From “Never Again” to “Never Accountable”: Gaza and the Collapse of International Law
From “Never Again” to “Never Accountable”: Gaza and the Collapse of International Law
Palestinians Mourn Their Friend, the Pope Famine in Gaza
Palestinians Mourn Their Friend, the Pope Famine in Gaza
Tensions Rise Between Nuclear Neighbors
Tensions Rise Between Nuclear Neighbors
Famine in Gaza: Will We Continue to Watch as Gazans Starve to Death?—Dr. Ramzy Baroud
Daily Life and Shattered Dreams in Gaza—Writers Share Their Stories—Six Views Ghada Abu Muaileq, Ahmad Mohmmad Abushawish, Donya Abu Sitta, Taqwa Al-Wawi, Sara H. Awad, Mariam Mushtaha
Lawfare in Service of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza —Ida Audeh
The Destruction of Gaza City: 1917 John Gee
Colombia’s Challenge to Israel Impunity—Jack McGrath
“Every House Is My Heart”: Palestinian Writers in the Diaspora—Lisa Mullenneaux
22 Technocracy Simplifies the Business of Genocide —Hajira Asghar 28 Challenging Impunity: Meet the NGO Holding Israeli War Crime Suspects to Account—Ahmad Halima 30 From “Never Again” to “Never Accountable”: Gaza and the Collapse of International Law—Faisal Kutty
20 Steady Efforts to Weave International Friendships Abruptly Unraveled—Delinda C. Hanley 25 Trump Throws Michael Waltz Overboard and Offers Him a Leaky Raft—Ian Williams 57 Tensions Rise Between Nuclear-Armed Neighbors Indian and Pakistan—Two Views —Maah Noor Ali, Eric S. Margolis
60 The Once Big Sister, Diminished: Egypt at a Crossroads—Mustafa Fetouri 62 Lebanon and Israel: Normalization Amidst Historical Legacy and Popular Resistance—Lama Abou Kharroub 65 Mask Off Maersk Campaign Pulls the Mask Off Imperialism Tala Aloul
Clamp Down in Türkiye Jonathan Gorvett
Federal Election Shakes Up Canadian Political Landscape but Palestine Supporters Hold Steady —Candice Bodnaruk
Remarks By Andy Shallal to His Fellow Arab Americans
Pope Francis’ Middle East Legacy: Solidarity, Hope and Dialogue—Dale Sprusansky
My Francis: Francis A. Boyle—Sam Husseini
ON THE COVER: A woman waits in a corridor at Abu Hamisa School in Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza, on May 10, 2025. The school, now used as a shelter for displaced families, was bombed twice by the Israeli Occupation Forces on May 6, killing 39. Israel orders evacuations and then bombs the schools and hospitals where people shelter.
PHOTO BY MOIZ SALHI/MIDDLE EAST IMAGES/AFP VIA GETTY
Why Israel’s Plans to Forcibly Depopulate Gaza Won’t Work, Qassam Muaddi, mondoweiss.net OV-41
Fear Is Not a Word That Can Describe What We Feel in Gaza, Nour Elassy, www.aljazeera.com
“I Want a Death That the World Will Hear”—Journalist Assassinated by Israel for Telling the Truth, Caitlin Johnstone, www.caitlinjohnstone.com.au
Breaking the Silence on Palestinian Armed Struggle: A Call For Legal Clarity, Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo, www.ramzybaroud.net
In Gaza, a Small Parish Mourns Their Friend, the Pope, Tareq S. Hajjaj, mondoweiss.net
Belated Anti-war Letters Are A Cowardly Indictment of Israel’s Moral Code, Gideon Levy, www.haaretz.com
PUBLISHERS’ PAGE
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 72 ARAB AMERICAN ACTIVISM: The Arab America Foundation Honors and Inspires, Despite Efforts to Silence
74 MUSLIM AMERICAN ACTIVISM: Tenth Annual National Muslim Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill
74 MUSIC & ARTS: “No Other Land” and the Divide Between Images and Lived Experience
76 HUMAN RIGHTS: Badar Khan Suri’s Arrest and the Threat to Free Speech
77 WAGING PEACE: Climate Change Mitigation Efforts in the MENA Region
79 DIPLOMATIC DOINGS: U.S. Open to Engaging Syria, Submits List of Demands
(A Supplement to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs available to all subscribers. To subscribe, call toll-free 1-888-881-5861.)
Compiled by Janet McMahon
OV-46
Israel’s Backers Keep Whining That They’re Losing Control of The Narrative, Caitlin Johnstone, www.caitlinjohnstone.com.au OV-48
There’s an Under-reported Israel Angle to the Corporate Effort To Muzzle “60 Minutes,” James North, mondoweiss.net OV-49
Waltz’s Demotion Should Begin A Neocon Purge, Jack Hunter, theamericanconservative.com OV-50
Wiz Acquisition Puts Israeli Intelligence in Charge of Your Google Data, Alan Macleod, www.mintpressnews.com OV-51
Hezbollah to U.S.: It’s Not in Your Interest to Support Israeli Attacks, Ali Rizk, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-53
Many Iraqis Unhappy With Islamist Syrian President’s Invite to Arab League Summit In Baghdad, Jason Ditz, www.antiwar.com OV-54
OV-47
Azerbaijan Is Already Friendly With Israel. Why the Push to “Normalize”?, Eldar Mamedov, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-55 See p. 94.
When news feeds deluge us with information each day, individual news items are easily overlooked. For more than 40 years, the staff of the Washington Report have made it our mission to curate, sift through and provide commentary on current events in order to provide a permanent record for readers. Every issue now includes our popular (and free) “Other Voices” insert. For this issue, we added extra pages to keep up with fastchanging events.
Like other media, including “60 Minutes” (see p. 49) and National Public Radio, as well as public libraries, universities and nonprofits, we are under fire for condemning U.S. support for Israel’s genocide. Language in congressional bills could grant the Treasury Secretary authority to label nonprofit organizations as “terrorist supporting” and revoke their tax-exempt status without due process, transparency or justification. We are determined to continue to publish stories from Gazan writers (pp. 10-21) trying to survive Israeli assaults using weapons supplied by our government plus deadly new technology (see Hajira Asghar’s article, p. 22).
The Hind Rajab Foundation, named after the 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed as she waited for help in a car full of dead family members, is holding Israeli war crime suspects accountable (see Ahmad Halima’s article, p. 28). In an effort to halt the work of the International Court of Justice, Trump has frozen bank accounts and blocked email access to its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. (See Faisal Kutty’s article on the collapse of international law, p. 30.)
U.S. legal institutions and First Amendment rights are also under fire (see Ida Audeh’s article, p. 34).
Gabby Deutch from the pro-Israel Jewish Insider lamented the fact that Trump didn’t visit Israel while he was in the neighborhood. Instead, Trump cut grand business deals to sell U.S. weaponry, planes and artificial intelligence chips to the Gulf sheikhdoms. He also ended sanctions on Syria, which Israel has continued to bomb in recent months. The Trump administration bypassed Netanyahu to negotiate with Hamas for the release of Israeli/American soldier Edan Alexander from captivity in Gaza. Much to Israel’s horror, on May 6, the U.S. and Ansar Allah (the Houthis) entered into a ceasefire agreement. No more U.S. bombs in Yemen and no more Houthi maritime attacks on U.S. ships. After upending the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, at the behest of the Israel lobby, we hear Trump is negotiating a new agreement that includes lifting sanctions on Iran. For once, Trump’s vision for the Middle East doesn’t seem to revolve around Israel.
Will Trump continue to support the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland to build a “Gaza Riviera” or a “Gaza Freedom Zone”? We can only hope that our president will pressure Israel to make a just and lasting peace for Israel and Palestine.
During a protest over military aid to Israel in the U.S. Senate on May 14, Ben Cohen said in a video as he was hauled away, “Congress kills poor kids in Gaza by buying bombs, and pays for it by kicking kids off Medicaid in the U.S.” In a subsequent video Cohen lamented, “We support the slaughter of people in Gaza. If someone protests the slaughter of people in Gaza, we arrest them. What does our country stand for? ...Our country needs to start measuring its strength by how many people it can help as opposed to how many people it can kill.” In January, Ben & Jerry's called for a “permanent and immediate ceasefire” in Gaza. It’s time for more international businesses and consumers to take that principled stand.
Israel’s armed-drone attack on the Conscience, a ship carrying urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza, caused a fire and damage to the hull on May 2. Tan Safi, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) volunteer, said: “After everything we’ve witnessed in Gaza over the past 19 months, I’m not surprised that a terrorist attack on civilians in European waters went unanswered. This was yet another test of the world’s principles, and once again, the world failed. But we won’t let Israel silence us through violence or allow Europe’s silence to frighten us. That’s never happened before—it’s never going to happen.”
The FFC is preparing to sail its next aid ship to Gaza. We urge all governments to guarantee safe passage and to uphold the basic principles of humanitarian law. All people of conscience, all Washington Report readers, do not look away. Please do everything you can to end this devastating siege and war on Gaza and...
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Regarding the Gaza genocide, on page 57 of the March/April 2025 issue of this magazine, Delinda C. Hanley suggests that readers cite the Declaration of Independence, speak out against funding apartheid and genocide, and tell their elected officials to enact an arms embargo on Israel.
The burgeoning Palestinian death toll warrants even stronger and more specific measures to deter the Israel-U.S. alliance that is implementing Israel’s “final solution” for “the Palestinian problem.” Top priority should be given to ending U.S. military support for Israel by not paying the portion of our income taxes used for that purpose. Second, Americans should divest from Israeli businesses and government bonds, from U.S. government bonds and other debt instruments, and from stocks and bonds of U.S. businesses that sell arms to Israel. We are personally declining to pay the portion (1.5 percent) of our 2024 federal taxes and our estimated 2025 taxes that go to providing Israel with military aid. We also have sold our U.S. bonds and other U.S. debt instruments, and do not hold and will not buy any more of the aforementioned securities.
Perhaps tax resistance seems risky, but probably not as much as one might imagine. Further, “Nothing risked, nothing gained.” Search the web for more information on this and other subjects touched on here. Maybe these seem like puny measures against the mighty, but every successful quest has started with small steps. And as Edmund Burke said, “Nobody [ever] made a greater mistake than he [or she] who did nothing because he [or she] could only do a little.” Moreover, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing.”
Gregory and Nancy De Sylva, Rhinebeck, NY
Long before Israel became a state in 1948, Zionists coveted the land of Palestine—not to assimilate with indigenous Palestinians, but to conquer Palestine. For this to happen, they had to garner political, financial and military support from England and the United States. In the process, Zionists changed Judaism from a religion to a brutal nationalistic ideology.
In England, the Balfour Declaration was declared in 1917. However, England had no right to give away land that wasn’t theirs and was already inhabited by Palestinians. In the United States, the pro-Israel lobby was created to incentivize candidates in elections to support Israel. Israel-firsters became major donors to influence conservative and liberal administrations alike, as well as Congress, the media and society.
As part of this lobbying, Israel and its supporters created an atmosphere of hate and intimidation, suppressing free speech in colleges and universities and calling any criticism of Israel anti-Semitic, which dilutes its real meaning. These tactics are an affront to the most important document in the world, the United States Constitution and First Amendment. If free speech is allowed to criticize America and other countries, why should Israel be different?
By using American “weapons of mass destruction,” Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians and continues to colonize, rule and absorb all of Palestine. This means blood is now on the hands of the American government—because Israel cannot do this harm on its own.
There is no such thing as the “Israel Defense Forces.” It has been on the offensive since its inception. With no respect for any country’s sovereignty except its own, Israel’s “Offense Force” has attacked surrounding states under the guise of its security. What about security for Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, etc.? Now, Israel wants the U.S. to use force if necessary to prevent
Iran from having nuclear weapons. However, Israel is known to have at least 200 nuclear warheads, is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its program has never been subjected to inspections.
Our first President, George Washington, in his Farewell Address warned that a “passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils.” Such is the U.S. passionate attachment to Israel.
What to do now? Elect new Palestinian leadership. Why no action from Arab states? How about a coalition of Arab American organizations holding a meeting with President Donald Trump? Time for self-determination and recognition by the U.N. and U.S. of full Palestinian statehood.
The U.S. must stop the madness and the political, financial and military spigot to Israel. Peace, justice and humanity should prevail. The Holy Land deserves it.
Judith Howard, Norwood, MA
During President Donald Trump’s recent public appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the U.S. leader declared that Gaza’s Palestinian population must accept his vague promise to settle them elsewhere. Without acknowledging the source of Gaza’s destruction, Trump then claimed that America would rebuild the battered territory, transforming it into a paradise.
He then advised Palestinians to accept more Israeli bombing if they dared remain in the territory. Netanyahu’s body language conveyed significant discomfort with Trump’s bizarre pronouncement, perhaps due to Trump’s failure to note Israel’s own Gaza settlement plans. Of course, he omitted mention of Israel’s prolonged assault or America’s pivotal role in shielding, funding and arming its expansionist Middle East ally.
Of course, Gaza’s people will not leave, preferring a defiant life in the rubble to surrender. This diehard attitude is obviously beyond Trump’s comprehension, accustomed as he is to manipulating and bullying his way through life, surrounded by syco-
Send your letters to the editor to the Washington Report, 1902 18th St. NW, Washington, DC 20009 or e-mail <letters@wrmea.org>.
phants and cynical opportunists eager to benefit from his scheming.
Trump might be a habitual entertainer and deal-maker but he remains the most powerful person in the world, with a tremendous responsibility to communicate clearly and even graciously. His casual rhetoric displays a deep contempt for the gravity of his office and welfare of those impacted by his careless speech and behavior.
Donald Trump does not understand or respect the value of principled resistance to illegitimate authority. Nevertheless, this is the only course available to working people, including those Palestinians who prefer uncomfortable freedom to de facto slavery.
Morgan Duchesney, Ottawa, Canada
Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is being detained in Jena, LA at the LaSalle ICE Processing Center. It is a horrible place. Years ago, with Freedom for Immigrants, I helped start a visitation program at LaSalle. We got several folks to go on a tour there, and I was able to visit two men at the facility. It is hard to get to Jena, because it is in the middle of nowhere. I was staying with my son who lived in New Orleans, and it was a 4-hour drive through winding roads and small towns to get there.
LaSalle is a private for-profit immigration prison run by the GEO Group. (Coincidently the new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was previously a lobbyist for GEO—which is doing quite well on the stock market!) These prisons have created lots of jobs in rural Louisiana. And I think they want to keep Khalil’s case there because the immigration judges in that region are notoriously harsh. One man I visited at LaSalle was from Bangladesh, and on his 14th day of a hunger strike. He came to the phone at the window and was
handcuffed. I will never forget it. Vicki Tamoush, Tustin, CA
This December 17 marks 15 years since the self-immolation of vegetable and fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi led to the uprising that resulted in Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s ousting and the creation of a transitional government. The Tunisian people captured the world's attention and inspired the subsequent uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Yemen, as you well know.
But it is indeed a puzzle to me that Tunisia is once again under one-man rule. How Kais Saied took over in October 2019 and has seemingly undermined democracy while solidifying his control over the country since then is a mystery to me—and, I suspect, to most Washington Report on Middle East Affairs readers.
It would be advantageous for the magazine to publish an explanation as to why and how Kais Saied was able to subvert the revolution. Moreover, what must be done to restore Tunisia's democracy?
George Aldridge, Bissen, Luxembourg ■
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By Dr. Ramzy Baroud
Displaced Palestinians, including children, wait with empty pots to receive food distributed by humanitarian organizations at the Jabalia Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip on May 7, 2025. The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate amid ongoing Israeli attacks and a full blockade imposed on Gaza.
THE SITUATION IN GAZA today starkly highlights Israeli exceptionalism. Israel is employing the starvation of two million Palestinians in the blockaded and devastated Gaza Strip as a tactic to extract political concessions from Palestinian groups operating there.
On April 23, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) described the current humanitarian situation in Gaza as “the worst ever seen throughout the war.” Despite the severity of these pronouncements, they often appear to be treated as routine news, eliciting little concrete action or substantive discussion.
Israeli violations of international and humanitarian laws regarding its occupation of Palestine are well-established facts. A new dimension of exceptionalism is emerging, reflected in Israel’s ability to deliberately starve an entire population for an extended period, with some even defending this approach.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book, co‐edited with Ilan Pappé, Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out, is available from Middle East Books and More. Dr. Baroud is a non‐resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is <www.ramzybaroud.net>.
The Gaza population continues to endure immense suffering, having experienced the loss of approximately 10 percent of its overall numbers due to deaths or disappearances. They are confined to a small, largely destroyed area of about 365 square kilometers (141 sq. miles), facing deaths from treatable diseases and lacking access to essential services and even clean water.
Despite these conditions, Israel continues to operate with impunity in what seems to be a brutal and protracted experiment, while much of the world observes with varying degrees of anger, helplessness or indifference.
The question of the international community’s role remains central. Enforcing international law is one aspect; exerting the necessary pressure to allow a population facing starvation access to basic necessities like food and water is another. For the people of Gaza, even these fundamental needs now seem unattainable after decades of diminished expectations.
During public hearings in The Hague starting on April 28 (see pp. 30-32), representatives from many nations appealed to the International Court of Justice to utilize its authority as the highest court to mandate that Israel cease the starvation of Palestinians.
Israel “may not collectively punish the protected Palestinian
people,” stated the South African representative, Jaymion Hendricks. The Saudi envoy, Mohammed Saud Alnasser, added that Israel had transformed the Gaza Strip into an “unlivable pile of rubble, while killing thousands of innocent and vulnerable people.”
Representatives from China, Egypt, Algeria, South Africa and other nations echoed these sentiments, aligning with the assessment of Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, who stated in March that Israel is employing a strategy of “weaponization of humanitarian aid.”
However, the assertion that the weaponization of food is a deliberate Israeli tactic requires no external proof; Israel itself declared it. The then Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, publicly announced a “complete siege” on Gaza on Oct. 9, 2023, just two days after the start of the genocidal war.
Gallant’s statement—“We are imposing a complete siege on [Gaza]. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel—everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly”—was not an impulsive outburst but a policy rooted in dehumanizing rhetoric and implemented with extreme violence.
This “acting accordingly” extended beyond closing border crossings and obstructing aid deliveries. Even when aid was permitted, Israeli forces targeted desperate civilians, including children, who gathered to receive supplies, bombing them along with the aid trucks. A particularly devastating incident occurred on Feb. 29, 2024, in Gaza City, where reports indicated that Israeli fire killed 112 Palestinians and injured 750 more.
This event was the first of what became known as the “Flour Massacres.” In between these events, Israel continued to bomb bakeries, aid storage facilities and aid distribution volunteers. The intention was to starve Palestinians
to a degree that would allow for coercive bargaining and potentially lead to the ethnic cleansing of the population.
On April 1, 2024, an Israeli military drone struck a convoy of the World Central Kitchen, resulting in the deaths of six international aid workers and their Palestinian driver. This led to a significant departure of the remaining international aid workers from Gaza.
A few months later, starting in October 2024, northern Gaza was placed under a strict siege, with the aim of forcing the population south, potentially toward the Sinai desert. Despite these efforts and the resulting famine, the will of the Gazan population did not break. Instead, hundreds of thousands reportedly began returning to their destroyed homes and towns in the north.
When, on March 18, Israel reneged on a ceasefire agreement that followed extensive negotiations, it once again resorted to starvation as a weapon. There was little consequence or strong condemnation from Western governments regarding Israel’s return to the war and to the starvation policies.
“Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” is classified as a war crime under international law, explicitly stated in the Rome Statute. However, the relevance of such legal frameworks is questioned when those who advocate for and consider themselves guardians of these laws fail to uphold or enforce them.
The inaction of the international community during this period of immense human suffering has significantly undermined the
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international
The potential consequences of this failure to act are grave, extending beyond the Palestinian people to impact humanity as a whole. Hope persists that fundamental human compassion, separate from legal frameworks, will compel the provision of essential supplies like flour, sugar and water to Gaza. The inability to ensure this basic aid will profoundly question our shared humanity for years to come. ■
By Ghada Abu Muaileq
ON AN ORDINARY school day when I was six years old, I looked up into the sky and saw an Israeli drone tracing strange shapes in the air. It was 2008, and this was my first tangible perception of occupation.
My friends and I didn’t yet grasp what it meant, so we’d stare at the sky, and make a game of guessing its patterns: sometimes a perfect loop, other times jagged lines or smooth curves. We didn’t know its name or purpose; we only knew that it never left, its relentless buzzing like a monstrous mechanical bee.
Then came the day I understood that its presence was ominous. On a December morning during recess at my UNRWA school, our principal abruptly rushed to us, her voice urgent: “Go home, now!” We were only children; we did not understand the danger until we saw the teachers’ faces as their eyes filled with terror at the buzzing growing louder overhead. In the panicked murmurs, we learned that the health center next to our school had been targeted for bombing.
The ever ‐ present al ‐ zannana flies overhead during the genocide, an omen of imminent explosions.
That was the beginning of Gaza’s first war of my lifetime, lasting 21 days. The deafening explosion of rockets was something I had never heard before—a horror even worse than the buzzing drone that painted the sky. I would clamp my hands over my ears, trembling. My parents tried to calm me, calling them fireworks, but I knew better. Fireworks don’t turn buildings into rubble.
After that war, four years passed without rocket sounds, but alzannana (the noisemaker), that ominous drone, never left our skies. With each birthday, my childish questions about it grew darker.
Ghada Abu Muaileq is an English literature and translation student. Since childhood, she has been an avid reader and especially likes world literature. She writes articles and stories from the life of war in Gaza, documenting the experiences of a people who deserve a life better than the one imposed on them by Israeli occupation. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
I was 10 when the bombs rained again in 2012, eight endless days during which Israel targeted our homes. I am still haunted by the images of civil defense workers pulling children my age from the ruins of a house that had been bombed with the whole family inside, the first massacre I saw in my life. I saw tiny bodies, still in pajamas, masked by blood and dust; I imagined myself in their place. At that moment, I understood two truths: these missiles didn’t just destroy buildings—they erased childhoods. And al-zannana? It wasn’t just watching. It had been guiding death all along.
Each war was worse than the preceding one. Two years later, in the summer of 2014, another Israeli offensive was unleashed, this one lasting nearly 50 days. The heaviest destruction targeted eastern Gaza, particularly the Shuja‘iyya neighborhood where Israeli forces stormed in and massacred families inside their own homes. In central Gaza, we endured relentless airstrikes, though soldiers never entered our area. They terrorized us in other ways—calling our phones, telling us that we would suffer the same fate as Shuja‘iyya’s residents.
By age 12, I already felt crushed under the weight of war. Being killed by the bombings seemed inevitable, but more scary than dying was not knowing how or when death would come. This terror was so strong that my friends and I would try to go to sleep when the bombing grew louder, because, in our childlike thinking, we thought that we would not feel any pain if we were killed while sleeping.
At that age, I didn’t cry much. I found refuge from the external chaos in words. I kept myself busy reading stories and writing, pouring my fear and defiance into poems, stories and the fragments of my life shaped by occupation. I have cried much more as an adult living through genocide.
You might think that Gaza residents have grown accustomed to war after three invasions in close succession, but that’s far from the truth. We are an educated, life-loving people and we have never adapted to destruction, nor have we accepted it as normal.
In 2021 the Israeli occupation responded to our defiance with yet another war, this time targeting Gaza City’s commercial and vital areas to paralyze daily life and tighten the noose. Even after that 10-day assault ended, the siege and restrictions remained, though the bombing resumed periodically with ever more lethal munitions.
On Oct. 7, 2023, I was preparing to go to my 8 a.m. lecture at the university when classes were suspended indefinitely. My friend Dalia and I were in our final year of study and excited to graduate. We looked forward to soon returning to our studies once the war ended, but this date marked the last day of ordinary life.
Within the first week of the war, my university was bombed to rubble. My beautiful memories of study and laughter with my friends were erased. The Israeli army occupied the road connecting the north and south of Gaza, cutting us off from our neighbors. I have not seen Dalia, who lives 20 minutes north of me by car, since the war began. Indiscriminate bombing killed people in their homes: our friend Tasneem, an outstanding student, along with several professors, including my lecturer Dr. Refaat Alareer, a famous poet and writer, and many of my own relatives. Even my grandfather passed away—not from an explosion, but from starvation, lack of medicine and unbearable living conditions.
My city is now rubble and a grave for more than 50,000 martyrs. These losses have left scars in my heart that will never fade.
The sky still holds every war I’ve lived through—each drone, each explosion, each night of fear etched into its vastness. It is a reminder of the terror that has rooted itself deep in my heart.
And yet, I hold onto a quiet, unwavering faith: that I will have a better life, and that one day, children will look up at this same sky, clear and calm, asking no haunting questions—only wondering why it is so blue. And we will say, “because it reflects the sea of Gaza.” ■
By Ahmad Mohmmad Abushawish
TAWJIHI IS A SIGNIFICANT turning point in the life of every young Palestinian. It is not only their final year of high school, it is the final exam that can determine the trajectory of their lives. Students strive to do their best on this test because they know that it, along with their grade point average (GPA), will determine the university they will attend and the field of study they will pursue.
Ahmad Mohmmad Abushawish was a high school student in Octo‐ber 2023 when the assault on Gaza began. He has volunteered in programs for children (Cooperazione Internazionale Sud Sud, Vento di Tera) and is passionate about dabke, chess and creative writing. He attended the Access Program, a U.S. State Department‐funded initiative that offers students from disadvantaged communities the opportunity to learn English and develop leadership, communication and cultural skills. He hopes to get a university scholarship to study in the United States or the United Kingdom.
Tawjihi brings a special excitement that both students and their families feel. When I entered my tawjihi year, my family began treating me as if I were their only son. They would stay awake late to make sure I had a quiet and comfortable space to study, and my mother would prepare my favorite meals every day. My siblings, too, kept the house unusually quiet and even spoke about me with pride to relatives, often saying things like, “Here’s our future doctor.” Along with this excitement and special treatment, there was pressure to do well on the test and the anxiety that pressure can create. The year normally ends with celebration as the results of the test are announced online.
In August 2023, I was full of hope for the future as I approached my tawjihi year. I dreamed of a high GPA, being admitted to a prestigious university abroad, and then going to medical school to achieve my dream of becoming a doctor. At the start of the school year, my day would begin with a warm family breakfast of cheese on toast (which I love) with a cup of tea lovingly prepared by my mother. After that, I would walk to school, watching the eagerness on the children’s faces to learn and laugh. The only thing I was afraid of was being late.
After school, I would sometimes walk with my best friend and desk mate, Yasser, to his house, where his mother would serve us her zaatar manakeesh—the beloved Palestinian flatbread topped with a fragrant mix of thyme, sumac and olive oil. Later, I,
along with Ihab, Suhaib and Yazan, my best friends since elementary school, would head to an air-conditioned, privately run educational center, where we sat in comfortable chairs and received private tutoring in mathematics. In the evening we would get together at each other’s homes to study. There were days when I saw them more than my own family.
Then the genocidal war began, and our schools and universities became our shelters. When we ran out of things to burn to cook our food, we burned some of our books. We had always looked to books and the knowledge they contained as our most effective weapons against the occupation. Now we needed them as fuel to cook our food and fill our empty stomachs. Then the home of my friend, Yasser, the place we used to escape to after school, was reduced to rubble. My biggest loss came on Nov. 19, 2023, when my friends Suhaib, Yazan and Ihab were martyred. Their murders left me in shock. I began to lose sight of who I was and who I dreamed of becoming. It felt as though the world had abandoned us.
But giving up is not an option for Gazans. My journey to prepare for the final exams now included trying to balance the hardships of war with the duties of studying for tawjihi. It became incredibly difficult to find a quiet place to study after we took in six families whose homes had been destroyed. Each night after everyone fell asleep, the wailing of warplanes and the bursts of gunfire became my study companions. With eyes burning from the dim light, I clung to the books we hadn’t burned for fuel, hoping they could shield me from the chaos outside.
The situation worsened when we were forced to flee our home and live in a tent in Rafah. The only things I could bring with me were the bare necessities—some clothes and bedding. I left behind not just my belongings but also my dream of graduating from high school and continuing my educational journey at a prestigious university.
At that time, I was thinking only about how I could avoid being killed in a random Israeli airstrike and continue to pursue my dream. Because I was no longer in school, I searched for people who could tutor me in subjects like math and physics. While I didn’t find tutors, I did find a makeshift school staffed by volunteers that had sprung up in our refugee camp. There were no comfortable padded chairs; we sat on the ground. There was no air-conditioning; our classroom was a humid and scorching hot tent. Despite the hardships, studying in this tent brought me back, even if just briefly, to the academic environment I craved. Learning alongside other students made the experience even more powerful. Being with other students who were also trying to study amidst the horror helped me understand that I was not alone.
Had Gaza not been under constant attack, the excitement of my last year in high school would have peaked on July 29, 2024, when I would have learned how well I did on my final exams. Instead of gathering with my friends and family around a computer to learn our scores as they were released on the internet, we huddled around a crackling fire, as though we had been thrown back to the Stone Age. The disappointment my friends and I felt that day remains etched in my memory. I could see the sorrow and frustration carved into their faces. It felt as though the sacrifices we had made, the effort we had exerted despite relentless bombings, hunger and exhaustion had, in the end, amounted to nothing. It was almost unbearable.
The fate of my generation, the generation of Gazans born in 2006, remains uncertain. As our world collapses, we exist in a space too small to hold our dreams. My dream was to study medicine and become a doctor. My friend Ihab, who was killed early on in the war, wanted to study computer science and become a programmer. Yazan’s dream was to travel the world. Instead, the world watched his death in silence. Other friends dreamed about living peacefully with their families. Instead of pursuing our dreams, we spend our days trying to avoid being killed by a bomb, missile, drone strike or sniper. Every day, our youth fades and our dreams slip further out of reach.
What pained me most was my inability to contribute to the portrait of resilience and resistance that Gaza’s educated elite were painting through their dedication and courage. Scenes of doctors battling against time and a lack of resources to save patients’ lives. Journalists risking their lives to document the crimes of the occupation. Engineers overcoming immense challenges to keep Gaza connected to the world so you could read my words now. I still dream of becoming a doctor and helping to rebuild the health system in Gaza. The war has not taken that from me. But it has made me and my generation less hopeful that we will ever be able to achieve our dreams. It killed my friend, Suhaib, who shared my ambition of becoming a doctor. It destroyed my friend Yasser’s home, shattering his dream of becoming a mechatronics engineer. Despite these losses, I refuse to let them define me. If I cannot be on the front lines saving lives or documenting history, I will use my voice to tell our story. ■
By Donya Abu Sitta
I WOKE UP PRECISELY at 5 a.m. to the sound of airplanes tearing through the silence of dawn. This sound has become my daily alarm, signaling the start of another day filled with anxiety. I crept into the kitchen and started washing the dishes with cold water. As the aroma of cardamom filled the air, I made two cups of tea in an attempt to add some warmth to this gloomy morning. I drank tea with my mother, whose eyes were so sorrowful they could drown a city, and then I dressed and walked the 30 minutes to the kindergarten in Hope neighborhood, in the center of Khan Yunis, where I saw streets lined with demolished homes and faces in need.
I welcomed my students, the first graders, with a smile I tried to make bright. How could they deserve all this suffering? The echo of their words on World Children’s Day, Nov. 20, 2024, still resonates in my ears.
Fouad holds the card reading “International Children’s Rights Day,” with Omar sitting on the chair in my classroom.
The Gaza Strip was groaning under the weight of famine, just like now. I wanted to paint some joy on their faces, so I planned a special day, and put them to work.
Each child brought whatever food they could from home to share in a communal Palestinian breakfast. We spread out the keffiyehs on the tables, placed thyme, a couple of rare tomatoes, za’atar, tea and bread (low-quality bread since flour was unavailable). The place was filled with the scent of the past, and the song “Salam to Gaza” played in the background, a melody that touched our hearts.
Donya Abu Sitta is a content writer and translator, studying the English language at Al‐Aqsa University. She has volunteered as a translator and writer for the Hult Prize, Youth Innovation Hub, Sci‐ence Tone, Eat Sulas and Electronic Intifada. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
My little ones were superheroes, racing to help. Saba, Judy, Suha and Noor arranged the chairs, while Yahya and Marwan returned to their houses near the kindergarten to bring the plates, and Yahya brought the teapot.
While I was tidying up the place, I overheard a conversation between Marwan, Ibrahim and Abdulaziz.
Marwan asked, “Did you go to Takiyya today?” Abdulaziz replied affirmatively, but Ibrahim asked in surprise, “Did the people of Takiyya cook today?” He was referring to an improvised soup kitchen that some people had set up.
They responded, “Yes, they cooked.”
I overheard him whisper, “I want to tell the teacher that I want to go get some food from Takiyya, and then I’ll come back to class to share it.”
I felt a shock that shook my being. How could I respond to this request? Should I let him go out when it is unsafe, or deny him this rare meal?
Endless questions gnawed at me, but Marwan and Abdulaziz saved me by saying, “They already served all the food they had.” I felt a pain crushing my heart and a sorrow for their stolen childhood. How can we celebrate World Children’s Day while their childhood is being stolen before our eyes?
In the corner of the classroom, Baraa and Youssef were standing, two brothers who fled from northern Gaza to Khan Yunis, then
Rafah, and then returned to Khan Yunis. The signs of exhaustion are etched on their small faces. Their mother told me earlier how they often stand for hours under the scorching sun, filling water jars for their family.
Baraa asks, “Youssef, did you bring drinking water today?”
“Yes, I brought it,” Youssef replies in a tired voice.
“Thank God, because I never got my turn,” adds Baraa, his eyes shining with a sad glimmer. Here, I feel the bitterness of injustice choking me. How are these children deprived of their most basic rights, even on World Children’s Day?
I invite them to sit down and eat, but before that, I ask my students to share their dreams with me, what they want to become when they grow up.
“I want to become an engineer,” says Rayan, his eyes glowing with enthusiasm, “to rebuild our homes that were destroyed by the occupation.” He draws me a blueprint of the home he had and explains how they will build a new house after the war, with his father, an engineer, helping him.
“I want to become a doctor,” says Zakaria, “to treat war casualties and not let there be a shortage of doctors during wars.”
“I want to become a teacher like my father,” says Iyad.
“I am a journalist like my father,” says Yahya, “to tell the world our stories and struggles.”
“I am a lawyer,” says Jude.
“I am a teacher,” says Suha.
“I am a painter,” Maryam says.
“I’m a doctor,” Youssef says.
Then it was Marwan’s turn, and he surprised us all by saying, “I want to be a bear! I love eating so much.”
The room erupted in laughter, our voices blending together, and we ate.
When we finished our meal, I gave each child a piece of paper with “Happy Children’s Day” written on it. Rayan’s mother had sent him with biscuits. We drank tea and sang. Each child expressed their dreams in a drawing. Boys drew footballs, dogs and toy cars; girls drew dolls, cats and flowers. I collected the drawings and kept them with me. We laughed a lot that day, and then we all went home, happy for the break from the misery of the ongoing war. ■
By Taqwa Al-Wawi
They brought back my appetite, my smile and a sense of reward that made everything worth the effort.
I remember that day so clearly—the last day of exams. I’d walk out of school feeling like I could breathe again. I’d go to the store near my school and I’d buy my favorite snacks: chips in every flavor, Doritos (especially the blue ones), Lays and, of course, Cheetos with their cheesy goodness. I’d also grab a pack of Mario chips for its unique taste, along with Stix and Pringles in all their colorful tubes—black, green, orange—I loved them all.
The spicier, the better. I loved the kick of chili flavor that made every bite feel like a celebration. I never forgot to get Indomie noodles too—the green pack was always my top pick, bold and delicious. And the red corn nuts, salty biscuits and crunchy snacks completed the ritual. I always lost my appetite during exam weeks. But that day it came back.
This wasn’t just about food.
My treats were about reclaiming some joy for myself after weeks of pressure. At home, I’d neatly line up all the snacks on my desk. Each had its place and my line-up was perfect. I’d open my phone and play an episode of “Detective Conan.” My ritual was like a
In a photo taken during the temporary ceasefire, the author rewards herself with treats after the end of her first year in university, which she completed online. Although the prices were high she couldn’t stop herself from buying snacks that had been unavailable.
SINCE I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, there have been certain moments I always waited for. These weren’t just breaks from school or short holidays—they were my sacred rituals. They came at the end of every exam period. These moments felt like a door opening into a world free from stress, pressure and exhaustion.
Taqwa Al‐Wawi is an aspiring writer and English literature student at the Islamic University of Gaza. Through her writing, she seeks to amplify the voice of Gaza and share its untold stories. Her work has been featured on Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Palestine Chron‐icle and We Are Not Numbers.
reset button. For those few hours, the outside world disappeared. I existed in a bubble of peace, happiness and childhood.
My friends and family would laugh when they saw me carrying bags full of snacks. “Looks like someone just finished her exams!” they’d say every time.
I never imagined that the day would come when my little tradition would be impossible.
The war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, was the hardest I’ve ever lived through—and I’ve lived through so many. Even the wars I was too young to remember, even the war when I was just 2 years old. But this one? This war stole something different. It stole food.
It brought hunger. Famine. Skyrocketing prices. During the early days of the war, snacks were still on the shelves. We still had food. But not for long. Suddenly, the stores were empty, and the streets were full of people trying to survive.
I tried to hold onto my ritual. At the end of the first semester in my first year of university—yes, even in the middle of war—I told myself: You deserve this. My brother Mo’men accompanied me, and I bought whatever was left. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t care.
After the second semester, during a short truce, I went out again. This time, the shelves were almost full, though the prices were absurd. I bought everything I could, even full boxes of snacks. My friends jokingly called me “the rich girl.” No one realized how much I was willing to pay to keep my celebration ritual alive.
But then came the summer semester— everything was gone. No snacks. No Indomie. No chips. No juice. Nothing.
When I finished the semester, I asked my brother if he would take me to the shops. He looked at me with a quiet sadness and said, “There’s nothing in the stores.” For the first time ever I couldn't perform my ritual. Not because I didn’t have the money, but because there was nothing to buy.
I’m 19 years old now, but I have never grown out of my cherished tradition. I don’t want to. To others, it may seem silly—I’m only buying chips and snacks. But to me, it’s a sacred reward for working hard.
The grief that hit me was more than just missing my snacks. It was more than simply about losing my ritual and the comfort it brought me. I sat in my room thinking: What kind of world fails to provide its people with basic food? What kind of world lets children go hungry? This world has let us down. It has taken away even our smallest joys.
Famine has taken over our daily lives. If you walk the streets, you’ll see children playing—but look into their eyes, and you’ll see pain. Hunger. Grief. I saw a boy, no older than 6 years old, walking with his mother past a small shop which miraculously had a little food. He was staring at a bag of chips that cost 10 shekels ($2.72)—before the war it was half a shekel (14 cents). His mother tried to calm him: “I’ll buy it for you when it’s cheaper.” He didn’t understand politics. But he understood hunger. He understood what it meant to lose something you love—even if it’s just a snack.
Children have been robbed of their childhood. Parents have nothing to offer. Families live on a single meal a day—or nothing but water. If you’re lucky, you get bread. That’s it. One family might manage to eat, but the one next door might go to sleep hungry again. Every household in Gaza carries its own story of suffering.
We hope that this nightmare will end. That we’ll wake up and the shelves will be full again. That no child will stare hungrily at a bag of chips. That no mother will have to say “not today.”
But let the world remember—it failed us.
It stood by as Gaza starved. As children died. People still call us “heroes.” But let me say this: we didn’t choose to be heroes. We were forced to be. We are still human. We still crave normalcy,
peace and dignity.
What’s the difference between a child in Gaza and a child anywhere else?
Nothing—except that we were born here. And for that, we suffer. We are still here. But we will never forget—we endure, we resist, we rise. ■
By Sara H. Awad
“SINCE THAT DAY, I knew that I would never see my prosthesis or my wheelchair again,” my aunt’s husband said through his tears. Uncle Khaled Shaqoura, 56, was referring to Nov. 5, 2024, when he and his family were forced to flee from their home in the Jabaliya refugee camp and he was arrested at a checkpoint by the Israeli army. He was imprisoned for five months in very harsh conditions.
Sara H. Awad is an English literature student with a passion for lit‐erature and everything related to it. In addition to studying, she en‐joys writing, painting, photographing and volunteering with local charities. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a pro‐ject to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
him to run around his tiny cell for 10 minutes at a time without any breaks. Predictably, his abuse brought more serious health risks. A clot developed in his good leg, and so then he was suffering in both legs.
Equally predictable was the indifference shown by his Israeli jailers when he was released and needed assistance to return home. “No one provided for any medical assistance for me,” Uncle Khaled told me. I was astonished and saddened to learn how hard he tried to obtain medical assistance for his many difficult and dangerous health conditions, only to be met with complete indifference by the Israelis working in the prison.
Uncle Khaled’s left leg had been amputated in 2004 after an Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip. He was able to get a prosthesis and resume a normal life. Until the day of his arrest, he had been completely independent, able to do whatever he needed to. As an amputee, he had expected to cross the Israeli checkpoint in his wheelchair. For no reason, Israeli soldiers confiscated the prosthesis for his leg, as well as his wheelchair and even his glasses. He had also suffered from blockage in the mesh vessels in his right eye, which regulate blood pressure in the eye. The Israeli soldiers ignored all these health issues.
Like the majority of Gazan prisoners, Uncle Khaled was transferred from one Israeli secret torture camp to another and beaten several times by his jailers. He was first detained in Sde Teiman jail in the Negev desert near the border with Gaza, “the worst prison I’ve ever been in.” Soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed the prisoners the entire time. They received a pittance of food and were allowed only one shower a month. Talking with other prisoners was a punishable crime. They experienced constant psychological and physical torture.
“I ask for a chair to sit down, so they give me a slap on my face instead,” Uncle Khaled told me. Even the prisoners’ sleep was under attack. Prisoners were only permitted five hours of sleep per day, from midnight to 5 a.m. The jailers told them, “If you sleep more than that, you will be punished by not being allowed to sleep at all.” He still has anxiety about falling asleep.
Uncle Khaled asked for a doctor to check his leg after it continued bleeding for a couple of hours, but the jailers refused his request. Indeed, they treated him worse than before. They forced
But if the guards refused to help, many imprisoned Gazans stepped up to help him take care of his basic needs, even though they were suffering in the same conditions.
Uncle Khaled spent 10 days on the ground without clothes or blankets; soldiers kept him blindfolded and handcuffed during that time. As a man who lost one leg and was suffering pain in his other leg, a man who could not see without his glasses, Khaled asked the soldiers politely if he could open his eyes, but of course they rudely refused even this simple request.
Israel uses mental anguish as a weapon against all Palestinian prisoners. Fortunately, my uncle understood that and was able to separate himself from the poison in the abusers’ souls. “I was completely aware that one day I would be free from this hell; I felt reassured knowing I would see my big family soon.”
But he was anxious about them, too. Uncle Khaled was constantly worrying about how they were going to get through the ongoing war. He was particularly concerned about Mohammed, his firstborn and only son. He said, “My lovely wife was in my heart and soul all the time.”
I can understand that. My aunt is the most loyal wife I have ever seen in my entire life. She was praying for him every day.
After five months behind bars, he was finally released.
When he learned that he would be released, he was excited, expecting to finally be able to walk with his prosthesis and be reunited with his family. But the Israeli army opted to steal it, telling him: “Khaled, there’s no prosthesis anymore.”
Uncle Khaled’s life was turned upside down by the theft of the medical equipment he requires. He has had to go back to square one, asking for a new prosthesis and a new wheelchair, just to be able to move about independently again. ■
By Mariam Mushtaha
IN GAZA, JOURNALISM may cost you your life, the lives of those dearest to you, or your ability to ever hold a camera again.
The story of Wael Al-Dahdouh, who began reporting for Al Jazeera in 2004 and became Gaza bureau chief, is one example of the relentless brutality the occupation inflicts on Gazan journalists and their families.
In the early days of the war, his family fled their home in Tal AlHawa as they had done during previous Israeli attacks, fully aware that at any moment they could be targeted.
Wael Al-Dahdouh was completely committed to his work. “We barely saw him,” my friend Batoul, his daughter, told me. His son, Hamza, also a journalist, had been covering events in southern Gaza since the war began.
Wael’s family received persistent threats from the Israeli occu-
Mariam Mushtaha is a second‐year student at the Islamic University of Gaza, majoring in English translation. She hopes to become a professional writer and a voice for the Gazan people. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
pation, telling them to move south. After many warnings, they made the journey to the Nuseirat refugee camp on Oct. 13, 2023, seeking shelter at a relative’s home. A total of 45 members of the Al-Dahdouh family sheltered in the house, including Wael’s wife Amna and his children, Batoul, Sondos, Mahmoud, Sham, Kholoud and Yahya. Wael, however, remained in the north to continue his reporting.
On the evening of Oct. 25, we received the devastating news that the house sheltering the Al-Dahdouh family had been bombed, leaving most of them trapped. Overcome with shock and disbelief, I thought of Wael’s daughters, my friends for many years.
Civil Defense crews worked for hours to rescue them, eventually pulling out everyone except Batoul and her cousin. With no more sounds heard beneath the rubble, it was thought they had been martyred. “I was so incredibly thirsty that I could not even get a word out,” Batoul later told me. Her cousin’s scream alerted rescuers to their location.
Fifteen members of the Al-Dahdouh family were martyred in the strike. Many others were left wounded. It was a big story, and Wael was covering it. He arrived at the hospital to face a horrifying reality.
His wife, Amna, 15-year-old son, Mahmoud, 7-year-old daughter, Sham, and 18-month-old grandson, Adam, had all been martyred. Separated from his family since the war began, he had no chance to say goodbye or tell them once more just how much he loved them.
Following the attack on Oct. 26, Batoul and her siblings made the decision to return to the north, seeking shelter at the home of their cousin Hamdan, a photographer working for Al Jazeera.
In the early hours of the morning, Sondos received a call from Israeli intelligence. “They threatened us again, warning that if we did not evacuate to the south, we would be killed,” she later told me.
Shaken by the threat, she and her siblings spent the day at the nearby Al-Shifa Hospital. After a few days, they moved to their father’s office in Al-Tabba Tower. Kholoud said, “We told him, if we die, we want to die together.”
By Nov. 11, snipers were positioned on nearly every tower in the area. They requested an ambulance to evacuate, but with the Israel air force mercilessly attacking emergency services workers, this was too risky.
Sondos suggested heading south on foot. By then, the Netzarim Corridor had been imposed and moving to the south required a lot of luck. In the end, they were able to cross the corridor and reached Al-Aqsa Hospital, where they lived in a tent for over a month. “After the bombing, the thought of staying inside a building terrified us,” Batoul explained. From Al-Aqsa, the family moved through Gaza City to central Gaza, and ultimately to Rafah, where they found shelter in the home of the friend of their brother Hamza.
With no food, medical supplies or safe shelter, Al Jazeera instructed Wael to evacuate to the south via ambulance.
On Dec. 15, Yahya was watching Al Jazeera when he suddenly cried out, “My dad is hurt!” He had just seen news of his father, Wael, and journalist Samer Abu Daqqa, 45, being attacked while reporting near a school in Khan Yunis. Wael was injured in the arm; Samer was critically wounded. Israeli tanks surrounded the area, blocking ambulances from reaching him. Samer bled to death.
Wael paid little attention to his own injury. Seeing Samer die in front of him was much more painful. Samer was not just a colleague; he was like a brother.
Just weeks later, on Jan. 7, 2024, a powerful strike hit near the house sheltering the Al-Dahdouh family. They rushed to the rooftop to see the target of the shelling, but they had no idea who had been targeted until a young child approached them and said, “Hamza is in there.”
In Wael's absence, their brother Hamza was like a father to them. Now, Batoul recalls, “we only managed to hold his hand. His face was unrecognizable.”
“If you want me to feel at peace, then please leave,” Wael urged his family. Though it was a difficult decision, it was the only choice left in such unbearable circumstances. Having lost so much and believing that remaining in Gaza would only bring more pain, the family traveled to Qatar. Wael joined them some time later to receive medical care for his wounded arm.
Wael's decision to leave was not an easy one. He wanted to continue to report on conditions in Gaza but could not allow his remaining family members to stay in danger.
Wael Al-Dahdouh’s story exposes the cruelty of the occupation and its deliberate strategy of targeting and silencing journalists and their families. What they fail to realize is the truth cannot be buried as long as someone is alive— even if it is the last child in Gaza. ■
By Delinda C. Hanley
THE WASHINGTON REPORT was founded by U.S. diplomats who had spent their careers making friends for the United States. Ambassador Andy Killgore charmed everyone with his “only-in-America” origin story. He grew up on an Alabama farm, joined the U.S. Navy after working his way through college, married a World War II widow with two children, graduated from law school, learned Arabic and rose in the diplomatic corps to become an ambassador. Richard Curtiss rushed through high school to join the U.S. Army to fight the
Nazis and stayed in Germany to work for peace and reconciliation. He spent the next 30 years telling the American story abroad. At the United States Information Agency (USIA) he worked with journalists and students, helped to open or fill libraries and cultural centers and designed programs to showcase American society and culture. Before he retired, he worked for Voice of America (VOA), which in those days broadcast well-respected news and programs. Both our magazine founders, as well as their entire generation of earnest civil servants, would be crushed to see how their work building understanding and lasting friendships for the U.S. around the globe has unraveled over the past decades.
For more than 80 years, VOA and its related outlets, now overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), delivered news to more than 427 million people every week in 49 languages around the world. Since 1999, each U.S. administration made changes usually based on domestic politics. Over the years VOA survived staff cuts, board changes, mergers, reorganizations and reductions in programming, including replacing VOA Arabic with Radio Sawa, sometimes dominated by pop music. President Donald Trump called VOA the “voice of radical America” and issued an executive order in March to dismantle it, sending home 1,300 workers and forcing it off the air. The
broadcaster’s journalists then sued, saying Trump was not authorized to withdraw funding that had been approved by Congress. The court decided VOA could resume broadcasting and on May 6, former Fox News anchor Kari Lake— charged by Trump to overhaul VOA—decided to replace its programming with feeds from One American News (OAN), a far-right, pro-Trump media network. Grant Turner, who served as chief executive of USAGM during the first Trump administration, noted that adding OAN content would violate a statutory requirement that the broadcaster be “accurate, objective and comprehensive.” Foreign audiences will probably just turn their dial.
This administration has also decimated the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), established in 1961, which is responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. Trump’s executive order, signed as soon as he took office, directed a near-total freeze on foreign aid. In February, USAID employees were fired or placed on administrative leave and were given 15 minutes to pack up their belongings and clear out their offices. The vast majority of remaining USAID employees have been notified they will be fired by June or September, as part of a reduction in force, and the State Department is supposed to absorb the rest. Cutting aid will devastate people in need overseas, but gutting USAID has also threatened the livelihoods of U.S. farmers. They supplied more than $2.1 billion of agricultural products a year, 41 percent of the food aid distributed by the agency.
On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order halting most refugee admissions from countries afflicted by war and famine. The processing and vetting of refugees in the U.S. often take months, even years and about 12,000 already approved refugees are now in limbo, waiting for entry. He also
ended services for refugees already in the U.S., canceling contracts with refugee resettlement programs.
Presumably encouraged by South African immigrant Elon Musk, the Trump administration prioritized immigration for white South Africans, claiming they faced anti-white discrimination. A plane carrying 59 landed in the U.S. on May 11. Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church Sean Rowe said, “It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years....I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country.” He refused to help resettle the South Africans, citing the church’s longstanding “commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.”
For years, U.S. colleges and universities have attracted the best and brightest international students who usually paid full tuition. As the Trump administration attacks U.S. universities, deports students, revokes visas and demands schools hand over lists of foreign students, both students and professors are choosing to go to friendlier countries.
Their loss is hurting schools and the U.S. economy. During the 2023-24 academic year, more than 1.1 million international students pumped nearly $44 billion into the U.S. economy, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators.
Leaders in higher education fear that decreases in international enrollment will deter the world’s top minds from studying in the U.S. Suzanne Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, told The New York Times the chaos of visa terminations had fueled concerns among many students. “I think it sends a powerful signal to friends and family at home that the U.S. is not a safe place to be anymore.”
Boston College Professor Chris R. Glass warned that the number of international students could fall below 1 million for the first time since the 2014-15 academic year.
International student enrollments have dropped 11 percent since March 2024, but that decline started during the Biden administration when students and teachers protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza faced punishment for expressing their political views, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment. According to The New York Times, the Trump administration has canceled more than 1,500 visas at 222 schools nationwide, and immigration agents have detained and deported students and researchers, with estimates ranging from hundreds to thousands.
The United States could lose some $12.5 billion in revenue from international tourists this year, a tourism industry group reported in May 2025. The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) said the U.S. is the only country expected to see a drop in spending from foreign tourists this year.
“While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign,” according to WTTC president Julia Simpson. Foreign travelers spend an average of $4,000 per trip. Divisive and combative rhetoric, reports of tourist detentions at the border, deportations and tariffs are causing visitors to feel unwelcome or unsafe. Many are reluctant to support the economy of a country that is waging trade wars, destabilizing its allies and funding genocide in Palestine.
Before Trump’s second term, travel to the U.S. was finally rebounding to pre-pandemic levels as visitors leaned into “revenge travel.” The U.S. Travel Association estimated that travel injected $1.3 trillion into the U.S. economy and supported 15 million jobs last year. This year, businesspeople and even people with family in the U.S. are cancelling trips.
Shutting down agencies that strengthened international relationships is unraveling generations of work abroad and coming at a terrible economic cost at home. ■
By Hajira Asghar
IF THERE was ever a word to define the current political state in America, it would be technocracy. Describing a system of government controlled by an elite group of technically skilled individuals, it’s easy to see why the term has been used to describe the overwhelming influence Silicon Valley billionaires seem to occupy within the current administration. Departing from Joe Biden’s more aggressive antitrust efforts, which sought to weaken companies like Amazon and Google, Donald Trump has seemingly embraced Big Tech with open arms.
Notable attendants of his inauguration included Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and of course, Elon Musk, who contributed an eye-popping $288 million to Trump’s re-election efforts. Under the flag of “Dark MAGA,” Musk has proudly become the face of the recent Department of Government Efficiency initiative, sparking controversy and drawing ire from mainstream liberal media. It is no surprise that SpaceX, Musk’s airspace company, is now being floated to develop a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield modeled after the Israeli Iron Dome defense system. While it may seem like a simple case of quid pro quo in the form of contract kickbacks for
wealthy CEOs in return for their sizable political contributions, the reality is much more complex.
As U.S. capacity to export consumer goods wanes in the face of competitors like China, the pivot to evergreen industries like weapons manufacturing has been sizable. In the last 10 years alone, U.S. arms exports have surged over 20 percent, and in face of rising global tensions on multiple fronts, this only stands to increase. While Silicon Valley races to integrate rapidly developing technology like artificial intelligence (AI) into weapons capabilities, this marriage between Big Tech and the military-industrial complex is not unique to the Trump era; it is the continuation of complex machinations put into play during the War on Terror, now reaching a crescendo with the genocide in Gaza and looming potential of widescale war across the Middle East. It’s important to recognize how the ideological motivations behind these technocratic players shape the geopolitical landscape we find ourselves in today and what this means for those who dare to challenge the status quo.
While his attention-seeking appearances at Trump’s side most publicly display this alliance between Big Tech and Washington, Musk is not the only billionaire leveraging influence within the current administration. He, along with the newly appointed czar of AI and Cryptocurrency, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel, venture capitalist and
mentor of J.D. Vance, belong to an elite circle known as the Paypal Mafia. This group refers to the early founders and employees of the widely successful digital payment platform. After the company’s sale in 2002, the Paypal Mafia would go on to become titans in the tech industry as CEOs, shareholders and angel investors, allowing them to carve out their domain in Silicon Valley and eventually in Washington, DC.
While Musk and Thiel have self-described as conservative libertarians in the past, a more fitting label for the ideology behind these Paypal Mafia dons would be accelerationism. Proponents of accelerationism favor the advancement of technological solutions to any and all social, political and economic problems. They support the rapid and unfettered development of both capitalism and technology in tandem, allowing the digital realm to imbed itself into the very fabric of human existence. Monopolies are welcomed and social welfare is discouraged as a roadblock to progress.
While these values conflict with traditional bipartisan political dogma, accelerationism has been successful at balancing favor across administrations through providing essential services in the one arena few politicians ever dare to limit or critique: defense.
As America launched its War on Terror following the attacks on 9/ 11, Peter Thiel successfully ingratiated himself in the national security state through the creation of Palantir, otherwise known as the greatest case study of technocracy in action. Named after the magical orb in The Lord of the Rings trilogy which allowed the holder to covertly observe events past, present and future, Palantir was created as the digital manifes-
tation of this fantastical desire to see and know all. In short, it operates as database software that processes and organizes immense amounts of raw data to predict events and produce a succinct tapestry of connections for the benefit of its clients.
With the power of AI, genocide has never been easier.
With heavy investments from In-Q-Tel, the venture-capital wing of the CIA, Palantir enabled the U.S. government to easily wade through the vast trove of surveillance data it had harvested from unsuspecting Americans through the sweeping powers of the Patriot Act. During its wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon heavily relied on Palantir systems for battlefield reconnaissance, target identification and operation planning. Palantir has since grown in scope and size since its early days working almost exclusively for the U.S. Defense sector, and now lends its vast services to companies across the S&P 500, as well as a number of U.S.-allied foreign governments engaged in active conflict, where it
has seemingly found its niche.
In a truly enlightening op-ed in The New York Times (July 25, 2023) titled “Our Oppenheimer Moment: The Creation of AI Weapons,” current CEO of Palantir Alex Karp openly proclaimed support for harnessing the power of technology in the fight to defend Western civilization and rebuffed hesitancy on the grounds of ethical concerns as folly. According to Karp, “the ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.”
In Gaza, this hard power has enabled the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to automate its genocide against Palestinians. As reported in +972 Magazine, whistleblowers revealed the process through which data processing software like Palantir’s transformed the IOF Unit 8200’s surveillance operations into a streamlined killing machine. The AI system helped Israel convert troves of surveillance data on Palestinians into a spurious web of more than 37,000 targets in the weeks following Oct. 7 alone. These kill lists encompassed journalists, municipality workers, medics, university professors and even underage teens. Entire sectors of society had been swiftly and
methodically dehumanized and designated worthy of death, establishing the groundwork for the genocide to come.
Other software like “Where’s Daddy?” further enabled the IOF to track a designated target’s location, allowing them to strike at the precise moment they entered their homes where they would join their wives, kids and extended family. This explains why, despite the marketed power of these softwares to generate, track and target with ostensible precision, over 80 percent of casualties in Gaza have been women and children.
Under the cover of these technologies, the IOF has been able to offload the manual and mental burden that comes with killing more than 52,000 people in less than 18 months. With the power of AI, genocide has never been easier. As dystopian and inhumane as it may sound, this is the future that technocrats have dreamt of. In the course of this ongoing genocide, Israel has successfully applied a technological solution to its Palestinian problem in Gaza. Not only have these technologies produced great success in streamlining the IOF’s goals, defense startups like Anduril and Palantir are
now able to market their innovations on the global weapons market as “battle tested.”
In December 2024, the first ever DefenseTech summit kicked off in Tel Aviv. Venture capitalists, military officers and weapons manufacturers alike gathered to eagerly discuss the future of war in a new digital age, undeterred by the growing calls for Israel’s prosecution in international courts and the cries of Gazans just 70 kilometers (43 miles) away.
AI has already changed the ways in which we communicate, create and organize information despite the technology only being in its infancy. Left in the hands of accelerationists, we can only expect these technologies to take more pernicious and destructive forms. It becomes imperative for any advocate for peace to recognize the role of Big Tech in operationalizing these new developments in advancement of their ideological drive for control instead of the advancement of human progress.
Put simply, AI is not the problem. Technocracy is.
As we sharpen our analysis on the changing global political landscape, it be-
comes imperative to consider the role that figures like Peter Thiel play in making the world a darker place, not because they exist as singularly and uniquely evil forces pulling the strings behind the U.S. government, but because they fulfill a critical function in the longstanding imperialist drive toward domination through force, a model so successful that it now exists as a commodity for export. So long as war remains the existential mainstay of U.S. politics, opportunists will invariably emerge to take advantage of these circumstances. By challenging the underlying assumption that Western society must be preserved against its perceived enemies at any and all costs, the potential exists to channel technological innovation toward liberatory and humanitarian objectives and away from Orwellian surveillance and weaponry systems. Just as the technocratic elite have modeled a world in their image, so too can the oppressed peoples of the world in their fight for justice and liberation. ■
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By Ian Williams
A month after the Signalgate scandal, when Mike Waltz used the Signal messaging app for a group chat to discuss attacking Yemen, a photo captured him using TeleMessage, a Signal clone, during a Cabinet meeting on April 30, 2025. TeleMessage is an Israeli‐founded platform, which suffered a massive hack on May 5.
MICHAEL WALTZ was thrown overboard as national security adviser while being offered a leaky lifeboat, demotion to U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N. The “permanent” thing is at the whim of the increasingly erratic president, who had just contrived to ditch his previous unqualified nominee, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), before she presented her credentials.
The proximate cause of Waltz’s demotion was his use of the Signal platform to share classified information. The focus of this story illustrates successful use of the tactic “flooding the zone”: The medium completely camouflages the actual message. These people were discussing war crimes against Yemen on
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of U.N.told: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).
an insecure channel, but they are pilloried only because they were indiscreet about it, not because they were plotting to attack a country with which the United States was not at war. It is alleged that rather than the Signal fiasco, his real crime was his attitude to Iran, where President Trump has had the temerity to disagree with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Since Waltz’s offense was using insecure communications, he should fit right in at the U.N. It is fortunate that the U.N. has few secrets to keep and is not very good at keeping them. The fearless Middle East hostage negotiator, Giandomenico Picco, who sadly died a year ago, resigned from the U.N. in 1992 when jealous rivals persuaded then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali that Picco should ask permission and file his travel plans for secret hostage negotiations through the U.N. Secretariat.
When he spoke to me before he left, just after negotiating the release of half a dozen hostages, Picco complained correctly that it would be tantamount to informing the world’s intelligence services (and thus every one of the numerous hostile hostage takers) where and when to take him out as he travelled into war zones.
When the more urbane Kofi Annan was warned that British intelligence services were spying on him for their U.S. counterparts, who in those far off days were inhibited from surveillance in New York, he drew some comfort that they still felt the United Nations and its Secretary General were important enough to snoop on. One cannot be sure that this is the case with the current U.S. administration, which shows only a tenuous respect for U.S. law, let alone the international order.
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Waltz’s nomination raises several questions: will he actually survive the confirmation process and then, will it make any difference? Waltz has a record of offering his own (albeit often erroneous) advice rather than anticipating what he thinks Trump and his minions want to hear. He has not taken part in what his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, called the “competitive sycophancy” of Trump’s usual incestuously malicious coteries.
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fanik, who had previously also been expediently thrown overboard by Trump.
The irrationality of her anti-U.N. and proZionist rants were hard to overlook; the more sophisticated Waltz sugars the pill, encouraging U.N. delegates to consider the U.S. a rational actor.
From Trump’s point of view, the U.N. posting is a way to defenestrate Waltz humanely with a gentle demotion that carries the bonus risk that the Senate could refuse to confirm him, thus exonerating the president from the accusation of cavalier disloyalty to a good and faithful servant. If confirmed, Waltz could be worse for the world and the organization than his putative predecessor, Elise Ste-
His predecessor, John Bolton, recently summarized Trump’s approach succinctly and accurately in Le Monde : “Trump does not concern himself with political philosophy, grand strategy, or even ‘policy’ as we usually understand the term. His world consists of transactions, one after another, with no connection or relation between them, implemented as if the consequences of one such transaction would not affect the
The erraticism of the last few weeks epitomizes this approach. To bomb or not to bomb the Houthis or Iran? To tariff foreign-made films or not? (Did someone tell him that James Bond was a British production?) To annex Canada or not? We are perhaps lucky that he does not have a favorite horse he is grooming for a Senate seat—but watch this stall. As part of the caprice, he did seem to refuse to support Netanyahu’s Gaza push. Whether he would actively oppose is another question— but his nonideological approach suggests that he would use the U.N. if he chose to do so.
Now some officials and delegates are sycophantically calling for a purge of the U.N. system like that exercised by the South African emigré Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) youngsters, reckless and indifferent to the chaos and partisan malice they leave in their wake. Regardless of which strategic tack Trump takes, this is no way to run an international organization.
Through the decades I have reported on the U.N., the constant and consistent refrain from the U.S. has been the alleged need for reform to overcome “waste, mismanagement and corruption.” It has to be said, there is a lot of it about—but much less so than the U.S. Department of Defense or New York City government. By remarkable, but hardly unexpected, coincidence, most of the would-be reformers wanted to shape, or rather stifle, the discourse about Israel
(and lest we forget, originally Apartheid South Africa) and to rewrite international law in ways that shielded the guilty. It did not matter (and still does not matter) to the “reformers” that doing so entailed the dilution of the whole apparatus of international law and its monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, which initially focused on issues like the “Zionism is Racism” resolution and commemoration of Palestine to expand to almost any related issues. In this, far too many allegedly liberal Democrats became accomplices in a return to the Goldwater isolationism of the 1930s in a long war of attrition against the United Nations as a concept and international law as a practice. This benighted exercise in bipartisanship has united allegedly globalist, self-proclaimed liberal progressive Democrats with isolationists in discounting international law and international human rights mechanisms, simply because they hold Israel to standards it rejects.
The effect, as Faisal Kutty demonstrates on pp. 30-32, is to blunt the sword of justice. So U.S. politicians who deplore moves against their own independent judiciary are happy to bay along with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) against U.N. tribunal judges who
deal with charges against Israel and Israelis, threatening deportations and exclusions against U.N. and International Court staffs regardless of international conventions.
The U.N. Charter and the organization itself suffered from an early breach of principle. Originally it was only open to “peace-loving nations,” roughly deemed to mean the allies in World War II who were known as the United Nations before the Charter was finalized and the U.N. Organization was set up. (In fact, the United Nations Correspondents’ Association has records of meetings going back to 1943, since the military diplomatic alliance had a press office in New York. After the Charter was drafted, the League of Nations in Geneva gently morphed into the U.N.)
Ireland and Spain were kept out for the first decade because of their perceived ambivalence about the Axis powers, but their later acceptance augmented a developing principle of universal membership, which was challenged rather than overturned by the China syndrome. In those days there was no argument that China was entitled to membership—but considerable confusion about which government represented the country.
That is the background to how the members have incrementally enhanced Palestine’s status as a member state, currently sitting it in the General Assembly Hall between Sri Lanka and Sudan. The U.N. Secretariat has responded to a nomination from the Arab Group that Palestine is entitled to run for the prestigious Presidency of the General Assembly in two years. The usual suspects from the pro-Israeli press have already begun to militate against it, which would usually entail whipping in the cohorts of AIPAC beneficiaries to threaten U.N. funding.
But in this state of quantum indeterminacy for Washington foreign policy, no one can tell which way Trump will jump, not least with advisers like Musk whose history of Nazi salutes suggests an expedient support for Zionism rather than a deep emotional tie.
Caprice as much as calculation characterize Trump’s foreign policy. Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both shown that they can trigger unpredictable reactions from Trump, while the cowed cabinet is hardly likely to provide any intellectual ballast.
In the meantime, the people of Gaza suffer—and the West gives Netanyahu whatever he wants. ■
By Ahmad Halima
The Hind Rajab Foundation filed a legal complaint in Brazil against Yuval Vagdani, who planted explosives and then filmed and cheered home demolitions in Gaza, vowing to destroy Gaza “to its foundations.” The Israeli minister of foreign affairs facilitated Vagdani’s escape to Argentina during his holiday in Brazil.
A LEGAL NONPROFIT consisting of hundreds of volunteers and lawyers around the world is trying to bring accountability for Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Attempting to shatter decades of Israeli impunity, the Hind Rajab Foundation's (HRF) work is forcing Israeli suspects of war crimes and genocidal actions to make a U-turn after touchdown on their overseas holiday destinations. The HRF, which is entirely funded through donations from the public, informs local authorities of suspects’ presence on their soil, provides critical evidence and legal analysis and urges prosecutors to open an investigation.
Founded in September 2024, the nonprofit is named after Hind Rajab, the 5-year-old Palestinian girl who Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza on Jan. 29, 2024, alongside her four cousins, aunt and uncle, and the two paramedics who came to her rescue. Forensic investigations found that the tank had fired 335 bullets at Hind and her family.
A year later, the Palestinian Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, played a recording at the U.N. Security Council of Hind’s phone call to the emergency services. In the call, she pleads for help and says that her six family members in
Ahmad Halima is a Middle East and North Africa analyst and freelance reporter. He is Dutch‐Palestinian and is usually based in the Netherlands. He holds an MA in International Affairs from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
the car have been killed by the Israeli tank nearby. Meanwhile, Israel’s permanent representative flipped through the papers in front of him. The entire Israeli delegation averted their gaze.
The HRF aims to bring justice to Hind and “all the victims of the Gaza Genocide.” The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, has described the foundation as “brilliant for many reasons” including its lack of “a political manifesto.” HRF’s mission is legal, with the goal “to break the cycle of Israeli impunity,” or in the words of Albanese: “Bring to justice those who have committed crimes, full stop.”
The HRF collects and analyzes open-source evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, mainly posted by both former and active soldiers on social media. Its team of lawyers carefully examine photos and videos, identify perpetrators, and submit this documentation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) or to the prosecutors in relevant countries.
As of April 2025, the foundation has active cases in 25 countries, including the United States. In April 2025, it filed a case with the Department of Justice and Homeland Security Investigations against Yuval Shatel, a sergeant who was part of an “elite Israeli military unit” in Gaza, according to the HRF. After the organization became aware of his presence on U.S. soil, in Texas, it called for Shatel’s immediate arrest and prosecution under U.S. federal law, accusing him of war crimes, conspiracy and genocide.
The case consists of around 200 pages, with evidence and legal analysis. One video clearly shows Shatel as he is tightly gripping a detonator and blows up a civilian apartment block with the press of a button, from inside an Israeli military vehicle. The momentary sound of explosives is audible before the apartment block collapses to the ground. As the smoke rises and fills the screen, Shatel is seen laughing.
Shatel published the incriminating footage on his own Instagram page in March 2024—as hundreds of Israeli soldiers have done, not expecting repercussions. It is the mission of Lebanese-Belgian activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the HRF, to bring accountability to Israeli war criminals. He told the Washington Report: “You cannot go kill people, massacre people, destroy neighborhoods, destroy homes for fun, and laugh about it and dedicate it to your girlfriend and think you can just go to Fort Worth, Texas, and sit in a café, and sit there without looking over your shoulder. You might get arrested…We’re asking the authorities to arrest you.”
Abou Jahjah is cautiously hopeful that his organization’s efforts will lead to the prosecution of Israeli individuals suspected of committing war crimes in Gaza—including in countries where proIsrael government policies and crackdowns on anti-genocide protests prevail—because such proceedings are, in his view, fundamentally judicial matters. These decisions ultimately depend on prosecutors and judges, and how they interpret the law—not on political alignments or government policy, according to Abou Jahjah. “Countries that are serious about the law are serious about the separation of powers,” he says. These cases serve as a litmus test for the strength of judicial independence and the rule of law. The HRF’s evidence collection is not limited to perpetrators’ social media pages. To strengthen their cases, the foundation identifies victims and witnesses on the ground in Gaza. A “delicate” matter, Abou Jahjah says; “our first
priority is to protect the people and not to put them in harm’s way...We don’t want their names leaked to the Israelis, because they are vindictive.”
The Israeli government is taking the work of the HRF seriously and “they’re getting nervous about it,” according to Abou Jahjah. During his visit to the UK, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar sought to end his visit early when it became clear that the HRF was seeking an arrest warrant in London; the UK Foreign Minister reassured him, and he did not change his schedule. The legal filing against Sa’ar pertains to Israel’s siege of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, where medical staff and patients were attacked and the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was abducted and tortured by the Israeli Occupation Forces. He remains in a torture camp.
eral Court instructed the Federal Police to investigate the file, “making Brazil the first Rome Statute signatory state to enforce provisions without relying on the International Criminal Court,” the HRF notes on its website.
International law is largely customary; it relies on consistent state practice and is evolving. In the UK, the challenge was to get an arrest warrant for an active government minister, who enjoys diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention. The HRF attempted to challenge Sa’ar’s immunity by “reinterpreting the law” when it comes to war crimes and genocide and thus “breaking new terrain for accountability,” Abou Jahjah says.
In the case against Yuval Vagdani in Brazil, Abou Jahjah hoped that the judge would examine the evidence—which consisted of video footage, geolocation data and photographs of Vagdani planting explosives for the mass destruction of civilian property and infrastructure and cheering at the destruction—and “re-articulate the law, based on the weight of the file.”
“This is exactly what happened,” Abou Jahjah says, “this was a breakthrough.” Vagdani fled Brazil with the help of the Israeli Embassy because the Brazilian Fed-
When it comes to Israelis who are dual citizens, “the choice is clear,” said Abou Jahjah, because the HRF can bring the case to the attention of the prosecutor of the second country of which the suspect holds citizenship. It is more challenging when a case is brought against a nondual citizen. When the HRF has evidence against an Israeli citizen and does not know whether he or she has a second nationality, “then we need another connection with the jurisdiction, which is their presence on the territory of the country.”
The HRF has done this, making use of the universal jurisdiction principle in international law, which means that states can exercise jurisdiction over grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, regardless of where they were committed or the nationality of the perpetrators or victims.
The HRF’s work comes at personal cost to founder Abou Jahjah, who said he and his family receive security protection, including by the Belgian police. While the pressure and threats are invasive, he says “they are nothing compared to what people in Gaza are facing.”
Abou Jahjah has also been facing an Israeli smear campaign. The first Google
By Faisal Kutty
THE DESTRUCTION of Gaza has been catastrophic—not only in human terms, but also in what it reveals about the fragility of international law itself. As hospitals, homes and schools lie in ruins, so too does the promise of a global legal system capable of restraining state violence. Far from being a remote regional conflict, Israel’s war on Gaza has become a crucible for testing the credibility of legal institutions, the durability of post-World War II norms and the willingness of Western countries to apply their own standards to conflicts involving an ally. The verdict so far is damning.
For decades, the United States and its allies have championed a “rules-based international order,” forged in the ashes of genocide and global war. The Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Charter and the Genocide Convention were supposed to stand as bulwarks against atrocity. But in Gaza, that system is unraveling— through legal double standards, selective enforcement and
ical paralysis.
The facts on the ground speak for themselves. Since Oct. 7, 2023, more than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 18,000 children. Over 90 percent of Gaza’s housing stock has been destroyed, along with 84 percent of its healthcare facilities and virtually every educational institution. Nearly two million people
have been forcibly displaced. The United Nations has warned of looming famine. These are not unfortunate byproducts of war. These are deliberate, large-scale violations of international humanitarian law.
Yet instead of upholding legal norms, Western powers have shielded Israel from accountability. U.N. resolutions are routinely vetoed. International Criminal Court (ICC) investigations are delayed or undermined. Military and financial aid to Israel flows uninterrupted. As the Atlantic Council notes, regardless of formal declarations, Israel’s effective control over Gaza legally constitutes continued occupation—making it subject to the full scope of international legal obligations.
Even Israel’s closest allies have expressed unease. The United Kingdom, France and Germany warned earlier this year that Israel’s suspension of humanitarian aid “could breach international law.” The U.N. Human Rights Office has repeatedly accused Israel of violating international law through forced evacuations and targeting of civilian infrastructure. Amnesty International’s 2024 report described the war as a “watershed moment for international law,” warning of “flagrant rule-breaking by governments and corporate actors” that is undermining the entire global legal order.
But this isn’t just hypocrisy. It’s a systemic failure.
Legal scholar Rebecca Ingber has documented the near-total sidelining of international law in U.S. politics. “International law is becoming a third rail,” she wrote, as U.S. courts refuse to grant it interpretive weight and the executive branch amasses unchecked authority over its application. Harold Koh, former legal adviser to the State Department, has warned of a collapse in the balance of war powers and treaty obligations. The Gaza war is not just happening in violation of law—it is happening because the law no longer constrains those with the power to wage war.
At the heart of this breakdown is the myth of the “rules-based order.” As international relations professor Matias Spektor argued in his 2024 Breyer Lecture, this
framework is “empirically inaccurate and politically dangerous.” It functions more as a rhetorical shield than a legal reality, portraying the West as lawful and its adversaries as rogue, while masking the West’s own complicity in undermining the very system it claims to defend.
Israel’s legal maneuvers only deepen the crisis. Amendments to the country’s “Unlawful Combatants Law” now allow for indefinite detention without trial, with detainees denied access to counsel for up to 75 days. These practices violate both international humanitarian law and Israel’s own constitutional commitments. As the U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has warned, the very category of “unlawful combatant” has no meaning under international law and opens the door to arbitrary detention, torture and abuse— especially of children.
Existing legal categories struggle to describe the scale of destruction. South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has pushed the limits of international legal language. Scholars are invoking new concepts like domicide— the destruction of home—and spacioicide—the systematic erasure of inhabitable space. These are attempts to give legal name to the lived realities of Gazans. As the official podcast of the European Journal of International Law (EJIL:Talk!) contributors have noted, “the discursive
limits of international law are laid bare when it is unable—or unwilling—to name the atrocity it seeks to prohibit.”
Even when legal mechanisms exist, they are hobbled by politics. The ICJ’s provisional measures to prevent genocide remain unfulfilled. The ICC’s application for arrest warrants has stalled. The Advisory Opinion declaring Israel’s occupation unlawful remains unimplemented. Meanwhile, Israel’s military campaign, backed by its allies, has moved forward with devastating precision. As one U.N. panel put it, “the international legal order is breaking down in Gaza.”
The erosion of law is compounded by the media. U.S. coverage of the war in Gaza, as extensively documented by scholar Natalie Khazaal, overwhelmingly centers Israeli suffering while erasing or decontextualizing Palestinian voices. News outlets often regurgitate Israeli military claims without scrutiny, delay or omit Palestinian responses and frame solidarity as extremism. In one egregious example, The Wall Street Journal labeled Dearborn, Michigan—a city with a large Arab-American population—a hub of “anti-Semitic terrorism sympathizers.” Such narratives warp public opinion and narrow the political space for legal accountability.
But even as institutions fail, civil society is rising. Around the world, students, academics, unions and human rights defend-
On May 3, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded two days of public hearings on whether Israel, as the occupying power, is legally obligated to allow the unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The case—initiated by South Africa—has further spotlighted Israel’s use of starvation and siege as tools of war, amid a deepening humanitarian catastrophe.
Key developments and takeaways:
• Forty countries and the Arab League participated in the hearings, with the overwhelming majority affirming that Israel is in breach of its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention and customary international law by obstructing aid and fueling famine conditions.
• South Africa argued that Israel’s actions—including blocking food, water and medical supplies—constitute a continuing violation of international law, separate from and compounding the genocide case already before the Court.
• Palestine’s legal team presented evidence that famine is not accidental but engineered, calling attention to Israel’s strategic denial of aid to northern Gaza and the use of starvation as a weapon of war—potentially constituting war crimes or crimes against humanity.
• The United States, while not a formal party to the case, defended Israel in its oral submission. U.S. representatives urged the Court to focus only on abstract legal principles rather than Israel’s conduct. They echoed Israeli
claims that UNRWA was compromised, downplayed the humanitarian crisis and avoided addressing the extensive destruction and death toll—all while continuing to provide military and political support to Israel.
• Israel did not attend the oral hearings but submitted written observations. Legal experts note that its absence from the proceedings may still weaken its position in the court of public opinion and potentially affect how the advisory opinion is received globally.
Although the ICJ’s ruling will be advisory and not legally binding, it is expected to carry significant political and moral weight. A final opinion is anticipated in the coming months.
ers are invoking international law to demand accountability. Legal petitions, boycott campaigns, campus mobilizations and public protests have filled the void left by governments and courts. These efforts have not gone unnoticed—they’ve been met with doxxing, surveillance, criminalization and deportations. Yet they persist.
The ICJ proceedings, though limited in enforcement power, have reignited public debate. Countries like South Africa, Bolivia and Ireland have demonstrated that transnational solidarity can still animate legal tools. This is not just a legal battle— it’s a moral one.
What’s needed now is transformation.
Western states must end their enabling role in war crimes by cutting military aid and supporting independent legal processes. International legal institutions must be restructured to withstand geopolitical interference and recognize new forms of violence, including digital
targeting, infrastructural destruction and mass displacement. Media institutions must be held accountable for perpetuating bias and failing in their watchdog role. And legal education must confront its colonial legacy and center voices from the Global South.
Gaza may well be the graveyard of Western ideals. But it can also be the birthplace of a new, reimagined legal order—one rooted in justice, accountability and a universal commitment to the dignity of all people.
Whether that future comes to pass depends not on states, but on those who refuse to let law die in the rubble of Gaza. ■
Continued from page 29
result for the “Hind Rajab Foundation” is a paid advertisement to a webpage belonging to the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora
Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism. The page contains numerous claims aimed at discrediting Abou Jahjah and delegitimizing his organization.
The HRF wants to keep the focus on the Israeli genocide and war crimes committed in Gaza. Abou Jahjah says that his organization communicates about threats only in exceptional cases, such as in January 2025, when Amichai Chikli, Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, responded to Abou Jahjah in a tweet: “Hello to our human rights activist. Watch your pager,” in reference to Israel’s 2024 pager attack across Lebanon, killing dozens and injuring thousands—indiscriminately. Abou Jahjah announced plans to pursue legal action against Chikli. The Israeli minister’s planned visit to Belgium was cancelled amid fears of prosecution for “acts of terrorism.” More information about the HRF’s cases can be found on their website: <www.hindrajabfoundation.org>. ■
REGULAR READERS of the Washington Report will have read about the encampments erected by Washington, DC-area activists near the McLean, Virginia residence of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Israeli Embassy to demand an end to Israel’s genocide of Gaza. The removal of both encampments was the result of the efforts of numerous pro-Israel agitators, allegedly acting in cahoots with Israeli Embassy staff and Israel’s Foreign Ministry, among other actors. These encampments and the efforts to shut them down have triggered several lawsuits. The Washington Report interviewed the two defendants in the case brought against the embassy encampment protesters, Hazami Barmada and Atefeh Rokhvand, and was given access to a document detailing the history of interactions between the two groups. This account draws on these sources.
Pro‐Palestinian demonstrators with their hands painted the color of blood call for a ceasefire in Gaza as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies at the Committee on Foreign Affairs on Capitol Hill, on Dec. 11, 2024.
Disclosure: I did not attempt to contact the pro-Israel agitators; their views were conveyed in a Fox News report I reviewed, in which they presented their claims. I was involved in some of the activities described in the lawsuits and know the principals well enough to vouch for the code of conduct observed by the antiwar protesters (which included nonviolence in actions and speech and nonengagement with opponents). I’ve also had one unpleasant encounter with the pro-Israel agitators at the embassy to know how aggressive they can be.
The first case was prompted by the surprise raid by Virginia State Troopers and other heavily armed law enforcement on the Blinken encampment, which was set up on January 26, 2024, the evening of the International Court of Justice ruling of Israel’s commission of “plausible genocide” in Gaza. Claiming that the encampment was a public safety concern and was “trespassing on Virginia State property,” law enforcement dismantled it on July 26, 2024. The claims were not true: the protesters were on what they had determined to be public property, there were no public safety incidents
By Ida Audeh
to the protesters or to the 2.4 million cars that drove by the encampment over the 6 months, and they were in regular (and cordial) contact with Arlington County law enforcement. They ensured that all protesters and tents were on public property and abided by all health, safety and sound regulations. The activists took their case to court, and before a judgment could be announced, the U.S. Department of State’s security detail in effect rezoned the entire area of the encampment adjacent to the Blinken residence, making it federally protected property.
The embassy encampment set up in February 2024 seems to have been a major irritation to embassy staff and to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, as noted by Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog in an exit interview with the Times of Israel published Feb. 4, 2025. After many failed diplomatic and political efforts to shut the encampment down, the embassy seemed to have requested local assistance from pro-Israel agitators including supporters of Tsav 8. Tsav 8 is “the emergency call-up order given to Israelis during times of urgent need that summon them back to reserve service for their country.” The DC branch was founded by Yossi Appleboum, a former Israeli Intelligence leader who also runs a cybersecurity business in Rockville, MD called Sepio. Washington Jewish Week noted that “They’re [Tsav 8 is] considering ways to aid the Israeli Embassy workers in Washington, DC,” which suggests that they are an extension of Israel’s foreign lobby arm in Washington, DC. They made it their mission to shut down the embassy encampment.
It is worth noting that some people affiliated with Tsav 8 are also members of Betar USA, an extremist Zionist movement that boasts about doxxing anti-Israel activists and compiling lists of foreign students and submitting them to the Trump administration for deportation. Their actions are a frontal assault on the First Amendment. Their tactics were initially unsuccessful. Pro-Israel agitators draped in Israeli flags and clearly working in coordination with the embassy
appeared at the encampment, shouting insults through megaphones and attempting to intimidate the antiwar activists by getting physically close to them.
Disclosure: I know from personal experience the types who rallied around Tsav 8. In one unpleasant experience, an Israeli stood inches away from me and blared on a megaphone “you support Khamas. You are a terrorist.” The message did not faze me, considering the source, but the proximity to a genocide supporter was unsettling. Barmada received more inventive insults; she was called a Nazi bitch and told to go to a concentration camp and Rokhvand was called a supporter of rapists. Some of their tactics were embarrassingly juvenile, such as waving plates of food in front of the activists (many of whom were Muslim) during Ramadan. But they also frequently hit and shoved activists, particularly women activists, and on one occasion drove a U-Haul truck toward a sidewalk where protesters were gathered.
But these tactics paled in comparison to what Tsav 8 devotees expressed in private chats when they let their hair down among their comrades. In leaked Tsav 8 WhatsApp messages, Tsav 8 members’ banter consists of strings of homicidal intentions. They express wanting to shoot Barmada and other activists and carve swastikas in their foreheads, to break teeth, to “make them suffer” and then see who comes to their defense. In public, they were noticeably vile with Jewish antiwar protesters, blasting them with bullhorns inches away from their ears, insulting them and shoving them. A Tsav 8 member on one occasion targeted an anti-Zionist rabbi with hate-filled anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs and posted videos doxxing him on social media, and threatened sexual violence and rape.
Their frustrations seemed to have grown over time. They tried to intimidate, but that
didn’t deter the antiwar protesters. One can surmise from the account that they might have felt outmaneuvered: They left audio equipment on the ground to monitor the protesters, but that was confiscated by the police; when challenged, the police said that abandoned equipment had to be removed. (Equipment of antiwar protesters was protected because they kept a round-the-clock presence at the encampment.) The Tsav 8 agitators rented U-Haul trucks and parked them in front of the embassy to block the encampment signs from sight, but U-Haul objected because the renters were in violation of the terms of the U-Haul contract, which limits use of the trucks to moving items from place to place. The antiwar protesters had not broken any laws, which made it hard to stop them.
At this point, it seems that the Tsav 8 agitators decided to ratchet up their actions. Barmada and Rokhvand found themselves the principal targets of Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, who they alleged engaged, in coordination with Tsav 8, in harassment, surveillance and intimidation. As part of that orchestrated effort, they were defendants on a lawsuit filed by Herzfeld, who (according to Fox News) claimed that on March 22, 2024, the antiwar activists “damaged his ears while blasting ‘bullhorns, sirens and loudspeakers’ in an attempt to drown out his prayers.” Barmada described the incident as little more than a photo opportunity, during which the rabbi and his co-conspirators appeared at the embassy, paraded around the protesters, hurled vile insults and racial slurs, and then eventually stood in front of Barmada’s megaphone. She claimed he opened a book and closed it within seconds, looking to make sure that the people with him (later revealed to be lawyers) had filmed him. Because he framed the (non)incident as an “attack” on his right to pray, he pressed charges alleging a hate crime and sought damages of $75,000 in federal court. The case was weak, as even Tsav 8 members admitted privately. The case is currently being challenged in court.
Barmada and Rokhvand continued to receive threatening text messages from the Israel supporters. After the mounting harassment and threats, after witnessing some of their comrades being physically shoved and assaulted by the pro-genocide group, and after seeing a spike in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim attacks nationally, the two sought and received a temporary anti-stalking order in May 2024. Ultimately, however, the judge denied the request for a permanent anti-stalking order and ordered Barmada and Rokhvand to pay $181,526 in legal fees and costs to Herzfeld’s lawyers. They are appealing the decision.
The Washington Report asked the activists to comment on the significance of their encampments in light of the legal challenges they face. Both noted that they believed that their group had set important firsts. No other group had directly protested, with daily constancy, a U.S. government official, and their siege of the Israeli Embassy had never been done anywhere in the world. Their type of activism—the creativity and consistency of it, combining political street theater and a round-the-clock presence—had never been done anywhere for Palestine and Gaza, which unfortunately made them targets for assaults on their First Amendment rights.
Gregory M. Lipper, Barmada’s and Rokhvand’s appellate attorney in the antistalking case, said to the Washington Report: “If advocates don’t feel safe and secure when protesting, then their freedom to speak, assemble and petition means little. Threats and violence against women, Muslims and human rights advocates undermine their freedom to protest. So do lawsuits trying to impose crushing financial judgments on peaceful protesters. The domestic violence court’s judgment, which orders my clients to pay nearly $200,000 to the law firm opposing their anti-stalking petitions, improperly punishes my clients for asking to be safe from threats while exercising their First Amendment rights. This appeal is critical to their basic freedom to speak.” ■
By John Gee
During the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of World War I, British patrols enter Gaza City on Nov. 7, 1917, after defeating the Turkish army in the third battle of Gaza. Artillery bombardments of Gaza had severely damaged or destroyed the majority of the city’s housing. After this defeat, the Ottomans fell back to just in front of Jaffa, which did not suffer the same devastation as Gaza, fortunately. To the east, the British pushed forward and took Jerusalem, which Allenby, the British commander, described as a Christmas present for the British people.
OVER A HUNDRED YEARS ago, the city of Gaza was devastated during World War I as British forces fighting Ottoman troops advanced into Palestine.
In January 1917, the British captured the last Turkish position in Egypt and then crossed the international border to occupy Rafah, in Palestine. Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah were taken with ease. An attack aimed at capturing Gaza City on March 26 met with initial success, but faulty communications led to British withdrawal. By the time they returned to the attack, the Turks had firm control of Gaza and the British were repulsed, with heavy losses. The front stabilized with the Turks controlling a line anchored on Gaza City to the northwest and Beersheba to the southeast. Whereas most of the British front line had deserted to its rear, the Turkish line largely backed onto fertile land
John Gee is a free ‐ lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.
and had an adequate water supply. The British forces in Palestine were not strong enough to resume offensive operations until the autumn, when reinforcements arrived and Field Marshal Edmund Allenby was sent to take command, with instructions to press forward. The three battles of Gaza and the physical impact of the war on the city are well described in Gerald Butt’s book, Life at the Crossroads: A History of Gaza.
The front line inside Palestine temporarily stabilized in April 1917.
On the British side of the front, Deir al-Balah became the terminus for a railway built across Sinai with Egyptian labor. On the Turkish side, when the British approached, Gaza City’s population of some 40,000 were ordered by the Turks to leave for their own safety. Consequently, the town was completely emptied of civilians within days of the beginning of fighting. Soldiers went from house to house, lashing out with whips at those who did not leave voluntarily, according to one Gazan woman. The people left with
only the possessions they could carry. The wealthy were able to settle in Hebron, Lydda and Ramleh. The poor sought what shelter they could in villages or camped out in orchards and fields. Their hardships in whatever places of refuge they found must have been great.
Gaza City was turned into a Turkish stronghold, defended by barbed wire, machine guns, artillery and trenches. The Grand Mosque of Gaza was used as a store for provisions and ammunition. The British believed that its minaret was being used as an observation platform to direct Turkish artillery fire, and it became a target for their gunners. The mosque was badly damaged when the Turkish ammunition stored there exploded.
The most severe fighting of the war in Palestine took place along the GazaBeersheba line. It culminated in the Third Battle of Gaza, when a British offensive resulted in the capture of Beersheba on Oct. 31, 1917, followed by the occupation of Gaza City, on Nov. 7, after it was bombed from land and sea.
The British victors found Gaza City devastated. Shellfire had wrecked many buildings. Nevertheless, British observers at the time attributed much of the damage to the Turkish ransacking of buildings for materials to use in its de-
fense. That included anything made from wood, which was burnt for cooking purposes and to provide warmth. Ronald Storrs, who later became the British military governor of Jerusalem, wrote, “Gaza is a ruin, and was so long before we took it, the Turks having stripped all the roofs off the houses to cover their dug-outs.”
Visiting the hill of Ali Muntar, which had been a Turkish strongpoint and observation point northeast of Gaza City, Storrs wrote: “We passed shell craters, many from 8-inch guns, on all sides as we clambered up to Ali Muntar, which commands the whole district...The hill itself had been almost shelled away, and must have been untenable long before we could occupy it.”
Sir Herbert Samuel, the first British High Commissioner for Palestine, wrote in 1920: “The town of Gaza suffered probably more from military action during the war than any other town in this theater of operations...Almost all its buildings have been destroyed and its present appearance is comparable only to that of the devastated areas in France and Belgium.”
Three years after the war, despite Gazans having begun to return to their city immediately after the battles there
Less than two months after the outbreak of the First Intifada, a mostly non-violent civilian uprising, in December 1987, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger spoke at a closed door breakfast meeting with a group of American Jewish leaders. To his chagrin, details of what he said were leaked to the press shortly afterwards. He made three main points, the second of which was the following:
“Israel should bar the media from entry into the territories involved in the present demonstrations, accept the short-term criticism of the world press for such conduct and put down the insurrection as quickly as possible—overwhelmingly, brutally and rapidly.”
Whether it recalled Kissinger’s words or was simply acting upon its own reasoning, this is what Israel has attempted to do since October 2023 in the Gaza Strip, although suppressing resistance proved much harder than it had expected. The foreign press was excluded from the Gaza Strip, unless embedded with Israeli forces. For good measure, Israel targeted local media workers in the Gaza Strip: 212 Palestinian journalists in Gaza had been killed by April 25, according to Middle East Monitor.
ended, Samuel thought that “(t)he original population has now dwindled to something like a third of its number, and in the present ruinous condition of the town there is little to attract the remainder of its inhabitants to return or fresh population to settle there.”
However, Gaza City did rebuild and most of those who had left returned.
There are differences as well as similarities between the devastation of Gaza City in 1917 and in 2023-25. It was much larger in 2023 than in 1917. The level of destruction by the Israeli military is worse than the damage done in 1917. Neither the Ottoman nor the British forces made the civilians of Gaza a target of military action, so although some died as a result of their privations, very few died as the result of deliberate violence. When the Ottoman army ordered the population to leave their homes, it really was primarily for their own safety and once the fighting was over, the British allowed Gaza’s people to return, though the devastation hindered the process.
Israel has assaulted the people of Gaza and destroyed their means of living; when it orders Gaza’s people out of their homes, it is with the intention that they never return, which has so far only been frustrated through their resistance. ■
The number of journalists killed by hostile action in a year and a half is far greater than the total number of journalists killed in World Wars I and II over a total of 10 years, the Korean War and the wars in Indochina between 1945 and 1975.
The policy advocated by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Kissinger has resulted in more than 51,400 confirmed Palestinian deaths; the injury of many more; the imprisonment, ill treatment and torture of thousands of Palestinians; and the devastation of this entire occupied area.
The first piece of advice given by Kissinger was summarized as follows: “Now is not the time for Jewish community leaders to publicly attack Israel or its policies with respect to the Palestinians.” For the likes of Kissinger, there is never a time for “Jewish community leaders” to attack Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, no matter what they are.
Some leaders are choosing not to follow that advice, and an increasing number of Jewish people are saying that those who give Israel’s government unquestioning support do not speak for them.
By Jack McGrath
INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION of Israel’s destruction of Gaza has been substantial and sustained, particularly from nations in the Global South. However, this opposition is overwhelmingly channeled into diplomatic actions, such as U.N. ceasefire resolutions, the suspension of diplomatic relations and the genocide case at the International Court of Justice (see Faisal Kutty pp. 30-32). On the other hand, political support for Palestine on the world stage is primarily symbolic. Few governments are willing to apply economic pressure on Israel, whether in the form of an arms embargo or the reduction of trade. Among the leaders prepared to impose tangible costs on Israel is Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who is working to dismantle the entrenched military and economic ties between the two countries.
As with other embattled governments in Latin America during the Cold War, Colombia looked to Israel for arms and expertise
in its war against leftist insurgencies. In 1986, Colombian President Virgilio Barco Vargas covertly contracted Israeli operative Rafael Eitan to plan a campaign against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group. Several years earlier, Eitan had helped organize the Sabra and Shatila camp massacre in Lebanon, in which Israeli forces used far-right Christian militias to murder thousands of Palestinian civilians. Eitan devised a blueprint to target members of a FARC-affiliated political party, the Patriotic Union (UP), which had signed a peace accord with the government. Thousands of party members were systematically assassinated, which Colombia’s Justice and Peace court later characterized as a “political genocide.”
As in Lebanon, the military relied on state-backed paramilitaries to carry out much of the slaughter, none more notorious than the United Self-Defense Forces (AUC). Its leaders, Carlos and Fidel Castaño, were trained by an Israeli mercenary firm led by Yair Klein, a former lieutenant colonel in the Israeli Occupation Forces. In the mid-1980s, Carlos Castaño attended Hebrew University and received additional military training in Israel. In his autobiography, Carlos writes that he “copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis.” The AUC and smaller right-wing militias murdered approximately 100,000 civilians during Colombia’s armed conflict. Klein was convicted in absentia for his role in training death squads, but Israel refused to extradite him. During a dispute with Israel’s deputy foreign minister in October 2023, Gustavo Petro accused Eitan and Klein of “massacre and genocide in Colombia.”
Israel continued to collaborate with Colombia in the 2000s during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe, during his military offensive against the FARC. Defense Minister and future President Juan
Manuel Santos built a close relationship with Israel’s ambassador, leading to “the creation of an office in the Defense Department for the Mossad and Israeli intelligence to help the government in fighting the insurgency,” noted Nazih Richani, director of Latin American Studies at Kean University. Israeli intelligence was instrumental in killing numerous FARC leaders, including through cross-border raids into Ecuador, he added. Amid the diplomatic fallout from one such attack, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez castigated Colombia as “the Israel of Latin America.” President Santos expressed “pride” at the comparison.
Petro’s stance on Palestine is hardly the only position that marks him as an outlier in Colombian politics. Unlike the elites of the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties, Petro began his political career at age 17 by joining M-19, a leftist guerrilla group which fought the Colombian state and its affiliated paramilitaries throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Petro managed to survive a decade in the movement, despite being imprisoned and tortured by the military. Following M-19’s transition into a political party, Petro was elected to Congress and later served as mayor of Bogotá.
The election of Gustavo Petro to the presidency in 2022 marked a watershed in Colombian history. “This is the first time ever in Colombia since its 19th-century independence that it has a nationalist, left-leaning reformist president,” Richani emphasized. Although domestic politics took center stage in his campaign, Petro has spent considerable political capital on setting his nation’s foreign policy on a new course. However, breaking from the past is easier said than done, particularly when successive administrations have cemented Colombia’s ties with Israel over the past 40 years.
“One of the most salient aspects of Colombia’s foreign policy was its close military, security and economic relationship with Israel,” Richani observed. In 2023 alone, Colombia purchased more
than $230 million of military hardware from Israel Aerospace Industries and the Israeli firm Elbit Systems. Colombian soldiers use Israeli Galil rifles, which have been produced by Colombia’s stateowned arms manufacturer INDUMIL on license from Israel since the 1990s. Israeli military instructors regularly train Colombian special forces in “warfare and counter-terrorism techniques.” Colombia’s air force relies on a fleet of Kfir fighter jets purchased from Israel Aerospace Industries several decades ago, which can only be repaired by Israeli firms. In 2020, Colombia bought the notorious Pegasus spyware from the Israeli NSO Group with $13 million in cash, which was flown to Israel on a private jet.
Though Petro had expressed strong support for Palestine prior to his election to the presidency, his administration remained relatively quiet on the issue during its first year in power. That would all change after October 7.
In the days following the Hamas-led attack, Gustavo Petro stood nearly alone on the world stage in his refusal to voice support for Israel or condemn the Pales-
tinian militant group. On Oct. 8, Petro (a prolific X user) wrote, “If I had lived in Germany in 1933, I would have fought alongside the Jews, and if I had lived in Palestine in 1948, I would have fought on the Palestinian side,” and expressed his desire for both peoples to have peace and freedom. The next day, Petro compared Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s declaration of a “complete siege” against “human animals” to “what the Nazis said about the Jews” and argued that such dehumanization “will only bring about a holocaust.” Unsurprisingly, Petro’s remarks sparked a diplomatic row with Israel, which only escalated as the death toll in Gaza rose.
According to Richani, Petro believes that “this is not a war against the Palestinians only, it is a message to the Global South that says if you challenge us, meaning the United States or any of our satellites, your destiny will be very similar to what we’re doing today in Gaza.”
After Israel’s massacre of over 200 Palestinians in Jabalia refugee camp in November 2023, Colombia and Chile recalled their ambassadors to Israel. In April 2024, Colombia filed an intervention on behalf of South Africa in its genocide case against Israel at the International
Court of Justice. Speaking at a May Day rally the next month, Petro railed against a return to ‘the era of genocide, of the extermination of an entire people before our eyes, before our humanity,” and warned that “If Palestine dies, humanity dies.” During the speech, Petro announced that his government would sever diplomatic relations with Israel. Colombia subsequently closed its embassy in Tel Aviv and opened one in Ramallah.
Colombia imposed the first of many economic measures against Israel in February 2024, following its killing of more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza City while they waited for aid trucks. In response, Petro announced the suspension of “all arms purchases from Israel” (while still adhering to prior contracts).
Colombia has since negotiated the purchase of fighter planes from Sweden to replace its aging fleet of Kfir jets. In a joint communique with eight other states that established The Hague Group in January 2025, Colombia committed to preventing
ships suspected of transporting “military fuel and weaponry to Israel” from docking at its ports.
In its most consequential move to date, the Petro administration suspended all coal exports to Israel in August 2024. Colombia exported $450 million worth of coal to Israel in 2023, which accounted for 60 percent of Israel’s total coal imports. Israel generates 22 percent of its electricity output from coal, helping power the nation’s arms industry, artificial intelligence systems and illegal settlements.
Likening his coal embargo to past boycotts against apartheid regimes, Petro has urged other nations to join his effort to reduce Israel’s energy imports until the genocide ends.
Gustavo Petro’s solidarity with Palestine has been celebrated by Colombia’s left, especially indigenous movements and trade unions, which proposed many of the policies his government later enacted.
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At the same time, Richani notes that Petro’s stance is opposed by the military, fossil fuel interests and most of Congress. With Petro’s term-limited presidency concluding in August 2026, the future of Colombia-Israel relations is far from certain. “It all depends on the future elections and the type of government that emerges from that election,” Richani said, adding that the right would reverse Colombia’s rupture with Israel while the left would most likely maintain it.
Undeniably, the Petro administration has pushed the boundaries of state-led solidarity with Palestine. By holding Israel accountable for its atrocities through material means, Petro challenges other leaders to match rhetorical solidarity with economic action. For Petro, ending Israel’s impunity is not only moral but essential to the future of humanity, as the precedent set by the genocide extends across the Global South. In his view, “Gaza is just the first experiment to deem all of us disposable.” ■
Compiled by Janet McMahon
BY QASSAM MUADDI
The Israeli war cabinet approved the creation of a special agency to organize the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza on Sunday. It was in line with the announced plan of U.S. President Donald Trump to expel Palestinians from the Strip, even though the U.S. has since backed down from it. Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the cabinet was briefed on the “international dimensions” of creating the special agency and that Israel’s Defense Ministry under Israel Katz would oversee the creation and implementation of the expulsion plans.
Katz indicated that the Ministry will implement the plan within a local and international “legal” framework, in coordination with international organizations and other countries. It added that it will establish the necessary infrastructure to transfer so many Palestinians out of Gaza.
The idea of establishing a special body to transfer Palestinians from Gaza is not new. In 1971, Israel started a plan to “thin out” Gaza’s population by contacting Palestinians and offering to transfer them to Egypt—and threatening to demolish their homes if they refused.
But this time, Israel’s attempt is different; it is explicit, public, and enjoys
the full support of the U.S. More importantly, this time it is willing to go all the way to accomplish its displacement agenda. But it also won’t work in eliminating Palestinian resistance, even if Gaza is ethnically cleansed.
The creation of a special body to expel Palestinians from Gaza has been called for by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for months as part of his counter-proposal to a ceasefire. On Monday, the Israeli government said in a statement that the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, affirmed to Binyamin Netanyahu in a phone call
Why Israel’s Plans to Forcibly Depopulate Gaza Won’t Work, Qassam Muaddi, mondoweiss.net OV-41
Fear Is not a Word That Can Describe What We Feel in Gaza, Nour Elassy, www.aljazeera.com OV-43
“I Want a Death That the World Will Hear”—Journalist Assassinated by Israel for Telling the Truth, Caitlin Johnstone, www.caitlinjohnstone.com.au OV-44
Breaking the Silence on Palestinian Armed Struggle: A Call For Legal Clarity, Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo, www.ramzybaroud.net OV-45
In Gaza, a Small Parish Mourns Their Friend, the Pope, Tareq S. Hajjaj, mondoweiss.net OV-46
Belated Anti-war Letters Are A Cowardly Indictment of Israel’s Moral Code, Gideon Levy, www.haaretz.com OV-47
Israel’s Backers Keep Whining That They’re Losing Control of
The Narrative, Caitlin Johnstone, www.caitlinjohnstone.com.au OV-48
There’s an Under-reported Israel Angle to the Corporate Effort To Muzzle “60 Minutes,” James North, mondoweiss.net OV-49
Waltz’s Demotion Should Begin A Neocon Purge, Jack Hunter, theamericanconservative.com OV-50
Wiz Acquisition Puts Israeli Intelligence in Charge of Your Google Data, Alan Macleod, www.mintpressnews.com OV-51
Hezbollah to U.S.: It’s not in Your Interest to Support Israeli Attacks, Ali Rizk, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-53
Many Iraqis Unhappy With Islamist Syrian President’s Invite to Arab League Summit In Baghdad, Jason Ditz, www.antiwar.com OV-54
Azerbaijan Is Already Friendly With Israel. Why the Push to “Normalize”?, Eldar Mamedov, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-55
that Washington “undoubtedly” supports Israel’s policies. And just last week, Israeli media reported that Israel is currently preparing plans to permanently occupy Gaza and control its population.
All of these plans take place as Israel escalates its wide-ranging military operation in the northern West Bank, especially in the cities of Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas, expelling at least 40,000 Palestinians from their homes. In November, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that driving Palestinians out of Gaza through “voluntary migration” would “set a precedent” to do the same in the West Bank later. In this context, the latest plans to create a special bureau are not isolated from Israel’s plans to impose its control over all of Palestine, including its plans to annex the West Bank. This is also in line with Israel’s “Nation-state law” passed in the Knesset in 2018, which stipulates that the right of self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be exclusive to the Jewish people.
The decision is the latest episode in Israel’s attempts to expel Palestinians from Gaza, which intensified after Oct. 7, 2023. In the last two months before the ceasefire deal in Gaza, Israel focused on emptying northern Gaza of Palestinians through a complete siege, starvation, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and daily bombardment. It was a massive operation known as the “Generals’ Plan.” Meanwhile, Israeli settler groups endorsed by Israeli farright ministers and lawmakers continued to call for allowing Israeli resettlement of Gaza.
Not only has Israel destroyed all civilian infrastructure in the Strip and obliterated the health and education systems, but it has also assassinated leaders and directors of civil services, especially in the law and order department. Last year, it was with the assassination
of the head of Gaza’s police operations, Faiq Mabhouh, who was in charge of securing the distribution of humanitarian aid in north Gaza.
Since Israel resumed its campaign against Gaza last week, it assassinated a number of civil and political leaders in the Hamas government, including the coordinator of government action in Gaza, the deputy minister of justice, the deputy minister of interior, and the head of the Security Service. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Civil Defense in Rafah announced that Israeli forces abducted 15 first responders. Israel also continues to hold captive the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, and a number of medics and doctors who were abducted from the north Gaza medical center.
All these practices fall in line with the strategy of dismantling civil services, and with them the capacity of Gaza’s society to reorganize and rebuild itself. All this points in one direction: ending the collective presence of Palestinians in Gaza.
Despite the demographic replacement rhetoric of the Israeli far right, this time there is another factor that feeds Israel’s efforts to displace Palestinians from Gaza: Israel has decided that its ongoing battle with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza will be its last.
Israel’s dilemma in dealing with Palestinian resistance has always been that, contrary to regular armies, irregular resistance forces are part of the social fabric of the occupied population. Resistance groups don’t embed themselves in the population, as Israel continuously claims, but stem from the population itself.
The members of Palestinian militant groups come from the same neighborhoods, homes, families and communities where they operate. Israel’s favorite strategy for decades has been the same policy made into a doctrine by its former chief of staff, Gady Eizenkot, in
the wake of the 2006 Lebanon war— the “Dahiya doctrine.” It consists of targeting the civilian population and its infrastructure until either the resistance gives up, or the population turns against it.
Absent either of that happening, Israel has decided to put an end to this episode of resistance by completely uprooting it—and all Palestinians with it.
In 1982, after years of failed attempts to deter the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon’s refugee camps, which raided Israeli positions from south Lebanon, Israel decided to uproot the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon. Following three months of siege and bombardment on Beirut, the PLO accepted to move all its leadership and thousands of its fighters out of Lebanon by sea.
Halfway through the Gaza genocide, Israelis were hoping that Hamas would go the route of the “Lebanon model.” In 1982, the exit of Palestinian forces from Lebanon was an easy solution, because Palestinians were operating in a host country, which despite all the sympathy of its people with the Palestinian cause, wasn’t theirs. The civil war in Lebanon was also symptomatic of the fact that part of Lebanese society didn’t want Lebanon to continue to be a base for Palestinian resistance activity.
The years that followed the PLO’s exit from Lebanon saw an intense effort by Palestinian leaders and organizations to bring the center of the Palestinian national movement back to Palestine. For the leadership of the PLO, it meant engaging in negotiations which culminated in the Oslo accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority. But for other Palestinian forces, it meant building the basis for Palestinian resistance inside the occupied territories. That direction eventually led to the explosion of all kinds of Palestinian civil and militant activism during the First Intifada between 1987 and 1993. During that time, Hamas was born.
The Oct. 7 attacks were the latest episode of a long history of confrontation between Israel and the overwhelmingly-refugee population of Gaza, dating back decades before Hamas was created.
According to documents revealed by the BBC in October 2023 and reported by Israeli media last year, the Israeli plans to displace thousands of Palestinians from Gaza in 1971 came after a wave of Palestinian resistance activity that resulted in the killing of 43 Israeli soldiers and wounding 336 more, while Israel killed some 240 Palestinians and wounded 878 between 1968 and 1971.
At the time, Gaza had a population of 385,000 Palestinians, mostly refugees from 1948 and their descendants. Israel launched a plan to “thin out” Gaza’s population in order to reduce resistance activity, dismantling entire parts of refugee camps, and transferring at least 10,000 Palestinians out of Gaza, especially to the then-Israeli-occupied Sinai desert. Many were families of Palestinian militants, and most weren’t suspected of any activity themselves. This campaign was documented by Anne Irfan and has been referenced by Israeli media outlets multiple times.
Israel is determined to make this time the final round of confrontation with Gaza’s resistance as a historical phenomenon, which is deeper, older, and more complex than Hamas as an organization. For that, Israeli leaders want to apply the Beirut model and uproot the social base for any resistance in the future.
A crucial point escapes the minds of Israeli leaders and their allies in Washington. Gaza is not a host country for Palestinians. Applying the Lebanese model won’t work unless the entire population is displaced. Gaza’s society is much more than the material infrastructure that can be destroyed with explosives—it is a social fabric and a sense of identity rooted in the place itself. An entire civilization cannot simply be dis-
mantled like a group of squatters or illegal immigrants.
Most importantly, Gazans have nowhere else to go. Arab countries were willing to receive the Palestinian fighters who left Lebanon in 1982 because they were moving away from Palestine’s borders and, therefore, away from armed struggle, while there was a U.S.-led political project on the way to start negotiations under Reagan. This time, there is no political horizon, and moving Palestinians anywhere out of Gaza would mean laying the grounds for a more radical Palestinian wave of resistance from the countries that Gazans would be sent to. No country wants to be confronted with such a scenario in its own territory.
The Palestinians who took up arms against Israel in Lebanon before 1982 were the children of those expelled in 1948. Israel had to go after them 33 years later and, as a result, turned Lebanon into an active party in the conflict to this day.
The important variable here is not geography. It doesn’t matter if Palestinians find themselves at the borders of their homeland or thousands of miles away. What makes the difference is the political horizon ahead. After 1982, there was a political project for a Palestinian state as part of the two-state solution. After 1948—just like today—there was none. This is what makes resistance inevitable.
What Israel and its sponsors still can’t accept is that the Palestinian struggle is not a security matter, but a political issue. Palestinians fight for their rights, and as long as their rights aren’t achieved, they will continue fighting.
Any mega-projects to change geography, demographics, or the cosmos itself, without a political solution that includes the basic rights of an entire people, will fail.
Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine staff writer for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter/X at @QassaMMuaddi. This article was first posted at <http://mondoweiss.net>, March 26, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Mondoweiss. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
BY NOUR ELASSY
Last week, during another violent night, my almost four-year-old niece asked me a question I’ll never forget.
“If we die while sleeping…will it still hurt?”
I didn’t know what to say.
How do you tell a child—who has seen more death than daylight — that dying in your sleep is a mercy?
So I told her: “No. I don’t think so. That’s why we should fall asleep now.”
She nodded quietly, and turned her face to the wall.
She believed me. She closed her eyes. I sat in the dark, listening to the bombs, wondering how many children were being buried alive just down the street.
I have 12 nieces and nephews. All are under the age of nine. They have been my solace and joy in these dark times.
But I, like their parents, struggle to help them make sense of what is going on around us. We have had to lie to them so many times. They would often believe us, but sometimes they would feel in our voices or our stares that something terrifying was happening. They would feel the horror in the air.
No child should ever have to endure such brutality. No parent should have to cower in despair, knowing they cannot protect their children.
Last month, the ceasefire ended, and with it, the illusion of a pause.
What followed wasn’t just a resumption of war—it was a shift to something more brutal and relentless.
In the span of three weeks, Gaza has become a field of fire, where no one is safe. More than 1,400 men, women and children have been slaughtered. Daily massacres have shattered what remained of our ability to hope.
Some of them have hit home.
Not just emotionally. Physically. Just yesterday, the air was filled with dust and the smell of blood from just a few streets away. The Israeli army targeted al-Nakheel Street in Gaza City, killing 11 people, including five children.
A few days earlier, at Dar al-Arqam School, a place that had sheltered displaced families, an Israeli air strike turned classrooms into ash. At least 30 people were killed in seconds— mostly women and children. They had come there seeking safety, believing the blue United Nations flag would protect them. It didn’t. The school is less than 10 minutes away from my home.
The same day, the nearby Fahd School was also bombarded; three people were killed.
A day earlier, there was news of a horror scene in Jabalya.
An Israeli strike targeted a clinic run by UNRWA, where civilians were sheltering.
Eyewitnesses described body parts strewn across the clinic. Children burned alive. An infant decapitated. The smell of burning flesh suffocating the survivors. It was a massacre in a place meant for healing.
Amid all this, parts of Gaza City received evacuation orders.
Evacuate. Now. But to where? Gaza has no safe zones. The north is leveled. The south is bombed.
The sea is a prison. The roads are death traps.
We stayed.
It is not because we are brave. It is because we have nowhere else to go.
Fear is not the right word to describe what we feel in Gaza. Fear is manageable. Fear can be named.
What we feel is a choking, silent terror that sits inside your chest and never leaves.
It is the moment between a missile’s whistle and the impact, when you wonder if your heart has stopped.
It is the sound of children crying from under the rubble. The smell of blood spreading with the wind.
It is the question my niece asked.
Foreign governments and politicians call it a “conflict.” A “complex situation.” A “tragedy.” But what we are living through is not complex. It is a plain massacre. What we are living through is not a tragedy. It is a war crime.
I am a writer. A journalist. I’ve spent months writing, documenting, calling out to the world through my words. I have sent dispatches. I have told stories no one else could. And yet—so often— I feel like I am screaming into a void. Still, I keep writing. Because even if the world looks away, I will not let our truth remain unspoken. Because I believe someone is listening. Somewhere. I write because I believe in humanity, even when governments have turned their backs on it. I write so that when history is written, no one can say they didn’t know.
Nour Elassy is a poet and writer based in Gaza. This article was first posted at <www.aljazeera.com>, April 8, 2025. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Copyright © 2025 Al Jazeera Media Network. Reprinted with permission.
BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
Israel assassinated a photojournalist in Gaza in an airstrike targeting her family’s home on Wednesday, the day after it was announced that a documentary she appears in would premier in Cannes next month. Her name was Fatima Hassouna. Nine members of her family were also
reportedly killed in the bombing. She was going to get married in a few days. The documentary is titled “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” and it’s about Israel’s crimes in Gaza.
In an Instagram post from August of last year, Hassouna wrote the following:
“If I die, I want a loud death. I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group; I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.”
Hassouna said she viewed her camera as a weapon to change the world and defend her family, making the following statements in a video shared by Middle East Eye:
“As Fatima, I believe that the image and the camera are weapons. So I consider my camera to be my rifle. So many times, in so many situations, I tell my friends, Come and see, it’s not bullets that we load into a rifle. Okay, I’m going to put a memory card into the camera. This is the camera’s bullet, the memory card. It changes the world and defends me. It shows the world what is happening to me and what’s happening to others. So I used to consider this my weapon, that I defend myself with it. And so that my family won’t be forgotten. And so I can document people’s stories, so that my family’s stories too don’t just vanish into thin air.”
Israel saw Hassouna’s camera as a weapon too, apparently.
As Ryan Grim observed on Twitter:
“For this to have been a deliberate act— which it plainly was—consider what that means. A person within the IDF saw the news that Fatima’s film was accepted into Cannes. He/she/they then proposed assassinating her. Other people reviewed the suggestion and approved it. Then other people carried it out.”
Israel has been murdering a recordshattering number of journalists in Gaza while simultaneously blocking any foreign press from accessing the enclave because Israel views journalists as its enemy. And Israel views journalists as its enemy because Israel is the enemy of truth.
Israel and its Western backers understand that truth and support for Israel are mutually exclusive. Those who support Israel are not interested in the truth, and those who are interested in the truth don’t support Israel.
That’s why the light of journalism is being aggressively snuffed out in Gaza while Israel massively increases its propaganda budget to sway public opinion.
It’s why journalists like Fatima Hassouna are being assassinated while the Western propaganda services known as the mainstream press commit journalistic malpractice to hide the truth of Israel’s crimes.
It’s why Western journalists are banned from Gaza while Western institutions are silencing, deporting, firing and marginalizing those who speak out about Israel’s criminality.
Israel and truth cannot coexist. Israel’s enemies know this, and Israel knows this. That’s why Israel’s primary weapons are bombs, bullets, propaganda, censorship and obstruction, while the main weapon of Israel’s enemies is the camera.
Fatima Hassouna’s death has indeed been heard. All these loud noises are snapping more and more eyes open from their slumber.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian opinion writer whose work, co-authored with her American husband, Tim Foley, is entirely reader-supported. Her newsletter is available on Substack and her website is <www.caitlin johnstone.com.au>. This article was first published on both sites, April 19, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
BY RAMZY BAROUD AND ROMANA RUBEO
On Feb. 22, 2024, China’s Ambassador to The Hague, Zhang Jun, uttered the unexpected. His testimony, like that of a number of others, was meant to help the International Court of Justice (ICJ) formulate a critical and long-overdue legal opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Zhang articulated the Chinese position, which, unlike the American envoy’s testimony, was entirely aligned with international and humanitarian laws.
But he delved into a tabooed subject—one that even Palestine’s closest allies in the Middle East and Global South dared not touch: the right to use armed struggle.
“Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is an inalienable right,” the Chinese ambassador said, insisting that “the struggle waged by peoples for their liberation, right to self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression, domination against foreign forces should not be considered terror acts.”
Expectedly, Zhang’s comments didn’t reverberate much further: neither governments nor intellectuals, including many on the left, used his remarks as an opportunity to explore the matter further. It’s far more convenient to assign Palestinians the role of the victim or the villain. A resisting Palestinian— one with agency and control over his own fate—is always a dangerous territory.
Zhang’s remarks, however, were situated entirely within international law. Thus, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to discuss the topic in a recent interview we conducted with Prof. Richard Falk, a leading scholar in international law and former U.N. Special Rapporteur for Palestine.
Falk is not merely a legal expert, however accomplished he has been in the field. He is also a profound intellectual and an astute student of history. Though he speaks with great care, he does not hesitate or mince words. His
ideas may appear “radical,” but only if the term is understood within the limiting intellectual confines of mainstream media and academia.
Falk does not speak “common sense,” according to the Gramscian principle, but “good sense”—perfectly rational discourse, though often inconsistent with mainstream thinking.
We asked Professor Falk specifically about the Palestinian people’s right to defend themselves, and, specifically, about armed struggle and its consistency (or lack thereof) with international law.
“Yes, I think that’s a correct understanding of international law—one that the West, by and large, doesn’t want to hear about,” Falk said in response to the Feb. 24 comments by Zhang.
Falk elaborated: “The right of resistance was affirmed during the decolonization process in the 1980s and 1990s, and this included the right to armed resistance. However, this resistance is subject to compliance with international laws of war.”
Even the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”
Israel does not comply with international laws of war—for example, the entire situation in Gaza is one of the most flagrant [examples] of Israel’s complete disregard, not only for the laws of war, but for the entire apparatus of international and humanitarian laws.
Palestinians, on the other hand, who are in a permanent state of self-defense, are driven by a different set of values than Israel. One is that they are fully aware of the need to maintain moral legitimacy in their methods of resistance.
Thus, “compliance with the laws of war” would imply a commitment to protect civilians; respect and protect the “wounded and sick [...] in all circumstances”; “prevent unnecessary suffering” by restricting “the means
and methods of warfare”; conduct “proportionate” attacks, among other principles.
This takes us to the events of Oct. 7, 2023, the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation inside what is known as the Gaza Envelope region in southern Israel.
“To the extent that there is real evidence of atrocities accompanying the Oct. 7 attack, those would constitute violations, but the attack itself is something that, in context, appears entirely justifiable and long overdue,” Falk said.
The above statement is earth-shattering, to say the least. It is one of the clearest distinctions between the operation itself and some allegations— many of which have already been proven false—of what may have taken place during the Palestinian resistance assault.
This is why Israel, the U.S., and their allies in Western governments and media labored greatly to mischaracterize the events that led to the war, resorting to utter lies about mass rape, decapitation of babies, and senseless slaughter of innocent participants in a music festival.
By creating this misleading narrative, Israel succeeded in shifting the conversation away from the events that led to Oct. 7 and placed Palestinians on the defensive, as they stood accused of carrying out unspeakable horrors against innocent civilians.
“One of the tactics used by the West and Israel has been to almost succeed in decontextualizing Oct. 7 so that it appears to have come out of the blue,” according to Falk.
“The U.N. secretary-general was even defamed as an anti-Semite for merely pointing out the most obvious fact—that there had been a long history of abuse of the Palestinian people leading up to it,” he added, referring to Antonio Guterres’ simply stating that Oct. 7 “did not happen in a vacuum.”
The words of Falk, an iconic figure and one of the most influential academics and advocates of international law in our time, must inspire
a real discussion on Palestinian resistance.
The history of Palestinian resistance is not a history of armed resistance, per se. The latter is a mere manifestation of a long history of popular resistance that reaches all aspects of societal expression, ranging from culture, spirituality, civil disobedience, general strikes, mass protests, hunger strikes and more.
However, if Palestinians succeed in placing their armed resistance—as long as it complies with the laws of war— within a legal framework, then attempts at delegitimizing the Palestinian struggle, or large sections of Palestinian society, will be challenged and ultimately defeated.
While Israel continues to enjoy impunity from any meaningful action by international institutions, it is the Palestinians who continue to stand accused, instead of being supported in their legitimate struggle for freedom, justice and liberation.
Only courageous voices like Zhang and Falk, among many others, will ultimately correct this skewed discourse of history.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a U.S.-Palestinian journalist, media consultant, author and internationally syndicated columnist. He is editor of Palestine Chronicle, the author of six books, and co-editor with Ilan Pappé of Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appear in many online newspapers and academic journals. This article was first posted at <www.ramzybaroud.net>, April 6, 2025. Copyright © 2010-2025 RamzyBaroud.net. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
BY TAREQ S. HAJJAJ
Christians around the world are mourning the death of Pope Francis, who passed away on April 21. But in the Gaza Strip, the local Christian community is not just mourning the loss of a religious leader, but the loss of a friend and someone they called “a true father.”
Universally hailed as a champion of the oppressed and the marginalized, the late pope demonstrated his commitment to this reputation during the past 18 months of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. It has been widely reported that he made regular and neardaily calls to the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza and that he roundly condemned Israel’s actions, describing them as “terrorism” with “the characteristics of a genocide.”
George Anton, head of the emergency committee of the Holy Family Church, tells Mondoweiss that Pope Francis never failed to contact them during the long months of the war. The pontiff’s calls were “a daily necessity” for parishioners, Anton describes, because “he was a true father to every person in the Gaza Strip, a father who cares and shows concern for his children.”
At the start of the genocide, Palestinian Christians in Gaza sought refuge at Gaza’s oldest church, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, which dates back to the 5th century. But after it was bombed on Oct. 20, 2023, killing 17 people, including Christian and Muslim families, the rest of Gaza’s Christian population sought refuge at the Holy Family Catholic Church for the rest of the war.
“When we knew the pope was on the phone, we felt happy and secure that he was with us,” Anton says. “He always asked about the elderly, the children, the women, our food and drink, asked if we had medicine and hospitals. He would say, ‘I pray for you, and you pray for me.’ He would also ask about the people in the streets, whether aid was getting in and reaching us or not, everything.”
Christians in Gaza were in such close contact with Pope Francis that
many didn’t believe the news of his death, thinking it was just a rumor, despite knowing that he was in ill health.
“On [Easter] Sunday, he appeared to the world, congratulated Christians, and mentioned the people of Gaza in his speech. We couldn’t believe he had passed away,” Anton says.
“It has never happened in the history of the Church that a pope would call a small parish located far away every day for 16 months to reassure them that he is with them in this war,” Anton says. “If he could be with us, he would come. He sent the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem to visit us twice during the war.”
The pope’s short calls left a mark on many parishioners in the Church, says Laila Anton, a member of the flock. “We would finish our prayers and wait for the usual daily call, which often occurred in the evening around 8:00 p.m.,” Anton tells Mondoweiss. “It gave us the strength to endure the difficult conditions we were experiencing.”
Laila Anton says that Pope Francis’ voice symbolized resilience in Gaza and assuaged their fear of the constant bombardment. “We felt at ease, and his voice made us forget the sound of the planes and the bombs, even if only for a few minutes,” she says. “Gaza was among his last words.”
Pope Francis’ teachings were not limited to those inside the Church. According to Father Gabriele Romanelli, the priest in charge of the Holy Family Church in Gaza, the number of displaced Christians in the Church has reached 500.
“Pope Francis always asked us to protect children and vulnerable people needing help,” Father Romanelli tells Mondoweiss. “Thanks to the support of the Catholic Church, thousands of families in the Gaza Strip are receiving aid.”
“Pope Francis was responsible for more than a billion Catholics world-
wide, yet he was keen to connect with this small parish,” Father Romanelli adds. “This is evidence of his love and concern for us.”
Tareq S. Hajjaj is a journalist and a member of the Palestinian Writers Union. He studied English Literature at Al-Azhar University in Gaza. He has reported for Elbadi, Middle East Eye and Al Monitor. Follow him on Twitter at @Tareqshajjaj.This article was first posted at <http://mondoweiss.net>, April 22, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Mondoweiss. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
BY GIDEON LEVY
All the protest letters against the war deserve recognition − and all of them are belated and cowardly. Reading them, one might conclude that only 59 people are suffering in the Gaza Strip. No one else exists. No 50,000 corpses. No tens of thousands of orphaned, traumatized or maimed children. No two million displaced and destitute Palestinians. Just 59 Israeli hostages, living and dead, whose blood is sacred and whose freedom outweighs all else.
According to these letters, the hostages are the war’s only victims. Anyone reading these supposedly brave documents is met with the distorted and selective moral code of Israeli society—even the best of them. The awful subtext is that if only the hostages are released (and if only Binyamin Netanyahu is removed from office), then the bloodbath in Gaza can continue unhindered. After all, the war is justified.
While many hail these letters—praising their supposed courage and civic
engagement—it’s hard not to be appalled that not one of them calls for ending the war first and foremost because of its crimes against humanity and human dignity. The fate of the hostages should move every Israeli, and every human being. But when the focus is placed solely on them, while the suffering of over two million others is ignored, one cannot help but recognize this for what it is: nationalist morality, where Israeli blood and freedom stand above all else.
Of course, every nation must care first and foremost for its own. But to turn one’s back entirely on the other victims—victims of our own making— even when the scale is so vast, is profoundly disheartening. No person of true conscience could sign such letters.
Some of the letters paid lip service to Gaza’s victims, as if to check a moral box. The pilots referred vaguely to “innocent civilians,” without saying who—perhaps they meant Israeli residents of the Gaza border region? The writers showed a bit more courage, citing “disproportionate harm to Gaza residents,” and even “horrific harm to helpless human beings,” as they should have. But even in these cases, it’s clear the main impetus behind the call to end the war is the fate of the hostages.
Two thousand reservists from the military’s paratrooper and infantry brigades, 1,700 Armored Corps members, 1,055 pilots and air crews and even 200 reservists from the elite Talpiot training program—veterans of nearly every corner of the military— signed these letters. In response, the military top brass threatened dismissal, adding an unnecessarily dramatic and pompous flair to what remains a modest protest.
Next came the artists, the architects, the doctors—just about everyone, suddenly waking up after more than a year and a half of horror and silence. “End the war to save the hostages,” they all wrote with the same copy-paste tendency. It’s a cautious and calculated form of protest—one that avoids even
mentioning refusal, let alone any bold plunge into the heart of the fire. The letter writers knew exactly what they were doing: had they placed Palestinian victims front and center, many of the signatories would have walked away.
The signatories are right: the war must end in order to save the hostages. But that cannot be the only reason, or even the primary one. The war must end, above all, because of what it is doing to more than two million Palestinians, the vast majority of them innocent and defenseless. There is no need to rank suffering, or compare one kind of pain to another, to grasp this truth.
The hostages and their families are enduring unimaginable suffering, which must end immediately. But we must also raise our voices, just as forcefully, against the killing of journalists and medical workers (here, Israeli medical professionals who have spoken out deserve credit), against the bombing of hospitals and schools, the uprooting of entire communities like pawns on a game board and the total devastation being inflicted by the military without purpose.
Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are languishing in Gaza. They must be freed immediately. But contrary to prevailing Israeli opinion, they aren’t the only ones in Gaza who must be immediately rescued from their torment.
This opinion column was first posted at <www.haaretz.com>, April 17, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Haaretz. Reprinted with permission.
Amnesty International is now calling Israel’s mass atrocity in Gaza “a live-streamed genocide” due to the way this nightmare is unfolding right in front of us on the screens of our devices around the world, and public support for Israel is plummeting in the United States.
Zionists are losing control of the narrative, and they know it. And they are not taking it well.
During a speech at a summit hosted by the Jewish News Syndicate earlier this week, former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman said that Jews are “the masters of the universe” and should use their power in Silicon Valley to control online information in order to win a “digital war.”
Coleman, who is Jewish, made the following remarks on Monday:
“A majority of Gen Z have an unfavorable impression of Israel. And, my friends, I think the reason for that is that we’re losing the digital war. They’re getting their information from TikTok… and we’re losing that war.
“And when you think about it, the masters of the universe are Jews! We’ve got Altman at OpenAI, we’ve got [Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg, we’ve got [Google founder] Sergey Brin, we’ve got a group across the board. Jan Koum, y’know, founded WhatsApp. It’s us.
“And we have to figure out a way to win the digital battle. We’ve got to get our digital sneakers on, so that the truth can prevail over the lies. And when we do that, the future of Israel will be stronger because a majority of all Americans will support Israel. We’ll make that happen, we have to make it happen.”
Interestingly, at that same event, Meta’s “Jewish Diaspora” chief Jordana Cutler noted that Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram “banned content claiming Zionists run the world or control the media.” Under Cutler’s own guidelines, the prior comments from her fellow attendee would have been banned if he had said them on Facebook instead of at the Jewish News Syndicate International Policy Summit.
Israel’s backers have been whining about losing control of the narrative for months.
In February, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham told the press at an event in Tel Aviv that in the Arab world “Israel has won the war on the ground, but they’ve lost it on television,” lamenting that “all they see is morning, noon and night attacks on the Palestinian people.”
The Arab world is seeing attacks on the Palestinian people morning, noon and night because that is what’s happening. That is what the entire world is seeing.
In a talk at the McCain Institute last year, then-Sen. Mitt Romney told then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Congress supports banning TikTok because it shares information that turns people’s opinions against Israel, saying such information has a “very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”
BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
If any anti-Zionist with a public profile had said Jews control Silicon Valley and use it to influence public opinion for the benefit of Israel, they’d be forcefully denounced by the entire Western political-media class as a rabid antiSemite. But a Jewish politician saying Jews must use their control over Silicon Valley to influence public opinion about Israel receives no attention from that same politicalmedia class.
After bemoaning Israel’s lack of success at “PR” regarding its Gaza assault, Romney just came right out and said that this was “why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature”—with “us” meaning himself and his fellow lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“How this narrative has evolved, yeah, it’s a great question,” Blinken responded, saying that at the beginning of his career in Washington everyone was getting their information from television and physical newspapers like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
“Now, of course, we are on an intravenous feed of information with new impulses, inputs every millisecond,” Blinken continued. “And of course, the way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative. And you have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion, the impact of images dominates. And we can’t — we can’t discount that, but I think it also has a very, very, very challenging effect on the narrative.”
Notice how he said the word “narrative” three times? That’s how empire managers talk to each other, because that’s how they think about everything. Everything is about narrative control. It doesn’t matter what happens as long as you can control how people think about what happens.
During the university protests last year, Palantir CEO Alex Karp came right out and said that if those on the side of the protesters win the debate on this issue, the West will lose the ability to wage wars.
“We kind of just think these things that are happening, across college campuses especially, are like a sideshow — no, they are the show,” Karp said during his rant. “Because if we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.”
In an audio recording published by the Tehran Times in 2023, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is heard saying “We really have a TikTok problem” and calling for more aggressive online narrative operations to control public opinion about Israel among young people.
In the audio recording, whose authenticity was confirmed by the ADL, Greenblatt says the following:
“I also wanna point out that we have a major major major generational problem. All the polling that I’ve seen, ADL’s polling, ICC’s polling, independent polling suggests this is not a left or right gap, folks. The issue in United States’ support for Israel is not left and right: it is young
and old. And the numbers of young people who think that Hamas’ you know massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high. And so we really have a Tik-Tok problem, a Gen-Z problem, that our community needs to put the same brains that gave us Taglit, the same brains that gave us all these other amazing innovations, need to put our energy toward this like, fast. Cause again like we’ve been chasing this left-right divide. It’s the wrong game. The real game is the next generation, and the Hamas and their accomplices, the useful idiots in the West, are falling in line in ways that are terrifying.”
Israel’s backers are losing control of the narrative because there’s only so much that PR spin can do to convince people they’re not seeing what’s right in front of their eyes. If you’re strangling someone right in front of me there are no words you can say to me to convince me I’m not seeing someone being strangled, no matter how skillful you are at manipulation.
Actions speak louder than words. Talk is cheap. A picture is worth a thousand words. These aphorisms exist for a reason. Past a certain point there is only so much that mountains of verbiage can accomplish when people are seeing history’s first live-streamed genocide playing out right before their eyes.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. The average human life is dominated by mental stories, so if you can control the stories they are telling about what’s going on, you can control the humans.
Losing narrative control is losing real power. That’s why Israel’s supporters are growing increasingly anxious.
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian opinion writer whose work, co-authored with her American husband, Tim Foley, is entirely reader-supported. Her newsletter is available on Substack and her website is <www.caitlin johnstone.com.au>. This article was first published on both sites, May 1, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
BY JAMES NORTH
The corporate efforts to muzzle “60 Minutes,” the prestigious American television news program, have been publicly exposed by courageous members of its own staff. But mainstream U.S. media reports have underplayed one significant factor: the intense pro-Israel views of Shari Redstone, the billionaire heiress who is the controlling shareholder of Paramount, the CBS TV network’s parent company. Her views have mostly gone unreported, even though she is one of the most powerful media moguls in America, and someone who has already sharply criticized her own network’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Here’s what’s happened: on April 22, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, resigned, charging interference. Then, at the end of the program’s normal Sunday evening broadcast, one of its on-air reporters, Scott Pelley, dared to stand up for Owens. As The New York Times said, “… Mr. Pelley presented Mr. Owens’s decision to resign as an effort to protect ’60 Minutes’ from further interference.”
Pelley pointed out rightly that the parent company, Paramount, has a big merger pending, and that “The Trump administration must approve it.” So far, the majority of the mainstream coverage is emphasizing the merger angle; the (strong) suggestion is that Paramount is trying to tone down criticism of Trump so Shari Redstone can get the necessary Federal Communications Commission blessing to sell it to another billionaire.
Reporting the merger angle about the proposed sale is certainly not wrong. But it downplays another significant factor. Redstone is passionately pro-Israel, and there is evidence that she has regularly interfered in her network’s coverage. Back in January, she apparently complained to CBS executives about a “60 Minutes” segment on Israel and Gaza. In response, CBS appointed a special watchdog to pre-review program reports—an unusual, possibly unprecedented step that smells like additional pressure.
Redstone’s pro-Israel passions are no secret. To pick just one example, you could turn to a New York Post report last October, which cited her anger with a couple of other CBS news programs, including “Face the Nation,” the network’s Sunday morning show. The Post said: “She was particularly upset with a ‘Face the Nation’ broadcast last spring in which the show was critical of Israel after seven aid workers were killed during a strike in Gaza…”
This raises some important questions:
• CBS News, although no longer the distinguished exemplar that it was in the days of Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather, is still a powerful presence on the America media landscape. “60 Minutes” is the most highly rated news program on television, has 8.5 million viewers, and will celebrate its 57th anniversary later this year. (By contrast, 23 million regularly watch Fox News programming.)
• Shari Redstone is still the dominant shareholder in the parent company, (at least until she does get permission to sell it).
• Redstone is strongly and publicly pro-Israel, and has tried to shape the network’s coverage. Put yourself in the position of, say, the producers of the “CBS Evening News.” Are we supposed to believe that they are going to ignore her as they plan their daily programming?
So the question remains: Why aren’t Shari Redstone’s views—and her efforts
to influence CBS’s news coverage— known more widely?
James North is Mondoweiss’ editor-at-large, and has reported from Africa, Latin America and Asia for four decades. Follow him on X at @jamesnorth7. This article was first posted at <http://mondoweiss.net>, May 3, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Mondoweiss. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
BY JACK HUNTER
In March, it was reported that the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg had been part of a private Signal chat that also included then–National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Vice President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others.
They discussed sensitive plans about bombing Yemen.
The greatest focus after the story broke was how Goldberg, a journalist, could have possibly been included in this chat. Legacy media and left-leaning news outlets pounced on this aspect, eager to highlight the Trump administration’s supposed incompetency. Few to none focused on the wisdom of attacking the Houthis, something Vance questioned in the chat.
But the press did have a point about incompetency, even if it wasn’t the one they intended. How did the notorious “anti-Trump hater” Goldberg become part of this conversation?
Because neoconservatives stick together. They work together. They scheme together.
Neocons consistently work against President Trump’s stated desire to be a peacemaker whenever and wherever they can.
Mike Waltz, who had Goldberg in his phone contacts and knew him despite his denials, and who was relieved of his
duties as national security adviser this week and nominated for the United Nations ambassador role, is certainly one such neocon.
So is Goldberg, who wrote mere months before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 that “the relationship between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda is far closer than previously thought,” a bald-faced lie neocons were willing to tell back then to goad Americans into supporting arguably the worst foreign policy mistake in U.S. history.
Goldberg has long been a reliable purveyor of neocon narratives. He was not only willing to lie about the imaginary relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq, but also peddled the fantasy that Trump was an “agent” of Putin and the unsubstantiated claim that the president called military veterans “losers” while visiting a World War I memorial.
Waltz and Goldberg belong to the camp that would very much like the Trump administration to bomb Iran and have the U.S. become ensnared in an Iraq-style war, the exact opposite of what Trump campaigned on.
Though savvier than Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also closer to this neoconservative camp.
In mid-April, Axios reported on the two opposing and considerably different foreign policy forces within Team Trump: “One camp, unofficially led by Vice President Vance, believes a diplomatic solution is both preferable and possible and that the U.S. should be ready to make compromises in order to make it happen. Vance is highly involved in the Iran policy discussions, another U.S. official said.
“This camp includes also Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff—who represented the U.S. at the first round of Iran talks on Saturday—and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth,” Axios noted. “It also gets outside support from MAGA influencer and Trump whisperer Tucker Carlson.”
The report continued,
The other camp, which includes national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is highly sus-
picious of Iran and extremely skeptical of the chances of a deal that significantly rolls back Iran's nuclear program, U.S. officials say.
Senators close to Trump like Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) also hold that view,” Axios observed. “This camp believes Iran is weaker than ever, and therefore the U.S. should not compromise but insist Tehran fully dismantle its nuclear program—and should either strike Iran directly or support an Israeli strike if they don’t. Iran hawks like Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, are lobbying hard for that approach.
On April 3, not long after “Signalgate” and two weeks before the Axios report, the conservative commentator Charlie Kirk shared on X, “It’s going unnoticed because so much other news is happening, but the war drums are beating again in D.C. The warmongers worry this is their last chance to get the white whale they’ve been chasing for thirty years, an all-out regime change war against Iran.”
Senator Graham has wanted regime change in Iran. So has Senator Cotton. Rubio has threatened the same, even while serving as Trump’s secretary of state.
It’s almost as if war-eager politicians learned nothing from America’s last regime change wars. Kirk would add, “A new Middle East war would be a catastrophic mistake.”
A new Middle East war is exactly what the neoconservatives want—have long wanted—and are angling to have Trump start.
Trump should not only not give it to them. He should get rid of them.
In his first term, Trump eventually learned that his national security adviser, John Bolton, represented the antithesis of his “America First” foreign policy goals. Only three months into his second term, Waltz, along with his deputy Alex Wong, are out, hopefully after a similar realization within the administration.
In his role, Rubio should have two options: Carry out the president’s desire for diplomacy and peacemaking re-
garding Iran, as the secretary has thus far dutifully done regarding the Ukraine–Russia conflict—or get fired.
A true “America First” foreign policy and neoconservatism are incompatible. Trump has said that in his first term he wasn’t aware soon enough of who on his staff might be working against him.
At only 100 days in, may he learn even sooner in his second term.
Jack Hunter is the former political editor of Rare.us. He has written regularly for the Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, Spectator USA and Responsible Statecraft and is the co-author of the The Tea Party Goes to Washington by Sen. Rand Paul. This article was first posted at <www.theamerican conservative.com>, May 3, 2025. Copyright © 2022 The American Conservative, a publication of The American Ideas Institute. Reprinted with permission.
BY ALAN MACLEOD
Google recently announced it would acquire Israeli-American cloud security firm Wiz for $32 billion. The price tag—65 times Wiz’s annual revenue—has raised eyebrows and further solidified the close relationship between Google and the Israeli military.
In its press release, the Silicon Valley giant claimed that the purchase will “vastly improve how security is designed, operated and automated—providing an end-to-end security platform for customers, of all types and sizes, in the AI era.”
Yet it has also raised fears about the security of user data, particularly of those who oppose Israeli actions against its neighbors, given Unit 8200’s
long history of using tech to spy on opponents, gather intelligence, and use that knowledge for extortion and blackmail.
Wiz was established only five years ago, and all four co-founders—Yinon Costica, Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik—were leaders in Israel’s elite military intelligence unit, Unit 8200. Like many Israeli tech companies, Wiz is a direct outgrowth of the military intelligence outfit. A recent study found that almost 50 of its current employees are Unit 8200 veterans.
“That experience showed me the impact you can make when you combine great talent with amazing technology,” Rappaport said of his time in the military.
Former Unit 8200 agents, working hand-in-glove with the Israeli national security state, have gone on to produce many of the world’s most infamous malware and hacking tools.
Perhaps the most well-known of these is Pegasus, spyware used by governments around the world to surveil and harass political opponents. These include India, Kazakhstan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the latter of which used the tool to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was assassinated by Saudi agents in Türkiye.
In total, more than 50,000 journalists, human rights defenders, diplomats, business leaders and politicians are known to have been secretly surveilled. That includes heads of state such as French President Emmanuel Macron, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Iraqi President Barham Salih. All Pegasus sales had to be approved by the Israeli government, which reportedly had access to the data Pegasus’ foreign customers were accruing.
Unit 8200 also spies on Americans. Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency regularly shared the data and
communications of U.S. citizens with the Israeli intelligence group. “I think that’s amazing…It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen,” he said.
For the Israeli government, the utility of these private spying firms filled with former IDF intelligence figures is that it allows it some measure of plausible deniability when confronted with spying attacks. As Haaretz explained: “Who owns [these spying companies] isn’t clear, but their employees aren’t soldiers. Consequently, they may solve the army’s problem, even if the solution they provide is imperfect.”
Today, former Unit 8200 agents not only create much of the world’s spyware, but also the security features that claim to protect against unwanted surveillance. A MintPress investigation found that three of the six largest VPN companies in the world are owned and controlled by an Israeli company co-founded by a Unit 8200 veteran.
It is in Palestine, however, that Unit 8200 has been most active. The unit serves as the centerpiece of Israel’s high-tech repressive state apparatus. Using gigantic amounts of data compiled on Palestinians by tracking their every move through facial recognition cameras, monitoring their calls, messages, emails and personal data, Unit 8200 has created a digital dragnet that it uses to snoop on, harass and suppress Palestinians.
It compiles dossiers on virtually every Gaza resident, including their medical history, sex lives and search histories, so that this information can be used for extortion or blackmail later. If, for example, an individual is cheating on their spouse, desperately needs a medical operation, or is secretly homosexual, this can be used as leverage to turn civilians into informants and spies for Israel.
One former Unit 8200 operative said that as part of his training, he was assigned to memorize different Arabic
words for “gay” so that he could listen for them in phone conversations he was eavesdropping on.
Unit 8200 is also reportedly behind the even more controversial Project Lavender, a giant, AI-generated kill list of tens of thousands of Gazans that the IDF uses to target the densely populated Strip’s civilian population.
Every Gazan (including children) is assigned a score of 1-100, based on their perceived proximity to Hamas. A wide range of characteristics will increase an individual’s score, including living or working in the same building or being in a WhatsApp group with a known or suspected Hamas member.
If a person’s number reaches a certain threshold, they are automatically added to a Unit 8200 kill list. This, one IDF commander explained, solved Israel’s perennial targeting “human bottleneck,” allowing them to carry out tens of thousands of strikes into Gaza during the first few weeks of the postOct. 7 attack alone.
Unit 8200 is also widely reported to have carried out the Lebanon pager attack, exploding thousands of electronic devices at the same time, killing dozens and injuring thousands more. The operation was widely described, even by former CIA Director Leon Panetta, as an act of terrorism.
This long history of violence, skulduggery and spying raises troubling questions about whether a corporation founded and staffed by dozens of individuals from such an organization can be trusted with billions of users’ private and personal data.
Google’s purchase of Wiz deepens its already close ties to Unit 8200. In 2013, the tech giant acquired Waze, an online maps service founded by three Unit 8200 veterans, for $1.3 billion. It has also directly hired dozens of former spooks and spies to fill its ranks; a 2022 MintPress News investigation found at least 99 former Unit 8200 agents working at the Silicon Valley behemoth.
Among these figures is Gavriel Goidel, head of strategy and operations for Google Research. Goidel joined Google in 2022 after a six-year career in military intelligence, during which he rose to become head of learning at Unit 8200. There, he led a large team of operatives who sifted through intelligence data to “understand patterns of hostile activists,” according to his own account.
Google is far from an outlier when it comes to hiring former Israeli spies to carry out its operations. Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon have all hired a significant number of ex-Unit 8200 agents. Even TikTok, supposedly a hotbed of anti-Semitism, employs a considerable number of ex-spooks. Perhaps most surprisingly, a number of top U.S. media outlets, including CNN and Axios, have recruited former Unit 8200 spies and analysts to write and produce America’s news about the Middle East.
Google has invested heavily in Israel, first opening offices there in 2006. Longtime CEO Eric Schmidt is known to be a vocal supporter of the controversial state. In a 2012 meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he declared that “the decision to invest in Israel was one of the best that Google has ever made.”
But the Wiz deal is undoubtedly the company’s biggest Israeli investment yet. The all-cash acquisition represents a massive injection of money into Israel’s flailing and war-weary economy, equivalent to 0.6 percent of the country’s GDP. The money, the Israeli press excitedly reports, will allow the government to continue without enacting major austerity measures, reduce the nation’s deficit, and enable Israel to continue on a wartime footing for longer. As such, it represents a move critics say amounts to a financial intervention on behalf of Israel. Moreover, it also sends a message to the rest of the business world to invest in the country, boosting investor sentiment at a time when it is most needed.
The size of the deal also surprised many. The price is similar to that of
the sale of JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo in 2008, Visa Europe in 2017, and Twitter in 2022. Yet Wiz is a new and relatively unknown company, raising questions about its valuation.
Ultimately, though, these considerations are secondary to the main issue that such a group will now be charged with providing security for the data of billions of users worldwide. Given Unit 8200’s role in monitoring and targeting the Palestinian population, many will be wondering if, going forward, Google products are at all safe to use.
Alan MacLeod is senior staff writer for MintPress News and the author of Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. This article was first posted at <www.mintpressnews.com>, April 24, 2025, under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License. Reprinted with permission.
BY ALI RIZK
The secretary-general of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Sheikh Naim Qassem, recently asserted that continued instability in Lebanon does not serve U.S. interests.
Qassem made the remarks following an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs which Israel claimed had targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot.
“Put pressure on America and make it understand that Lebanon cannot rise if the aggression doesn’t stop,” he said, addressing senior Lebanese state officials. He added that Washington has interests in Lebanon, and that “stability achieves these interests.”
Those statements mark a notable shift from the fiery anti-American rhetoric historically employed by senior officials of the Lebanese Shi’i movement. They also represent a rare public acknowledgment and recognition of U.S. interests in a stable Lebanon. This offers an opportunity worth exploring by the Trump administration and provides it with a strong motive to press Israel to refrain from conducting attacks on Lebanese targets.
Unlike previous Israeli attacks on the Lebanese capital following last November’s ceasefire agreement, Israel did not claim that its latest strike was provoked by any alleged action by Hezbollah. The Israeli military conducted its first post-ceasefire strike on Beirut last March after two missiles were launched at Israel from southern Lebanon.
Despite suffering immense losses in its latest war with Israel, Hezbollah remains an important player in Lebanon, not least because it retains widespread support within the Shi’i community, the largest sectarian group in the country. This support was reflected in the funeral procession for its former leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last September. According to Reuters news agency, hundreds of thousands of people took part in this procession. (Pro-Hezbollah media outlets put the figure at 1.4 million.)
If anything, events in neighboring Syria, where some Alawite and Druse communities have been subject to killings and massacres under the new Sunni-led regime, have strengthened Lebanese Shi’i support for Hezbollah as their most reliable protector against a Sunni extremist threat.
As a result, Hezbollah’s public recognition of U.S. interests in Lebanon will likely translate into much broader popular acceptance across the country. Moreover, there is reason to believe that the Shi’i movement would commit to its word. While relations between the U.S., which still considers the group a terrorist organization, and
Hezbollah have been historically hostile, that animosity stems largely from Washington’s support for Israel, as opposed to ideological anti-Americanism.
In the words of former CIA veteran and Quincy Institute non-resident fellow Paul Pillar, the Lebanese Shi’i movement “has never looked to pick fights with the United States based on some al-Qaeda-like transnational ideology.” Pillar also explains that the 1983 Marine Barracks attack in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and has been attributed to Hezbollah—although it did not actually exist as a formal organization at the time—was the result of perceived U.S. support for an Israeli offensive against Lebanon and its occupation of the southern part of the country.
Hezbollah officials have also recently gone on the record stating that its issues with the United States do not stem from animosity toward Washington per se but rather its policies, particularly its support for Israel. In an interview with Responsible Statecraft in March, Hezbollah parliamentarian Ali Fayyad remarked that the Lebanese Shi’i movement “didn’t have bilateral problems with the Americans,” and that “the antagonism owes largely to Washington's pro-Israel policies.”
At the same time, U.S. government documents have warned that renewed Israeli military action in Lebanon threatens American interests, suggesting that Washington should try to rein in Israel. “A resumption of protracted military operations in Lebanon could trigger a sharp rise in sectarian tension, undermine Lebanese security forces, and dramatically worsen humanitarian conditions,” warned the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community released in March.
Indeed, renewed unilateral Israeli actions against Lebanon threatens U.S. interests, not least given that Washington has invested heavily in backing former army chief Joseph Aoun in his election to the presidency in January. That support stemmed from Washington’s longstanding sup-
port for the Lebanese army—more than $3 billion since 2006 —which is one of Washington closest regional partners.
A spike in sectarianism, coupled with deteriorating security and humanitarian conditions, would seriously undermine Aoun’s position and, by extension, that of the United States. Perhaps even more important, the weakening of Lebanon’s state security apparatus undermines Washington’s declared aim of the state assuming full responsibility for securing the country.
Reining in Israel would also facilitate Aoun’s efforts to resolve the contentious issue of Hezbollah’s still formidable arsenal and gain a state monopoly over the possession of weapons. The Lebanese president has affirmed his intent to tackle this issue through national dialogue that includes the Shi’i movement, rather than taking a more confrontational approach. Aoun has even suggested that Hezbollah fighters could be integrated into the Lebanese military.
Pressing Israel to refrain from unnecessary escalation would bolster Aoun’s position and potentially make Hezbollah more cooperative with the Lebanese president’s initiatives.
Some pundits in Washington have dismissed Aoun’s approach as unworkable. A policy analysis by David Schenker of the influential pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy argued that integrating Hezbollah fighters into the army would not be consistent with the goal of disarming the Lebanese Shi’i movement. He also asserted that integrating Hezbollah forces would “undercut” the Lebanese army, and that now is the time to disarm Hezbollah, by force if necessary.
This argument prioritizes the disarmament of the Lebanese Shi’i movement over other considerations, making it more closely aligned with Israel’s objectives as opposed to U.S. aims. Any attempt by the Lebanese army to forcefully disarm Hezbollah would almost certainly lead to civil
strife and weaken Lebanon’s military by splitting it along sectarian lines and/or provoking the defection of Shi’i officers and soldiers within its ranks, thus severely degrading the very national institution in which Washington has invested so much in strengthening.
Moreover, integrating Hezbollah fighters into the Lebanese army would arguably strengthen rather than weaken the institution. Many of the group’s fighters are battle-hardened as a result of having taken part in military operations against Israel or during the civil war in Syria. Any fears that Iran would infiltrate the Lebanese army via Hezbollah under such a scenario were addressed by Aoun’s recent dismissal of an Iraqi Popular Mobilization-like model in Lebanon.
Simply stated, the Lebanese president’s initiatives deserve American support given that this would be consistent with U.S. interests in a stable and unitary Lebanese state that can lay the groundwork for reinvigorating the economy, attracting badly needed foreign investment, and dealing with longstanding problems of corruption and clientelism.
To its credit, the Trump administration has shown an inclination to place U.S. interests above those of Israel, as evidenced by the ongoing nuclear talks with Iran (notwithstanding the delay of the next round of these talks). This allows for cautious optimism that it may pursue a similar approach in Lebanon, which would have the added benefit of facilitating an understanding with Tehran.
Ali Rizk is a contributor to Al-Monitor, AlMayadeen and The American Conservative, and has written for other outlets including the Lebanese dailies Assafir and Al-Alakhbar. This article was first posted at <www.responsiblestatecraft.org>, May 5, 2025. The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates. Copyright © 2025 the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Reprinted with permission.
BY JASON DITZ
Next month, Iraq will host the Arab League’s 34th summit in Baghdad. This was seen as an exciting opportunity for Iraq after the protracted U.S. invasion and occupation, to finally reclaim some regional influence for themselves.
It’s become a source of no small amount of controversy inside Iraq, however, after the announcement Wednesday by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani that the president of neighboring Syria, Ahmed alSharaa, has been invited.
It’s a sore spot for many Iraqis after decades of war, because Sharaa was formerly a high ranking member of alQaeda in Iraq (AQI), actively participating in a violent insurgency against the Iraqis.
Sharaa was well known as part of AQI in his early insurgency days, and was said to be a close associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the AQI founder and leader.
During his time in Iraq, Sharaa was captured by the Iraqis at least once, and held in prison under the name Amjad Muzaffar Hussein al-Naimi. He spent five years in various prison facilities, and was released in 2011, roughly coinciding with the Syrian civil war’s beginning.
Sharaa was then tasked by al-Qaeda’s international leader (Ayman al-Zawahiri) with forming an al-Qaeda affiliate for Syria. He did so, creating a group which was called Jabhat alNusra. During this time he was known
by a new nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.
Jabhat al-Nusra was also a massive terrorist organization within Syria, vying with ISIS for power along with aiming to oust the Assad government. In 2017, Sharaa renamed the organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Based in Syria’s Idlib Governorate, HTS held substantial territory, with Sharaa also trying to merge other Islamist groups with them, often violently trying to incorporate them into his faction.
In 2024, heavily backed by Turkey, the HTS struck out from Idlib toward the Aleppo Governorate, quickly seizing a lot of territory and marching southward. Within weeks, they had seized Damascus outright, and Sharaa was named the “interim” leader of Syria, a position he continues to hold.
Sharaa’s history with al-Qaeda is a matter of considerable concern given he’s now the ruler of Syria, and the massacre of members of the Alawite minority last month only adds to that. In and of itself that would probably be cause for concern in Iraq too, which is dominated by Shi’i groups.
But Sharaa publicly having been directly part of AQI and engaged in terrorist activities inside Iraq in recent memory adds a lot to this issue, with many Iraqi MPs warning Prime Minister Sudani that Sharaa’s history makes him very much not welcome.
MP Falih al-Khazali warned, “We will not accept Baghdad becoming a safe heaven for the terrorist al-Jolani. The blood of the martyrs is still fresh.” Excluding Sharaa from the summit likely would’ve caused problems for Iraq too, but his invitation is likely to remain an issue until the summit is over.
Jason Ditz is senior editor for Antiwar.com. This article was first posted at <www.antiwar. com>, April 17, 2025. Copyright © 2025 Anti war.com. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.
BY ELDAR MAMEDOV
With President Donald Trump sending mixed messages on Iran—on the one hand, reinstating his “maximum pressure” campaign and threatening military action; on the other, signaling an eagerness to negotiate—anti-diplomacy voices are working overtime to find new ways to lock the U.S. and Iran into perpetual enmity.
The last weeks have seen a mounting campaign, in both the U.S. and Israel, to integrate Azerbaijan, Iran’s northern neighbor, into the Abraham Accords— the 2020 set of “normalization deals” between Israel and a number of Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. The leading Israeli think tank Begin-Sadat Center argued that Baku would be a perfect addition to the club. A number of influential rabbis, led by the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Marvin Hier, and the main rabbi of the UAE, Eli Abadi (who happens to be a close associate to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was himself instrumental in forging the original Abraham Accords), also sent a letter to Trump promoting Baku’s inclusion. The Wall Street Journal and Forbes amplified these messages on their op-ed pages.
At first blush, such activism may appear puzzling. Azerbaijan, for all practical purposes, is already a close ally of Israel—to a much greater extent than any of the Arab signatories of the Abraham Accords.
When, in the early 1990s, Israel defined Iran as its main threat, it sought ties with Azerbaijan as a counter. Baku has benefited greatly from that rela-
tionship: Israel played a key role in Azerbaijan’s defeat of Armenia in wars over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2020 and 2023. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Israel accounted for up to 70 percent of Azerbaijan’s imports of advanced weaponry. Azerbaijan, in turn, is Israel’s main supplier of oil, accounting for up to 40 percent of overall oil imports. Baku never suspended oil shipments during Israel’s war in Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023. In a sign of further developing ties, Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR recently acquired a 10 percent stake in Israel’s offshore “Tamar” gas field.
Thus, the added value of Azerbaijan joining the Abraham Accords is not obvious on its merits alone. The real agenda here appears to be to add the United States to the existing bilateral alliance. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office, in fact, announced that Israel seeks to “establish a strong foundation for trilateral collaboration” with the U.S. and Azerbaijan. Seth Cropsey and Joseph Epstein spelled out the aim of such an alliance in their March 14 Wall Street Journal op-ed: to significantly increase pressure on Iran’s northern border.
Yet there is an obstacle to the full realization of that scheme: Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act, enacted by Congress in the context of the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in the early 1990s at the urgings of the influential American-Armenian lobby, forbids U.S. aid and arms sales to Azerbaijan. Since the beginning of the Global War on Terror, successive presidents have waived that provision as Azerbaijan was found to be a useful partner. In that context, Baku pitched itself as a key ally against Tehran, including through illicit lobbying of Congress members.
Azerbaijan’s Israeli and American backers claim that the announcement of an impending “peace deal” between Armenia and Azerbaijan provides a good reason for Section 907 to be repealed altogether. Yet the deal is not yet
signed, with Baku constantly moving the goalposts. More ominously, Baku has intensified messaging that Armenia is preparing a revanchist war to roll back its losses. Such claims, however, would seem to defy common sense, as the balance of forces in the region strongly suggests that Yerevan is in no position to militarily challenge a Turkish- and Israeli-backed Azerbaijan. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has insisted that he is ready to immediately sign the peace agreement with Baku.
Baku’s stalling tactics may be explained by the desire to maximize its current leverage to extract yet more territorial concessions from Yerevan and then blame Armenia for the failure of the peace talks. In particular, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has long claimed the southern Armenian province of Syunik (known as Zangezur in Baku) as ancestral Azeri land and vowed to “return” it. It also happens to be the small slice of Armenian territory that borders Iran and cuts mainland Azerbaijan off from its exclave Nakhchivan. Azerbaijan has long demanded the establishment of the so-called “Zangezur corridor” that would connect it directly with Turkey. That demand is not addressed in the current draft peace agreement; nor, however, has it been dropped from Baku’s agenda, which makes Armenia particularly vulnerable to renewed military pressure from Azerbaijan.
For itself, Iran has made it abundantly clear that any change to the borders in the South Caucasus is unacceptable. Tehran fears that the loss of the border with Armenia will isolate it from the region and enable its rival Turkey and arch-enemy Israel to consolidate their foothold in its backyard. To prevent that, Tehran has conducted massive military exercises along its border with Azerbaijan and warned that it would intervene militarily, if necessary. So far, that has been enough to deter Baku’s irredentist plans. Those warnings have
had their desired effect: since then, both Baku and Tehran have taken steps to deescalate tensions.
The push to add Azerbaijan to the Abraham Accords, which Trump considers his signature first-term foreign policy achievement, appears aimed at elevating Baku’s relationship to Washington, and thus potentially emboldening Azerbaijan to take a more as-
sertive stance vis-à-vis Iran. Positioning Azerbaijan at the vanguard of the anti-Iran coalition also aims at galvanizing Iran’s own large Azeri community (up to 20 percent of the total population). Hard-line U.S. neoconservatives and organizations, such as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute, and their Israeli counterparts have long argued for encouraging Iran’s ethnic and religious minority communities, including Azeris, to rise up against the regime.
There is no doubt that Israel and Azerbaijan would welcome “trilateral collaboration” with the U.S. that Netanyahu’s office favors. But it is difficult to see how it would serve longterm U.S. interests, particularly its interest in avoiding new military commitments in the greater Middle East that could entangle Washington in alliances that could drag it into new wars there, either directly or by proxy.
Moreover, there certainly isn’t any compelling reason for the U.S. to reward Azerbaijan—a far-flung, corrupt and despotic dynastic regime guilty of ethnically cleansing 120,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and abusing the human rights of its own people. Azerbaijan’s strategic significance to the U.S. is negligible. It mostly hinges on a massively inflated “Iran threat.” A far better way forward would be for Washington to settle its differences with Tehran in a peaceful way, as indeed Trump purports to want to do. Among other benefits, it would remove any excuses for unnecessary entanglements with yet more unsavory clients.
Eldar Mamedov is a Brussels-based foreign policy expert and non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute. This article was first posted at <www.responsiblestatecraft.org>, March 24, 2025. The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates. Copyright © 2025 the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Reprinted with permission.
Members of civil society take part in a peace rally in Lahore, Pakistan, on May 6, 2025. Pakistan conducted a second missile test and India ordered civil defense drills in an escalating stand‐off over contested Kashmir that the U.N. said on May 5 has brought the two nations to the brink of war.
By Maah-Noor Ali
AS BOMBS RAIN down on Gaza and the world looks away, another settler colonial project is taking notes. From New Delhi to
Maah‐Noor Ali is a writer, activist and lawyer, specializing in South Asia and the Middle East. You can follow him @maahnoorali on Twitter and Instagram. This article was published on May 7, 2025, by Mondoweiss. Reprinted with permission.
Tel Aviv, the ideological affinity between Israeli Zionism and India’s Hindutva movement has never been more pronounced as India strikes Pakistan.
And with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza facing little to no meaningful international accountability, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has every reason to believe that he, too, can escalate his ethno-nationalist project with impunity.
When Israel bombs a hospital, the world debates whether Hamas was hiding beneath it. When India bombs a mosque, it shrugs— wasn’t it probably a “terror hideout”? The fact that the international community has tolerated Israel dropping U.S.-made bombs on refugee camps has set a chilling precedent for other governments to commit atrocities with the same blank check.
India has been paying attention.
This spring, that belief manifested violently. On May 6, India launched missile strikes into Pakistan under the banner of Operation Sindoor, a name that carries deep Hindu cultural connotations. The Indian government claimed these were precision attacks on “terrorist infrastructure,” a response to the April 22 attack in the town of Pahalgam in the Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 Hindu tourists. Yet no concrete evidence has linked that attack to Pakistan. It hasn’t mattered. The facts don’t need to check out when the purpose is performance, when the goal is to signal dominance.
Nine targets were struck across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. In Bahawalpur, a missile hit a mosque. A child was killed alongside seven others. Thirty-one men and women have been injured so far. Civilians are dead, mourning families are left in ruins and the Indian government rushed to declare the operation “measured.” But we’ve heard that word before. It’s the same sanitized language used every time Israel flattens a school in Rafah or bombs a hospital in Khan Yunis. Surgical, precise, justified. The language of colonial warfare, carefully rehearsed.
The solidarity between Zionism and Hindutva is not metaphorical. It is material. India is now one of Israel’s largest arms buyers. Surveillance systems perfected in the West Bank now watch Kashmiri neighborhoods. Israeli drones that terrorize Gaza skies are sold to India to monitor unrest in Muslim majority regions. The exchange isn’t just in weapons, it’s in ideology, strategy and impunity.
Back in 2019, when Modi revoked Article 370 and stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its limited autonomy, it was an open declaration of settler intent. Tens of thousands of additional troops were deployed. Communication was cut. Journalists were gagged. The region was locked down while India began laying the legal and infrastructural groundwork for demographic change. The model? Israel’s ongoing colonization of the West Bank.
And today, as Gaza is turned into rubble and ash, Kashmir watches. So does the rest of the subcontinent.
Because this isn’t just about Kashmir. It’s about a broader, expanding mandate for Hindu supremacy across India—one that sees Christians, Dalits, Sikhs and particularly Muslims as obstacles to a pure nationalist identity. And just like Zionism, Hindutva positions itself as ancient, sacred and fundamentally peaceful, so that any resistance to it can be labelled extremism.
We saw it again in early May. The attack in Pahalgam, though tragic, was seized upon instantly as justification for cross-border violence. No thorough investigation. No space for doubt. No accountability for the consequences. This is Modi’s version of the hasbara playbook: flood the media with righteousness, and let the bombs do the rest.
The victims, whether in Gaza, Bahawalpur, or Srinagar, are always cast as threats to the peace being enforced upon them. Their mourning is seen as radical. Their survival, inconvenient. And their death, often deserved.
But it’s not just the governments. It’s the world that enables them.
What has emboldened Netanyahu has also emboldened Modi: the silence of so-called liberal democracies, the performative concern from the U.N., and the refusal of the U.S., UK, and Europe to impose sanctions or cut aid. This teaches other authoritarian leaders a lesson: if you’re useful, if you say the right words about terror, you
can get away with anything.
Modi is watching Gaza burn. And he’s not just watching: he’s learning, testing and practicing.
Today it was Bahawalpur. Tomorrow it might be Lahore. Or maybe somewhere else entirely. But the message has been sent: the world will not intervene.
So as Palestinians resist a genocidal siege, and Kashmiris struggle under militarized occupation, our solidarity must be sharp, intersectional and unapologetic. We must name these ideologies for what they are: settler colonialism, fascism and apartheid. We must stop pretending they are separate fights.
They are not.
They are chapters of the same global story.
And Modi is writing his next one with Israeli ink.
By Eric S. Margolis
ONE OF THE WORLD’S oldest and most dangerous conflicts escalated dramatically in late April as two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, traded threats of war. The Kashmir conflict is the oldest one before the U.N.
In my book War at the Top of the World, I warned that the confrontation over Kashmir, the beautiful mountain state claimed by both Islamabad and Delhi, could unleash a nuclear war that could kill millions and pollute the planet.
After three wars and many clashes, it seemed the two bad neighbors had allowed the Kashmir dispute to fade into the background as their relations slightly improved. Then came the murder on April 22 of 26 Indian tourists at Pahalgam, a Kashmir beauty spot, by Muslim insurgents.
Kashmir was roughly divided between India and Pakistan in 1947. The larger part of Kashmir was annexed by Indian troops as the entire region was scourged by massacres and rapine. As a result, India’s portion of Kashmir became the only Muslim majority state in India. Kashmiri Muslims have waged a bloody struggle since the 1980s to leave India or join Pakistan. Today, 500,000 Indian troops and an equal number of paramilitary police garrison the restive province.
I’ve been under fire three times on the Line of Control that separates the two Kashmirs and at 15,000 feet altitude on the remote Siachen Glacier. I was with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after he tried to seize Kargil, which lies above Kashmir.
The outside world cared little about the India-Pakistan conflict until both Delhi and Islamabad acquired nuclear weapons. Their “hatred of brothers,” as I called it, pits fanatical Hindus against equally ardent Muslims who share centuries of hatred and are being whipped up by politicians.
Right-wing Hindu militants in Delhi demand reunification of pre1947 “Mother India.” Pakistan has about 251 million citizens; India
Eric S. Margolis is an award ‐winning, internationally syndicated columnist. This article was first posted on his website, <www.eric‐margolis.com>, May 2, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
has 1.4 billion and a much larger GDP. Pakistan would be unable to resist a full-bore attack by India’s huge armed forces. So it relies on tactical nuclear weapons to compensate for the dangerous imbalance.
But the nuclear arsenals of both countries are on hair-trigger alert and are pointed at the subcontinent’s major cities. A decade ago, the U.S. think tank Rand Corp estimated an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange would kill three million immediately and injure 100 million. Such damage would pollute most of the region’s major riverine water sources all the way down to Southeast Asia.
Given the region’s poor communications and often obsolete technology, nuclear arsenals must be kept on high alert lest they be surprised and decapitated by a sudden missile attack from across the
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border. Accidents are frequent, as anyone who has traveled across India knows.
India’s right-wing politicians are loudly demanding more revenge strikes against Pakistan as Prime Minister Narendra Modi stirs up anti-Muslim hatred in India—following the example set in the United States by his new ally, President Donald Trump. Pakistan is calling on its key ally, China, for support. India and China are at scimitars drawn over their poorly demarcated Himalayan border—another legacy of British imperialism.
India claims Pakistan’s intelligence service (ISI) was behind the Kashmir attacks. Pakistan denies Indian charges. I’m unsure. A decade ago, as a war correspondent, I joined Kashmiri mujahideen guerrillas operating against Indian forces. At the time, Pakistan was quietly supporting the insurgents. I was extensively briefed on Kashmir by ISI officials.
Today, it’s uncertain if Pakistan is involved, as India claims. India, for its part, also supports rebel groups in Pakistani Balochistan and around Karachi. India routinely commits atrocities against Muslim Kashmiri citizens. Muslim Kashmiris have attacked local Hindus and Sikhs.
India just threatened to shut off the rivers leading from Tibet that nurture Pakistan’s wheat farmers. Pakistan threatens to breach any Indian dams on the Indus River and its tributaries with nuclear weapons.
Everyone wants beautiful, green Kashmir.
By Mustafa Fetouri
FOR DECADES, Egypt stood as the unrivaled leader of the Arab world, a nation of cultural depth and historical gravitas. Arabs affectionately referred to it as the big sister and many still do. In the 1940s it spearheaded the founding of the League of Arab States championing Arab unity, economic integration and common defense policy. The late Gamal Abdel Nasser’s messages of Arab nationalism and unity still resonate with many throughout the Arab world to this day. In the 1960s, as more Arab countries gained independence, almost all of them received assistance from Egypt in the form of teachers, medics, managers and other professionals to help the new states establish the institutions of government.
Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He received the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written extensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues, and has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafa fetouri@hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri.
Today, Egypt’s regional role has declined significantly. Critics would say that it has become subservient to external powers, especially the U.S. and Gulf states. It is plagued by crippling internal challenges including severe economic difficulties, soaring internal and external debt, rising food insecurity and waning influence. Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Cairo’s failure to help Gaza (which once was part of Egypt) make that decline painfully obvious.
Culturally and politically, Egyptians were once admired by their Arab neighbors for their rich history and their role in shaping modern Arab identity. Historically, Egypt was a pillar of Arab nationalism and the fulcrum upon which regional alliances and political influence were balanced. In the mid-20th century, Egypt was celebrated not only as a cultural center but also as a beacon of anti-imperialist sentiment
and pan-Arab unity. Israel, as an imperialist outpost, became the stated enemy further rallying the Arab masses around Cairo.
Since its creation in 1948, Israel has been a threat to Egypt. Egypt fought four major wars against Israel, first over Palestine and later to liberate the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel occupied in 1967. Right after Nasser died, Cairo shifted its foreign policy and became a U.S. ally. President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, mediated by the late President Jimmy Carter. The agreement neutralized Egypt as a threat to Israel, yet Israel still saw fit to snub Carter’s funeral because the former president criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Critics argue that the accords overprioritized peace with Israel and Egypt’s need for foreign aid at the expense of the Palestinian struggle. Many believe that Egypt’s role as a mediator between Israel and various Arab parties encouraged other Arab countries to normalize with Israel. And the accords have come at a high cost: Egypt regained control over the Sinai Peninsula but it has very limited sovereignty over the territory. Cairo cannot deploy certain kinds of forces and armament into the area without first securing Israel’s approval. Israel today is a net exporter to Egypt of natural gas, textiles and chemicals. Decades after the accords were signed, Egyptians regard the treaty as offering a cold peace.
Evidence of Egypt’s declining status in the Arab world has been on display during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Historically seen as a defender of the Palestinian cause, Cairo has not even taken the symbolic gesture of recalling its ambassador to Israel. Many criticize the fact that a single private company, with links to the Egyptian security establishment, enjoys a monopoly on border transportation and logistics. The company charges war-ravaged and ailing Palestinians exorbitant amounts to cross the border for treatment or safety, forcing many to sacrifice their life savings. To cross the border into Egypt, an Egyptian company charges $5,000 per adult and $2,500 per child, suggesting that opportunistic calculations are trumping long-held principles
of solidarity with the Palestinians.
In summary, Egypt is increasingly seen as subordinating and aligning its regional policies with Western political interests. As a result, its traditional role as the vanguard of Arab solidarity has been undermined, leading to a crisis of identity and influence in the broader Middle East.
The most tangible evidence of Egypt’s decline as a regional leader is its severe economic predicament. The country’s external debt is nearly $152 billion, which means that every single Egyptian owes some $1,400 of it, more than four times the average monthly pay. The latest report of the Central Bank of Egypt estimated the domestic debt to be $210 billion, which is over 90 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Some of the implications of this massive debt include high inflation, skyrocketing prices and higher lending rates, which stifle private investment.
Faced with these fiscal constraints, the government imposed unpopular austerity measures in the 1990s, peaking in 2016 under the International Monetary Fund’s strict lending conditions, which included cutting subsidies, devaluing currency and reducing public services. The social effect of this is the speedy erosion of the middle class—Egypt’s historical engine of growth.
Living standards, including nutrition and health, have declined drastically. In early March, the minister of health and population announced that 40 percent of the population suffers from anemia, and UNICEF estimated that malnutrition affects over 27 percent of children under five and some 25 percent of women of reproductive age. UNICEF also ranked Egypt among the world’s 36 countries where 90 percent of global malnutrition is concentrated. In its 2024 report, the Food and Agriculture Organization said that 14 percent of Egyptians experience food insecurity and the country ranks 63 out of 121 nations on the 2024 Global Hunger Index—down from 57 in 2023.
Among the reasons for these grim statistics are inflation-driven rising food prices, global market pressures and reduced subsidies (once a cushion against such shocks). The lifting of subsidies was aimed at stabilizing state finances, but it actually deepened the struggle for basic sustenance among the nation’s most vulnerable segments.
Malnutrition can lead to stunted growth in children, reduced productivity among adults and an overall decline in human capital. With a projected population of some 157 million in 2050, the implications for Egypt’s future development are profound. The country’s ability to invest in education, healthcare and job creation will be severely constrained by these systemic challenges.
Egypt’s current predicament is a tale about external pressures, internal missteps and shifting geopolitical loyalties converging to undermine a nation’s historic stature. The challenges facing Cairo are manifold: balancing its strategic interests with those of Western allies, reviving a faltering economy burdened by unsustainable debt and addressing a domestic crisis marked by rising hunger and malnutrition.
Egypt has introduced positive domestic economic policies. Since taking power over a decade ago, President Abdel Fattah elSisi has enacted notable economic reforms, launched healthcare initiatives benefitting the average Egyptian and constructed a new administrative capital to ease Cairo’s notorious congestions. He also expanded the Suez Canal—a critical source of revenue which has been adversely impacted by the Gaza war.
In terms of foreign policy, however, the Sisi administration has not been that successful. It has ignored normalizing with Iran; a regional important power. It has, so far, failed to solve its dispute with Ethiopia over sharing Nile River water after Addis Ababa launched its mega dam project. Cairo believes that dam will reduce its share of the vital water supply. Many Egyptian diplomats and experts believe
By Lama Abou Kharroub
NORMALIZING TIES with Israel is considered one of the most sensitive and complex issues facing Lebanon today. Amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and following its 2023–2024 aggression against Lebanon—with Israeli violations continuing almost daily despite the ceasefire signed in November 2024 —certain elites and politicians are promoting normalizing ties as a solution to Lebanon’s political and economic crisis and as a way to protect the country from future Israeli attacks. This article offers both a historical and contemporary reading of the relationship between Lebanon and Israel.
Since the Palestinian Nakba and the establishment of Israel in 1948, Zionist militias committed massacres that targeted Lebanese civil-
ians as well as Palestinians, and Lebanon adopted an official position rejecting normalization. The Lebanese army took part in the Battle of Malikiya in May 1948, engaging in fierce confrontations with Zionist forces at the time. These confrontations ultimately led to the signing of the Armistice Agreement between Lebanon and Israel on March 23, 1949, under United Nations mediation, which stipulated a “cessation of hostilities” and the demarcation of the armistice line.
In 1968, Israeli special forces destroyed 12 passenger planes at Beirut Airport. After the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) entered Lebanon and commando operations against Israel were launched, Israeli military attacks escalated. Israel then launched an invasion of southern Lebanon in 1978, and again invaded Lebanon in 1982. Israel claimed its goal in the war was to dismantle the PLO and its infrastructure in Lebanon, but its ultimate goal was to reshape the political landscape of the region in its favor.
Five days after invading Lebanon, the Israeli military reached the outskirts of Beirut, and two weeks later it imposed a siege on its residents. The PLO decided to evacuate its leaders and fighters from Beirut in an agreement brokered by U.S. envoy Philip Habib that included a ceasefire and protection for Palestinians in the refugee camps. However, soon after the Palestinian fighters left, about 3,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila camps (and Lebanese and other Arab nationals living with them) were massacred, from September 16-18, 1982, by the Lebanese Phalangist forces operating in an area controlled by Israel.
The May 1983 agreement between Lebanon and Israel aimed to regulate the political and security relations between the two countries. It is considered the first direct negotiations between the Lebanese government and Israel, mediated by the United States. The terms of the agreement stipulated the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, the end of the state of war and the establishment of liaison offices between the two sides to monitor the imple-
mentation of the agreement. This agreement faced popular and political rejection within Lebanon and collapsed in less than a year. It was officially rescinded in 1984 by the Lebanese Parliament.
Twelve years later, Israel launched what it dubbed Operation Grapes of Wrath against Lebanon with the aim of striking the military capabilities of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. The bombing hit a United Nations compound in Qana, killing 102 civilians, which sparked international outrage. The United States and France mediated the April Understanding of 1996, which ended the war and guaranteed the right of resistance against Israeli forces in occupied southern Lebanon, without targeting Israeli settlements. It also established a monitoring committee to oversee the implementation of the understanding.
In 2000, Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon after continuous attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli military positions in the occupied Lebanese territories made its presence too costly to continue.
The United States first sent combat troops to the Arab region in 1958, at the request of Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, who was facing an armed popular uprising against his rule. A force of 1,700 soldiers arrived on the shores of Beirut, brought in by the U.S. Sixth Fleet and more than 70 warships.
In 1983, the U.S. Marines were again deployed in Lebanon, transferring weapons and armored vehicles from U.S. warships to land. The active participation of the Marines in the conflict made them key targets of the resistance. The major attacks came in the form of a suicide bombing that targeted the U.S. Embassy in April, killing 63 people; the attack on the Marine headquarters in October killed 241 Americans, making it one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. military forces. The United States carried out airstrikes, with the USS New Jersey warship bombing areas of Beirut, including the southern suburbs and mountainous re-
gions. The bombing, along with the broader context of U.S. military presence in Lebanon, marked a significant shift in the role of the Marines. The operation, which was meant to cover up the failure of the Israeli military efforts, instead turned the Marines into legitimate targets of Lebanese resistance, which led to their withdrawal in February 1984.
The years of conflict between Lebanon and Israel have been accompanied by local campaigns promoting peace with Israel, led by a faction often referred to as “sovereigntists”—a camp aligned against Hezbollah, the regional resistance movement, and generally hostile to Iran. The sovereigntists advocate for Lebanon’s sovereignty, equating it with the disarmament of Hezbollah and placing all arms under the authority of the Lebanese state. This rhetoric is not new; it emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and led to alliances with Israel, under the pretext of refusing to allow Lebanese territory to be used for military actions against Israel that could provoke war. Today, this narrative is backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and it mirrors the stance of Arab regimes that justify normalization with Israel as a sovereign decision aligned with the Arab Peace Initiative. They claim it serves the Palestinian cause, promotes peaceful coexistence and promises eco-
nomic prosperity. Meanwhile, other segments of society—particularly those aligned with Hezbollah and the broader resistance movements—view these efforts as part of a larger plan to dismantle their resistance to occupation. These groups consider the U.S. intervention and Israeli hegemony as a threat aimed at erasing their existence. They continue to resist these pressures in defense of Lebanon’s sovereignty and the Palestinian cause.
The pro-normalization narrative turns a blind eye to the Israeli genocide against Palestinians, Israel’s occupation of southern villages, its continuous violations of Lebanese sovereignty and its historical relationship with Lebanon. In the 2006 war alone, Israel committed massacres against civilians, killing more than 1,200 people, a third of whom were children, destroying infrastructure and wiping out entire villages in the South. Since October 2023, more than 6,000 Lebanese have been martyred, and 37 villages have been destroyed. A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon was signed in November 2024, yet daily Israeli violations persist, with no clear response from either the monitoring committee or the Lebanese government.
Historical experience has shown that diplomacy cannot deter Israel—just as normalization between Israel and neighboring Arab states didn’t lead to any real growth or prosperity. On the contrary, it has only reinforced their roles as functional
regimes serving the occupation militarily, economically and diplomatically—incapable of even delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians who are subjected to starvation and ethnic cleansing.
The Lebanese legal framework prohibits normalization. The preamble of the Constitution and the Taif Agreement that ended the Lebanese civil war refer to Lebanon’s Arab identity and its commitment to Arab causes, with the Palestinian cause being at the forefront. This makes normalization contradictory to Lebanon's national principles. Additionally, the 1955 Boycott of Israel Law prohibits commercial, economic or diplomatic dealings or interactions with Israel.
Moreover, normalization contradicts United Nations resolutions and international law, which recognize Israel’s occupation of Lebanese territories. According to interna-
tional law, normalization cannot be imposed on a state that is in conflict with another, especially if that state is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Despite all the American-Arab projects and plans that aim to impose their conditions on Lebanon, normalization with Israel requires a fundamental change at the political, legal and constitutional levels. It is likely that this attempt at normalization will face strong internal rejection and may lead to political and security tensions that deepen divisions, especially since hostility toward Israel is, for many Lebanese, historical, personal and collective. According to a poll conducted in April 2025 by the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar and an organization called International Information, 75 percent of Lebanese view Israel as Lebanon’s primary enemy. The sentiment was expressed by a woman from southern Lebanon whose brother, mother and three daughters had been killed by Israel over the last 16 months: “Those who want to nor-
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malize, they want to normalize with the blood mixed with my brother Ali’s blood. We have already normalized that this is our land, and the South is ours, and Lebanon is ours until the last breath.” ■
Continued from page 61
Cairo ignored the issue for years only remembering it when Addis Ababa started its huge project. Many also question the wisdom behind accepting $35 billion in investments from the United Arab Emirates with unfavorable conditions. A former Egyptian ambassador with decades of regional experience, speaking anonymously, described it to me as “a sellout with longterm implications for Egypt’s foreign and regional influence.”
How Egypt will fare regionally in light of widening Israeli hegemony is to be seen. What is certain is this: the big sister is not so big anymore as her influence wanes. ■
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By Tala Aloul
MAERSK, ONE OF THE WORLD’S largest shipping and logistics companies, directly transports military cargo that facilitate Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
Before Maersk was established in 1904, it operated under a different name, Dampskibsselskabet Svendborg. On May 26, 2024, the Palestinian Youth Movement launched the Mask off Maersk (MoM) campaign to pressure Maersk to cut ties with genocide. The Danish company is easier to pressure than the weapons companies it works with since only around 13 percent of Maersk’s profits are from shipping weapons, whereas the weapons companies, such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, are more difficult to pressure.
In addition to shipping weapons, Maersk chartered the ship that caused the collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore, MD on
March 26, 2024, which killed six construction workers, and is accused of underpaying and mistreating their blue-collar workers, most of whom are dockworkers and truckers who are currently organizing unions against Maersk. In the current stage of the MoM campaign, the Palestinian Youth Movement is building relationships with these workers and providing the tools and resources they need to unionize against Maersk and eventually pressure the company to stop sending weapons to Israel.
Organizing around the campaign is part of a broader coalition. In San Francisco, CA, organizers have successfully mobilized dockworkers to delay Maersk ships with Israeli military cargo on several occasions this past year. Historically, dockworkers in California have collectively unionized and resisted on the ports. In the early 1980s, Black longshoremen in Oakland’s International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 supported the antiapartheid movement in South Africa by protesting and delaying
Protesters in Berlin, Germany, hold a banner reading “There is no salvation alone, either all together or none of us” with a portrait of Istanbul’s powerful jailed opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu during a demonstration against the anti‐democratic developments in Türkiye, on April 13, 2025.
FOLLOWING THE MARCH arrest of Istanbul mayor and opposition leader Ekrem Imamoğlu, many Turks took to the streets around the country in protest.
Imamoğlu had been accused of a variety of corrupt activities, all of which he denies. His arrest is seen by many as an attempt by Türkiye’s current veteran ruler, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to remove his most dangerous future challenger.
Opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) mayors and deputy mayors in the Istanbul districts of Besiktas and Beykoz have also been detained, along with over 1,000 protesters, at time of writing. Mass trials of these began in mid-April.
Some in detention have also alleged abuse at the hands of the police—allegations denied by law enforcement officers.
Many journalists have also been arrested covering the demonstra-
Jonathan Gorvett is a free‐lance writer specializing on European and Middle Eastern affairs.
By Jonathan Gorvett
tions sparked by Imamoğlu’s arrest or in dawn raids on their homes.
Foreign reporters are no longer immune. The BBC’s Mark Lowen was deported on March 27 after covering the protests.
In a sign of the widening crackdown, the leadership of the Istanbul Bar Association has been prosecuted after calling for an investigation into the deaths of two journalists in December 2024.
Back in March 2024, several municipalities that had elected the Kurdish nationalist opposition Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) in the largely ethnic Kurdish southeast of the country found themselves taken over by unelected trustees appointed by Erdoğan.
Yet despite some large-scale demonstrations—and a major hit to the Turkish economy following Imamoğlu’s arrest—Erdoğan’s grip on power still seems as tight as ever.
In the southeast, the domestic challenge to the Turkish state from the separatist Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) recently saw imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan call for the organization to lay down its arms.
In foreign policy, too, Erdoğan’s position has been strengthening significantly.
In neighboring Syria, Türkiye’s influence is now greater than ever following the victory in December of the Ankara-backed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Ankara is also positioning itself as a key go-between in the Russian-Ukrainian war and in future European security arrangements.
As a result, the response from Europe and the U.S. to the arrest of a top opposition figure has been much more muted than it would likely have been in the past.
“The Europeans are being very quiet,” Enis Erdem Aydin, from political risk advisory RDM, told the Washington Report
At the same time, “Erdoğan certainly has reason to believe that the tougher he gets with the opposition, the more respect he’ll get from the White House,” Selim Koru, political analyst and author of
New Turkey and the Far Right, told the Washington Report
These factors have now combined with a Turkish electoral calendar that sees no new voting until 2028.
“That made it a good time to act against Imamoğlu,” adds Koru, “with three years for things to normalize again before any vote.”
Yet despite being in such a powerful position, Erdoğan’s move may also suggest a growing lack of confidence from him in the political alliances that have long underpinned his strength.
The 71-year-old president has seen support for his party and person eroding, while his closest political ally—the far-right, 77-yearold nationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli—may also be having second thoughts about his long-time political partner.
Bahçeli’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has been in de facto alliance with Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2016 and de jure since 2018.
As the People’s Alliance (PA), they have won a series of parliamentary and presidential elections in recent years—despite declining support for the AKP and Erdoğan and rising support for opposition parties and Imamoğlu.
Indeed, the Istanbul mayor has now defeated the AKP at the ballot box in Istanbul—Erdoğan’s home city—on three occasions.
Continued from page 65
ships with the colonizer’s military cargo. The port rallies decades ago and the ones this year demonstrate that the colonizers’ weapons and the ships transporting them are never welcome.
Nexoe, a Maersk ship, was loaded and set sail from Norfolk on April 10, 2025, but not before protesters rallied and demanded an arms embargo. Two days later, the ship docked in New Jersey, where another group of protesters rallied at the ports.
The next stop was Marseille, France, where dockworkers delayed the shipment of parts for F-35 combat jets, headed for Israel. After a few days, the ship managed to set sail to Casablanca, Morocco, where dockworkers prevented the ship from docking and successfully delayed it for 39 hours. Afterward, the ship was once again delayed in Tangier, Morocco by dockworkers, in addition to thousands of protesters standing with the workers in solidarity.
On April 23, Moroccan media outlets reported that several dockworkers in Tangier
Bahçeli, meanwhile, came recently to prominence for launching the initiative to persuade the PKK to lay down its arms.
Since then, however, little more on the Kurdish issue has happened. PKK requests for a ceasefire and Öcalan’s release have been refused by Erdoğan. The DEM has also condemned Imamoğlu’s arrest and called for the return of its elected municipal councils in the southeast.
Bahçeli’s initiative therefore languishes, while government-watchers also speculate that he may not have known of Imamoğlu’s imminent arrest.
The MHP leader has since called for there to be a quick decision on the Istanbul mayor’s “innocence or guilt” using “credible evidence.”
“The general public are not convinced any such evidence exists,” says Aydin.
At the same time, Bahçeli’s statement “mentioned for the first time that Imamoğlu could be innocent,” Aydin adds. “If even Erdoğan’s main ally thinks this, it may be that Erdoğan has made his biggest political mistake yet.”
This, at least, gives some hope for Türkiye’s beleaguered opposition, as it tries to maintain momentum in its protest campaign.
“It’s David versus Goliath, though,” says Koru. “So the chances aren’t looking so good.” ■
resigned, along with Maersk executives in Morocco, a sign that the MoM campaign succeeded in exposing the shipping company’s complicit ties with genocide.
Last year, Spain denied the docking of a Maersk ship suspected of carrying weapons to Israel. Across the globe, the
MoM campaign has built a coalition of organizers and rallied the masses to protest the boat, block the boat and delay weapon deliveries to Israel. This campaign is a testament to the masses and their power over fighting imperialism not just within Palestine, but worldwide. ■
PHOTO BY ABDEL MAJID
A woman holds Palestinian, Moroccan and Lebanese flags as protesters march toward the port of Tanger‐Med in Tangier on April 20, 2025. Dockworkers and organizations supporting Palestinians in Gaza said that the Maersk vessel was transporting spare parts for F ‐ 35 warplanes from the U.S. to Israel and was due to dock in Tangier. For more than a year, Moroccans have protested their government’s decision to normalize relations with Israel.
By Candice Bodnaruk
IN CANADA’S 45th federal election in late April, the Liberal Party won a fourth mandate. Only a couple months ago, polls predicted the party would lose official party status and the Conservatives would win a majority. But the polls got it wrong: the Liberal Party received a rare fourth mandate from voters, winning 169 seats in parliament, just three seats short of a majority government. Meanwhile, the New Democratic Party (NDP) won only 7 seats in parliament and lost official party status. The federal Conservative Party lost to the incumbent Liberals, and the party’s leader, Pierre Poilievre, lost his own seat in Canada’s parliament.
Political commentators said the major shift was directly related to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada and make it a 51st state and Poilievre’s American-style politics and sim-
Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg.
ilarities to Trump as well as his refusal to pivot. An Abacus poll conducted before election day reported that 44 percent of Canadians had a negative view of Poilievre.
Although progressive parties suffered losses, many candidates who have publicly supported Palestine retained their seats. Dozens of candidates in the April 28 election who supported the Palestinian-directed Vote Palestine platform were elected. Endorsed by dozens of Palestine solidarity organizations across Canada, Vote Palestine called for candidates to support a two-way arms embargo on Israel, end Canadian involvement in illegal Israeli settlements, address anti-Palestinian racism, recognize the State of Palestine and fund Gaza relief efforts, including UNRWA. Candidates from the Liberals, NDP, Greens and Bloc Quebecois (BQ) supported the campaign. No Conservative candidates supported the campaign. For example, NDP Member of Parliament and foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson, who authored the February 2024 motion calling on Canada to recognize the State of Palestine, was re-elected. McPherson supported Vote Palestine. Leah Gazan, community ac-
tivist and MP for Winnipeg Centre, also held onto her seat. Gazan is a long-time advocate for Palestine who supported the Vote Palestine platform.
Meanwhile, another Vote Palestine supporter, Quebec NDP MP, Alexandre Boulerice, also retained his seat in parliament. Boulerice has been lobbying for federal recognition of Nakba Day in parliament.
Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May was the only Green Party member to retain her seat. May had supported Vote Palestine and has called for a ceasefire since October 2023. ■
TAL MITNICK received death threats after he became the first Israeli to refuse to enlist in military service after Oct. 7. The 18-year-old spent 185 days in jail. Mitnick is a selfproclaimed leftist who was inspired by his father, a journalist who spent time in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and told stories from the Palestinian side. Einat Gerlitz, another refuser, was jailed for 87 days three years ago, when she was 19. For Gerlitz, who identifies as a queer woman, the decision to refuse came about through intersectionality and unity struggles.
The two Israeli refusers were in Winnipeg in March 2025, on a 15-city Anti-Zionist Refuseniks Speaking Tour, hosted by Independent Jewish Voices. Local sponsors included Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba, Mennonite Church Manitoba Palestine Israel Network (MCMPIN), Peace Alliance Winnipeg, United Jewish People’s Order and Students for Justice in Palestine University of Manitoba. In Winnipeg Gerlitz and Mitnick spoke at the First Mennonite Church.
A growing number of Israelis are refusing mandatory enlistment or to return to their military duty after tours in Gaza. But few do so publicly. Military duty is compulsory for most Israeli men and women and refusers face jail time as well as social and professional blowback. The military-run Conscientious Committee does not allow military refusal on the grounds of conscience.
It was specifically her work in climate activism that led Gerlitz to understand her voice can make change. “Through climate activism I met Palestinian girls for the first time. It really opened up my mind to understand that we live in the same place but have completely different realities,” she said. After learning what Palestinians went through growing up in the West Bank, she knew she couldn’t possibly enlist with a military that oppresses them and their families.
For the two Israeli refusers, it is also a scary time to be a voice of opposition. The pair are both members of Mesarvot, a network of young Israeli activists who refuse to serve in the Israeli military.
“People are scared, especially Palestinians living inside the state
of Israel,” Mitnick said, adding that since he refused, 12 more refusers have publicly come forward. He emphasized the importance of speaking up and acknowledged the privilege of having a supportive family.
Mitnick first got involved when he joined the judicial reform protests in Israel after the election of Israel’s new government. He called Binyamin Netanyahu’s government “a new kind of evil.” In August 2023, he worked collectively with other young people to draft a letter stating that they refused to serve in the military that occupies the Palestinian people. The group was able to collect 280 signatures, and people’s responses motivated him even more than the actual act of refusal. At the time Mitnick really felt their movement was growing.
After Oct. 7, he said he still felt he had a duty to protest. He talked about his prison experience, which he said is nothing like the prisons that Palestinian prisoners are held in. “They face torture, are deprived of food and basic needs. We had our basic needs met,” he explained.
“What we have to do is go forward—justice for all from the river to the sea,” Mitnick said.
Gerlitz called her decision to refuse mandatory military service “a process.”
“We grew up in a very militarized society, it’s very clear that it’s part of our lives,” Gerlitz said, explaining that she has a grandfather who fought in the 1967 and 1973 wars.
She came out of the closet at age 15, and she outlined how her experience of finding queer community increased her sensitivity to social injustices.
She described her time incarcerated as “a tough experience,” but she said what really helped her go through it was the support of the Mesarvot network and the solidarity among her fellow prisoners. “We are the biggest threat to the system when we unite our struggle.”
Both speakers stressed that everyone has a role in rejecting the Gaza war and explained what Canadian activists can do to make a difference.
“We must oppose the genocide that is currently happening in the Gaza Strip. The role that we have from inside our society—the place where we are our strongest is inside our own society—and talking to our own society,” Mitnick said, adding that Canadians should pressure their local and federal governments to divest from Israeli weapons.
Gerlitz echoed those sentiments. “Canada and the U.S. and many other countries around the world are complicit in this genocide and have responsibility for it and I think that anyone who has a conscience and believes in human rights should stand up and raise their voice and do whatever they can to stop the genocide.”
Palestinian Canadian writer and filmmaker Taghreed Saadeh has been working in Canadian print journalism for over two decades. She sat down with the Washington Report recently to talk about the ongoing challenges she experiences as a Palestinian Canadian filmmaker. She is chairing the 9th Annual Al-Awda International Film Festival in May. Screening films that give viewers a greater understanding of the Palestinian cause is part of Nakba Day commemorations. Saadeh calls her work with the film festival the honor of her career.
Saadeh has called Canada home since 2001 and now resides in Edmonton. She argues there is a significant gap in the understanding of Arab history in Canada and through her work, including her new film “I Am Arab Canadian,” she aspires to change the stereotypical images of Arabs in Canada. Saadeh said the need to understand Arab society has only increased with the escalation of the war in Gaza.
“As a Palestinian, I say that art awakens the militant side of thorny issues and difficult choices for humanity, because the choice of Palestine means you will pay a heavy price as a producer, director, actor, model or any kind of artist,” she said.
Saadeh recalled listening to her father’s conversations with figures from the Palestine Liberation Organization in Kuwait. Such experiences informed her work as Palestinian creator.
She explained that many people are not fully aware of the real narratives of Arabs residing in Canada. Furthermore, she said prevailing stereotypes undermine the real accomplishments and contributions of the Arab community.
Through archival research for her film, Saadeh found documented evidence that Palestine was recognized by Canada before 1948 and that Canada then ceased referencing Palestine after 1951—just a few years after the establishment of Israel on part of Palestinian land in 1948. “Historically Canada classified Palestine within Greater Syria—an area that was divided into Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan following the Sykes-Picot Division Agreement,” she said
In her view, the most important challenge Palestinian filmmakers face is the inability to express their support for the Palestinian cause. When she relocated to Edmonton from Toronto, she was shocked by the extent of white control in the arts sector. “Whenever I wanted to participate in a workshop, it was always men and white,” Saadeh said. It is time to change the scene in Alberta and include women and ethnic minorities, she argued.
Saadeh said despite the focus on diversity and integration, in Canada whites still hold power and control. “Even the minorities in the federal government or political parties work in favor of white power and the system,” she said, explaining that the presence of a Muslims or Arabs in the government does not guarantee inclusive policies.
Saadeh stressed that absolute support for Israel harms the interests of not only Palestinians but also of Arabs and Muslims, who constitute a higher percentage than Jews in Canada and are a significant and influential population. “If the Canadian government does not understand this, it will ultimately lose,” she said.
Because of the racial discrimination she experienced in Edmonton, specifically in the fields of artistic work, she eventually resigned from arts organizations. She believes her (foreign) name suggested to others a lack of Canadian experience, even though she had studied, produced and directed films in Canada for years. “They were unable to shake their sense of superiority and the perception that I was inferior as I was the only non-white among them,” she said.
Saadeh argues that the media has contributed to distorting the Arab image. Western news outlets portray Arabs as suspicious and violent. She hopes her film will help viewers develop a new impression. “I hope that they see us as we are. We have a history and a civilization, and our societies, although they differ in some aspects, are based on an underlying culture of generosity, sacrifice, love and respect.” ■
During these very difficult and troubling times, we have the opportunity to make this a more perfect union. Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote in her book, The 1619 Project, that it is Black people who made the biggest contribution to make America a democratic country. Without Black people fighting and sacrificing everything, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights legislation would not have happened.
Immigrants and people who came afterwards benefited from it.
Now it’s our turn as Arab Americans to carry the baton. As Arab Americans, we have to move away from a position of victimhood and weakness and turn our efforts into fighting for the civil rights and social justice that this country claims to uphold. This is our time. We are called at this moment in history to call out the injustice against all. Not just Arabs and Muslims, but against all immigrants and people of color throughout the world. We are called upon to uphold the rule of law—to uphold the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice rulings. To fight against draconian measures that equate anti-Semitism with anti-genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Anas “Andy” Shallal, an Iraqi‐American artist, activist, philanthropist and entrepreneur, is the founder and CEO of Busboys & Poets, a restaurant, bookstore and performance venue with numerous loca‐tions in the Washington, DC area. Shallal received a standing ova‐tion for his remarks at the Arab America Foundation’s celebration of Arab American Heritage and Identity, on April 9, 2025. He is pictured at his Columbia, MD, location on Feb. 6, 2025.
Andy Shallal delivered these remarks at the Arab America Founda‐tion’s commemoration of National Arab American Heritage Month, on April 9,2025. Amazon abruptly cancelled the celebration planned at Amazon HQ Theater with only 48‐hours’ notice. Instead, the pop‐ular yearly cultural event “honoring the past, inspiring the future,” was held at Saints Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Potomac, MD.
This is ridiculous and they know it.
They hope that we just give up and just walk away. I say the hell with them. We have the numbers. We have the vision of a better world. We are the new moral majority—not Democrats or Republicans, not right or left, but right vs. wrong.
And they are surely wrong. They are on the wrong side of history. The whole world knows that—they are a dying breed of truth contortionists gasping for the last holdout of white supremacy and neocolonialism.
Remember: they are the white supremacists. Don’t you find it ironic how white Europeans are lecturing us about anti-Semitism? These are the same people who introduced the world to Nazism, fascism, Zionism and apartheid. While Arabs and Muslims were making discoveries in math and science, writing books and mapping the heavens, Europeans were burning witches. The same so-called civilization that gave rise to Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, King Leopold, Binyamin Netanyahu (son of Benzion Mileikowsky) and Cecil Rhodes, the British colonizer.
It was great to see so many of you at the demonstrations this past weekend. Young and old, Black and white and brown, men and women, babies and dogs, it was energizing as hell. But we cannot stop at demonstrating—we have to turn this street power into political power.
This is not the time to pull back. We have to continue to mobilize, to organize, to strategize, run for office, work on campaigns, donate money and time, join a school board and support an NGO.
I have no doubt that we can win this. Our kids and grandkids are watching and counting on us. We cannot let them down. ■
The Arab America Foundation Honors and Inspires, Despite Efforts to Silence
The Arab America Foundation (AAF) held its annual commemoration of National Arab American Heritage Month on April 9, despite a devastating last-minute hitch. Every year since 2017, AAF, an apolitical nonprofit foundation, has hosted a cultural event “honoring the past, inspiring the future,” featuring Arabic music, dancing, comedy and, of course, delicious food. After six months of planning by AAF and “Arabs at Amazon,” that company’s employees’ resource group, Amazon abruptly cancelled the celebration scheduled at its HQ2 Theater in Arlington, VA, with only 48-hours’ notice. Demonstrating the resilience and strength of their remarkable community, Saints Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Potomac, MD stepped in to accommodate the event. Speakers and attendees remarked that in this particularly challenging time, it was even more important than ever that the Arab American community demonstrated unity, resistance and pride in their remarkable heritage.
After enjoying the buffet, featuring Arab cuisine, attendees mingled and danced until the program began, emceed by Emmy-nominated TV anchor Shirin Rajaee. Referring to the sudden venue change she said, “it’s a testament to the Arab America community that no matter where we are we will let our voices be heard.” Rajaee, an Iranian-American with Fox 5 DC, and her husband Joe Khalil, a Lebanese-American with NewsNation, are determined to share their cultures with TV viewers—and Rajaee emphasized they are raising their daughter to be proud of her heritage.
AAF’s president Warren David, a thirdgeneration Arab American, addressed the attempts to silence their voices. AAF sued the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Orlando, FL, when they cancelled their Nov. 3-5, 2023, annual summit, with only a week’s notice, and the U.S. Justice Department agreed, determining the hotel was guilty of
discrimination. David said he was tired of Arab Americans being treated as outsiders in their own country. “We will not be silenced. We will continue to tell our stories. We’re proud of who we are. Our voice matters. Our resilience is greater than their rejection,” he said, before proudly introducing his wife of 48 years.
Dr. Amal David said being forced to change their location to Potomac, about a 50-minute drive from Amazon’s headquarters, meant that university students who had planned to attend couldn’t make it. She then recognized the many community leaders in the audience who are working to amplify Arab voices, including AAF’s chairman Dr. Adel Korkor. Palestinian-American Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who tirelessly promotes justice for all, attended the commemoration but did not speak. After a rousing speech by community activist and Busboys & Poets founder Andy Shallal (see p. 71), Libyan-born stand-up comedian Mohanad Elshieky regaled listeners until it was time for “Umm Kulthum in Retrospect.” Talented vocalist Marwa Morgan and New York’s Umm Kulthum Ensemble performed songs by the beloved Egyptian icon, 50 years after the death of
the “Nightingale of the Arab World.” To complete the delightful evening, the DC-based Faris El-Layl Folkloric Dance Troupe performed upbeat traditional dances and then provided an energizing “Dabke-101” for anyone who was apprehensive about their own dance moves. —Delinda C. Hanley
“Gaza Remains the Story” Exhibit in DC
The Museum of the Palestinian People (MPP) in Washington, DC, next door to Middle East Books and More, is hosting an unforgettable exhibit called “Gaza Remains the Story,” from April 11-Nov. 2, 2025. The exhibition, first curated by the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, Palestine, was adapted for a diaspora audience by MPP curator Wafa Ghnaim. She is a Palestinian dress historian, embroiderer, researcher, author and archivist—and her guided tour for reporters on opening day was unforgettable. She introduced us to photos of pre-war ordinary Gazans who were enjoying day-to-day life just like us. The exhibit also features artwork by 28 Palestinian artists, some of whom have been killed or displaced by Israeli airstrikes or are at risk of starvation.
While the Birzeit museum in the West Bank can display many materials in its large space, the MPP must use every inch of wall space to display and preserve Palestine’s cultural heritage and stories until its planned expansion. Ghnaim said she tried to select just a few photographs to depict everyday life in Gaza before Israel started its latest rampage. She found she just couldn’t leave any out and she wept as she hung the pictures. “These lives are like ours,” she said. Viewers have a similar reaction: I see my child in this photo. I see my father. I see kids joking around piled in the trunk of a car. My family posing by the water or picnicking on the beach.
Palestinians are not looking for our pity, Ghnaim emphasized. Here in America, our job is to remember Palestinian culture before it’s erased…Before someone presses “delete.” As we scroll through Instagram reels, we are witnessing the erasure of Palestinian heritage in Gaza, Ghnaim said. Every photo distills the enormity of what is happening. There is trauma. We can fall apart, or we can compartmentalize what we see. “What is our role?” Ghnaim asks. Ghnaim knows her role. She believes Palestinians will continue to survive and adapt through art, collective memory and diasporic storytelling, even in the face of ongoing devastation. —Delinda C. Hanley
Community members celebrated Palestinian American poet, writer, editor and community activist Zeina Azzam at the Charles E. Beatley Jr. Central Library on April 12. Azzam concluded her threeyear term as Poet Laureate of the City of Alexandria, VA, surrounded by public officials, family, friends and the poets she has mentored who all praised her talents as well as her advocacy for human rights. Tributes offered testaments to her personal characteristics and her role as a community leader: “She always made time for us…she said ‘yes,’ when we asked…she made us proud of our heritage…she fought hate and discrimination.”
Azzam thanked Alexandria for “making this city home to me,” after she moved in 2011. She said she learned so much about the rich history and culture of Alexandria during her tenure. As she researched and wrote poems for her city, Azzam said she found inspiration and a new poetic voice. She read her poem, “Like the Trees in Alexandria,” which honors the city’s diversity: “So many shades of green and brown…Our root systems teach us to behave as a single organism, to uplift all branches, young and old, she and he and they, watering and nourishing each other, safeguarding saplings against injustice. This is our present and our legacy. We are the trees in Alexandria’s forest.”
During her tenure as the first Arab American Poet Laureate in Alexandria, Azzam wrote poems for her city’s jazz festivals, 4th of July celebrations, Alexandria’s 275th birthday, Martin Luther King Day commemorations, Sept. 11 remembrance ceremonies, domestic abuse awareness month, a rally against gun violence by Moms Demand Action and a moving poem asking forgiveness from the Black bodies buried during and after the Civil War in Alexandria’s
Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery. That poem rails against injustice in our country, “When shackling Black bodies was the law of the land, when segregation and racial discrimination, poll taxes and literacy tests, Jim Crow and white supremacy were everywhere, the air everyone breathed,” and concludes with words that also resonated with supporters of Palestine in the audience: “Rest in peace, our ancestors. Rest in power. Rest in justice. Rest in dignity. Rest in truth. Rest in freedom.”
Zeina Azzam’s brother Fateh, who traveled from Maine with his wife for the occasion, confessed that his younger sister has become his teacher in humanity. While we are living in a difficult moment amidst crude, divisive hatred, he said there is a consistent message in her poetry: “We are in this together with no differences between us.”
Rose Esber noted that Azzam is also an educator and since 2016 she has mentored Palestinian poets in Gaza who are learning to tell their stories in a program called We Are Not Numbers, which the Washington Report works with to bring the voices of Gaza writers to our readers. (See articles on pp. 10-19.) She now communicates with those poets who call or text her during this ongoing genocide and conveys to them they are not alone. Azzam also makes things happen in workshops and local rights coalitions, Esber said, “and this very busy woman took the time to bring me soup when I was sick.”
An activist read aloud Azzam’s powerful poem, “Write My Name,” which Azzam shared at the United Nations and has been translated into many languages. She wrote it in 2023 when she heard that some parents in Gaza have resorted to writing their children’s names on their legs with markers to help identify them should either they or the children be killed.
The Office of Historic Alexandria collected the poems she was asked to write for official occasions in a lovely booklet that was given to attendees of her final event as poet laureate. Throughout her term she bonded with advocates supporting varied righteous causes who are “safeguarding saplings against injustice.” Undoubtedly, along her way Azzam opened minds, built sturdy relationships and linked those branches together to also support justice for Palestinians. Her full-length poetry collection Some Things Never Leave You: Poems by Zeina Azzam, published in 2023, is available from Middle East Books and More. Her readers eagerly await her next volume.
—Delinda C.
Hanley
Some 750 Muslims from across the United States gathered in Washington, DC on April 28 and 29 for the tenth annual National Muslim Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill, sponsored by the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations.
“As American people we have the right to question them and hold them accountable,” Osama Abuirshaid, national director of American Muslims for Palestine, said of meeting with elected officials. “That is the mutual relationship. That’s what democracy is all about.”
During their two days on Capitol Hill, delegations from some 30 Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapters across the United States met with their congressional representatives.
One advocacy group of ten young people from CAIR-Ohio, including the chapter’s executive director Khalid Turaani, spoke with
Participants in the tenth annual National Muslim Advocacy Day pose in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on April 28, 2025.
a staff member from the office of Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH). They relayed their many concerns, including the First Amendment right of free speech, of particular importance this year to students at Ohio State University who face new restrictions on academic freedom and freedom of expression.
Of grave concern to the Ohioans was Beatty’s military and financial support for Israel. Fears about President Donald Trump reinstating the Muslim ban, which would prevent many Muslims from entering the United States, were also discussed. One young man expressed uneasiness in even flying within the United States if this order is reinstated.
Speaking at the reception following the successful advocacy meetings, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) offered her appreciation for the large crowd gathered in the nation’s capital. “We’re not going anywhere, this is our country, and we will not be silent even when you [the administration] try to intimidate us,” the congresswoman said. “Do not wait for our community to be the target. We have to speak up…and make sure we are connected with each other.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) voiced her pride in the record-breaking number of Muslims in attendance. “I think in this moment of challenges and trials we have to lead the way in fighting for our constitutional rights… due process…and the protection of our stu-
dents and educational institutions,” she said.
Specifically addressing the women gathered at the event, Rep. Lateefah Simon (DCA) said, “Your place is on Capitol Hill, your place is in elected office, your place is in the CEO chair. Let us teach, let us run for office, let us keep praying for the peace that we all…deserve as human rights.”
The focus of this year’s advocacy day was protecting free speech and nonprofit advocacy rights in light of growing legislative threats targeting Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and allied Jewish community organizations. In addition, opposing discriminatory travel bans and calling for U.S. action to end genocide and human rights abuses in Myanmar, Gaza, Sudan and China were also important issues raised with congressional representatives.
Most importantly, CAIR National Director Nihad Awad pointed out, “The advocacy doesn’t end here. Take it back to the elected representatives in your state.”
Elaine Pasquini
“No Other Land” and the Divide Between Images and Lived Experience
On March 24, 2025, film director Hamdan Ballal was beaten by Israeli settlers in the
West Bank and detained by the Israeli military. Ballal is co-director of “No Other Land” (2024), alongside Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The documentary, made by an Israeli-Palestinian collective, won the 2025 Oscar for Best Documentary—a mere three weeks before Ballal was assaulted. Adra, who was present when Ballal was attacked and taken, believes the incident “might be their revenge on us for making the movie. It feels like a punishment.”
Ballal has since been released. However, conditions in Masafer Yatta, the region in the West Bank the film covers, have only gotten worse since October 2023. “No Other Land” mostly catalogues events between 2019-2023, right before the Gaza genocide swung into full force. It follows two filmmakers, Palestinian Basel Adra and Israeli activist Yuval Abraham.
The Palestinian struggle for Masafer Yatta dates to before Adra was born. For decades, the Israeli military and settlers have terrorized the hamlets that comprise Masafer Yatta by demolishing homes, power generators, schools and wells. In fact, Adra’s very first memory is his father’s first arrest. Following in his father’s footsteps, he decided to become an activist at an early age.
Perhaps the most telling scene in the film is when Adra and Abraham, who document Israel’s crimes in Masafer Yatta, are driving at night after a protest. Earlier, a man
named Harun stood up to a soldier who was attempting to destroy the only generator in the neighborhood. Even though Harun was unarmed, the soldier shot him with a rifle at point blank range, leaving him paralyzed. During the driving scene, Abraham talks about an article he wrote containing an interview he conducted with Harun’s mother and complains it did not get as many hits as he hoped. In response, Adra says, “you want everything to happen quickly. As if you came to solve everything in 10 days and then go back home.” Adra then explains to Abraham that change takes time and that this struggle has been going on for decades. Abraham does not seem to understand Adra’s perspective and acts defensively toward his comments. Adra ends the conversation by saying, “get used to failing, you’re a loser,” meaning that victory can only come after accepting countless defeats.
This philosophical distance between Adra and Abraham shows up throughout the film, but it is most obvious in this scene, and in another one later in the film where a Palestinian man confronts Abraham about his Israeli heritage. One can interpret this distance between the two filmmakers as a representation of the distance between the (non-Palestinian) audience of the film and the lived experiences of those Palestinians brutalized every day by Israel. Living in the “first world,” we have been subjected to the most horrible and grotesque images from a livestreamed genocide. These images deeply impact us, and they inspire us to take action. But unless one is from Palestine or a member of the diaspora, we can never share those lived experiences, which unfortunately have in many ways defined what it means to be Palestinian over the past several decades.
At first, the film seemingly ends with a sentimental conversation between Abraham and Adra about hope for change in the region. Abraham wishes for people to act after being exposed to images of the injustices Palestinians face daily, saying, “somebody watches something, they’re touched, and then…?” as if directly challenging the audience. The film then cuts to a wide shot with white text on the screen stating, “we
finished this film in October 2023,” and then shows the escalation of violence and destruction Israeli settlers and the military have inflicted upon Masafer Yatta over the past 18 months.
It is unclear what the future holds for Masafer Yatta, for Gaza and for Palestine as a whole. But we must not stop protesting, donating and helping in every way we can. Compared to what Adra and all Palestinians have been subjected to for the last 77 years, it is the least we can do. “No Other Land” reminds us that it is our responsibility to not be indifferent about the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the genocide of its people.
For months, “No Other Land” was unable to find a distributor in the United States, despite its resounding success at film festivals and the public’s demand for it to be screened. After it was finally released following its Oscar victory, the film still came under attack. In one notable case, Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner threatened to evict the independent theater O Cinema and cancel its $40,000 city grant after it screened the film. Meiner later dropped his threat after it became apparent he did not have the backing of the city council.
Duran Aziz
Documentaries typically exist to explain or explore a particular subject. “The Encampments,” directed and produced by Michael T. Workman and Kei Pritsker, meets this standard, but also doubles as a defense of the pro-Palestine campus movement.
The film begins by stating the obvious: The media, members of Congress and university leaders have assailed pro-Palestine student activists as anti-Semitic and violent. The producers clearly aim to refute these narratives. Jewish participants in the encampments that took over college campuses after Oct. 7, 2023, are given ample screen time and are seen openly celebrating their heritage and religion within the encampments via prayers, songs and services. These same Jewish students, alongside a diverse array of comrades, are seen being violently ripped from their
peaceful assemblies by police in riot gear—and being assaulted and threatened by Zionist agitators under the indifferent watch of police and campus administrators. Viewers are left to ask: Who are the real proponents of violence? Who are the real voices of hate?
While the film clearly has a defensive element, it is also optimistic. It shows students who know they are in over their heads but also in the driver’s seat. In over their heads, because university donors, boards of directors and administrators—not to mention those at the highest levels of local and national government—have put a target on them. In the driver’s seat, because their movement is clearly dismantling the status quo the powerful and wealthy have worked so hard to uphold. The film thus serves as a rebuttal to the erroneous mainstream discourse surrounding the encampments and a celebration that the tides have shifted.
One would expect the leaders of this landscape-altering movement to be depicted with revolutionary zeal. Instead, the film portrays the students as reluctant heroes, individuals who did not set out to be radicals, but who were rather compelled by human decency to do something in the face of grave evil. Viewers see students at their wits’ end; for years, university administrators rejected or ignored their peaceful overtures, most notably divestment resolutions ratified by student governments—important context ignored by the mainstream
media. Then the genocide began in the fall of 2023, and students instinctively knew the intransigence of their university leaders needed to be met with greater pushback. Columbia University was, and remains, the epicenter of the student movement, and the film focuses heavily on its students deciding to occupy part of the campus. Interviews with leaders, including Mahmoud Khalil, who has since been arrested and processed for deportation by the Trump regime, reveal the encampments were set up and run with great intentionality and purpose, but also haphazardness. Students acted in democratic fashion, deliberated strategic actions and articulated clear demands. However, needing to quickly mobilize after October 7 and having to constantly respond to ever-evolving realities, the students were often acting on the fly. Powerfully, the film shows how the impromptu action at Columbia became contagious, with leaders expressing shock and joy upon learning their encampment inspired similar actions across the world.
Importantly, the film includes anonymous testimony from someone who worked in communications at Columbia. He reveals the administration knew it had no evidence to support claims of anti-Semitism, and that his investigation found such allegations were largely being made by biased proIsrael groups and individuals. He also notes that university leaders told him to exclude Palestinian perspectives in statements and to emphasize the brutality of Hamas but ignore the scores of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel. His testimony helps show just how deliberately university leaders lied to push the narrative preferred by their donors and government officials bought off by the pro-Israel lobby.
In 85 minutes, “The Encampments” masterfully demonstrates that those making the students out to be the villains are in fact themselves the true villains. In the face of a genocidal reality and with the power stacked against them, Columbia’s students gave renewed meaning to the expression, “when we are weak, we are strong.” Advocating from a place of desperation and powerlessness, they flipped the script on the ruling class, showing that their threats, in-
timidation and brute force are insufficient means of suppression. In fact, their overthe-top crackdown on students helped enflame a global uprising.
This is a lesson those in power seem to never learn. The 2014 film “Rosewater,” based on Iran’s political imprisonment of journalist Maziar Bahari, ends with Iranian authorities destroying satellites on the roof of a residence in an effort to inhibit the flow of information. The only problem? A child is recording their barbarity, ensuring their effort to clamp down on free expression will only fuel greater outrage.
The entrenched elites continue to do all in their power to quash the student movement for Palestine. Their efforts create many painful arcs in the story of Palestinian solidarity, but “The Encampments” shows that the students demanding justice had the first word and will have the last word.
Dale Sprusansky
Badar Khan Suri’s Arrest and the
Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and research fellow at Georgetown University, was returning from a Ramadan iftar with his wife on March 17 when he was seized by masked federal agents and informed of his imminent deportation. According to the ACLU of Virginia, an arresting officer at the Washington, DC ICE office told him that “they knew he was not a criminal and that someone at a very high level at the Secretary of State’s office ‘does not want you here.’” Khan Suri’s case is not unique. The Trump administration has abducted and sought the deportation of numerous international students on spurious charges of anti-Semitism and support for terrorism. On April 24, the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) at Georgetown University hosted a forum on “Freedom of Speech, Trump and Campus Repression: The Case of Badar Khan Suri.” Moderated by Dr. Nader Hashemi, director of the ACMCU, the panel featured Hassan Ahmad, the attorney representing Khan Suri; David Cole, professor
People march to demand that the Trump administration stops arresting foreign students and threatening them with deportation for expressing their opinions, in New York City on April 17, 2025.
at Georgetown Law and former National Legal Director at the ACLU; and Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).
Hashemi met with Khan Suri at an ICE detention center in Texas on April 23, and reported that “Notwithstanding the trauma that he and his family have been subjected to, his spirits are strong.” In their conversation, Khan Suri “quoted Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela several times” and “explicitly told me that they are his role models during this dark time in his life.” Khan Suri told Hashemi, “If his ordeal and his suffering can help expose the problem of authoritarianism in the USA today and shine a spotlight on the suffering people of Gaza, it will have been worth it.”
Ahmad elaborated on the legal status of the DOJ’s case against Khan Suri. Immigration cases fall under the jurisdiction of civil court, meaning “there’s no jury…no presumption of innocence” and the state “does not need to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt.” Ahmad noted that “the only charge on his notice to appear is that somebody high up, in this case presumably Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has made the determination that his presence and/or activities in the United States could have a potentially serious adverse effect on U.S. foreign policy.” Even worse, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that it does not have the authority to second-guess the secretary of state’s judgment. “He [Rubio] could
ChatGPT a [deportation] letter if he wanted to, and no court would have the power to say, ‘wait a second, where did you get that, what is your reasoning, is this a reasonable determination or not,’” Ahmad said. “All we’re asking is that a court be empowered to say, ‘Hey, show your math’ and get him [Khan Suri] the due process that he and anyone else in his position deserves.”
Whitson placed the deportation efforts in the context of an “unprecedented and unique” censorship campaign waged on behalf of Israel. She explained that most censorship campaigns are national in scope, focusing on issues specific to a country and its politics. However, “what we’re seeing today is a global censorship campaign that is targeting people advocating on one very specific issue, which is human rights abuses by Israel,” she said.
Whitson noted that much of Europe engages in “very similar conduct and actions in terms of quashing protests [and] deporting immigrants based on their criticism of Israel.” She also highlighted the dangers of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which lists describing Israel as racist as an example of anti-Semitism. Whitson argued that the IHRA definition, which numerous state governments, federal agencies and universities have adopted, is being “deployed as a cudgel to silence speech that describes Israel as an apartheid state, as an illegal, racist occupation.”
Does the First Amendment protect the free speech of all people living in this country, regardless of citizenship or legal status? In 1987, Cole defended a group of Palestinian students who were arrested and subject to deportation proceedings for their advocacy. Due to McCarthy era immigration law, the students were charged with being members of an organization that “advocates world communism.” Cole won the case, recalling his argument that the First Amendment “says Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech,” not just “the freedom of speech of citizens.” Congress repealed the communism provision but “enacted a new law that made it a deportable offense to provide material support for terrorist organizations, and they charged our clients under that” (unsuccessfully). Ultimately, Cole contends, “if foreign nationals can be deported for saying something that those of us who are citizens can’t even be punished for, then we don’t live in a society that respects free speech. We don’t have free speech.”
Jack McGrath
Climate change is a growing global concern, with experts constantly raising the alarm about the need to address the issue. Sufficient funding in this area is lacking for many countries, especially following the Trump administration’s recent cuts to USAID, which was one of the main contributors to climate change efforts in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
“Now is the time for [regional] governments to get smart and draw from within from their own resources,” said Frederic Wehrey, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s (CEIP) Middle East Program, in an April 9 webinar hosted by his organization. “I think this massive shock we’re experiencing now just underscores that imperative.”
One country which should be applauded for implementing well-developed plans for reducing carbon emissions by transitioning to solar energy is Morocco, he said. The
A satellite image of Morocco’s Noor Ouarzazate Solar Complex, one of the largest concentrated solar power plants in the world. The image was collected on July 10, 2020, by Sentinel‐2 satellites.
country is home to one of the largest solar farms in the world, capable of powering the homes of 2.3 million people.
Morocco, however, is the second-most water scarce country in North Africa. An estimated 93 percent of its land is arid or semiarid, which impacts the agriculture sector— responsible for 10 percent of the GDP, Wehrey explained. An estimated 30 percent of the country’s population depends on farming for their livelihood or are associated with the rural economy. About 70 percent of this agricultural output comes from smallplot family-owned farms and oasis-dwellers.
Morocco’s deeply unequal system of water distribution, inherited from the French colonial period and carried over into the monarchy, is centered around political clientelism, benefiting rich landowners, Wehrey said. While measures have been taken over the years to correct this imbalance, the interests of the same “regime-connected elites” are still prioritized. “This is all political and has to do with the nature of the Moroccan monarchy system…and has led to sporadic protests,” Wehrey noted. Local farmers have the expertise from traditional indigenous traditions for managing water, he emphasized. “The government just needs to listen.”
Sarah Yerkes, senior fellow at the Middle
East Program at CEIP, pointed out the importance of youth activism in tackling climate challenges, noting that young people make up a large proportion of the region’s population. In her opinion, governments in North Africa are largely incapable of addressing rapidly increasing climate challenges on their own, making it in their best interests to strengthen civil society, including the large youth segment who are educated and have important tech skills.
Doing so would also “help bridge the trust gap” between young people and their governments, she added. “The one thing that governments can do is actually listen to them…and harness the skills of these young people.”
Several North African governments have been increasingly trying to give the youth a seat at the table when it comes to climate policymaking, Yerkes explained. During sessions of the United Nations-directed Conference of the Parties (COP) held in Sharm el-Sheikh and Dubai, a number of young people from Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco were given elevated roles.
Selma Khalil, an MBA candidate at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, said financing the green transition in Egypt would require transparency, along with stronger accountability
mechanisms and a smoother regulatory process. Egypt’s difficult economic conditions and declining foreign direct investment remittances are exacerbated by Israel’s war on neighboring Gaza, which has dramatically reduced important Suez Canal revenues. Despite these challenges, Egypt is looking at ambitious climate projects, including generating 42 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
Aisha Al-Sarihi, a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs and the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, noted that the Arab Gulf countries have been slower than those in North Africa in their climate adaptation and mitigation efforts due to their reliance on oil and gas sales. This industry contributes significantly to Gulf economies, and “the clean energy sector itself might not generate the same kind of revenue as the hydrocarbon sector,” she said. Nonetheless, countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE have set ambitious renewable energy targets.
Elaine Pasquini
“Zionism
Zionism
A fraught term, “Zionism” can encompass multiple definitions and inspire fierce debate, not just between Zionists and antiZionists, but among various camps and movements within Zionism itself. A key insight from the March 16 Voices from the Holy Land (VFHL) online film salon was that Zionism, like any belief system or political ideology, must be evaluated based on its real-world fruits. As encountered within “the laboratory of history,” Zionism has resulted in severe injustices, panelists agreed.
Amira Musallam, a Palestinian Christian peace activist with the Save al-Makhrour campaign and a member of Unarmed Civilian Protection in Palestine, described how Zionism impacts her daily life. “Bethlehem, now, is surrounded by so many settlements,” she explained. “From my house in Beit Jala, as I look out my bedroom, I see a settlement on my right and the separation wall on my left. In front of me is a bridge, a road for Israelis only. This is apartheid.” Musallam described her encounters with Israeli settlers, including a harrowing story
Palestinian farmer Ahmad Khalil stands amid the charred remains of his agricultural installation, following an attack by Israeli settlers in the village of Sinjil, in the occupied West Bank, on April 23, 2025.
of collecting her son from an attack. “On the 31st of July, I got a phone call from my mother-in-law telling me to go immediately to their land in al-Makhrour and take my son. When I arrived, I saw my son standing outside, holding his only remaining toy; it was a car. The rest of his toys were crushed by the settlers, by their trucks. The settlers were on our land and removing all our stuff. They were doing so with the protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces and the police.” But rather than arrest the settlers, Musallam emphasized, the police arrested her son’s father. A female Israeli soldier, upon being questioned by Musallam, flatly responded, “I am here to guard the settlers.”
Mimi Kirk, director of the Institute for the Study of Christian Zionism and associate director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, spoke to the magnitude of Zionist, particularly Christian Zionist, influences on American politics and foreign policy. “A quarter of all Americans today identify as evangelical,” Kirk noted. “Of that quarter, polls show that many—up to 80 percent in one 2017 poll— say the modern state of Israel is key to their understanding of the End Times. There’s this feeling that one must bless Israel in order to be blessed. This ‘prosperity gospel’ comes from a verse in Genesis, that a blessing to Israel brings material support to individuals as well as nations.”
Kirk cited the Christians United for Israel claim to have more than 10 million mem-
bers. “The number of Jews in the United States is something like 7.5 million, [so] just one [Christian] organization has more members than the number of Jews in the United States, of which many are not Zionist.” Given this data, Kirk concluded that the power of the Christian Zionist lobby must not be understated. However, the tides appear to be turning, as a study conducted between 2018 and 2021 found that support for Israel among young evangelicals decreased by more than 50 percent over the three-year period.
Odeliya Matter, program associate with the Friends Committee on National Legislation and co-founder of Negev Media, described growing up in Jerusalem as a Jewish Israeli. “Across the street, 200,000 Palestinians lived without access to basic human rights, rights that I had full access to,” she said. “They didn’t have access to waste disposal, garbage disposal and sewage disposal. They weren’t given building permits to expand homes, or to build on the land that they themselves owned, and they were going through forced displacement systemically as well. Meanwhile, I was living in a settlement with full access to all human rights, protection from the government, and I had voting rights to the government that dictated what my life looked like. Across the street, East Jerusalem Palestinians are stateless. They do not have voting rights to the government that controls every single element of their life.”
Musallam outlined what it means to live in the shadow of Israeli settlements. She described many of the settlers as “really little kids, 12 to 13 years old with knives, and they are really aggressive. The whole time they are spitting on and cursing” at Palestinians and human rights witnesses. Even so, in response to a question about Zionism and anti-Semitism, Musallam sought to emphasize, “As Palestinians, we don’t hate Judaism. The issue is really about what Israel is doing to us. It’s really about ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism, massacre and genocide. It has nothing to do with hating Jews.”
“When we were preparing for this panel,” Matter said, “I heard Amira say something really important.” It was a quote from Rev. Munther Isaac, author of Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible and the Genocide in Gaza, and pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem: “Zionism is what Zionism does.”
The March salon, the second in a series of three exploring the topic of Zionism, was held in partnership with Friends of Sabeel North America and co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace–Boston. Seth Morrison, a member of the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace Action and a leader within the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, moderated the discussion. —Jesse Steven Wheeler
Tim Lenderking, a senior official in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, joined the National Council on U.S.Arab Relations on April 24 to discuss the Trump administration’s views on engaging the new Syrian government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
The long-time diplomat noted that the topic of Syria comes up frequently in conversations between Washington and senior officials from the Arab world, with many of them “really encouraging us to engage robustly and energetically with the new leadership.” Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been particularly open to assisting al-Sharaa’s
Members of Syria’s Druze community attend the funeral of seven people killed during overnight fighting with Syrian security forces, in Damascus, on April 30, 2025. Druze leaders accused armed Sunni groups affiliated with the government of launching a “genocidal attack” in response to since‐discredited rumors of a Druze cleric disparaging the Prophet Muhammad. In response to this communal violence, Israel launched air strikes near Damascus, with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu saying he would “not allow the deployment of [Syrian] forces south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community.”
government. In April, the two countries jointly announced plans to fully pay off the $15 million Damascus owes the International Monetary Fund, which will free Syria to tap more international assistance as it attempts to rebuild its economy following more than a decade of civil war, foreign interventions and Western sanctions.
Lenderking said the U.S. respects the decision of other countries to quickly embrace al-Sharaa, but noted that Washington is not prepared to move at such a rapid pace. “We’re not there yet, to be quite honest,” he said. However, he indicated Washington is willing to engage al-Sharaa in good faith negotiations and to see how sincere the former leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is about moving on from his jihadist roots.
“We’re looking for an opportunity where we can build confidence with the new leadership,” Lenderking said. “They [HTS] are, as you know, designated as terrorists according to the United States….These are not things that can be remedied overnight, but there is a keenness on the part of the United States to engage and really see what these guys are made of and whether they are serious about turning a corner on their past, on their previous ideologies.”
If the new government follows through on the promises they have made to govern in an inclusive and responsible manner,
“there’s a real opportunity for confidence building with the United States that could lead to much bigger and better things,” including sanctions relief, he added.
In March, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Levant and Syria Natasha Franceschi reportedly met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani in Brussels to provide a list of demands outlining what Washington expects from the Syrian government. Lenderking said the list includes: providing any information about Americans who were disappeared by the Assad regime, not permitting Iran to regain a foothold in the country, pledging to combat terrorist groups (particularly ISIS), expelling foreign fighters, destroying all chemical weapons and chemical weapon precursors, and pledging to not take an aggressive posture toward neighboring states.
In April, Reps. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) and Cory Mills (R-FL) participated in the first official congressional delegation to Syria since Bashar al-Assad’s ouster last December. After meeting with al-Sharaa, they reported the leader was open to signing a peace deal with Israel. The Syrian government later clarified that Damascus does not seek conflict with its neighbors, but that formal recognition of Israel cannot take place as long as Israel continues to occupy Syrian territory. In the months after Assad’s
ouster, Israel has annexed more Syrian land beyond the Golan Heights, destroyed much of Syria’s remaining military capabilities and repeatedly bombed Syria, including an early May attack near the presidential palace.
Unsurprisingly, as the U.S. demands Syria adopt a servile posture toward its neighbors in exchange for recovering basic economic rights, it is actively supporting Israel’s belligerent disregard for Syrian sovereignty. —Dale Sprusansky
Mohsen Milani, a professor at the University of South Florida, joined the Iran Podcast with Negar Mortazavi on May 3 to discuss his newly released book, Iran’s Rise and Rivalry with the U.S. in the Middle East
“The central question that I have in this book is: How is it possible for Iran, a middle power at best, to become a formidable power in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza, etc., despite the U.S. policy of containment?”
Beyond Iran’s natural desire to export its 1979 revolution, Milani cited the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and the U.S. invasion of Iraq as the two events that helped expand Iran’s influence throughout the Middle East.
While Saddam Hussain sought to weaken or destroy the Islamic Revolution, his war of aggression actually had the opposite effect, Milani explained, as the conflict “shaped the evolution of the Iranian revolution and laid the military foundation of Iran’s rise.” In particular, he noted that the war prompted Tehran to develop proxy networks in neighboring states such as Lebanon and Iraq and compelled the country to invest heavily in its own military infrastructure.
By the time the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Iran was already “a relatively powerful [regional] force,” the author pointed out. However, “had it not been for the American invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the Sunni-dominated government in Shi’i-majority Iraq, Iran’s rise would not have been possible. The American invasion of Iraq had one huge unintended consequence— it served as a catalyst for Iran’s rise.” With
the region upended and its main rival eliminated, Iran was able to sustainably deepen its involvement from Lebanon to Yemen and form what is popularly referred to at the “Axis of Resistance.”
That being said, Milani thinks many commentators overstated Iran’s regional prowess in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023. “I think there was a great deal of exaggeration about Iranian power,” he said. “This idea that Iran controls 4-5 [Arab] capitals…Iran never had the ability to impose its hegemony in any of these countries. At best, Iran had established spheres of influence in those countries.”
He explained that Iran’s foreign policy posture was “both defensive and offensive. It was designed to expand Iranian power and at the same time serve as a deterrent against Israel and against the United States in case those two countries decided to attack Iran.”
Milani believes Iran’s ability to project power has “diminished significantly” and has “at least been reduced by half” as a result of the post-Oct. 7 wars and the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria. “Iran has paid a heavy price” and “created new enemies and new challenges,” he said, adding that its deterrent abilities have been proven to be “very limited.”
Going forward, Milani cautioned, “Iran’s rise is unsustainable….Without making some important, meaningful and radical reforms in Iranian foreign policy, most importantly putting an end to this anti-American policy…Iran won’t be able to remain a
major power in the Middle East.”
Milani is hopeful about the ongoing talks between Iran and the U.S. “The leaders of these two countries…neither one is a warmonger; they don’t want to get engaged in a war,” he said. “They want to see if they can solve the nuclear impasse through diplomatic channels.”
However, even if a nuclear deal is reached, Milani believes future conflict is unavoidable unless the status quo paradigm of Iran seeking to disrupt U.S. and Israeli regional power is altered. “Iran and the United States have to establish normalized relations,” he urged. “Unless and until we have a normalized relationship, something is going to happen and again we’re going to [continue] this cold war.”
If diplomacy fails and a U.S.-Israeli war against Iran materializes, Milani warned of dire consequences for all involved. “A war [would] damage Iran, without any doubt. It’s going to have a devastating impact on Iran, but it’s [also] going to have a serious impact for the Americans, for the Israelis and for the world economy,” he said. The idea of a quick successful war is foolish and disproven by history, he added. “When you have a long war in that region, everyone is going to be impacted.” —Dale Sprusansky
Catherine Baker invited guests to her Bethesda, MD, home on April 27 for a book talk by Brian K. Barber, Ph.D., author of No Way But Forward. Barber chose the title for
a Palestinian maxim: When people are confronted with an obstacle or setback, “there is nothing to do but move forward.”
His book takes an intimate look at the lives of three men and their families who keep going, whom he got to know during three decades of visits to Gaza. Barber went to Gaza to conduct group and individual interviews with hundreds of young men and women for a scientific journal. He chose to focus on the three, Hammam, Khalil and Hussam, in 2014, because of their distinct personalities, approaches to resisting the occupation and their fluency in English. Barber points out that these men were born after Israel’s military occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1967. Israel has controlled their entire lives, but they have persevered in making honorable and even happy lives for themselves. They’ve never met each other.
One boy started kindergarten with his father in prison, and we see how the events that shaped his life unfolded. Israeli soldiers took his ID card while he played marbles with his friends. Without an ID he was detained and endured 10 days of torture. Remembering that traumatic event, he remarks those soldiers made him a human rights activist.
The response to Barber’s book has not been positive, he admitted. Literary agents tried to censor it, asking him to change text written after October 7. He refused. He couldn’t find a publisher or publicist and ended up self-publishing on Amazon. He urged listeners to read the book (it’s available from Middle East Books and More) and recommend it to others.
This book is important for Americans to read, so they understand Palestinians trying to survive in Gaza. Barber reflects: “In seeing their day-to-day reality, we recognize ourselves—our own interests, struggles, dilemmas, joys and pains…Readers will get lost in such familiar human drama—only to be awakened by the realization that it’s all playing out in tiny, oppressed Gaza, of all places.”
Barber manages to tell universally relevant stories of everyday life in a misunderstood part of the world—“tales of the extraordinary determination of ordinary people who are trying to forge a good and dignified life.”
—Delinda C. Hanley
All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1101
Suppressing Dissent: Shrinking Civic Space, Transnational Repression and Palestine-Israel
Edited by Zaha Hassan and H.A. Hellyer, Oneworld Publications, 2024, paperback, 336 pp. MEB $45
Reviewed by Sana Abed-Kotob, Ph.D.
Suppressing Dissent was published in late 2024 as people across the world voiced despair about the horrific war on Gaza and the accompanying silence of world leaders. This seminal collection of essays by knowledgeable analysts outlines the shrinking civic space that increasingly constrains human rights activists, academics, students, social media influencers and others who express opposition to the oppression of the Palestinian people.
Since the book’s publication, more than 1,800 international students and recent graduates at over 280 U.S. colleges lost their visa status, with hundreds reinstated after a flurry of lawsuits challenging the visa terminations. In addition, individuals associated with pro-Palestinian activities have been abducted and detained by plainclothes officers without due process. Moreover, universities across the country have been threatened with funding cuts if they do not stop alleged “anti-Semitic discrimi-
Sana Abed-Kotob, Ph.D. is former deputy director at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Prior to joining the State Department, she served as director of publications and book review editor at the Middle East Institute. She is co-author, with Denis Sullivan, of Islam in Contemporary Egypt: Civil Society vs. the State
nation and harassment” on campus.
To elucidate the anti-democratic efforts that deny basic freedoms and violate a country’s own constitution, Suppressing Dissent discusses the political, legal and financial actions taken by Israel and the United States to thwart dissent. The reading was distressing and scary.
Zaha Hassan begins the discussion with the question on everyone’s mind: “Why is advocating for Palestinians treated so differently from other human rights activism?” The answer lies in a myriad of topics addressed in subsequent chapters: legal definitions, laws and—especially— concerted global repression efforts that associate criticism of Israeli policy and Zionism with antiSemitism and terrorism. Even boycotts of Israeli products have been outlawed in some U.S. states, “requiring those wanting to contract with the state to certify that they have never or will not engage in such activity.” One may boycott a U.S. company for domestic reasons at will, but boycotting an Israeli company that operates out of an illegal West Bank settlement is seen as anti-Semitic.
The book provides a thorough background analysis on the causes of the demise of the two-state option: an authoritarian Palestinian leadership that uses repression to control society, often in coordination with Israeli authorities; Israeli use of repressive surveillance systems in Palestinian communities; and Israeli attacks on Palestinian civil society—labeling longtime human and civil rights organizations as terrorists and thus causing risk-averse international donors and banks to stop funding their activities.
Palestinians are not the only activists under attack by Israel. Dahlia Scheindlin outlines Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s aim, in Israel, to “intimidate and suppress critical political speech and activism, and weaken the institutions that protect independent civil activity, including the media and the judiciary.” With constraints on free expression in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel, it is natural for civil society groups in both locations to reach out for help from overseas allies. In the United States, however, advocates for Palestinian rights have come under legal and financial assault. A chapter on the role of U.S. laws discusses how, for decades, pro-Israel groups worked “to deploy U.S. counterterrorism law to chill Palestinian and pro-Palestinian civic engagement and political expression.” Since Oct 7, 2023, the attacks have intensified. Online blacklists use “intimidation tactics against students and blatant conflation of protected speech against Zionism with anti-Semitism and terrorism.”
Those who have experienced social media censorship will appreciate the chapter on digital repression. Marwa Fatafta discusses how Israeli authorities have pressured social media companies like Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) and TikTok to censor and penalize Palestinians “under the pretext of eradicating extremism and incitement to violence.” From blocking the term “Palestinian” to disabling hashtags and treating “Zionists” as a protected group, restrictions on pro-Palestinian speech abound.
While all the chapters are outstanding, Yousef Munayyer’s is particularly illuminating and chilling, as it outlines the elements of “a calculated Israeli government strategy
to silence critics.” In the face of rising proPalestinian sentiment around the world, in 2015 Israel charged its Ministry of Strategic Affairs (MSA) with dealing “with the phenomenon in all its aspects.” The MSA built a global network, consisting mainly of paid secret actors, to engage in pro-Israel activities. In 2019, the director of MSA called the network the “Iron Dome of Israel’s legitimacy.” The MSA took credit for “passage of anti-BDS laws in 27 U.S. states, Congress and the UK, initiation of more than 50 lawsuits against civil society activists…closure of numerous BDS bank accounts, deportation and denial of visas for activists” and more. Munayyer astutely outlines the MSA’s transition from fighting BDS without mentioning “anti-Semitism,” to ultimately using the term 287 times in a 94-page report. The messaging shift framed BDS not as a free speech issue, but as discriminatory activity.
The MSA’s global pressure tactics are a major element in answering the question that Zaha Hassan posited at the beginning of the book: “Why is advocating for Palestinians treated so differently from other human rights activism?” The book illuminates how, in the face of more than 50,000 dead Gazans since October 2023, human rights advocates are seen as the criminals.
By Maya Wind, Verso, 2024, paperback, 288 pp. MEB $29.95
Reviewed by Ida
Audeh
Frequently considered in the West as “liberal bastions of pluralism and democracy,” Israel’s universities are more accurately described as extensions of the surveillance state and its military. In Towers of Ivory and Steel, author Maya Wind explores the ways in which eight Israeli universities support the state’s colonization project and its assertion of military control over the land of Palestine and its people.
The three chapters of Part 1, “Complicity,” provide a detailed exposition of the tight
Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report
Mohammed Omer Almoghayer, OR Books, 2025, paperback, 288 pp. MEB $19.95
In this book, former Washington Report Gaza correspondent Mohammed Omer Almoghayer presents a necessary corrective to those who depict Gazans as either terrorists or perpetual victims. What the news reports have rarely shown are the ways in which, prior to Israel’s onslaught, the people of Gaza rose above their hardships to enjoy the simple pleasures of human existence. On the Pleasures of Living in Gaza takes the reader on a tour of a most misunderstood and hidden territory, allowing us to discover the community spirit, the enduring family ties, the festivals and pastimes, and the creativity and resourcefulness of people, who, in lives now tragically lost, refused to surrender to hopelessness, snatching moments of joy in the most difficult of circumstances. More than ever, it is vital that we recognize the humanity of people referred to by Israel’s leaders as “animals,” and by news organizations around the world as the nameless dead. With the sensitivity and insight available to a native Gazan, Omer Almoghayer parts the smoke and dust to show us the richness of a way of life Israel has now destroyed.
Naseej: Life-Weavings of Palestine edited by Arpan Roy and Noura Salahaldeen, Pluto Press, 2025, paperback, 216 pp. MEB $26.95
Naseej, meaning “tapestry” in Arabic, is a book about the diversity and beauty of community, history and continuity in Palestine. It compiles essays, short stories, poetry, interviews and visual art to tell the story of how the vast web of Palestinian histories has been severed from its roots. Palestine has always been a precious patchwork of languages, ethnicities, cultures, religions and practices, weaved into the fabric of an Arab and Islamic civilization that was a culmination of centuries of interchange and experimentation. Arriving at a moment of utter devastation, this collection celebrates life in Palestine. From the trajectories of Romani groups to religious communities like the Druze and Ahmadiyya Muslims, to the political experience of Black Palestinians, Naseej asks what kind of threads remain of this tapestry after some 150 years of colonialism.
Spring
by Nejmeh Khalil Habib, translated by Samar Habib, Interlink Books, 2025, paperback, 149 pp. MEB $16
Drawing on cultural and oral history, Nejmeh Khalil Habib’s collection of five powerful short stories delves into the lives of ordinary Palestinians trying to find their way through relentless circumstances. Introducing us to characters loosely interconnected by time and place, the stories begin in 1975 with a family living in the Dbayeh refugee camp (located outside of Beirut) and end with the Israeli siege of West Beirut in 1982. From Mariam, a mother devoted to her only child, to Nu’man, the soon-to-be-martyred young man who is ashamed of unwanted thoughts that mar his heroism, to Randa, the revolutionary, who is torn between glorifying her father’s sacrifices and denouncing them, Habib accompanies each of her characters nimbly in language at times simple and embedded in popular vernacular, at others lyrical and poetic. Habib’s mastery of craft allows her to dive boldly into her characters’ depths and say what has not been said, revealing their hidden worlds with illuminating transparency that honors their unrequited longings for spring.
collaboration between Israeli universities and the state, and especially the military. Three universities—Hebrew University, the Technion in Haifa and the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot—were established prior to 1948 for the purpose of serving the “[Zionist] movement’s territorial objectives in Palestine” and advancing “the scientific and technological development of Israel as a Jewish state in historic Palestine.” Israel’s weapons manufacturers Rafael, Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries developed out of infrastructure laid by the Technion and Weizmann Institute. All three universities had bases for the Haganah militia “to research and refine military capabilities.” During the 1948 war, weapons (including biological weapons) were made on these campuses by faculty and students; after the war, the university expanded to lands of ethnically cleansed villages and grew its library holdings through the confiscation of personal libraries in Palestinian homes. After the 1967 war, Hebrew University expanded its Mt. Scopus campus to East Jerusalem as a way of securing Israeli control over newly occupied territory.
Other universities were built to serve “as pillars of regional demographic engineering”: the University of Haifa, established in 1972 in the Palestinian-majority Galilee; Ben-Gurion University, in the Naqab/Negev desert, sparsely populated by Jewish Israelis, also in 1972; and in 2012, Ariel University in the occupied West Bank, built as part of the project to Judaize the region. The goals, then, were to insert a military outpost in Palestinian concentration centers; develop a Jewish population where one didn’t previously exist; and fuel the growth of ille-
gal settlements in occupied territory.
Wind describes how three disciplines— archeology, law and Middle East studies— are used to erase Muslim and Arab history, expropriate land for archeological excavation, create justification for violating international human rights law and legitimize disproportionate use of Israeli force against Palestinian civilians, including war crimes and assassinations. The integration between the military and Israeli academic specialists on the Middle East is seamless, with the latter viewing the region through “an Orientalist, militarized lens.” The study of Arabic and Islam is valued only as a tool that supports greater control of the natives.
Tel Aviv University, located in what Israelis consider to be a liberal city, is a good example of the typical enmeshment of the military in the academe. The university has several partnerships with the military, including the Erez program “for officers in combat military units” that pairs a humanities track with military “areas of interest.” Uniformed soldiers are permitted to carry their weapons to campus; some of their classes are taught by senior military officers. Students can take courses with such titles as “strategy and national security,” “terror and guerrillas” and “contemporary military thought.” The university faculty abide by military restrictions: they have to watch what they say and avoid making what might be considered “offensive statements” toward soldier-students about their service. The campus begins to take on the qualities of a military base, on which Palestinian students face arrest for what the state considers unacceptable behavior (such as wearing a keffiyeh or protesting student arrests in the West Bank); they have to censor themselves in class, knowing that some of their classmates are soldiers who will eventually surveil them and their communities.
The three chapters of Part 2, “Repression,” describe how Palestinian faculty (Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is a prominent example) and students (particularly student organizers) are targeted for repression by universities and Jewish Israeli students acting as agents of the state. When Israeli military personnel make their way into academia and reinvent themselves as university professors, the distinction between
the state and the academe is obliterated; the campus is just another site for colonial control of Palestinian faculty and students. The very few Jewish staff who buck the system, like Ilan Pappé and Neve Gordon, find that self-exile offers their best option for their physical safety. Benny Morris, one of the “new historians” who publicized the foundational massacres and ethnic cleansing that enabled Israel’s establishment, was acceptable because he publicly lamented that Israel had not been more thorough. The extent of the collaboration between universities and the (unapologetically colonial and apartheid) state make the boycott of Israeli universities a no-brainer. In the words of the author, the boycott of Israel’s universities is “an essential step toward decolonization.” Israeli scholars are hardly bystanders. As this account makes clear, they are willing partners in the colonial project, contributing in their areas of expertise (law, medicine, history, journalism, archeology, filmmaking, fiction writing) and shaping the law and international perceptions of Israel’s military operations. As the author states at the end of the book, “A reckoning with this complicity is overdue.”
By Thérèse Soukar Chehade, Regal House Publishing, 2024, paperback, 262 pp. MEB $18.95
Thérèse Soukar Chehade’s elegant prose captures the precious beauty of Beirut amid rising political unrest. Chehade was born in Lebanon and immigrated to Massachusetts in 1983, eight years after the start of Lebanon’s civil war. Her first novel, Loom, features an immigrant family reliving memories and anxieties from the civil war amid a Vermont blizzard. Loom won the Arab American Book Award in 2011, and her next historical novel, We Walked On, deserves even more accolades. This second masterpiece takes place before, during and after Lebanon’s 15-year-long civil war (1975-1990), which killed 150,000
Delinda C. Hanley, the executive editor of the Washington Report, spent nearly a decade growing up in Beirut.
people and led to the exodus of a million individuals.
We Walked On begins as Rita, 14, hunkers down hearing bombs outside and argues with herself: “You must do everything in your power to survive,” she thinks, while her other voice warns, “The bombs will find us. We will be blown to pieces. Our bones will be trampled to dust, and no one will hear our screams.” Rita imagines seeing “twisted shadows of the dead… They never got to say goodbye, and now the world awakens without them…I will die soon,” she sobs.
I couldn’t help reading these words and thinking about children like Rita enduring bombs in war zones in Gaza and Lebanon today.
This is just the first chapter. In every subsequent page, as we grow increasingly fond of Rita, the reader fears the worst will happen to this bright fun-loving girl. Despite these dark forebodings, in much of the book we just frolic along with Rita during her pre-war Beirut school days, studying in a Catholic girls’ school and living in her diverse community that slowly begins to separate and fall apart. Nostalgic readers, especially those like me who grew up in Beirut, will relate to Rita’s experiences with sibling rivalry; on-again, off-again friendships; first-loves; seaside fun; and bucolic family weekends in the mountains.
The other main character, Hisham, Rita’s 30-year-old inspiring Arabic teacher, observes the political unrest, worries about his politically active brother and tries to complete a book review that will bring him accolades. Hisham fills Rita’s mind with the rich Arabic literature that he hopes will help
Empty Cages: A Novel by Fatma Qandil, translated by Adam Talib, Hoopoe, 2025, paperback, 260 pp. MEB
$19.95
The discovery of an old tin of chocolates, its contents long ago devoured, marks the entry into this intimate story that reaches back through a lifetime of memories in search of self and home, with the relationship between mother and daughter at its core. Fatma Qandil describes, in startling and immersive prose, growing up in a middle-class Egyptian family, the youngest child and witness to their declining fortunes. Spanning the 1960s to the present day, her happy childhood melts away to reveal the fecklessness of her selfish older brothers, her father’s addiction, her mother’s illness and the violence and many deaths, both literal and figurative, that she endures. In both celebration and suffering, and through triumph and disappointment, her voice is unflinching, revealing both a determination to speak the truth and a poetic sensitivity that is disarming. Recipient of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, this fictional debut marks the arrival of a stunning new voice.
Sleep Phase by Mohamed Kheir, translated by Robin Moger, Two Lines Press, 2025, paperback, 240 pp. MEB
$18
After seven years in prison, Warif is released to a changed Cairo. This new city, busy with expats and bureaucrats, is proving disorienting as he tries to regain his job as a translator: What is he supposed to make of the self-assured newcomers who are so certain of his obsolescence, his subjugation, his solitude? They seem happy to provide him with a salary, if he’s willing to give up the work that gave his life meaning. As his encounters more and more resemble interrogations and the futility of trying to escape the system set against him threatens to suffocate him, Warif escapes into the vivid colors of the city, looking deeper and deeper into the food, the people, the buildings and the flowers, until what’s real blurs into fantasy. Sleep Phase is the latest enthralling work of award-winning Egyptian writer Mohamed Kheir.
Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History by Vali Nasr, Princeton University Press, 2025, hardcover, 408 pp. MEB $35
Iran presents one of the most significant foreign policy challenges for America and the West, yet very little is known about what the country’s goals really are. Vali Nasr examines Iran’s political history in new ways to explain its actions and ambitions on the world stage, showing how, behind the veneer of theocracy and Islamic ideology, today’s Iran is pursuing a grand strategy aimed at securing the country internally and asserting its place in the region and the world. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories and original in-depth interviews with Iranian decision makers, Nasr brings to light facts and events in Iran’s political history that have been overlooked until now. Challenging the notion that Iran’s foreign policy simply reflects its revolutionary values or theocratic government, Iran’s Grand Strategy provides invaluable new insights into what Iran wants and why, explaining the country’s resistance to the United States, its nuclear ambitions and its pursuit of influence and proxies across the Middle East.
her survive. In chapters alternating between Rita’s childish woes, Hisham takes his turn trying to discover his place in the world. We are soon attached to this bookish, impractical, adoring husband and Gisele, his vivacious wife, who works in a boutique clothing store in the stylish Hamra district.
We are deeply afraid for these characters who live on the front line, near the city center, as they go from squabbling over who cooks dinner after work to lying in the dark “with their hands entwined, counting the explosions.” Hisham also worries about his militant sibling Fuad; “These bombs might be gifts from my brother.” Night after night, when the guns rest, Hisham and his wife clean up broken glass in their home and try to put their lives back in order.
Getting ready for school during a lull in the fighting, Hisham selects which books to loan his student Rita. “War was many things: animal terror, loss of control and obsessive attention to daily details. The lines separating the divided city were safe one day and minefields the next, and the erratic shifts drove him to a breaking point. Books offered stability...No matter what happened, there would always be the last page and an ending. Books allayed his deepest fears. ‘They would do well by Rita,’ he thought, slipping the stack in his bag.”
While I admire the caring teacher, I also love his quintessential Beirut descriptions. Hisham describes a traffic jam entering a tunnel, “filled with blaring horns, the motorists making a racket for the thrill of hearing it echo against the walls, in the way the Lebanese have of escaping unpleasantness with boisterous noise.” Chehade tenderly describes Lebanon through Hisham. “His small country, the size of a thumbprint on a map, a thin coastline surrounded by mountains. Crammed together, leaderless, the Lebanese made a mess of things, always complaining about their government while eulogizing their country’s landscapes and their seafaring forefathers. The people were as varied as the landscape. Palestinians and Lebanese fleeing Israeli bombs in the South…There were at least 18 religious sects spread across the country, all clamoring for a say. New political parties sprang up like mushrooms, and not
one day went by without demonstrations or shootings. Beirut exhausted him.”
Rita’s family, meanwhile, moves mattresses between the vestibule and landing of their apartment, listening to the radio to see which sector of their city is fighting. “But we harbored no illusions. When you live in a small country, you know that sooner or later your turn will come.”
I was so afraid and caught up in this tale that when I couldn’t finish it on a plane trip home I stayed up until 3 a.m. As I turned the last page, I wished it would go on. Then I wondered about other talented Lebanese and Palestinian writers, those Anne Franks and Refaat Alareers who may or may not survive the bombs raining down on their lands today. Will their powerful books lead us toward hope and away from endless war? Will receptive publishers and reviewers help those books find readers finally ready to connect and identify with sympathetic Arab characters? When books like this find their way into classrooms, libraries and homes in the West, Israel and other actors who bomb and terrorize people like Rita and Hisham will have a tough time justifying their atrocities.
Written and illustrated by Mona Mortazavi, Olive Tree Press, 2024, paperback, 37 pp. MEB $12.99
Reviewed by Delinda C. Hanley
This little book takes readers, aged 3 to 8, and their families on an adventure to see the treasures of Lebanon. The engaging watercolor pictures will capture young imaginations and encourage their families to check out flights to a country where “lots of people speak three languages: Arabic, French and English. You’ll even see street signs written in all three languages.” Mona Mortazavi neglects to add that Lebanese use all three languages in nearly every sentence!
Young explorers start the day in Beirut, eating a traditional breakfast, topped off with candy and juice from a local grocery store. Then we jump into a taxi to Raouche, also known as Pigeon Rocks, the iconic landmark rising from the Mediterranean Sea, and walk along the sidewalks of the
Corniche. After yummy ice cream, it’s time to hike in the “majestic Cedars of God forest, where you can see Lebanon’s national tree, the cedar, which is proudly featured on the Lebanese flag.”
We explore Crusaders’ castles, Roman ruins in Baalbek, the town of Byblos and take a cable car ride from the seaside resort of Jounieh up the mountain to the shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa. Of course, since we’re in Lebanon, there are fresh grapes to pick off a vine. But save room for a delicious dinner! At the end of her book, Mortazavi invites the young reader to have more fun tomorrow and describe what their perfect day in Lebanon looks like!
By Fawaz Gerges, Princeton University Press, 2025, hardcover, 384 pp. MEB $35
Reviewed by Jack McGrath
The political and social fabric of the Middle East and North Africa has been rocked by foreign interventions, mass uprisings, civil wars and genocide. The result is a crisis-ridden region often written off by the West as inherently unstable. In The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East, Fawaz Gerges, professor of International Relations and chair in Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies at the London School of Economics, examines the roots of this instability throughout the region’s modern history. Gerges, author of Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb and the Clash That
Shaped the Middle East (2018) and What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East (2024), synthesizes subjects explored in his previous works, namely the roles of Arab nationalism, political Islam and U.S. foreign policy in shaping the region. Blending history with contemporary analysis, Gerges traces the origins and development of numerous structural forces and political trends that he blames for “the wretched social conditions of Arab societies.” He contends that interventions by foreign powers and domestic authoritarian governance are mutually reinforcing trends that have stifled the struggle of ordinary people for human rights and political representation.
Gerges’ sweeping historical overview begins with the original betrayal of Arab aspirations for national self-determination by European powers following World War I. The Sykes-Picot Agreement between Britain and France divided much of the Middle East into colonial mandates after World War I, while London’s Balfour Declaration promised the Jewish people a “national home” in Mandate Palestine. France and Britain managed their mandates through constitutional monarchies reliant on their European patrons for survival. Gerges argues that this democratic charade resulted in mass disillusionment with the concept of liberal constitutionalism, which became “synonymous with colonization and Westernization.” The neo-colonial governments in Egypt, Syria and Iraq were further discredited by their defeat in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and proved incapable of withstanding the tide of Arab nationalism that swept the region.
The ascendance of pan-Arabism as a “national myth” set the stage for a political and ideological struggle over regional identity. The choice between accepting national identities at least partially defined by colonial borders or embracing the transnational ideology of pan-Arabism became the defining debate of the mid20th century. The Great Betrayal charts the rise and fall of Arab nationalism through the reign of Gamal Abdel Nasser (a subject of interest for Gerges, who has written extensively about the Egyptian
leader in his last two books). A captivating figure who embodied the successes, failures and contradictions of pan-Arabism, Nasser proved unable to sustain the short-lived United Arab Republic and feuded with fellow Arab nationalist leaders in Iraq and Syria. Although the 1967 ArabIsraeli war sounded the death knell for Arab nationalism, Gerges convincingly argues that “the pan-Arab vision was subverted from within, sacrificed at the altar of separate state nationalisms and subjected to the whims and predilections of military strongmen.”
While acknowledging that the first generation of post-colonial Arab nationalist leaders made formidable strides in education, healthcare and agrarian reform, Gerges notes that they established a model of political authoritarianism which still dominates the region. Beginning with Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, future generations of rulers would abandon Arab socialism in favor of neoliberal policies that enabled unprecedented levels of corruption and enriched small cliques of elites. Fearful of the growing divide between state and society as well as threats from foreign adversaries, regimes invested in their security apparatus. Gerges points out that “the expanding securitization of the state in many Arab countries was directly proportionate to the growing sense of insecurity of the ruling elites.” The peoples’ frustration with their stagnant economies and entrenched autocrats culminated in the Arab Spring, which Gerges vociferously defends as a “direct challenge to both foreign intervention and domestic authoritarianism.”
Although the author observes that attempts to introduce heredity rule contributed to many a dictator’s downfall, relatively little attention is afforded to the authoritarian monarchies that continue to rule in the Arab Gulf and Jordan.
Gerges blames the resurgence of religious and subnational identities in the Middle East on leaders who stoked sectarianism, both to “divide and rule” their populations and “prevent the emergence of modern political identities” that could challenge their hegemony. Using Egypt and Algeria as case studies, he explains how regimes empowered political Islam to repress the left while inadvertently allowing the movements to “accrue considerable soft power” in contrast to the state. When popular protests forced the state to hold democratic elections, Islamist parties won, much to the chagrin of the ancien régime. In both cases, the military elites regained control through extreme violence that, Gerges asserts, radicalized Islamists and contributed to the rise of militant jihadism across the region.
The Great Betrayal explores a wide range of subjects in varying degrees of depth, with the thrust of Gerges’ analysis examining how the decisions of post-colonial Arab rulers contributed to the region’s authoritarian governance, economic stagnation, social divisions and endemic conflict. Gerges’ expertise is complemented by his engaging prose, which makes The Great Betrayal accessible to a wide range of audiences.
Despite the dismal state of the region, Gerges remains optimistic about its longterm future. In the coming decades, the author believes that civil society must foster resilience and engage with the rebuilding of state institutions to negotiate a new social contract based on “the rule of law, freedom, social justice and representation.” While this outcome appears distant, Gerges reminds us that the people of the Middle East have proven their ability to surprise the world.
Jack McGrath is Middle East Books and More director and Washington Report editor.
SHE SAID IT LOUD AND PROUD: “Our service is needed as writers. Our service is needed as human beings. In every room, in every space, especially where there is something to risk. That’s what’s needed.” When Lena Khalaf Tuffaha accepted the 2024 National Book Award for her poetry collection Something About Living, she called on Americans to “get uncomfortable” and stop Israel’s war on Gaza, which was then in its 411th day. In invoking her father’s birth in Jerusalem in 1938 and the homeland he couldn’t live in, she was invoking a story “that has carried me through my entire life, has driven me and motivated me.”
By Lisa Mullenneaux
else but right now I’m living the erasure of our lives, our memories, our monuments 24 hours a day. The only thing I can do is write.”
Popular novelist Susan Abulhawa was born in Kuwait in 1970 to parents who became refugees after the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Her first language is Arabic, but she chooses to write in English, and her themes and characters are Palestinian Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin (2006), is a multigenerational family epic that spans five countries and more than 60 years as it charts the effects of the Israeli occupation. Her latest novel, Against the Loveless World (2019), tells the
Tuffaha is one of many first- and second-generation Palestinian writers whose work is defined by the Nakba, the 1948 expulsion from the homeland, and never more so than since Oct. 7, 2023. For these writers, the Nakba never ended: forced migration has determined their lives. Novelist Yara El-Ghadban, 49, is the daughter of Palestinian refugees, who lived successively in exile in Buenos Aires, Beirut, Damascus and Sana’a until her family settled in Montreal in 1989.
“I only started traveling by choice when I got my Canadian passport in my late teens,” she told me. “As a child I had no notion of traveling for pleasure. The experience of travel was always traumatizing, such as being singled out in the airport and having someone take away our documents, seeing the stress on my parents’ faces, and the uncertainty of not knowing if we’d be given permission to leave.” Her four novels, written in French, are all connected to Palestine. “Maybe one day I’ll have the chance to write about something
Lisa Mullenneaux’s poems and essays appear in literary journals in the UK and America. She specializes in the translation of modern French and Italian literature, such as Yara El‐Ghadban’s 2011 novel L’Ombre de l’olivier, and authored the critical study Naples’ Little Women: The Fiction of Elena Ferrante. She has taught research writing for the University of Maryland’s Global Campus since 2015. More at lisamullenneaux.com.
story of Nahr, a Palestinian refugee from Kuwait, who becomes radicalized and ends in an Israeli isolation cell she calls “the Cube.” But even before she won awards for her fiction, Abulhawa had founded Playgrounds for Palestine (“to uphold the right to play”) and supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
When writers like Abulhawa take a public stand for Palestine, however, criticism and censorship follow. On Nov. 29, 2024, she was invited by Britain’s Oxford Union to debate the motion, “This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” She spoke in favor of the proposition with poet Mohammed El-Kurd. Although the motion carried overwhelmingly, the Oxford Union caved to demands by Zionists and deleted her original speech on YouTube, substituting a censored version.
No one knows the power of media as a tool for social protest better than 26-year-old Mohammed El-Kurd, whose neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem is the focus of Julia Bacha’s 2013 film “My Neighbourhood.” In 2009, part of his family’s home was seized by Israeli settlers and, because many Israeli judges themselves are settlers or children of settlers, they tend to rule in favor of evictions. El-Kurd and his twin sister Muna became the faces of resistance to ethnic cleansing and launched a global grassroots campaign, #SaveSheikhJarrah.
El-Kurd’s poetry collection Rifqa (2021) lays bare the brutality of settlers’ land grabs as well as his family’s dispossession. He named it for his grandmother, Rifqa, who demanded of Israelis her right to return: “I will only agree to leave Sheikh Jarrah to go back to my Haifa house that I was forced to flee in 1948.” In his 2025 manifesto Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal, El-Kurd asks: Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? Why have their deaths become routine, like a weather report announcing “Cloudy skies, light showers, and 3,000 Palestinians dead in the past ten days.”
The disruption of Palestinian family life is the subject of novels and poems by Hala Alyan, 39, born in Carbondale, Illi-
so many diasporic writers, Alyan feels tied to a homeland she can never call home, but that attachment is also a creative laboratory, a way to honor the dead and fight for the living.
“I don’t need my claim [to the land] sanctioned by anyone,” insists Alyan. “That is where my grandparents lived. Their grandparents. Their grandparents. You can destroy all the libraries and archives and villages in the world, you can make return impossible, you can rename a city, you can blow up a university, refashion a history book, and it still won’t change that fact.” The truest defeat of all would be to forget. For then, David Ben-Gurion’s prophecy that “The old will die and the young will forget” would be fulfilled.
nois. Her first novel, Salt Houses (2017), mirrors her family’s fragmented history. When the Yacoub family is forced to leave Nablus, Palestine, in 1967 during the war, they move to Kuwait City and begin to rebuild their life only to lose their home again when Saddam Hussain invades Kuwait in 1990. They scattered to Beirut, Paris and Boston. In Alyan’s second novel, The Arsonists’ City (2021), the Nasr family reunites in Beirut to discuss the family patriarch’s will, revealing family secrets and the lasting effects of the violence they’ve witnessed.
In a 2024 Guardian article, Alyan describes her agony at the genocide decimating Gaza. She is American, living in Brooklyn, but Gaza is where her father was born and where her parents married. “One of my favorite lines by [Mahmoud] Darwish: I am from there. I am from here. / I am not there and I am not here.” Like
diaspora has affected my relationship with Palestine since it’s the only experience of it I have known, but I can say I grew up as a child of the idea, and when I left university, I went and developed a personal, physical and emotional relationship with the place. Right or wrong, Palestine is always more than a place.”
Adania Shibli was born in Upper Galilee in 1974 and, like Hammad, educated in London. She’s best known for her fictional re-creation of the rape and murder of a Bedouin girl in Minor Detail (2020) and the controversy surrounding LitProm’s cancellation of its award ceremony at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair. She also edited the essay collection A Journey of Ideas Across: In Dialog with
But the young haven’t forgotten; they’ve created prize-winning books on a history Zionists had hoped to bury, building an archive of remembrance. The protagonist of Isabella Hammad’s debut novel The Parisian (2019), Midhat Kamal, is the son of a wealthy textile merchant from Nablus. In 1914 he leaves to study medicine in France and discovers that, as an Arab, “liberty, equality and fraternity” don’t apply to him. Back in Palestine, which is now under British rule, he tries to fit in, to find his role in a region struggling for independence. Kamal is as divided as the land he was born in, as subject to the same internal tensions.
“Mourid Barghouti says the occupation has changed us from the children of Palestine to the children of the idea of Palestine,” says Hammad, 34, born in London to a Palestinian father and BritishIrish mother. “It’s hard to say how being in
Edward Said (2014). “[My parents] had experienced the Nakba when they were 15 years old. My grandfather had been killed. There was silence about that.... Palestine is a mode of living, an experience. But it’s also a position of witnessing, from a position that can teach us. If you are listening, it becomes so natural that you care, and you create a connection of care toward others that is not limited to the borders of the nation-state or to Palestine as such.”
Decades younger, Mosab Abu Toha was born in 1992 in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza. His debut book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear (2022), won the Palestine Book Award and an American Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Walcott Poetry Prize. Abu Toha founded the Edward Said Library, Gaza's first English language li-
brary, which has since been demolished by Israeli bombs. He and his wife and children lost their home in Beit Lahiya in 2023, and he was detained and beaten by the Israelis before being allowed to leave Gaza. When I heard him read from his second collection, Forest of Noise (2024), he was still mourning friends he’d lost, including the writer/professor Refaat Alareer. On March 28, 2025, he cancelled his book tour because of threats against his family. He received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for a series of New Yorker essays on the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza.
Novelist Randa Jarrar is no stranger to controversy or to crossing borders. Born in 1978 in Chicago to an Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father, she grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, which she re-creates in her coming-of-age novel, A Map of Home (2008). Nidali, the rebellious standin for the author (whose name means “my struggle”), narrates the story of her
childhood in Kuwait, her teenage years in Egypt. In February 2024, Jarrar and five other members of Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) disrupted a PEN America event by playing the names of 13 writers and poets killed by Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, to protest the Zionist speaker Mayim Bialik. Jarrar was dragged out of the event when she refused to leave.
Born in St. Louis, Naomi Shihab Nye spent her early years in Jerusalem until the 1967 war sent her family fleeing back to the United States. They settled in San Antonio, where the 73-year-old Nye still lives. She has said that the U.S. response to the attacks of 9/11 galvanized her to be a voice for Arab Americans, speaking out against the Islamophobia prevalent during the War on Terror. Her 2002 poetry collection 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002) channels her experiences as an Arab American; it was a finalist for the National Book Award. Nye
has gifted us with memorable poems, compiled in Everything Comes Next such as “Blood” and “The Gift” that shed light, not just on the Arab experience, but the human experience.
Since 2008, the Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) has served as a showcase for this rich outpouring of talent, and since its inception, its participants have been plagued by accusations of anti-Semitism with speaking events often cancelled. In 2023, donors objected to its staging at the University of Pennsylvania, but with support from President Liz Magill, over 80 sessions took place over three days, featuring some of the world’s most celebrated writers on Palestine. Human rights attorney and author Noura Erakat spoke for many diasporic Palestinians when she insisted “[our presence here] is a testament to our ancestors and a commitment to the generations that come after us. We are fighting for our humanity.” ■
Compiled by Dale Sprusansky
To the Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2025
The last line of Nour Khalil AbuShammala’s article (“Out of food and under constant attack, we Gazans are dying every day,” April 29) haunts me. “How did you let this happen?” I don’t know.
I do know how horrific the war is, the anger and pain of the families of the hostages taken by Hamas, along with the pain of those living in terror in Gaza. I know the fear of those in the U.S., especially young adults, to speak out against the war. I know that even though I am personally lucky enough to be distanced from this horrific war, it is beyond discouraging and depressing daily. If it is any consolation to AbuShammala, many have not forgotten about Gaza. We just feel powerless, hopeless and frightened.
Marie Puterbaugh, Redondo Beach, CA
To The Times-Tribune, April 29, 2025
The letter “Innocents Suffer on Both Sides in Gaza War” (April 29) incorrectly blames Hamas for what Israel has done to Palestinians. While there are a lot of things Hamas has done that must be condemned, we must also not use them as a way to avoid blaming Israel for their actions. Despite being exposed by journalists, Israel has continued its misinformation campaign, and that must be stopped. It is Israel, not Hamas, who has killed over 50,000 Palestinians, the majority being women and children. It is Israel, not Hamas, who has bombed Gaza’s safe
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zones, hospitals and schools. It is Israel, not Hamas, who first broke the ceasefire agreement by renewing attacks on Gaza and now refuses to agree to a new one.
This is not a war; this is a genocide of Palestinians by Israel and almost every major human rights organization and international organization is in agreement that in order for this to end Israel must stop their military campaigns and end their settler colonial tactics, ultimately returning Palestine back to the Palestinian people.
Ryan Kersey, Kingston, PA
To the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette, May 2, 2025
Read a disturbing article in Monday’s paper, “Palestinian death toll in war hits 52,243.” Makes me wonder when the “civilized countries” of this world will condemn Israel for this genocide as they condemned Hamas for the murder and taking of captives. I also wonder when Israel will be called to account for its acts against humanity with its sealing off all imports to the remaining 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Of course, it’s like John Prine said, “A question ain’t really a question if you know the answer, too.”
Dennis Ritchie, Nashville, AR
To the Yakima Herald-Republic, April 25, 2025
I was curious about why so many U.S. politicians are so devoted to the state of Israel even in the face of alleged war
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crimes against the Palestinian people. Then I did some research.
According to the American election monitoring organization OpenSecrets, in the 2024 election cycle eight of our state’s 10 representatives received very large donations from the Israeli lobby group AIPAC—the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. For six of these, AIPAC was their largest donor, including our own Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse ($106,458) and Democratic Rep. Adam Smith (with a whopping $327,764).
This was typical in nearly every state. It would be naive to think that these massive donations from Israel’s lobby do not influence our American Congress to favor Israel rather than the interests of the American taxpayers. FYI, in 2024 Congress gave Israel $20 billion of our tax dollars. That’s an average of more than $54,000,000 every day of 2024, with little restrictions or accountability.
Don’t know about you, dear readers, but I can think of many better uses for our $20 billion U.S. tax dollars right here in our country, our counties and our cities.
Plus, there is no culpability for war crimes.
Jack
Kranz, Yakima, WA
To The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 29, 2025
Whatever can be said concerning President Donald Trump’s foibles and liabilities, few should excite more outrage than his surrender to the Israeli government on the subject of Gaza. Does he ex-
press outrage at Israel’s turning Gaza to near total rubble; outrage at its refusal to allow food, water or medicine into the enclave for over two months; outrage at its relentless attacks on hospitals, ambulances, aid workers and journalists; and now its daily attacks on the fragile tents that house women and children, resulting in cold-blooded slaughters? Instead of excoriating the Israeli government over its villainy and barbarous pursuits, Trump instead invites Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu here to assure him of even more money and weapons, including 2,000-pound bombs to continue the carnage. This is the state of our U.S. government today—a moral turpitude of unprecedented proportions.
Sid Sussman, Hallandale, FL
To The News-Gazette, April 19, 2025
It’s high time to speak out against the unmitigated slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. Far too many of us are cowed into silence for fear of being called anti-Semitic.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s military, supplied by U.S. weapons, continues to bomb civilians in refugee camps, hospitals, schools and apartment buildings. To date, more than 50,000 people have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces, more than a third of them under age 18; over 100,000 more have been wounded or maimed.
Netanyahu resumed his relentless bombardment of Gaza in violation of the ceasefire in March and has regularly denied the entry of humanitarian aid to civilians, creating the potential for mass starvation and the spread of disease. The population in Gaza has already battled a polio outbreak due to the lack of clean water.
There is a growing outcry among the Jews in Israel against Netanyahu’s government. In the U.S., there are Jewish groups, both national and local, who are speaking out against the slaughter of civilians in Gaza.
Clearly, it is the government of Israel,
not the Jewish people, who are perpetrating this immoral and ruthless massacre. We all should be as horrified by this loss of human life—as we are by the Holocaust.
Please do not be afraid to add your voice to calls for peace; write to Congress and demand that the U.S. stop sending bombs to Israel and actively work for a two-state solution.
Nancy Yeagle, Champaign, IL
To the New Hampshire Union Leader, April 15, 2025
Even for secular Jewish Americans, Passover is a familiar, annual event full of family, food and messages of freedom, caring for others and survival. The Haggadah, read at the Passover meal (seder) is deep with reflection, symbolism and meaning, which we recite from and reflect upon each year.
For the past couple of years, the obvious disconnect between some passages and the current reality of the Gaza war (and the occupation/oppression of the Palestinians) has been the elephant in the room. For example, “for our redemption is bound up with the deliverance from bondage of people everywhere.”
Also poignant in the readings is the passage about the plagues that reads: “Each drop of wine we pour is hope and prayer that people will cast out the plagues that threaten everyone everywhere they are found, beginning in our own hearts: The making of war, teaching of hate and violence, despoliation of the earth, perversion of justice and of government, fomenting of vice and crime, neglect of human needs, oppression of nations and peoples, corruption of culture, subjugation of science, learning and human discourse, the erosions of freedoms.”
These proud tenets of Judaism have never been more relevant than during the current political shakedown of our democracy. Some American Jewish political leaning has been referred to of late as “Progressive Except Palestine.” I implore all Jewish Americans to truly embrace the
progressive teachings of their faith and realize that our redemption truly is bound with the freedom of the Palestinians.
Anne Romney, Portsmouth, NH
To The Salt Lake Tribune, May 7, 2025 I find it curious that so many “Christians” condone Israel’s wanton destruction of Palestine. When Jesus was walking among the Jews 2,000 years ago, he neither supported nor fought against the leadership of Israel and Rome, although he often showed disdain for the individual vipers ruling the Jewish people from within. Jesus taught people to love one another, to turn the other cheek, to treat each other as they wanted to be treated.
Is there really anybody who sees the modern establishment of Israel as something that Jesus would support? Do Christians really support the one-sided government established in Israel that totally ignores the rights of the inhabitants of its non-Jewish citizens—including the right to walk between their olive trees and their homes, or even to continue to live? Do Christians really think it’s OK for Israel to push prior inhabitants of Palestine out of their homes and livelihoods, take away all their rights, force them to live in “temporary homeless settlements” with no hope of anything other than perpetual poverty— and then destroy those “conclaves” because they don’t like it when the people they have treated so badly rebel?
I don’t believe Jesus had anything to do with the establishment of the current state of Israel. I don’t think he would support any of the monstrosities carried out by Jehovah’s “chosen people.” I believe that any “Christian” who supports the utter destruction of the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank is, in their heart, yelling, “Give us Barabbas!”
I also believe that, given the destruction and terror resulting from the establishment of the modern state of Israel, it is but another example of someone saying, “I have been doing that which has been done in other times/places.”
Dave McNeill, South Jordan, UT ■
By Dale Sprusansky
POPE FRANCIS’ 12-YEAR PAPACY was in many ways contentious, as his political, theological and liturgical views were often hotly debated within Catholic circles and beyond. It could be said that his pontificate reflected, rather than transcended, the political and social fault lines that define our times. Nonetheless, by virtue of his office, he remained a unifying figure and a prominent voice whose opinions altered the global discourse.
Francis often used his public pulpit to express his deep love and concern for the poor and marginalized, particularly refugees, the imprisoned and those suffering due to others’ slavish pursuit of wealth and power. This perhaps explains why the Middle East was frequently on the late pope’s mind and agenda. His travels to the region were extensive, having visited Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Türkiye, Egypt, the UAE, Morocco, Iraq and Bahrain. These trips, while highly significant and important, are not Francis’ enduring legacy vis-à-vis the region.
Francis will be most remembered in the Middle East for his private and public solidarity with the people of Gaza. After Francis’ death, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, tasked by Rome with the challenge of representing and serving the Church in both Israel and Palestine (as well as Jordan), described Gaza as “one of the symbols of his pontificate.”
Nearly every night following Oct. 7, 2023—even when he was seriously ill in the hospital—the pope called Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City to check in on parishioners and their neighbors. “He would ask us how we were, what did we eat, did we have clean water, was anyone injured?” George Anton, a spokesperson for Gaza’s sole Catholic parish, told NPR. “It was never diplomatic or a matter of obligation. It was the questions a father would ask.”
These conversations clearly moved Francis and emboldened him to speak frankly about Israel’s crimes in Gaza. In Christmas remarks to Vatican officials last year, Francis said, “Yesterday, children were bombed [by Israel]. This is cruelty, not war. I want to say this because it touches the heart.” That same Christmas
season, the pope prayed before a Nativity scene crafted in Bethlehem that featured a baby Jesus swaddled in a blackand-white Palestinian keffiyeh. Last year, he also acknowledged credible determinations that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza and called for further investigation into the claim.
Hours before he died, Francis made one final plea for the people of Gaza in his written Easter address to the world. “Think of the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation,” he said. “I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace!”
Francis first raised eyebrows in the region in 2014, when he unexpectedly altered his tour of the Holy Land to pray in Bethlehem along the Israeli-constructed wall (often referred to as the “apartheid wall”) that separates Palestinians from their families and traditional lands. That gesture was highly symbolic and moving for many Palestinians, and perhaps left a lasting impression on Francis.
It must be noted that Francis’ strong support for the Palestinian people did not come at the expense of his concern for Israelis. In his February 2024 letter “To My Jewish Brothers and Sisters in Israel,” Francis said, “I want you to know that you are close to my heart and to the heart of the Church….I feel the desire to assure you of my closeness and affection. I embrace each of you, and especially those who are consumed by anguish, pain, fear and even anger.” In the same letter, he emphasized, “We must never lose hope for a possible peace—and we must do everything possible to promote it, rejecting every form of defeatism and mistrust…doing everything possible to create relationships capable of opening new horizons of light for everyone, Israelis and Palestinians.”
Many activists and observers sympathetic to Palestine likely see such sentiments as antiquated, painfully reminiscent of the false aspirations uttered by the
insincere interlocutors of the “peace process” who helped engineer the current brutal reality. Many pro-Israel voices, meanwhile, likely encounter such words with derision, believing Francis to have been inherently hostile toward Israel. But Francis’ sincere words are emblematic of a papacy in which he challenged the world to aspire to a higher ideal while striving to keep hope—a foundational Christian virtue—alive. Francis saw no contraction in staunchly defending Palestinians, acknowledging the humanity of Israelis and bluntly challenging leaders to do right by the marginalized.
Perhaps the most consistent way Francis admonished global leaders was by condemning the global arms industry. “May everyone get over this idea that problems can be solved with weapons,” he said while visiting Jordan in 2014. “Let’s pray for these criminals who are selling weapons, fueling hatred.”
He repeated this sentiment in a September 2015 address to the U.S. Congress, a legislative body that certainly never shared Francis’ vision for investing in human development over weapons of war. “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” he asked. “Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.”
Francis made this plea one final time this Easter: “Nor is peace possible without true disarmament! The requirement that every people provide for its own defense must not turn into a race to rearmament. I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death!”
Some, particularly members of the lay Catholic intelligentsia, cling to Just War
Theory as a means to justify nearly every act of war they desire, but Francis advocated a more prophetic and forward-looking theory: that weapons do not bring forth justice, but rather proliferate injustice.
Francis’ detestation of the weapons industry likely stemmed from his deep solidarity with refugees, many of whom have been driven from home by violence fueled by the industry. His first official trip outside of Rome after getting elected was to the Italian island of Lampedusa, where he spoke to migrants who had just arrived from Libya and decried the “globalization of indifference” to their plight. In 2016, he traveled to Lesbos, Greece and brought 12 Syrian refugees back to Rome on his plane.
Francis’ care for the refugee was perhaps best manifested in his historic 2021 visit to Iraq, when he became the first Roman pontiff to ever visit the country. His apostolic journey was a great comfort to the weary Christians of Iraq, who had just emerged from nearly 20 years of brutal war—first the deadly U.S. invasion of Iraq which eviscerated the country’s ancient Christian population, followed by ISIS’ genocidal campaign.
The pope used his trip to promote unity and offer hope to those returning from refuge and trying to rebuild their lives, communities and country. “Our gathering here today shows that terrorism and death never have the last word,” he said in the northern city of Qaraqosh. “The last word belongs to God….Even amid the ravages of terrorism and war, we can see, with the eyes of faith, the triumph of life over death.”
Notably, Francis also visited Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shi’i community, while he was in Najaf. The meeting showcased the pope’s great passion for interfaith dialogue and encounter. In this same spirit, Francis signed the “Document on Human Fraternity,” which promotes inter-religious coexistence, while visiting the UAE in 2019. Interfaith relations were also at the center of his visits to Bahrain, Egypt and Morocco. Some expressed concern that the leaders of these authoritarian states
Continued on page 97
By Sam Husseini
IN HER PIECE, “Pope Francis’s Legacy of Love and Peace,” my friend Kathy Kelly notes that he took the name after “Saint Francis, known as one who lived on the margins, who discarded his worldly clothes, and who kissed the lepers.”
My view of Pope Francis is less generous than Kathy’s. I think the pope could have done quite a bit more than he did. But my mind can’t but keep going to another Francis, who I think did virtually all he could for justice and peace, which was a great deal.
Francis Anthony Boyle, 75, died on Jan. 30, 2025, and I’ve thought about him every day since. I often feel like I’ve lost a limb since I can’t swap emails with him and get his read on the latest news, as I did with him for decades on a nearly daily basis.
Reading old emails from Francis is like reviewing a mammoth history reel. Here’s one from New Year’s Day of this year:
To his everlasting credit, Pope Francis extended de jure diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine. Previously, when it had been announced that Pope John Paul II was going to extend de jure diplomatic recognition to Israel, I did everything humanly possible to stop it. I sent a memo to Arafat on it and the PLO took steps to try to stop it. Doctor Haidar [Abdel-Shafi] agreed with me too and he weighed in with Arafat. At least Pope Francis rectified the Church’s terrible injustice inflicted upon the Palestinian People by JP2. For that he must get enormous credit. FAB
Not that my Francis was always smitten with Pope Francis. He criticized him, sometimes in public, but usually in private. And while he was a furious critic of U.S. empire, he never idealized any of those seeming to oppose it.
He was a lawyer extraordinaire, a historian, had a knowledge of some of the sciences, would read and write poetry and fought for everyone from the Palestinians to the indigenous Hawaiians; from Plowshare activists who break into nuclear weapons facil-
ities to conscientious objectors.
He was someone who graduated atop the most prestigious, establishment programs at Harvard and then used his capacities against the system.
He also happened to be a remarkably sincere Christian. He actually believed in what he said he believed in. He believed in God. He believed in international law.
Years ago, I got an angry email from Boyle. He thought I should have done a news release for accuracy.org about some subject or another and he was mad. So he gave me a piece of his mind.
I emailed back to him and told him that my then-partner was just diagnosed with cancer and I was not able to deal with things as well as I ordinarily might.
He immediately replied, sending best wishes, and telling me he’d pray for her, and I thanked him.
About five or ten minutes later, he sent me another email. It just said “Done.”
He had literally, in the moment, sat down, prayed for Emily’s health and then reported when he had finished.
Befittingly, it was Emily who introduced me to the book Watership Down, which reminds me much of Francis. It’s about a band of rabbits and their quest for a decent society. At the center of it was a prophetic rabbit named Fiver.
When Fiver saw a signpost declaring that a new “development” was to be built atop their original warren, he foresaw the coming danger, sharing with his brother Hazel:
“Oh, Hazel! This is where it comes from! I know now—something very bad! Some terrible thing—coming closer and closer.”
He began to whimper with fear.
“What sort of thing—what do you mean? I thought you said there was no danger?”
“I don’t know what it is,” answered Fiver wretchedly. “There isn’t any danger here, at this moment. But it’s coming— it’s coming. Oh, Hazel, look! The field! It’s covered with blood!”
My Francis could often see the signs that others ignored. He could see the blood coming well before it was apparent to most. Moreover, he could often find a remedy to prevent disaster—if people would listen.
We have a mixed-up sense of prophecy in our culture. Maybe Hollywood is to blame, maybe painters and sculptors on the payroll of monarchists.
Many pretend that prophets are muscular figures speaking eloquently as the masses listen intently.
From my experience, that is rarely where the prophetic voice is to be heard. Prophets can be broken people. They have thrown themselves upon the gears of the odious machinery and been battered, bruised and shredded by it.
People mocked my Francis. They ignored him. They dismissed him. But it’s always that way with prophets. And he never gained celebrity status or the public accolades of some other lefty “public intellectuals” that he more than deserved.
But it was he who saw the scope of the coming Israeli crimes for years in Gaza.
It was he who urged for decades that some country invoke the Genocide Convention against Israel, which South Africa finally did in late 2023.
It was he who emphasized that the next step in that process was for the General Assembly to vigorously use Uniting for Peace, a step that desperately needs to happen.
It was he who wrote the U.S. implementing legislation of the Biological Weapons Convention and warned of outbreaks like COVID.
It was he who warned of a “carve up agenda” for Syria, a version of which we see being enacted now.
I recall he warned about the power of the Federalist Society, which now dominates the Supreme Court, many years before it was fashionable.
That’s just some of it.
Over the years, I probably featured him on more accuracy.org news releases than anyone else. They could be a book now, a radical history of the last few decades. He was always at the ready.
Lord knows, I didn’t always agree with him. I recalled he was at least tacitly for the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, something he’d later dispute, but I’m pretty sure about my memory on that one.
I appeared with him on Fox News just after 9/11 as they cut my mic and he made
a case for some member of Congress to try to stop the impending diabolical madness. And I was on with him on CodePink’s radio program about the Genocide Convention almost a year ago.
He lived up to his obligation of capacity. He was also a proud Irishman:
I told you from the get-go you can’t trust Joe Biden. He sold out us Irish twice—his own People—to the Brits in order to feather his own presidential prospects nests twice by being able to claim that he was being tough on terrorism. That is explained in my book United Ireland, Human Rights and International Law.
I never met his family, but I’ve gotten to know his brother Jerry, who is also a lawyer who does movement work.
Many of his books are available via Clarity Press.
I have a conflict of interest in writing this piece. Francis told me—it would be a Herculean task to find the emails now— that he would be my lawyer at the Pearly Gates since I’ve been something of a Gnostic, rather ecumenical and non-conformist in my Christianity.
RIP. ■
Continued from page 95
with rampant human rights violations used Pope Francis’ visits to boost their international image by showcasing their alleged tolerance. While visiting these countries, Francis often made pleas for regional peace and freedom of religion, but did not publicly criticize his hosts.
Pope Francis’ interactions with the Middle East were both practical and aspirational. He called for concrete actions to stop war and displacement, while also imagining a future where dialogue and solidarity within and between nations would make violence and hatred unthinkable. The world would be wise to mimic Pope Francis on both accounts by taking immediate action to end suffering and by conjuring the hope to dare to dream of a better tomorrow. ■
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American Educational Trust
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
1902 18th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009
June/July 2025
Vol. XLIV, No. 4
A boatman ferries a passenger across the world famous Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir on May 12, 2025, following the ceasefire to end the conflict between nuclear‐armed neighbors India and Pakistan. A sense of normalcy has begun to return to the Kashmir Valley, after the most intense fighting in decades, with days of air sirens, blackouts and drone attacks.