Israel Empowered Hamas by Undermining the Palestinian Authority

Why Israel’s divide-and-rule approach towards Palestinians backfired so spectacularly
 

Opinion by Hussein Ibish (CNN)

Fri, November 17, 2023

Editor’s Note: Hussein Ibish is a Senior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. His most recent book is “What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

Lebanon Iznogood's Note: This opinion expresses wishful thinking or naiveté on the part of Mr. Ibish who assumes that Israel and the Israeli people are actually interested in peace. The reality is, however, that Israelis will not follow a path of peace as long as the Holocaust continues to inflict guilt on the West and the Zionist lobby has America's balls in a tight squeeze. Israel's ultimate plan - to which both the extremist right wing and the leftist Labor subscribe, the former openly and the latter insidiously - is to throw all the Palestinians out of Palestine to achieve the purely Jewish - from the river to the sea - state the Zionists have aimed for from the start of their colonial enterprise. Even when Labor was in power, illegal settlements were built, homes were demolished, Palestinians were deported, and land was stolen. Labor and the right-wing have been playing the good cop-bad cop game with a naive and reluctantly colluding international community. The late Edward Saiid rejected the Oslo and Madrid agreements for this specific reason.

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The most important factor in determining the political outcome of Israel’s current war will not take place in Gaza — but will instead unfold in the West Bank.

That’s because if Israel really wants to deliver a serious long-term blow to Hamas as a potent political movement among the Palestinian people, it’s going to be essential to seriously rethink its attitude towards the Islamist extremist group’s archrivals: the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on the international stage.

Without strengthening these Palestinian groups, which still represent the mainstream of the national movement, Hamas and even more extreme groups will almost certainly continue to grow and thrive among the Palestinian people.

If Israel is now serious about decimating Hamas’s military and political power, that cannot be done only or even mainly by killing the group’s leaders and members and blowing up its equipment and infrastructure. New people can and will fill the void and insurgencies can successfully operate on a shoestring and under extremely onerous conditions.

Because the Palestinian people, their cause and their national movement are not going to disappear, the only way to really marginalize Hamas in the long run is to abandon the policy of simultaneously strengthening and weakening both Palestinian factions to keep them at odds with each other and therefore ineffective as a national movement.

In one of the most reckless and self-defeating policies in its young history, Israel, from the outset, sought to bolster and use Hamas to split and thereby cripple the Palestinian national movement.

Hamas was formed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza during the firmament of the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israeli occupation in 1987. Israeli occupation authorities immediately believed they had stumbled upon a marvelous opportunity to divide Palestinians between secular nationalists and Islamists just as they began to rise up on the ground in the occupied territories.

Hamas was given considerable leeway to organize and form itself, with Israel turning a blind eye to the organization’s early efforts to structure and found itself — activities that would have been ruthlessly suppressed if pursued by either Fatah-dominated organizations or the local grassroots committees that led the first uprising in its initial months.

For a brief period during the Oslo negotiations and the initial implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements that led to the formation of the small self-administered Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank and most of Gaza in the 1990s, this deeply misguided strategy of divide and rule was essentially set aside in favor of serious negotiations with the PLO and a significant degree of cooperation with the PA.

However, after the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the subsequent outbreak of the far more violent second intifada in the fall of that year, the Israeli right resumed power. Under Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli right has dominated national politics for the vast majority of subsequent years, and it eagerly resumed a divide and rule approach.

This seemed to reach a successful crescendo in 2007, when a year of divided government among Palestinians — with a Fatah presidency under Mahmoud Abbas and a Hamas-dominated legislature — collapsed into open conflict and Hamas violently expelled Fatah and the PA from Gaza.

Israel’s ‘divide and rule’ approach

For Netanyahu and his colleagues, this split was ideal. Hamas’ unwavering commitment to armed struggle and violence allowed the Israeli right to paint the entire Palestinian national movement as hopelessly extreme.

And the split between Gaza and the West Bank provided Israelis who wanted no part in any additional negotiations with the Palestinians which could result in a two-state solution with a perfect excuse not to sit down with the PLO, by claiming that they do not represent the entirety of the Palestinian people.

For almost 20 years, Israel’s policy was to keep Hamas in power in Gaza, albeit besieged and contained, and periodically and literally cut down to size through wars cynically described as “mowing the grass,” while at the same time ensuring that the PA continued to control the self-administered enclaves in the West Bank, albeit with extreme institutional and political weakness.

Above all, the core goal appeared to be to ensure that the Palestinian division prevented any additional movement towards the creation of a Palestinian state or the development of any further restrictions on Israeli settlement activity and the now openly-declared national policy goal of eventual additional major annexation in the West Bank.

In March 2019, Netanyahu told a private meeting of Likud party Knesset members that “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring funds to Hamas in Gaza, according to the Jerusalem Post. He reportedly said that this was part of Israel’s strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank. This articulated policies that the Israeli right had been diligently following for many years. And it led, inexorably and predictably, to the October 7 massacres.

What Hamas did next

Israelis, including the national security establishment, were taken aback by the Hamas attack of October 7 because they had wrongly concluded that both Palestinian groups were content to rule their separate fiefdoms and persist in a relative stalemate for dominance of the national movement that played perfectly into Israel’s hands.

What the Israelis had not appreciated is that since Hamas’ founding in 1987, its prime directive has been to maneuver to take over the Palestinian national movement and, eventually, the PLO with its invaluable international diplomatic presence, including nonmember observer state status at the UN and over 100 embassies around the world.

It was instantly obvious after the October 7 killing spree that the increasingly unpopular Hamas was seeking to use violence and assert its dominance of the national movement. Indeed, it’s clear that Hamas expected an overwhelming military response from Israel on the ground in Gaza, and that it hopes to provoke a long-term Israeli security presence against which it can, sooner rather than later, organize a sustained and increasingly powerful insurgency.

The obvious goal is to contrast this armed resistance, not just now, but especially in coming years, with PA security cooperation with Israel and the PLO’s unwavering commitment to securing independence through a two-state agreement with Israel.

The only rational choice left for Israel in the wake of October 7 is to finally choose to deal seriously and constructively with the Palestinians who are committed to talking to Israelis, as opposed to bolstering those who want to kill Israelis.

It may go against all the instincts of many Israeli extremists in the current government, including Netanyahu, but if they do not begin to deal seriously, constructively and cooperatively with the PA and the PLO, Hamas and even more extreme groups will continue to thrive.

This means taking any number of obvious measures to strengthen the PA institutionally and politically, including by expanding its authority in the West Bank.

And it means reengaging with the PLO at the negotiating table to seriously discuss a viable accommodation that meets the needs of both peoples.

Beyond Mahmoud Abbas

Many Israelis may find it hard to imagine suddenly taking Mahmoud Abbas, who is both the PA president and the PLO chairman, seriously, both because they are used to thinking of him as a spent force and ineffective leader, and because he has lashed out in frustration with language that has been highly offensive, including regarding the Holocaust.

There is no doubt that Abbas is, in almost every imaginable way, long past his sell-by date. But the old, infirm and chain-smoking politician, who at least has time and again proven his unwavering rejection of violence as a Palestinian national strategy, represents exactly this trend among Palestinians. And when he passes, sooner rather than later, from the scene, he will be replaced by others from the same tendency.

Israelis cannot approach this decisive strategic and political inflection point by focusing on the personality, failures or foibles of Abbas. In many ways, Israel’s consistently hostile policies were the single biggest factor in shaping him into the highly flawed figure he has become.

This is the Palestinian leader who, after all, resigned as Yasser Arafat’s Prime Minister during the second intifada and voluntarily went into an open-ended sojourn in the political wilderness, precisely because he categorically rejected the use of violence.

Moreover, it’s not about Abbas or his inner circle as personalities. It must be about strengthening the hands of Palestinians who sincerely seek an accommodation with Jewish Israelis and represent the primary obstacle to Hamas finally achieving political dominance among Palestinians.

It’s a no-brainer, but Netanyahu and his government show no signs of understanding the necessity of such a radical policy shift. The Biden administration appears to understand the challenge in theory, but how much they can or will do to implement such a revised policy towards the Palestinian political scene is uncertain at best.

Given the profound governance, security and intelligence failures revealed by the October 7 attack — which was “successful” beyond Hamas’s wildest fantasies —Israelis should certainly be seeking new leadership. If and when they at last turn their backs on Netanyahu and the coterie of Jewish supremacists surrounding him, it’s essential that the next phase of Israeli strategic thinking reflects at least some understanding of the Palestinian political scene and what Israel’s real options are.

It’s not too late to choose to deal seriously, respectfully and constructively with Palestinians who are sincere about a negotiated agreement for peaceful coexistence. The alternative was on full display on October 7.

No amount of death and destruction in Gaza or elsewhere is going to provide Israel with lasting security. A negotiated agreement with the Palestinian factions who, despite everything, still want to reach a peace deal with Israel — for good or ill, currently led by Abbas — can bring that about. It’s the only thing that can bring Israelis peace and genuine security.

Who Were the "Human Animals" of Europe?

Zionists always claim that Palestinians are "Arabs" and therefore other Arab countries should take them. It's their way of asking Arab countries to partake in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Zionists refer to Palestinians as animals, savage Muslims, backward, prone to terror and violence, inferior, etc.

Now, has anyone wondered why the Jews of Europe and the West HAD TO FLEE EUROPE in the first place and build themselves an artificial country somewhere?

It was because the Zionists' best friends of today, namely the Europeans and the Americans, either massacred them and hunted them down (Europeans) or refused to take them as refugees (America). 

"Christian" westerners used to refer to Jews as inferior, vermin, animals, savages who turned down Jesus, backward people moved by greed and nothing else.

The Palestinians have become today's "Jews", and today's Israelis have become the Nazis who apply to the Palestinians the same labels that Hitler applied to the Jews. Today's Zionism is a reincarnation of Nazi ideology, except that it targets the Palestinian people. How come?  Zionism was born out of a racist colonial antisemitic European womb. The Jews of 18th-19th century Europe were absorbing and partaking in an environment of racism, colonialism, racial supremacism. As white Europeans, many Jewish individuals and businesses were participating in the slave trade and looting African, Asian and American colonies of their natural wealth and resources. As they began conquering Palestine in the late 19th century, what methods did you expect them to use in their conquest? Peaceful, non-violent, befriending, honest approach with the native Palestinians, lacking any threatening, blackmailing, violent, corrupt methods to swindle the naive indigenous Palestinians out of their lands, like all European colonialists had been doing around the globe? Has anyone ever wondered why it was those European Jews imbibed with colonialist ideologies, and not the Jews of Iran, Yemen and North Africa, who came up with the Zionist idea?

One HUGE difference though: The Jews of Europe are native to Europe; they did not arrive to Europe on migrant boats. They had been in Europe for millennia, the majority of them Christians newly converted to Judaism by fanatic proselytizing Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia. European antisemitism was against its own native Jewish community.

In contrast, today's Jewish Zionist Nazis are foreign invaders, conquerors, occupiers who arrived from overseas on migrant boats to Palestine, and began treating the native indigenous Palestinians as they themselves were treated by the Europeans and also as Europeans had been treating all their colonized peoples: Like subhuman vermin worthy only of being killed or deported to concentration camps known as refugee camps or put to work as slaves.

To the Zionists: You still can go back home to Europe (two-thirds of the Israeli population carry dual citizenships), leave the Palestinians alone, and live in a de-Nazified tolerant democratic no-longer-colonial Europe and West with loads of human values and very friendly to both Jews and Muslims. There is so much more to accomplish and live for in the West, rather toil constantly on the edge of moral and economic abyss. Europeans and Americans love you: See how they overlook and trespass their own laws for your sake? Your decision to move to Palestine was irrational, impulsive and reeking of colonialist biblical bullshit. On the other hand, Arabs who used to love you and live with you can no longer bear to hear your falsehoods and fabricated stories. They will never love you, nor will they ever forgive you for what you have done to Palestine. So why condemn yourselves to a life on a permanent war footing and hatred? Build yourselves other Jewish resorts or Disneylands right in the heart of Europe, instead of the dangerous shores of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Israel is Proof that Great Replacement Works

The Great Replacement is a conspiracy theory of white nationalists which says that the ethnic white populations in the West are being deliberately demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. 

As a conspiracy theory, the Great Replacement is rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview, and has generally been ridiculed for its blatant absurdity.

I always immediately reject conspiracies when used to explain large-scale events that have a negative impact and over which ordinary people have no control. In Lebanon, conspiratorial thinking is endemic. Nothing that happens in the country, the region, or the world can be due to political uncertainty, serendipity, coincidence, chance and the vagaries of constant change. Every issue, as it evolves over time, is the result of a planned plot or conspiracy - المخطط or المؤامرة.

Worse yet, conspiracies in Lebanon are often laced with a sense of despair that reflects itself in absurd self-inflating claims. In short, Lebanon is a victim of these conspiracies because it is such a smart(ass) country and has so much potential that others fear a stable prosperous Lebanon. The ultimate victim. But the Lebanese are not alone to wallow in this sack of composting despair. Many others in the third world adopt conspiracies as an explanation of their downtrodden status or societal unrest or economic uncertainty.

Examples: 

- Why is Israel producing gas while Lebanon, right next door, is not? It's gotta be a plot. The operators of the world levers - understand the US, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, or ... take your pick.... - don't want any competition from a potential gas-producing Lebanon. The gas that Lebanon can produce is so abundant that it can overwhelm the world markets and destroy the economies of its competitors. Or

- Why has Lebanon been in eternal torment it seems, with successive wars, crises, invasions, occupations and political stalemates? It's gotta be a plot. The Lebanese, talking about themselves, say they are so smart that other nations around fear them. Israel in particular is held responsible because of its endless wars with armed groups operating from Lebanon: If Lebanon were to regain its stability, it would be such a dangerous competitor to Israel that the latter has been engaged in a long term war of attrition against stability and prosperity in Lebanon. 

Yet, as you look around you in Lebanon: unmarked poorly-lit streets and roads that are full of potholes, rationed electricity, rationed water, a crushed Lebanese Lira, garbage strewn everywhere, dysfunctional banks...Nothing works in Lebanon. There is not a single television channel that tries to educate its audience with objectivity and science: Channels are either:

- Religious. Dedicated television channels with round-the-clock prayers and harangues by Christian and Muslim clergymen who attack science as a plot against religions and dig deeper untested and imagined religious beliefs into people's minds, or

- Entertainement. With locally-made or Syrian or Turkish sitcoms of abysmal quality, all around the same old single theme of forbidden love and betrayal ... no one ever smiles in these sitcoms, everyone is sad, frowning and crying, and most women are fake blondes with botoxed lips and cheeks, or 

- Western-imitation shows (cooking, game, talk shows, etc.) with lots of shiny lights, rotating round tables, "stars" and an adoring audience, the whole thing being a copy-paste of some equally abysmal American production whose sole merit is that it is made by Americans for Americans. But when taken out of their American context and imported to a third world country like Lebanon, they become like a horrid immiscible disgusting mixture of tahini and ketchup.

It is so easy to attribute problems that have no clear answer or explanation to a plot. Why? Because the moment you accept that a bunch of people, corporations or governments sat down and planned what is happening to you, you stop thinking. The "plot" is the answer.

But I digress. Back to the "Great Replacement" theory.

Israel is the perfect example of a Great Replacement that worked. No need to theorize. This one is a huge and actual conspiracy: Millions of European Jews planned it: Theodore Herzel's Zionist Conference in Basel in 1897, the Balfour Declaration by England in 1917, and the English Mandate over Palestine. Then they executed it: massive illegal European Jewish migration into Palestine, coupled with decades of Jewish terrorism against the native Palestinian population between the 1920s and 1940s, including massacres, eradication of ancient villages from the map, rapes, forced displacement of millions of Palestinian into refugee camps, and the building of brand new Jewish settlements. 

And the conspiracy is not finished yet. It goes on to this day in occupied Palestine. The ongoing Gaza War is only one of the Great Jewish Replacement Program installements in Palestine. The outcome after about 100 years is that Arab Palestine has being slowly erased while a Jewish Israel has gradually replaced it.

The Arab-Muslim world, as it was awakening from the brutal colonialism of the late 19th-early 20th- centuries, discovered its demographic and economic potential. Initially, rather than direct that potential to productive improvements in their dictatorship-brutalized and religiously-obscured populations, the Arab-Muslim world began dispatching preachers and building mosques to the liberal West with the declared objective of Islamizing Europe. Islam is such a great religion, they thought, that it was a pity not try to seduce western populations into converting. It had tried a military conquest (Al-Fatah in Arabic) of Europe but failed: The Ottoman Turks rampaged through the Balkans until they were defeated in Vienna in 1683, and the Moorish Muslim Arabs ruled over Spain and southern France for close to 800 years before they were expelled back to North Africa in 1492.

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Kuwait, Iran, Indonesia and other Muslim heavyweights "culturally retaliated" against their former colonizers by planning a program of Islamization of Europe and by extension the West at large. It was only after September 11, 2001 that the West woke up to the potential threat and the Islamic world had to revealuate its plans. As a secular non-religious West was not very receptive to adopting Islam (some idiots did but it didn't last), the Muslim-Arab world shifted to a campaign of marketing seduction: Turkey, the Emirates, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia .... present themselves today as beacons of modernity and openness. But is the conspiracy of the Great Replacement of whites by non-whites really dead? Or is it still simmering under the ashes?

What Gaza Says About Europe and the West

The West, Europeans in particular, are reaping the bitter harvest of their racism and colonialism: They are  stuck in their impotence at dissuading or deterring the barbarity of the Jews against the Palestinians because of their own barbaric anti-semitism over centuries against their Jewish populations. If they dare tell Israel to stop, they will be immediately silenced by the red herring of antisemitism.

As a result they continue to blindly support the Israeli carnage and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and in doing so, they are trashing all the "values" they suddenly discovered after the last three major wars in Europe (1871, 1914, 1939). Prior to that, Jews were considered vermin and the peoples of the global south were all savages and good candidates for imperial colonialism.

There is little doubt that Israel is a "European" colonial construct, now recuperated by the United States. Most leading Israelis are of German and East European ancestry. Israel is allowed to field teams at European sports meetings and competitions. The Israeli elite speaks perfect English and other European languages. And in fact, Israel was for the many decades of its existence a product of European colonialism, what with Theodore Herzl's Austro-Hungarian roots and the English Lord Balfour's Declaration. The founders of Israel were all European Ashkenazi settlers and illegal migrants to Palestine. The Sephardi Jews (Arabs, Persians and North African) came later: They had been leading happy peaceful lives for centuries embedded in their societies of the Middle East and North Africa, until the Jewish Agency and its Zionist recruiters began harassing them to move to Israel after the birth of the country.

In my own experience growing up in a Levantine capital, our pharmacist was Jewish, three of my teachers were Jewish, our neighbor across the street was a Jewish banker by the last name of Lahti. One after the other, they would come to my father (who was a school principal) and tell him that the Jewish Agency is paying them lots of money to move to Israel and they could not refuse. The newly fabricated Jewish state needed the demographic advantage over the Palestinians, and so the Zionists propagated all the lies they could about non-existent Arab progroms against Jews, with the objective of populating the state with human cattle to replace the ethnically cleansed Palestinians and make the artificial country more Jewish than Arab.

Zionist propaganda - Hasbara - has been telling the world that the Arab and Persian Jews were persecuted and had to flee to Israel. It's all lies. There are still thriving Jewish communities in Morocco, the Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia and elsewhere. Why have they not been progromed? Persecuted? Why do they not "flee" their homelands for Israel?

Europe also has been swamped by millions of its "citizens" from its former colonies. A large contingent of these new Europeans is Muslim. Having sowed hatred and racism across the globe, the Europeans are reckoning with their history. With their devastation of Palestine using their own Jewish victims, they have mounted Muslims against Jews. Their large Muslim populations are a tinderbox of unrest and anti-Israeli sentiment on account of the carnage in Gaza.

In reaction, and apparently losing control of the situation in France and Britain in particular, the Europeans have almost converted to Judaism trying to appear more defenders of the Jews than the Jews themselves. Yet, their antisemitism problem did not arise from their Arab, North African and Muslim immigrants. European antisemitism has a long history deeply rooted in the Roman Empire and medieval Europe and all the way to the militaristic ultra-nationalisms of 19th century Europe. 

Today's European antisemitism is deeply entrenched in the white European supremacists of the new right: Neo-Nazis and the like. The rising number of antisemitic attacks in France, for example, is the product not of Muslim immigrants but of radical white supremacists with nostalgia of Nazi collaborationist France of World War II. It was French security and police that carried out the massive roundups and deportations of Jews during WWII. To this day, both the French Communist party and the rightwing Rassemblement National remain ambiguous about their racism and antisemitism.

In other words, when pushed by remorseful guilt-burdened Europeans to face their brutality, the Israelis remind the Europeans of their antisemitism, such that what is fundamentally a problem of international colonialism becomes a local problem of antisemitism. Having been sacrificed in its land and its people by the European colonial creation of Israel, Palestine is again sacrificed in its soul by reducing its tragedy to one of European antisemitism. 

Europe should have the courage to face its demons. Yes, it should continue to fight antisemitism, but not at the cost of persecuting another innocent people, the Palestinians.

Combating antisemitism should not be made at the expense of seeking justice for the Palestinians. Unlike most Europeans and westerners who do not live near Jewish people or interact with them, Palestinians have been physically living with Jews for the past 100 years; they've come to know a lot more about them than your average European for whom antisemitism remains an academic exercise. 

In Lebanon, and despite many miserable periods of violence, Christians and Muslims live together and interact on a daily basis in every aspect of their life. Unlike Israeli Jews who have chosen a path of violence and exclusion against their fellow Muslim Palestinians, Lebanon's Christians have from the start sought accommodation with their fellow Muslims by sharing power. Lebanon's problems today have less to do with internal communal or religious divisions and more to do with antiquated tribal and feudal forms of governance that invite interference from outside players like Iran and Saudi Arabia. You'll find corruption in both Christian and Muslim leaders and politicians. Religious leaders of both communities continue to reject a laicization of the affairs of state, as is the case with the civil status that is still the exclusive domain of the religious establishment. Most politicians in both communities are beholden to the religious establishment which is very conservative  and continues to resist any change to the status quo.

Europe should not be afraid of confronting Israel for its barbarity against the Palestinians that has nothing to do with the native antisemtisim on European soil. Even before the Hamas attack last month, Europeans, especially Germans, were only beginning to admit that the major threat to their security was from the native white neo-Nazis and not from Islamists on their soil. By amalgamating PAlestinian National Resistance with Islamism, Israel has succeeded in scaring westerners and justifying its barbarity and continued colonial rape of Palestine. 

Will sound minds have the courage to express themselves honestly into the ears of the Israelis who are pretexting anger and revenge to continue stealing land and expelling indigenous Palestinians from their native land? Will antisemitism continue to be the scarecrow with which to cover up for the ongoing rape of Palestine?

Israel Says Goal is Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

Israeli Minister Admits Military Is Carrying Out ‘Nakba’ Against Gaza’s Palestinian

An Israeli cabinet official has publicly admitted to the government’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, saying on television over the weekend that the country is “rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”

On Saturday, security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter sat for a television interview with an Israeli news network. Dichter is part of the right-wing nationalist Likud party, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs.

“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” Dichter said when asked if the recent images of northern Gaza residents evacuating south are comparable to images of the 1948 Nakba.

“From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war ― as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza ― with masses between the tanks and the soldiers,” he continued, according to a translation of the interview by Haaretz.

"We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba," says Avi Dichter, Israel's Minister for Agriculture and former head of Shin Bet.

pic.twitter.com/idUA5lnnmP

The Nakba, which in Arabic means “catastrophe,” refers to the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Palestine was initially an entirely Arab society, but as illegal Jewish migrants began invading Palestine by the boatload without the rulling British crooks doing anything to stop it, tensions between the native Palestinians and the illegal Jewish migrants rose. As Palestinians tried to defend their country with the meager means at their disposal, the European Zionist movement began implementing its objective of displacing and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in order to establish a purely Jewish ethnostate in Palestine.

The Palestine Defense War against the barbarian invaders between the 1920s and 1940s reached a climax in 1947 when the British crooks fled the scene of their own crime and the UN General Assembly issued a resolution to partition Palestine into two states, a partition the Palestinians rejected. The ensuing 1948 war resulted in the permanent displacement, with much looting, massacring and raping of hundreds of thousands of powerless native indigenous Palestinians by the Jewish terrorist organizations Hanagah, Stern, Lehi and others that will later coalesce to form the Israeli army.

Despite the UN calling for Palestinian refugee return and property restitution, Israel has continued to deny the rights of Palestinians and establish an apartheid racist state for 75 years. The anniversary of the Nakba serves as a painful acknowledgment of the generational and ongoing trauma that Palestinians face both on their occupied land and outside the region.

“Gaza Nakba 2023,” Dichter said. “That’s how it’ll end.”

When later asked if labeling the current forced evacuation a Nakba means Palestinians won’t be able to return to Gaza City, Dichter said: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip ― half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”

Israel’s monthlong siege on Gaza has killed more than 11,000 people and displaced millions. In their habitual cruelty, Israeli forces tell Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza to "safe zones" to avoid being killed, but then these safe zones are savagely targeted by the Israelis, clearly demonstrating that the war aims at killing and displacing as many Palestinians as possible.

 

African Slaves and Palestinian Refugees: Kinship Victims of Colonialism

Talking to Black Kids About Palestine Brings up Issues Closer to Home

Black families, familiar with their own fight for civil rights, have long felt kinship with Palestinians.

The Israel-Palestine conflict has been ongoing for decades. As Gaza continues to be attacked and violence that many are calling genocide rages on before everyone’s eyes, many parents will have to navigate hard conversations with their children about what is happening in the Middle East.

For Black people–who are typically in support of the people of Gaza–the conversation is particularly nuanced. Black American communities have found kinship with Palestinians, having been subjected to oppression and colonialism, too, still enduring the lasting trauma and impact.

Historically, organizations such as the Black Panthers–who openly advocated for “the right of the Arab refugees to return to their Palestine homeland”–were labeled as terrorists and outliers. This in itself can bring out a lot of powerful emotions for us and our children.

Black activist groups such as Black Lives Matter and Black Christians for Palestine are standing in solidarity with Palestinian causes. Even Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Berniece King, took to Twitter to correct Amy Schumer’s false and slanderous claims that Berniece's father, the late Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. would have supported Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

In the last few years, Palestinians have advised Black protesters during the racial justice uprisings following the death of George Floyd. They also painted murals of him as a show of support for the Black cause.

With round-the-clock news broadcasts and social media posts covering the Israel-Palestine war, it’s easy for children to be exposed to unfiltered and uncensored content, much of which contains images, videos, and conversations about suffering and death.

“It is likely that your home has a political leaning which has shown up in their lives already, so talking about your family values and beliefs will be a part of the conversation,” notes Younge. “You can talk about valuing humanity and how people are hurting no matter where they live".

Importantly, especially for Black children, Palestinian support is visibly growing on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram among Gen Zs and Millennials. Younger generations are understanding the continuous interconnection between the fight for freedom by Black Africans and the Palestinian people. Sadly, there’s also a deep, dark parallel between the "insignificance" of Black American childrens' lives and that of the lives of Palestinian children, as demonstrated by the routine unconscionable killings of African American children by the racist culture of American police and the racist culture of Jewish society in Israel.

For decades, hypocrites in the Zionist movement in America have tried to make a false connection between the suffering of downtrodden African Americans at the hands of the racist white American culture on one hand, and the supposed suffering from antisemitism of the otherwise wealthy, well-to-do, and control-freak Jewish community in the US on the other hand. However, this connection has never existed. For one, many slave traders were Jewish. Second, the Jewish community has done nothing to assist the African American community in its fight against white racism; indeed, Jews consider themselves white and there are no neighborhoods anywhere in America where Blacks and Jews coexist, in a form of silent segregation.

 

Brahmin Jews Grant Plebeian Goyim the Right to Criticize USrael

Finally, the Jewish caste ruling over the rest of the universe has decided to grant the rest of us, the Not-Chosen People, the right to criticize Israel. From now on, anyone who criticizes Israel will not necessarily, but may still, be condemned to the metaphorical "antisemitic" gallows or burning at the stake.

We should thank Yahweh for further enlightening the already supercilious "Light onto Nations", and kneel in gratitude at the generosity of the Chosen Ones.

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Over 1,800 Jewish Writers, Artists, and Professors Sign Open Letter Saying Criticism of Israel Isn't Inherently Antisemitic

As war rages on in the Gaza Strip, a group of Jewish writers, artists, and activists are speaking out about words they believe are misused or mischaracterized.

An open letter, titled “A Dangerous Conflation,” published last Thursday by n+1 magazine specifically addresses what its writers see as people conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism —an issue, they say, that previously existed but has become especially prominent since the October 7 Hamas attack. 

After condeming multitudes of reasonable people and subjecting them to the Jewish equivalent of the Inquisition for daring to criticize Israel for its barbaric actions against the Palestinian people, these high-browsed rulers of the world have finally spoken out: “We find this rhetorical tactic antithetical to Jewish values, which teach us to repair the world, question authority, and champion the oppressed over the oppressor,” [Hahahahaha...it would be funny it if were not tragic] the letter states, which was originally signed by 100 people and now has over 1,800 signatories. Oh what magnanimity, what generous condescension on the part of the ruling caste to bestow this crumb of freedom of speech manna on the rest of us Plebeian riff-raff. We are now authorized to criticize the cancerous colony of Israel without being branded like cattle as antisemitic.

The organizers say they hope the letter will prompt people to question their conventional wisdom about the connection between some Jews and Israel and Zionism. By specifically pointing to "some" but not ALL Jews, these modern Jewish priests, however, are forgiving themselves for their previous amalgamation of being a Jew and being a Zionist. Now at least, we know that some Jews only, not all of them, are Zionists. What an intellectual achievement that will bestow many benefits to the rest of us plebeians.

“We are Jewish writers, artists, and activists who wish to disavow the widespread narrative that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic,” the letter begins. “Israel and its defenders have long used this rhetorical tactic to shield Israel from accountability, dignify the US’s multibillion-dollar investment in Israel’s military, obscure the deadly reality of occupation, and deny Palestinian sovereignty. Now, this insidious gagging of free speech is being used to justify Israel’s ongoing military bombardment of Gaza and to silence criticism from the international community.”

Ok, fine. So now is Roger Waters still an antisemite worthy of being quartered and burned at the stake for criticizing the barbaric colony of Israel? We, the lowly pleibeans of this world need to be better guided and educated by the ruling Jewish caste about what to think, how to think, and when they are allowed to speak up or keep silent.

One signatory said, ".... anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and in fact has a place in Jewish life; and ... our identities should not be weaponized to perpetuate the ghastly things Israel does in our name.” Really? Now? Isn't it too late? After 75 years of brutality and colonialism?

Some students who have expressed pro-Palestinian views have been doxxed, lost jobs, and been threatened with suspension. 

“If the college coddles them, revoke their taxpayer funding,” the islamophobe and Palestinophobe African-American descendant of slaves, the Republican senator and presidential candidate Tim Scott said last week. “We must stand up against this evil anti-Semitism everywhere we see it — especially on elite college campuses.” Obviously Mr. Scott, who'd do better to change his name to Uncle Tom and drop his slave-owner's Scott last name, or perhaps whitewash his face, is after a few Jewish votes for his far-fetched reach for the presidency. He also has apparently reneged on his descent from slaves snatched from his colonized home country in Africa by none other than those he is now defending and who ran a profitable slave trade, like the Brown family of Providence, Rhode Island, that gave its name to Brown University, a hotbed of Jewish extremism.

Former president and current 2024 candidate, the moron Donald Trump endorsed the same idea at a recent event: “Revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities.” This idiot has to dig really deep into his desolate cerebrum to conclude that being anti-American and anti-semitic is the same thing. Notice, though, that he focuses on "foreign" students and faculty, because "real" Americans are still allowed to be anti-American and antisemitic, but not foreigners. He is thus defending his own white supremacist terrorists whom he led in his seditious attack against the US government.

Both houses of Congress have passed resolutions disavowing antisemitism, an action which some say conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism and attempts to silence dissent on college campuses. The letter’s organizers hope their words will make those who share similar views feel less alone.

“One thing we didn’t get to include before everyone signed but feel is important: For as long as Zionism has existed, there have been Jews who debate or outright oppose it,” the organizers say. “Just saying this can help clear up misconceptions about the relationships between Jews, Zionism, and Israel.” What a sneaky way to discharge themselves of any responsibility for having previously endorsed the crimes committed in their name; now that the tide is turning, these faint-hearted Jewish Patricians are jumping ship with their wigs. Not a bad sign for the rest of us Plebeians.

But let us be magnanimous: We say to these Jewish illuminati: Thank you, thank you... you have liberated us. Now please go write a letter to the UN demanding that the "Zionism is Racism" resolution adopted by the general assembly then abrogated under pressure from the racist Zionists, be reinstated. Please do not wait another century of burning at the stake and decapitation before recognizing and declaring that most Zionists are racists.

 

From the Horse's Mouth: Truman Upset Zionists Coveted all of Palestine

See Truman speaking on Zionists coveting all of Palestine without any effort by "moving" 5-6 million Palestinians:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqoNQeGni5Y

If Palestinians chant  "from the river to the sea", they're terrorists.

If invading foreign Zionist thugs say it, then it's their bullshit biblical  right and they're allowed to kill thousands of children, displace millions out of their ancestral land, and ethnically cleanse the whole nine yards so they can have their own exclusive Jewish supremacist racist resort by the Mediterranean Sea.

The US under Truman were visibly annoyed by the demands of  the Zionists to evict 5-6 million people and replace them with foreign illegal Jewish migrants. Truman says he had all sorts of objections to the Zionist plan, but they wanted everything on a silver platter so they don't have to do anything.

And now if the native indigenous people of Palestine say their country was "from the river to the sea" and it was stolen from them with unprecedented barbarity and cruelty, they're branded as terrorists.

The US can still repair the damage it did to the Palestinians by drooling at the feet of the Zionists. America can still free itself from the bonds of the Zionist slavery enterprise.

A Day in the Life of a Palestinian: Jewish Settler Terrorism

This as-told-to essay is an account from Nasser Nawaj’ah—a West Bank resident and field researcher for B’Tselem, a human rights organization in Israel—of the ongoing attacks by Israeli settlers amid the war in Gaza. It’s been transcribed, translated from Arabic, and edited by Aymann Ismail.

The settlers look like soldiers. They come at night, but sometimes during the day, wearing army uniforms. They execute operations against Palestinians, beating us, taking our phones and smashing them to prevent us from documenting their terror. The settlers steal things from our homes and take our money. And in the end, their message is always the same: “You have 24 hours to flee, or we will shoot you.”

The threat is terrifying. And they’ve already succeeded in forcing the expulsion of six Palestinian villages off their lands so far.

All my life, I’ve been a resident of the Susya village, a small Palestinian village. We’re in Area C in the West Bank, in the shadow of what is happening in Gaza. The settlers see this as an opportunity to take control and claim parts of Area C as their own through terrorism and violence. We know who these settlers are. They’re criminals, and they should be arrested. But at the moment, they have become the law. They administer the law. They are the army, and they do whatever they want.

Over the last three years, settler violence steadily increased day after day. Those of us who live in villages near the settlements know these settlers, especially the violent ones who assault and try to expel us. Four days ago, they came to my village at night. They forcibly entered my neighbor’s home and detained all the men and held them at gunpoint. Then they took them outside the house, and with an M16 gun pointed to the head of the house owner, they told him he had two options, and there wasn’t a third: “Leave or die.”

Things have never been scarier for us. We tried to call the Israeli police to tell them what their citizens are doing to us. They told us we are in a state of war, and that they are powerless to do anything. But even last year, my home was raided in the night by the IDF. They blindfolded and arrested me, terrifying my family, only to release me later without charge but with a stern warning: Stop “causing all the trouble in the area.” Since the beginning of the war to the south, settler violence has increased, but for us, it did not begin on Oct. 7.

Israeli authorities were here on Oct. 16 when a settler entered our village with a bulldozer. He used it to destroy and block the main road into Susya. In total, he blocked 16 roads, and since then, for three weeks now, my village has been under a complete siege. We don’t have water or medical services and supplies. People are unable to get medicine. There are people with chronic diseases, like diabetes and high blood pressure and such, who are now going without their life-dependent medicines. No children have been able to attend any of the schools in our area because of the settler terrorism and their closure of the roads.

The same day they destroyed our roads with the bulldozer, the settlers also destroyed an entire grove of olive trees, and they destroyed three water wells, the only source of drinking water for the Palestinians. They also destroyed our solar panels, knowing that our village isn’t connected to electrical services except by solar panel. Most Palestinian villages in Area C are like this. My people are living in poverty because of this very difficult siege imposed upon us by the occupation. They are waging a war on Palestinians in every aspect of our lives. And they do this, all of this, under the protection of the army and with the knowledge of the police.

None of us are able to so much as disagree with the settlers, let alone fight back, because killing a Palestinian today is very, very easy. If anyone so much as objects to the settlers, they will shoot them immediately. The settlers tell us there is no law because we are at war, and that our land is now forbidden to us, and that it now belongs to Israel. And if we stay, we will die.

And they mean it. A few days ago, they pillaged and burned down a house in a nearby Palestinian village. Settlers have already killed many Palestinians. And they do it knowing that no one will hold them accountable.

There is nowhere for us to go. We are living through constant Nakbas (catastrophes). The Palestinian government is very weak, and can’t do anything about the settlers, even on their own territory. According to the Oslo designations, 60 percent of the West Bank, practically, is under total Israeli control, and the Palestinian government cannot interfere in these areas. The ones responsible for the law here are the occupation authorities. They are supposed to provide protection to civilians and to ensure a peaceful life. But the occupation authorities act opposite to international law and are helping settlers to expel the Palestinians from these areas.

There is no solution for us. In light of war and what is going on, the future is very, very bleak for us Palestinians. I don’t see a future. But even so, we are living on the hope that the conscience of the free world will change this situation, and give us a small ray of hope for the future.

 

Republican US Zionists to Expel Palestinian-American House Member Tlaib

Republican slaves to American Zionists are working overtime to punish Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, for her objections to Israel’s military bombardment of Gaza.

So far, Tlaib is facing three separate censure efforts in the House with another backup in tow, but some Republicans are looking to skip the disciplinary measure and go straight to expelling the Michigan Democrat.

To buttress their efforts, these house members with ties to the Zionist settler terrorists in Israel are propagating lies about Ms. Tlaib and trying to find a link between her and Hamas. Notice hos they use the word "alleged" because they have no evidence of course. All they seek to do is smear her and defame her for standing for humanitarian norms in the barbaric genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli horde in Gaza.  “Rashida Tlaib is a sitting member of Congress with alleged ties to Hamas terrorists. This should be investigated immediately, and if true, the House should move to expel her,” tweeted Senator Marsha Blackburn on Tuesday.

Should all the censure bills against Tlaib fail, Representative Derrick Van Orden also hinted at potential expulsion. Van Orden said he will move to introduce yet another against Tlaib, who he believes no longer “belongs in this body,” reported Punchbowl News’s Mica Soellner.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene tried to censure Tlaib last week but failed after 23 of her Republican peers voted to table it, criticizing the resolution as “feckless” and filled with “legally and factually unverified claims.”

But then, on Thursday, Representative Max Miller, one of the House’s two Jewish Republicans, threw his hat into the ring, filing his own censure resolution against Tlaib. Greene has also returned with another censure resolution using retooled language to go after the Michigan representative.

By now she’s not the only one drafting censure efforts against Tlaib. Representative Rich McCormick introduced a “privileged” censure on Monday, which forces a vote within two legislative days.

While introducing the new censure resolution, McCormick railed against Tlaib for describing the chant “from the river to the sea” as an “aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence,” and lambasted her for allegedly promoting the destruction of Israel. McCormick’s effort has faced more support from the Republican caucus than Greene’s, winning over the votes of several members who voted to table hers, including Miller, Van Orden and Representatives Darrell Issa and Austin Scott.

Darrell Issa is the most notorious ass-kisser to Arabs and in particular to Syria whose 30-year long brutal occupation of his ancestral Lebanon he supported. Every time there was a resolution condeming the Assad Baathist regime, Issa opposed it. Now he is ass-kissing to the Zionists.

In a statement issued last month, Tlaib called the efforts to silence her “unhinged” and “deeply Islamophobic,” adding that she will not be bullied or dehumanized. “It’s a shame my colleagues are more focused on silencing me than they are on saving lives, as the death toll in Gaza surpasses 10,000,” Tlaib wrote in another statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Many of them have shown me that Palestinian lives simply do not matter to them, but I still do not police their rhetoric or actions. Rather than acknowledge the voice and perspective of the only Palestinian American in Congress, my colleagues have resorted to distorting my positions in resolutions filled with obvious lies,” Tlaib added.

 

Jewish Zionist Love: Palestinian Home Turned into Concentration Camp

Meet the Palestinian family whose home is like a fenced kennel surrounded by barbarian Jewish settlers.

The Gharib family home once stood in rolling farmland but is now surrounded by an eight-metre metal fence with a gate controlled by Israeli soldiers, in a traditional display of Jewish decency towards non-Jewish humans.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=geZ0ZKo5VaM






Aug 01, 2022

An eight-metre fence surrounds the Gharib family home in the occupied West Bank. To reach it they must pass through a gate controlled remotely by Israeli security forces.

Since Israel seized the territory in the 1967 war, an Israeli settlement has sprung up on surrounding land claimed by the family, leaving them isolated in their single-storey house on the edge of the Palestinian village of Beit Ijza.

“I don't know when this will end,” Saadat Gharib said with a sigh. “No one knows the pain my children are suffering.”



For years the family home stood on farmland, but now it lies behind a yellow gate, controlled by Israeli soldiers, who also patrol a narrow bridge overlooking the towering fence.

“During these years we've had a tough life,” said Mr Gharib, 40, who works for the Palestinian Authority in nearby Ramallah.

When he was a child, the Jewish settlement of Givon Hahadasha was built partially on land he says belonged to his family.

Decades on, the high fence separates the Gharib house from the Israelis' red-roofed homes and gardens. A communal space for the settlers, with a children's slide, has been placed a few metres away.

Settlements are considered illegal by the international community, a judgment Israel rejects.

The Gharib family has fought numerous legal battles in Israeli courts, in 2012 winning the right to a small strip of the land they claim.



 

“The settlers built a car park and a park, and we've needed the security forces to implement [the decision] and retrieve it for 10 years,” Mr Gharib said.

The yellow gate leading to the house was installed in 2008, Mr Gharib said, and at one point the family had to hold up their IDs to security cameras to cross the threshold.

“[We] appealed to the high court … and the court permitted us to have the gate open all the time,” Mr Gharib said.

“Disputes have broken out between us and the settlers,” said Mr Gharib, who lives with his wife and four children, and his mother.

Avi Zipory, a resident of the settlement, said he would prefer it if the “unpleasant” fence around the house was not there.

“Two [Jewish, hence highly unbiased and trustworthy] courts unanimously decided that the area and his house are within Jewish land [stolen from Palestinians over the past several decades],” the 70-year-old said.

“We didn't want to destroy his house … [he is] not ready to accept any alternative plan, [even] other land and a lot of money, that's why we had to continue this separation fence,” he said.

Mr Gharib has hung blue tarpaulins to create a screen between his home and the Givon Hahadasha settlement. “So that the kids can play without being bothered by the settlers and fearing them,” he said.

Mr Gharib said the situation has affected his children, particularly when there are clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces nearby.

“My daughter couldn't sleep all night, for five hours, and she was afraid of the security forces that were stationed at the door of the house,” Mr Gharib said, recalling one incident.

Despite the difficulties, he still works to harvest the family's olive trees. But to do so, he said he has to co-ordinate with the Israeli security forces and take a circuitous route through the neighbouring Palestinian village of Bayt Duqu. Once there, Mr Gharib said he must wait “an hour or two” for soldiers to open another gate.

Mr Gharib is determined to stay on his land: “This is our land, which my father inherited from my grandfather. We will not sell it to anyone for all the money in the world.”

[These brutal methods, in all appearances procedural and within the confines of a law laid down by the Zionists, were imported from Nazi Germany by illegal Jewish migrants who invaded Palestine at the time of the fabrication of the British-American colony of Israel].

Biden Stands to Lose to Trump with Blind Support to Israel

Joe Biden is Alienating Millions of Young Voters’ with Blind Support to Israel

Joe Biden is set to alienate millions of young voters, and potentially lose the 2024 election to Donald Trump, unless he calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, young generation pressure groups have warned.

Sending the US president a “stark and unmistakable warning”, activist leaders said that the administration’s “stance on Gaza risks millions of young voters staying home or voting third party next year”.

In an open letter to Biden, signed by 10 organizations including Gen-Z for Change, formerly called TikTok for Biden, the groups said they had “mobilized the record youth turnout in 2020 that pushed your ticket over the finish line”.

They added: “We did not spend hours upon hours knocking doors and making calls to turn out the vote so that you could support indiscriminate slaughter of civilians and violations of international law.”

The groups told Biden that he cannot win in 2024 by “only telling our generation that you are the lesser of two evils” and said that his position is “badly out of step” with young voters, adding: “There is no way for a Democratic presidential nominee to win without significant youth voter enthusiasm and mobilization.”

They urged the president to “use every tool available to you to broker a ceasefire now and to revive the peace process”.

A poll by Quinnipiac University found that about half of voters under 35 do not support sending weapons and military equipment to Israel.

Christopher Galdieri, a professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, said that while youth who are put off voting for Biden would not switch to Donald Trump should he win the Republican nomination, it “could be just as dangerous” if they stay at home.

He said: “It doesn’t take a wholesale collapse in youth support to potentially have a big impact.”