attention, sanctioning individual ministers IS NOT enforcing the [international] law that was developed after the Holocaust and WWII to prevent another Holocaust and WWII.”
When Israelis Call It Out: Finding Genocide in Gaza
29 July 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/when-israelis-call-it-out-finding-genocide-in-gaza/
It’s been almost an article of faith among Israeli officials: the state they represent is incapable of genocide, their actions always spurred by the noblest, necessary motivations of self-defence against satanic enemies who wish genocide upon Jews. Over time, as Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov writes, “Ethical concerns and moral qualms were brushed aside as either marginal or distracting in the face of the ultimate cataclysm that is the genocide of the Jews.”
This form of reasoning, known otherwise as “Holocaust-ism” or “Shoah-tiyut”, is a moral conceit left bare in the war of annihilation being waged in Gaza against the Palestinian populace. Israeli human rights groups have taken note of this, despite the drained reserves of empathy evident in the Israel proper. (A Pew Research Center poll conducted last month found that a mere 16% of Jewish Israelis thought peaceful coexistence with Palestinians was possible.)
In its latest report pointedly titled Our Genocide, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem offers a blunt assessment: “Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads us to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
The infliction of genocide, the organisation acknowledges, is a matter of “multiple and parallel practices” applied over a period of time, with killing being merely one component. Living conditions can be destroyed, concentration camps and zones created, populations expelled and policies to systematically prevent reproduction enacted. “Accordingly, genocidal acts are various actions intended to bring about the destruction of a distinct group, as part of a deliberate, coordinated effort by a ruling authority.”
Our Genocide suggests that certain conditions often precede the sparking of a genocide. Israel’s relations with Palestinians had been characterised by “broader patterns of settler-colonialism”, with the intention of ensuring “Jewish supremacy over Palestinians – economically, politically, socially, and culturally.”
B’Tselem draws upon three crucial elements centred on ensuring “Jewish supremacy over Palestinians”: “life under an apartheid regime that imposes separation, demographic engineering, and ethnic cleansing; systemic and institutionalized use of violence against Palestinians, while the perpetrators enjoy impunity; and institutionalized mechanisms of dehumanization and framing Palestinians as an existential threat.” The attacks on Israel by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7, 2023 was a violent event that created a “sense of existential threat among the perpetrating group” enabling the “ruling system to carry out genocide.” As B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak notes, this sense of threat was promoted by an “extremist, far-right messianic government” to pursue “an agenda of destruction and expulsion.”
Israeli policy in the Strip since October 2023 could not be rationalised as a focused, targeted attempt to destroy the rule of Hamas or its military efficacy. “Statements by senior Israeli decision-makers about the nature and assault in Gaza have expressed genocidal intent throughout.” Ditto Israeli military officers of all ranks. Gaza’s residents had been dehumanised, with many Jewish-Israelis believing “that their lives are of negligible value compared to Israel’s national goals, if not worthless altogether.”
The report also notes the use of certain terminology that haunts the literature of genocidal euphemism: the creation of “humanitarian zones” that would still be bombed despite supposedly providing protection for displaced civilians; the use of “kill zones” by the Israeli military and the absence of any standardised rules of engagement through the Strip, often “determined at the discretion of commanders on the ground or based on arbitrary criteria.”
Wishing to be comprehensive, the authors of the report do not ignore Israel’s actions in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem. Airstrikes regularly take place against refugee camps in the northern part of the territory since October 2023. Even more lethal open-fire policies have been used in the West Bank, with the use of kill zones suggesting “the broader ‘Gazafication’ of Israel’s methods of warfare.”
Another group, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI), has also published a legal-medical appraisal on the intentional destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, finding that the Israeli campaign in Gaza “constitutes genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.” The evidence examined by the group “shows a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system and other vital systems necessary for the population’s survival.” The evolving nature of the campaign suggested a “deliberate progression” from the initial bombing and forced evacuation of hospitals in the northern part of the Strip to calculated collapse of the healthcare system across the entire enclave. The dismantling of the health system involved rendering hospitals “non-functional”, the blocking of medical evaluations and the elimination of such vital services as trauma care, surgery, dialysis and maternal health.
Added to this has been the direct targeting of health care workers, involving the death and detention of over 1,800 members “including many senior specialists” and the deliberate restriction of humanitarian relief through militarised distribution points that pose lethal risks to aid recipients. “This coordinated assault has produced a cascading failure of health and humanitarian infrastructure, compounded by policies leading to starvation, disease and the breakdown of sanitation, housing, and education systems.”
PHRI contends that, at the very least, three core elements of Article II of the Genocide Convention are met: the killing of members of a group (identified by nationality, ethnicity, race or religion); causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of that group and deliberately inflicting on the group those conditions of life to bring about its destruction in whole or in part.
In accepting that genocide is being perpetrated against the Palestinians, Our Genocide makes that most pertinent of points: the dry legal analysis of genocide tends to be distanced from a historical perspective. “The legal definition is narrow, having been shaped in large part by the political interests of the states whose representatives drafted it.” The high threshold of identifying genocide, and the international jurisprudence on the subject, had produced a disturbing paradox: genocide tends to be recognised “only after a significant portion of the targeted group has already been destroyed and the group as such has suffered irreparable harm.” The thrust of these clarion calls from B’Tselem and PHRI is urgently clear: end this state of affairs before the Palestinians become yet another historical victim of such harm.
Trump Shows Strong Support for Israel as Palestinians in Gaza Starve to Death
Trump has been claiming that a ceasefire deal was close, but now he is appearing to suggest that Israel should escalate its genocidal war.
After the US and Israel quit ceasefire talks, Trump suggested it was time for Israel to ‘finish the job’
by Dave DeCamp | July 27, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/07/27/trump-shows-strong-support-for-israel-as-palestinians-in-gaza-starve-to-death/
President Trump has shown strong support for Israel in recent days, while much of the world has been outraged over the images of Palestinians who are starving to death due to the US-backed Israeli siege on Gaza.
After the US and Israel quit ceasefire talks, Trump blamed the lack of progress on Hamas and suggested it was time for Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza. “I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad,” Trump said on Friday, referring to Hamas.
For its part, Hamas has said that it was surprised by the US and Israel quitting the truce talks and that it was committed to continuing the process until a deal was reached.
In recent weeks, Trump has been claiming that a ceasefire deal was close, but now he is appearing to suggest that Israel should escalate its genocidal war. “They’re gonna have to fight, and they’re gonna have to clean it up. You’re gonna have to get rid of [Hamas],” he said.
Israeli officials told Axios that they weren’t sure if Trump’s comments were a negotiating tactic or a “green light” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to use even more extreme military measures. The report said the Trump administration was rethinking its Gaza strategy, but there’s no sign it’s considering putting pressure on Israel to reach a ceasefire.
Israeli officials also told Axios that Trump has applied virtually no pressure on Netanyahu to end the slaughter in Gaza in recent months. “In most calls and meetings, Trump told Bibi, ‘Do what you have to do in Gaza.’ In some cases, he even encouraged Netanyahu to go harder on Hamas,” one official said.
While meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland on Sunday, Trump was asked about the images of starving children in Gaza. The president said people were “stealing the food,” a reference to Israel’s unfounded claims that Hamas has been stealing massive amounts of aid, then quickly pivoted to different topics.
In other comments, Trump said the issue of food shortages in Gaza was an “international problem,” not a “US problem.” But Israel is reliant on US military aid to sustain its military operations in Gaza, and Trump has the power to end the genocidal war by leveraging that support.
“Release Israeli hostages? Get serious. We’ve got a genocide to complete”
28 July 2025 AIMN Editorial By Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, https://theaimn.net/release-israeli-hostages-get-serious-weve-got-a-genocide-to-complete/
As reported in The Times of Israel July 24, far-right Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu told Haredi radio station Kol Barama that:
“The government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out. Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on ‘Mein Kampf’.
“All Gaza will be Jewish. We aren’t racists… We are fighting those who fight us.”
Tho one of the most explicit Israeli public statements admitting Israel’s Gaza genocide, it’s just one of many from Israeli government officials and pundits thruout this 22 month long atrocity. America remains fully committed to the genocide with tens of billions in weapons, intel, logistics, vetoes of UN ceasefire resolutions. That would be like FDR sending the Nazis Zylon B gas to finish off European Jewry and other Nazi undesirables during WWII.
The US just withdrew from ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas because Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire, ending the genocide before releasing remaining Israeli hostages.
Neither Israel nor America prioritizes the hostages’ release. That goal is a distant second to wiping out the remaining starving Palestinians so Gaza can be rebuilt, possibly by Trump Inc., as a waterfront showplace of Greater Israel.
More on Amichay Eliyahu here. He’s nasty.
They Intend To Keep Lying About Gaza Until They’ve Emptied It Out
Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 27, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/they-intend-to-keep-lying-about-gaza?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=169369626&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
We’re back at the part of the news cycle where Israel tells the world it’s going to allow a bit more aid into Gaza in order to mollify its allies and reduce the public outcry as images of starving children draw objections from the west.
This is just Israel giving the Kier Starmers and Anthony Albaneses of the western world just enough of an excuse to go silent about the starvation of Gaza again. They will then continue starving Gaza. This psychopathic python-like suffocation tactic is how Israel has gotten Gaza to the point it’s at now.
And of course it’s worth noting that Israel’s announcement that it will allow more food into Gaza so people don’t starve completely debunks all its claims these last few days that people in Gaza are starving because of Hamas and the UN. They’re starving because Israel is starving them.
Israeli officials have told The New York Times that there has never been any evidence of Hamas stealing aid from UN trucks in any significant way, a claim Israel and its apologists have been falsely asserting for two years. They lie about everything. They never stop lying.
We’ve been asked to believe a lot of intensely stupid narratives throughout this genocide, but “it’s actually HAMAS who’s starving Gaza” has got to be the dumbest one yet. The fact that Israel and its supporters tried to blame the UN and Hamas for Israel’s extensively documented starvation campaign makes it clear that these freaks intend to keep lying about this thing until the last dying gasp of the last Palestinian.
Gideon Levy has a new article out titled “Denying Gaza’s Starvation Is No Less Vile Than Denying the Holocaust”. Personally I’d take it much further and say it’s vastly worse than denying the Holocaust, because it’s helping to kill people right this very moment.
I’m sorry if this is antisemitic but I think it’s wrong to deliberately starve thousands of children to death.
If you found out someone was trapping small children in a confined space and then intentionally starving them to death, what words would you use to describe that person?
Think about how fucked up you’d need to be inside to starve a baby, or to support someone who is doing so. Think how many millennia of evolutionary conditioning you’d have to override as a human, as a primate, as a mammal, to stifle the screaming you feel inside when you see a skeletal infant. You’d have to make yourself less of a human inside to support the inhumanity.
The worst thing Donald Trump has ever done is commit genocide in Gaza. Everything else pales in comparison. He could end the Gaza holocaust with a phone call just like Biden could have, and he hasn’t. For that reason alone he deserves to die in a cage.
Children’s Youtube star Ms Rachel has announced that she won’t be working with anyone who doesn’t publicly oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The thing I love about Ms Rachel is that nobody was pushing her to speak out about Gaza. Not one person was out here saying “Ms Rachel’s silence on Rafah is deafening!” She could’ve gotten away with being silent on Gaza forever and suffered no professional consequences, but she spoke out anyway because she’s a genuinely good person.
Today I got my first comment telling me I was wrong to oppose Israel in October 2023 but now I’m right because things have changed. I expect to receive many more such comments going forward as people navigate the difficult cognitive dissonance terrain of realizing they’ve been wrong this entire time.
Israel apologists love using circular reasoning to dismiss outlets and organizations which criticize Israel. If you’ve ever argued with them online you know what I’m talking about.
It’s basically this —
Normal person: Here’s evidence of Israel doing bad things.
Israel apologist: You can’t cite THAT outlet! That outlet is Hamas propaganda!
Normal person: What? What makes them Hamas propaganda?
Israel apologist: They’re always saying Israel does bad things!
Or this —
Normal person: Israel is committing genocide.
Israel apologist: Nuh-uh, that’s blood libel.
Normal person: Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and UN human rights experts all say it’s genocide.
Israel apologist: Those groups are antisemitic!
Normal person: What? Why do you say that?
Israel apologist: They’re always spreading antisemitic lies about Israel!
Normal person: Such as?
Israel apologist: Such as saying Israel is committing genocide!
Everyone spreading lies today to help Israel carry out the final stages of its final solution knows exactly what they’re doing. We see you, you sick fucks. We’ll remember you forever.
Israeli Navy Seizes Second Gaza-Bound Freedom Flotilla Vessel in 2 Months
“The interception occurred in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said.
Common Dreams, Olivia Rosane, 26 July 25
The Israeli military intercepted and seized the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel The Handala late Saturday night local time as it attempted to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that Israeli forces cut the cameras on board the ship at 11:43 pm local time, when it was around 40 nautical miles from Gaza.
Jul 26, 2025
The Israeli military intercepted and seized the Gaza Freedom Flotilla vessel The Handala late Saturday night local time as it attempted to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition reported that Israeli forces cut the cameras on board the ship at 11:43 pm local time, when it was around 40 nautical miles from Gaza.
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“The unarmed boat was carrying lifesaving supplies when it was boarded by Israeli forces, its passengers abducted, and its cargo seized,” the coalition wrote. “The interception occurred in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that its navy had intercepted the ship, as Al Jazeera reported……………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-gaza-freedom-flotilla
Chris Hedges: The Gaza Riviera
July 27, 2025 ,By Chris Hedges / ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/07/27/chris-hedges-the-gaza-riviera/
Israelis do not see the images of skeletal corpses of Palestinian children who they have starved to death as a curse. They do not see the slain families they gun down at food hubs — designed not to deliver aid but lure starving Palestinians into a massive concentration camp in the south of Gaza in preparation for deportation — as a war crime. Israelis do not look at the savage bombing and shelling that kill or wound dozens of Palestinian civilians, where an average of 28 children die daily, as anything extraordinary. They do not see the wasteland of Gaza, pulverized by bombs and methodically being torn down by bulldozers and excavators, leaving virtually the entire population of Gaza homeless, as barbaric. They do not see the destruction of water purification plants, decimation of hospitals and clinics, where doctors and medical staff are often unable to work because they are weak from malnutrition, as savage. They do not blink at the assassinations of doctors as well as journalists, 232 of whom have been murdered for trying to document the horror.
Israelis have blinded themselves morally and intellectually. They view the genocide through the lens of a bankrupt media and political class that tells them only what they want to hear and shows them only what they want to see. They are intoxicated by the power of their industrial weapons and license to kill with impunity. They are drunk on self-adulation and the fantasy that they are the vanguard of civilization. They believe that the extermination of a people, including children, condemned as human contaminants, makes the world, especially their world, a happier and safer place.
They are the heirs of Pol Pot, the killers that carried out the genocides in East Timor, Rwanda and Bosnia and, yes, the Nazis. Israel, like all genocidal states — no population since World War II has been dispossessed and starved with such speed and ruthlessness – has a final solution that would have earned the stamp of approval from Adolf Eichmann.
Starvation was always the plan, the preordained final chapter of the genocide. Israel methodically set out from the beginning of the genocide to destroy sources of food, bombing bakeries and blocking food shipments into Gaza, something it has accelerated since March, when it severed nearly all food supplies. It targeted the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — on which most Palestinians depended on for food — for destruction, accusing its employees, without providing evidence, of being involved in the attacks of Oct. 7. This accusation was used to give funders such as the United States, which provided $422 million to the agency in 2023, the excuse to halt financial support. Israel then banned UNRWA.
Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and U.S. mercenaries in the chaotic scramble to get one of the few food packages distributed during the brief blocks of time, usually an hour, at the four aid sites set up by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office.
Once Gaza was turned into a moonscape after 21 months of saturation bombing, once Palestinians were forced to live in tents, under crude tarps or in the open air, once clean water, food and medical aid became nearly impossible to find, once civil society was obliterated, Israel began its grim campaign to starve the Palestinians out of Gaza.
One in three people in Gaza are going multiple days without eating, according to the U.N.
Starvation is not a pretty sight. I covered the famine in Sudan in 1988 that took an estimated 250,000 lives. There are streaks in my lungs — scars from standing amid hundreds of Sudanese who were dying of tuberculosis. I was strong and healthy and fought off the contagion. They were weak and emaciated and did not.
I watched hundreds of skeletal figures, ghosts of human beings, trudge at a glacial pace across the barren Sudanese landscape. Hyenas, accustomed to eating human flesh, routinely picked off small children. I stood over clusters of bleached human bones on the outskirts of villages where dozens of people, too weak to walk, had laid down in a group and never got up. Many were the remains of entire families.
The starved lack enough calories to sustain themselves. They eat anything to survive — animal feed, grass, leaves, insects, rodents, even dirt. They suffer from constant diarrhea. They have trouble breathing because of respiratory infections. They rip up tiny bits of food, often spoiled, and ration it in a vain attempt to hold off the gnawing hunger pains.
Starvation reduces the iron needed to produce hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body, and myoglobin, a protein that provides oxygen to muscles, coupled with a lack of vitamin B1, which affects heart and brain function. Anemia sets in. The body, in essence, feeds on itself. Tissue and muscle waste away. It is impossible to regulate body temperature. Kidneys shut down. Immune systems crash. Vital organs atrophy. Blood circulation slows. The volume of blood decreases. Infectious diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and cholera become an epidemic, killing people by the thousands.
It is impossible to concentrate. Emaciated victims succumb to mental and emotional withdrawal and apathy. They do not want to be touched or moved. The heart muscle is weakened. Victims, even at rest, are in a state of virtual heart failure. Wounds do not heal. Vision is impaired with cataracts, even among the young. Finally, wracked by convulsions and hallucinations, the heart stops. This process can last up to 40 days for an adult. Children, the elderly and the sick expire at faster rates. This is the future Israel has preordained for the two million people in Gaza.
But it is not the future Israelis see. They see paradise. They see an ethno-nationalist Jewish state where Palestinians, whose land they stole and occupied and whose people they have subjugated and forced into an apartheid existence, do not exist. They see cafes and hotels rising up where thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of bodies lie buried under the rubble. They see tourists frolicking on the Gaza beachfront, a vision enhanced by an Artificial Intelligence-generated video uploaded to social media by Israeli Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, Gila Gamliel. It is what a Gaza devoid of Palestinians would look like, echoing the absurdist AI video posted by Donald Trump.
In the new video, carefree Israelis eat at seaside restaurants. Anchored in the sparkling Mediterranean are luxury yachts. Gleaming hotels and office high rises, including a Trump Tower, dot the beachfront. Attractive residential neighborhoods stand where now there are broken, jagged mounds of concrete. The video shows Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, as well as Trump and Melania, strolling along the seaside.
Gamliel, like other Israeli leaders and Trump, cynically uses the term “voluntary emigration” to describe the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This omits the stark choice Israel actually offers the Palestinians — leave or die.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called for a “security annexation” of the northern Gaza Strip and vowed that Gaza will become an “inseparable part of the State of Israel.” He made the remarks at a Knesset conference called “The Gaza Riviera — from vision to reality,” which presented proposals for the building of Jewish colonies in Gaza. Smotrich said Israel would “relocate Gazans to other countries,” and that Trump endorsed the plan.
Israeli Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who once proposed dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, declared that “All Gaza will be Jewish.” The Israeli government “is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” Eliyahu said. He described Palestinians as Nazis. “Thank God, we are wiping out this evil. We are pushing this population that has been educated on ‘Mein Kampf.’”
Genocidal killers embrace fantasies of eradicating a native population and expanding their ethnonationalist state. The Nazis carried out their genocidal assault, which included mass starvation, on Slavs, Eastern European Jews and other indigenous people, dismissed as Untermenschen, or subhumans. Colonists were then to be shipped to Central and Eastern Europe to Germanize the occupied territory.
These killers do not reckon with the darkness they unleash. The upscale beachfront properties dreamt of by Israel will never appear, just as the modern, exclusively Serb capital, with its golden domed cathedral, imposing presidency building, 15-story clock tower, state-of-the-art medical center and national theater with a 72-foot revolving stage was never built on the ruins of Bosnia.
Rather, there will be ugly apartment blocks, populated by the usual miscreants, proto-fascists, racists and mediocrities who live in the Jewish colonies in the West Bank. These ultranationalists, who have formed rogue militias to seize Palestinian land and joined the Israeli army in murdering over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, will define Israel. They are the Israeli version of the 3-million-strong Pancasila Youth — Indonesia’s equivalent of the Brown Shirts or the Hitler Youth — that in 1965 helped carry out the genocidal mayhem that left half a million to one million dead.
These rogue militias, equipped with automatic weapons provided by the Israeli government, lynched Saifullah Musallet, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American, who was attempting to protect his family’s land two weeks ago. He is the fifth U.S. citizen killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.
Once these Israeli goons and thugs are done with the Palestinians, they will turn on each other.
The genocide in Gaza signals the abolition, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, of the rule of law. It marks the obliteration of even the pretense of an ethical code. Israelis are the barbarians they condemn. If there is any warped justice in this genocide it is that Israelis, once they finish with the Palestinians, will be forced to live together in moral squalor.
Intentional Policies: Dystopian Killing Fields and Starvation in Gaza
27 July 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/intentional-policies-dystopian-killing-fields-and-starvation-in-gaza/
Starvation as a way of life. Starvation as a way of death. Starvation as policy, justification and vengeance. As the state of Israel hums along frittering, scratching and violating international human rights conventions, the chroniclers are kept busy on the morgue’s relentlessly growing inventory and peace’s loss. Of late, a vast number of humanitarian organisations have decided to express their collective outrage in a statement at what is happening in Gaza.
The statement as run by Doctors Without Borders on July 23 is stark: “As the Israel government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families. With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste before their eyes.” Two months after the implementation of the controlled aid scheme by Israel, utilising the grotesquely named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, over 100 organisations were “sounding the alarm and urging governments to act: open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege; and agree to a ceasefire now.”
Outside Gaza, and even within the Strip, abundant supplies of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sat untouched. Humanitarian organisations had been prevented from accessing them. “The Government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.” A paltry figure of 28 trucks a day were being allowed into the Strip.
The relevant gore is recounted: massacres at food sites in the Gaza Strip are impossible to ignore; the figures from the UN suggest that 875 Palestinians had been slaughtered while seeking sustenance as of July 13. The frequency of these “flour massacres” is also receiving comment from those in the employ of the operation being run by GHF, policed by private contractors and the IDF. Retired US special forces officer Anthony Aguilar, who resigned from working with the GHF, told the BBC that he had “witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at crowds of Palestinians.” During his entire career, he had never seen such “brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.”
The NGO statement goes on to note the rise of cases of acute malnutrition, most prevalent among children and the elderly. (The World Food Programme has warned that one in three Gazans do not eat for days at a time, with 90,000 women and children requiring treatment.) “Illnesses like acute watery diarrhea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.”
In the face of this, international law’s decrees appear like the neglected statues of a distant land. The three sets of Provisional Measures Orders from the International Court of Justice, handed down since 2024, have warned Israel to observe its obligations under the UN Genocide Convention and address the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. In its modifying order of provisional measures handed down on March 28, 2024, the ICJ instructed Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address famine and starvation and the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza.” These include the provision of “food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care” and “increasing the capacity of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary.”
The latest concession from Israel to deal with this engineered humanitarian catastrophe is a promise to open humanitarian corridors to permit UN convoys into the Strip. In addition to that, COGAT, the Israeli military agency overseeing humanitarian affairs in Gaza, has announced that Jordan and the United Arab Emirates will be permitted to parachute humanitarian aid to those in Gaza. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has made a small team of British military planners and logisticians available to assist Jordan in this endeavour. On July 27, the IDF also released a statement claiming it had made the first airdrop including “seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar, and canned food.” These efforts, in their practical futility, are a reiteration of the humanitarian airdrops conducted by the US military and Jordan’s air force in March last year.
These drops will do little to alter the cruel, strangulating model of aid delivery in place, emboldening the fittest recipients capable of outpacing their adversaries. Those recipients will also be fortunate not to be injured or killed by the dropped packages, instances of which were recorded in March last year. “Why use airdrops,” asks Juliette Touma, chief spokeswoman for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, “when you can drive hundreds of trucks through the borders?” Using trucks was “much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper.” Precisely why using them is so unappealing to the IDF.
Instead of focusing on isolating Israel, its allies prefer piecemeal approaches that prolong the suffering of the Palestinians. Measures such as those announced by Starmer to “evacuate children from Gaza who need medical assistance, bringing them to the UK for specialist and medical treatment” only serve to encourage the Israeli war machine. The aid drops serve to do much the same. The objective is one of inflicting a sufficient degree of harm that will encourage the eventual depopulation of the enclave. Israel’s allies, with intentional or unintentional complicity, will clean up.
Israel just drew a new map – without saying it out loud
The Israeli Knesset has voted to apply sovereignty over settlements, drawing fears of de facto annexation .
25 Jul, 2025, by Elizabeth Blade, https://www.rt.com/news/621920-israel-just-drew-new-map/
In a significant yet non-binding move, the Israeli legislature has overwhelmingly approved a declaration urging the immediate extension of Israeli sovereignty over Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
The motion, which passed by a vote of 71 to 13, was backed by right-wing and center-right factions including Likud, Shas, Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, and Yisrael Beiteinu.
The text declares that the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas — referred to in Israeli political discourse as the “Simchat Torah Massacre” — proves that the creation of a Palestinian state poses a mortal danger to Israel’s existence.
“The Knesset declares that the State of Israel has the natural, historical, and legal right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” the resolution reads. “The Knesset calls on the Government of Israel to act without delay to apply sovereignty… over all areas of Jewish settlement in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley.”
“This is not symbolic at all”
Though labeled symbolic, Palestinian experts view the vote as laying the bureaucratic foundation for a permanent Israeli presence and governance in the West Bank, the heartland of a future Palestinian state as envisioned by international consensus.
Saad Nimr, professor of political science at Birzeit University in the West Bank, told RT the implications of the Knesset’s move are far-reaching.
“This is not symbolic at all,” Nimr said. “It means these settlements are now treated as Israeli cities. They’re no longer ‘occupied’ under military law. This is the legal and bureaucratic infrastructure of annexation.”
He continued: “The Israeli ministries — not the military — will now oversee health, welfare, planning, and infrastructure in these areas. It’s not about theory. It’s about bulldozers, budgets, and expansion.”
Dimitri Diliani, a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, echoed that sentiment.
“To describe the vote as symbolic is dangerously naive,” Diliani warned. “In Israeli politics, symbolism is often a precursor to de facto annexation. While the Knesset motion lacks binding legislative authority, it institutionalizes consensus in both government and opposition to expand the State of Israel’s settler-colonial project with new domestic political legitimacy.”
Diliani added that members of the Knesset are already pushing legislation to replace the internationally recognized term “West Bank” with the biblical “Judea and Samaria” — further entrenching a nationalist narrative in Israeli law.
A political transaction to preserve Netanyahu’s coalition
Many analysts see the vote not only as ideological, but also as a tactical political maneuver to preserve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile governing coalition.
“It’s quite clear this was a political exchange,” said Nimr. “[The leader of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism Bezalel] Smotrich and [the leader of the Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) party] Ben Gvir threatened to leave the government if negotiations in Doha led to a Gaza ceasefire. This vote is Netanyahu’s way of keeping them on board.”
By offering the far right a symbolic prize on annexation, Netanyahu appears to be stalling a government collapse – even as truce talks with Hamas continue under Qatari mediation.
Diliani described the move as “opportunistic,” adding: “It’s designed to pre-empt mounting international legal scrutiny, particularly after the International Court of Justice advisory opinion in July 2023, which declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal.”
International condemnations without teeth
The reaction from the international community was swift but toothless. Jordan condemned the vote as “a blatant violation of international law.” The European Union and the Arab League issued similarly worded rebukes, reaffirming their commitment to a two-state solution.
But both Palestinian analysts were unshaken by the lack of meaningful repercussions.
“The historical record teaches us that international consensus does not always translate into action,” said Diliani. “Israel’s alignment with key Western powers, particularly the United States, has only grown stronger – even amid documented live-streamed Israeli genocide in Gaza and tremendous war crimes in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.”
He cited continued US military support, which amounts to $3.8 billion annually in aid and has reached nearly $20 billion in additional military assistance since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.
“Israel continues to enjoy extensive trade privileges with the EU,” Diliani added. “Over three-quarters of a million illegal colonial Israeli settlers reside in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Yet the response from the international community remains negligible. Absent deterrent sanctions or accountability mechanisms, Israel interprets this as tacit permission to proceed.”
Nimr was equally scathing. “Israel went into this decision with an overwhelming majority in the Knesset. That means they don’t care about the international community’s opinion. The EU witnessed with their own eyes the genocide in Gaza, the use of hunger as a weapon, and still didn’t take any real action.”
“If there is no punishment,” Nimr said, “it’s interpreted as agreement. So now, they feel they have a green light.”
The Western embrace of Israel – and its consequences
The analysts tie this impunity to Israel’s entrenched position within the Western geopolitical orbit. In 2024, bilateral trade between the EU and Israel reached $46 billion, with Germany, France, and the Netherlands among the top exporters of dual-use technologies.
Diliani added that allegations of antisemitism are strategically deployed to shield Israeli actions from critique. “The Zionist instrumentalization of antisemitism allegations to silence critics of its genocidal war crimes has further immunized the Israeli state from accountability.”
Nimr agreed. “The double standard is the slogan – the unspoken slogan – of international diplomacy. Countries deal with Israel differently than they deal with Russia or China, because Israel is part of the same imperialist and capitalist system they belong to.”
He called for a global reassessment of the post-WWII international legal framework. “All these laws, including the United Nations and the Security Council, should be under review. The system is broken. The US veto can block any decision against a country like Israel – its favorite ally in the region.”
What comes next? Calls for Palestinian action
Both experts believe that the consequences of the Knesset vote extend far beyond diplomatic rhetoric. For Nimr, it should mark a turning point for the Palestinian leadership.
“This decision affects all Palestinians,” Nimr said. “The two-state solution is not only behind us – it’s officially dead. The law blows up the Oslo Agreement.”
Signed in the 1990s, the Oslo framework laid the foundation for limited Palestinian self-rule under Israeli oversight – a compromise meant to pave the way toward a two-state solution that now appears conclusively buried.
Nimr called on the Palestinian Authority to take immediate, concrete steps, beginning with ending security coordination with Israel – a practice long criticized by Palestinian civil society as collaboration.
“If Oslo is dead, then why should we keep our part of it? The Palestinian Authority must immediately stop all security cooperation. That would send a strong message.”
Beyond this, Nimr urged national unity. “We need a united front – Fatah, Hamas, all factions – to strategize against this existential threat. For decades, we had two paths: negotiations under Oslo, or resistance. Now, the Oslo path has been closed by Israel itself.”
Diliani, too, believes Palestinians must take matters into their own hands.
“We are no longer dealing with theoretical annexation,” he said. “This is the normalization of apartheid and settler-colonial domination – with legal mechanisms to enforce it. Palestinians must now focus on building grassroots resistance, mobilizing international civil society, and dismantling the myth of Israeli democracy.”
US and Israel Quit Gaza Ceasefire Talks in Doha as Palestinians Starve to Death
Hamas’s long-standing position is that it’s willing to release all remaining captives in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. But Israel has rejected this, and there’s no sign the Trump administration is willing to put pressure on Israel to change its position.
Steve Witkoff blamed the collapse of negotiations on Hamas while Hamas said it was caught off guard and wanted to continue talks
by Dave DeCamp | July 24, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/07/24/us-and-israel-quit-gaza-ceasefire-talks-in-doha-as-palestinians-starve-to-death/
The US and Israel have withdrawn negotiators from Gaza ceasefire talks in Doha, Qatar, dashing hopes for a breakthrough as the humanitarian situation in Gaza is as bad as ever, and Palestinians are starving to death due to the US-backed Israeli blockade.
Israel announced it was bringing its negotiators home after Hamas presented its latest counter-proposal. The Israeli announcement was quickly followed up by a statement from US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
Both the US and Israel are blaming Hamas for the collapse of the negotiations. However, Israel has maintained a hardline position throughout the talks and made clear that it would agree only to a temporary ceasefire since Israeli officials announced a plan to build a concentration camp in southern Gaza during the truce. One of Hamas’s conditions has been for a stronger guarantee that an initial 60-day ceasefire would lead to a permanent one.
Hamas’s long-standing position is that it’s willing to release all remaining captives in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. But Israel has rejected this, and there’s no sign the Trump administration is willing to put pressure on Israel to change its position.
“We have decided to bring our team home from Doha for consultations after the latest response from Hamas, which clearly shows a lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza. While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith,” Witkoff said in a post on X.
“We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza. It is a shame that Hamas has acted in this selfish way. We are resolute in seeking an end to this conflict and a permanent peace in Gaza,” he added.
It’s unclear what sort of “alternative options” the US and Israel may be considering, but the collapse in negotiations comes as the Israeli military has launched a ground offensive in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, an area where Israelis believe many of the remaining captives may be held.
In response to Witkoff’s statement, Hamas said that it has been flexible and that it was “committed to reaching an agreement that halts the aggression and ends the suffering of our people in the Gaza Strip.” Hamas said it presented its “final response” in consultations with other Palestinian factions and mediators.
“We are surprised by the negative statements of US envoy Steve Witkoff regarding the Movement’s stance, especially when the mediators have expressed their welcome and satisfaction with this constructive and positive position, which opens the door to reaching a comprehensive agreement,” Hamas said.
“The Movement reiterates its commitment to continuing negotiations and engaging in them to help overcome obstacles and reach a permanent ceasefire agreement,” the group added.
According to Axios, Hamas had asked for more Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for Israeli captives, including 2,000 Palestinians who have been abducted in Gaza since October 7, 2023, instead of the 1,200 the US and Israel proposed. The two sides have also been at odds over the amount of territory Israel will occupy, as Israel is refusing to withdraw its forces back to the positions it held during the short-lived ceasefire deal that was signed in January 2025.
Israel is changing the legal system governing the West Bank to accelerate annexation: report
Netanyahu’s government is building on a long-standing legal matrix to accelerate Israel’s de facto annexation in the West Bank
Mondoweiss, By Jeff Wright July 24, 2025
Israel is accelerating its efforts to cement its permanent control over the West Bank through a number of sweeping legal and institutional changes, according to a new report from Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.
The 87-page report, Legal Structures of Distinction, Separation, and Territorial Domination, describes the ways in which the Netanyahu government is rapidly building on a long-standing legal matrix that further threatens Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
“These developments are not something new to us,” Dr. Suhad Bishara, Legal Director of Adalah and lead author of the report, told Mondoweiss. “All eyes are on Gaza, justifiably so,” she said. “However… it is important to highlight the intensity of the structural changes that have taken place since the current government took over in December 2022.”
“What is happening in the West Bank is dangerously fast-forwarding annexation policies in a blatant violation of international law,” Bishara said. “Israel is intensifying measures to change the status of the West Bank, the status of many Palestinians living in Area C who are subject to intensified displacement induced by settler violence and Israeli policies.” She said, “This is in addition to settler expansion and further restrictions on Palestinian development in the area.”
Thoroughly researched and footnoted, the report documents how the current extremist government has built on what Adalah describes as “foundational mechanisms through which Israel has entrenched a land regime that facilitates territorial domination and racial segregation.”
Area C comprises over 60 percent of the West Bank, and is under full Israeli military control.
Here are the mechanisms of territorial domination Adalah examines in these areas.
Civilian governance for Israeli settlers; military rule over Palestinians………………………………………
1. Administration by local authorities
……………………………………Israel can argue that the settlements operate now under Israeli sovereignty. But applying Israeli law in occupied territory, Adalah maintains, is a violation of international human rights law and constitutes “a measure of de facto annexation.”
2. Financial incentives for settlements ………………………………
3. Declaring State land …………………………………….
The planning system in Area C……………………………………………
………………………..Paralleling the judgments of the ICJ, UN experts, and international, Palestinian, and Israeli human rights groups, the report ends by listing the five international crimes that Adalah finds Israel guilt of: violations of International Humanitarian Law; the deepening of the illegal mechanism of de facto annexation; the denial of Palestinian people’s right to self-determination; the deepening of the apartheid system in the occupied Palestinian territory; and the commission of war crimes and crimes of aggression on the part of Israel……………………………………………………………………………………
Free speech is under attack—especially when it comes to Palestine. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/07/israel-is-changing-the-legal-system-governing-the-west-bank-to-accelerate-annexation-report/
They’re Starving Civilians To Steal A Palestinian Territory, And They’re Lying About It
Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 26, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/theyre-starving-civilians-to-steal?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=169279261&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Just so we’re all absolutely clear about what we’re watching here, Israel is intentionally starving civilians in order to bring about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and steal a Palestinian territory. That’s all this is, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
This isn’t a theory. This is what’s happening. The facts are in and the case is closed. Israeli officials aren’t even hiding it anymore.
Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu is telling the Israeli media that “the government is racing ahead for Gaza to be wiped out,” and that “all Gaza will be Jewish.”
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is tweeting in Hebrew that a “complete halt of ‘humanitarian aid’” will allow “encouragement of migration” and “settlement” in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced earlier this month that the official plan is to build a giant concentration camp for Gaza’s population on the ruins of Rafah while working to deport the population to other countries.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself made it clear back in May that implementing Donald Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza was a precondition to having peace in the enclave.
Trump made it clear back in February that his plan was for “all” Palestinians to be removed from the Gaza Strip on a “permanent” basis.
Within days of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023, Israel’s Intelligence Ministry was circulating a plan for the entire population of Gaza to be moved to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, and an Israeli think tank had drawn up a strategy for the “relocation and final settlement of the entire Gaza population.”
Indeed, Israel has been on record scheming to find a way to relocate the population of Gaza for many decades.
That’s what this is all about. That’s all this has ever been about. It’s not about hostages. It’s not about Hamas. It’s not about Israel defending itself. It’s about stealing a Palestinian territory, and anyone who says otherwise is lying.
And the lies have been erupting like a geyser in recent days. Israel and its apologists have been frantically pushing the narrative that Gaza is starving because the UN isn’t allowing aid in (swiftly refuted by Drop Site News), that Gaza is starving because Hamas is stealing the aid (swiftly refuted by Reuters), and that Gaza is starving because Hamas attacks people who try to go to aid sites (already refuted by Israeli soldiers telling the Israeli press that they’re the ones shooting the aid seekers).
The more evil Israel gets, the more frenetic its apologists need to get with their lies to justify its behavior.
Starvation deaths in Gaza are skyrocketing. Many of those still alive have already suffered permanent damage, and even with a massive influx of aid and complete reversal of Israeli policies it will be very difficult to undo the effects of the famine.
Western governments are beginning to speak out against the mass atrocity in Gaza, far too little and far too late. We can expect Israel and the United States to respond to this outcry by saying that Palestinians need to be evacuated out of Gaza as quickly as possible in order to rescue them from this deliberately manufactured humanitarian crisis. We can expect them to denounce anyone who opposes this ethnic cleansing operation as evil monsters who want to starve the poor Palestinians.
And it will all be lies. They lied this entire time.
It’s about the most evil thing you could possibly come up with, really. If this is not evil, then nothing is.
Four Major News Agencies Warn Gaza Staff Face Starvation Due to Israeli Blockade
Gaza’s Health Ministry said two more Palestinians starved to death under the siege
by Dave DeCamp | July 24, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/07/24/four-major-news-agencies-warn-gaza-staff-face-starvation-due-to-israeli-blockade/
Four of the world’s major news agencies have issued a rare joint statement warning that their journalists in Gaza are unable to feed themselves due to the US-backed Israeli blockade, as Palestinians continue to starve to death under the siege.
“We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families,” AFP, The Associated Press, Reuters, and BBC News said. “For many months, these independent journalists have been the world’s eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. They are now facing the same dire circumstances as those they are covering.”
The news agencies said that journalists “endure many deprivations and hardships in war zones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them.” They urged the “Israeli authorities to allow journalists in and out of Gaza” and said it was “essential that adequate food supplies reach the people there.”
On top of the starvation, journalists in Gaza continue to be targeted by the IDF. On Wednesday, Walaa al-Jabari, who worked for local news outlets, was killed along with her husband and four children. Al-Jabari was pregnant at the time of her killing, and the Gaza Government Media Office said her death brought the total number of journalists killed by Israel since October 7, 2023, to 231.
The statement from the news agencies came as Gaza’s Health Ministry said another two Palestinians had starved to death over the previous 24-hour period. Starvation deaths have spiked over the past week, with dozens, mostly children, dying of malnutrition due to Israeli-imposed restrictions and the killing of aid seekers. The Health Ministry said it has recorded a total of 113 starvation deaths.
Palestinians in Gaza also continue to be gunned down while attempting to reach food aid. Since the end of May, more than 1,000 aid seekers have been killed by Israeli forces, mainly near distribution sites run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Sabreen Abu al-Kass, a mother of 10 in Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that she attempted to get aid from a GHF site on Thursday but failed. “I went to get food, to support my children, and I fainted there. No one helped me,” she said. “I couldn’t bring back any aid at all. We returned home empty-handed, just like we came. Out of maybe 50 attempts, I was only able to get some food once. One time, among thousands of women.”
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