For more than a century, Zionists have understood that the Zionist project involved doing some unpleasant things, and it was best to keep quiet about those things.
Theodor Herzl realized this as early as 1891. He confided in his diary that “we must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us” and “we shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border,” adding that “the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly.” [Emphasis added].
The State of Israel has broken the unspoken rule. Israeli soldiers have been publishing videos of themselves blowing up dozens of residential neighborhoods in Gaza. Jewish Israeli leaders have been publicly declaring their intention to ethnically cleanse Gaza while Jewish Israeli journalists have been calling on the military to flatten the entire Strip. Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu himself likened Israel’s enemy to Amalek twice, Amalek being the people the Biblical Israelites were instructed to commit a genocide against.
Of course, not all pro-war Israelis have forgotten the rule. The Israeli judge appointed to the ICJ by Israel, Aharon Barak, voted in support of South Africa’s claim about incitement to genocide. For Barak, the problem was not what Israel was doing, the problem was what Israeli leaders were saying. They were violating the unspoken rule about Zionism. When removing Palestinians from their homes, and making it impossible for them to return, best to do it discreetly.
The Zionist leader Jacob Thon (1880-1950), who worked at the Palestine Land Development Co. buying up land from Arabs in the 1910s, believed that “of course” transferring the Arabs to Transjordan was desirable. But, Thon warned, if the Zionists talked about transfer openly their chances of accomplishing it would diminish. Any steps to “transfer” Arabs would have to be taken “privately.”
During the 1920s, Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) frequently wrote and spoke openly of the removal of the Palestinian Arab population of Palestine. In his view, that was necessary to establish a Jewish democratic state, and so Palestinian Arabs often cited Zangwill’s writings as evidence of Zionism’s nefarious aims. Zionist leaders learned an important lesson from Zangwill’s frankness: “under no circumstances should they talk as though the Zionist program required the expulsion of the Arabs, because this would cause the Jews to lose the world’s sympathy,” in Tom Segev’s words.
Golda Meir also understood the importance of doing things quietly. By 1971, Israeli ministers were going on media roadshows in their newly established settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Geneva Conventions of 1948 prohibit states from transferring their civilian population onto land occupied in war, something obvious to Meir but apparently not her ministers. “Before we move forward with our discussion,” Meir said at the outset of a 1971 cabinet meeting, “there’s something I’d like to ask. It was our habit that for anything that has to do with settlements, outposts, land expropriations and so on, we simply do and do not talk [about it].”
Until recently, the Israeli government appreciated the importance of doing the expulsions and the expropriations quietly. For more than a decade, Israeli archivists have been scouring the Israeli archives on a hunt for documents related to the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Hundreds of documents have been concealed in “a systematic effort to hide evidence of the Nakba,” or Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948.
Israelis have generally understood that, whenever the matter pertains to removing Palestinians from their homes, or settling Jews in those homes, the actions must be done quietly to avoid attention. That’s why, in November 2020, Israel chose US Presidential election day to carry out its largest forced displacement in over four years, making 73 Palestinians in Khirbet Humsa homeless. That’s also why Israeli Jewish settlers usually take over Palestinian homes in the middle of the night (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Incidentally, that’s also why Israel bombs Gaza at night. That’s also why Israel does not allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza and why journalists native to Gaza are so often targeted. They are giving a voice to what Israel doesn’t want you to hear, and they are shining a light on what Israel doesn’t want you to see.
Perhaps Zionism should embrace a new slogan. Do Zionism quietly, discreetly, under the cover of darkness.
The spokesman of Yemen’s Houthi armed forces, Yahya Saree
“The American and British were involved in the aggression against our country to support the enemy in its aggression against Gaza.
The American-British pretext for launching their aggression against our country, i.e. “protecting international maritime navigation,” is a false pretext
America and Britain suffered great losses on the economic level because they involved themselves in the aggression.
Our forces are targeting American and British ships and battleships in response to the aggression against our country, and we are carrying out effective and effective operations.
American and British involvement is counterproductive for both sides and will not achieve their goals and will not protect Israeli ships.
The American-British involvement made the two countries a targeted force at sea
Instead of the Americans taking a humanitarian stance by bringing medicine and food into Gaza, they risked waging war against us.
The American is the one who caused the militarization of the Red Sea and turned it into another battlefield
Our operations will continue as long as the aggression against Gaza continues, and medicine and food must be brought into the Strip and the war of extermination must be stopped.
There is no other targeted country that can coordinate with us and should not listen to American interference
The American admitted his inability to prevent strikes targeting ships heading to the occupying entity
The 86 American attacks do not limit our country’s capabilities, and our strikes are continuing, effective and very influential.
The American was surprised by the level of tactics in Yemen and our capabilities to support the Palestinian people
The broad popular presence in Yemen is held in high regard by the enemy, especially the American
Hundreds of thousands of mujahideen who have military experience frighten the enemy, and the Americans realize the strength of our army
The American realizes that our army was able to confront all American tactics during the war that lasted 9 years against us.
The American realizes that our people are armed and that our army is ready to interact with the Palestinian people and their oppression
The Americans are not accustomed to having their ships and battleships hit by missiles, so they respond with simple raids that do not affect specific targets.
The American is looking for someone to fight on his behalf in the field and for mercenaries, and does not dare to invade our country and confront our people.
It is important for our people to continue comprehensive action in support of Gaza, and our path is escalatory as long as the aggression against the Strip continues.
The British deal with Yemen with hatred dating back to the days of the old colonialism of Aden.
We appreciate the diplomatic efforts made by Qatar and Egypt to end the war on Gaza
I call on our dear people for two million honorable people to come out in support of Gaza, because we will not leave the squares as long as the people of Gaza are killed.
The launching of ballistic missiles and drones will continue as long as the war continues
We tell the Palestinian people in all sincerity that they are not alone.”
P.S.
“I say the Houthis are the (biggest) hero of (all) heroes” — Norman Finkelstein
Oxford (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – On Tuesday afternoon (6 February 2024), U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took part in a joint press conference with Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha. The press conference was mainly about the war in Gaza and the possibility of a new pause in the fighting and exchange of hostages and prisoners.
However, Blinken was also asked about his recent meeting with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the possibility of normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Blinken said (as quoted by the US Department of State): “But with regard specifically to normalization, the crown prince reiterated Saudi Arabia’s strong interest in pursuing that. But he also made clear what he had said to me before, which is that in order to do that two things are required: an end to the conflict in Gaza and a clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
In other words, the Saudis are strongly in favour of normalisation but, in addition to ending the conflict in Gaza, they believe that there should be a “clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state.” This paints a fairly rosy and optimistic picture of Israel-Saudi negotiations and the prospects for normalisation of relations.
Shortly after that press conference, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement which puts the record straight and which seems to contradict the main thrust of what Blinken said. The difference between what Blinken said and what the statement of the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs stresses is stark and revealing.
There has been a “clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state” for the past 30 years, called the Oslo Accords. However, despite that process, which has been as long as a piece of string, the Israelis and especially Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu have opposed it and prevented its implementation.
What the Saudis are clearly saying is that they are not happy with a similar process, but want to go back to the Saudi Plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, as well as a reference to the Palestinian refugee problem and the right of the Palestinians to return to their occupied land.
That plan was adopted unanimously by all the members of the Arab League in 2002 at their summit in Beirut. Subsequently, it was also approved by all 57 states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (formerly known as the Organisation of Islamic Conference) at a summit meeting that was held in Riyadh, including Iran which was represented by President Mahmud Ahmadinezhad. The Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat immediately embraced the plan.
In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also expressed tentative support for the Initiative, but in 2018 he rejected it as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians. In his infamous speech at the United Nations’ General Assembly on 22 September 2023 in New York, he held a map of “The New Middle East”, with Palestine completely wiped out. The elimination of Palestinian territories from the map of the Middle East angered the Palestinians and was one of the reasons that led to the 7th October attack by Hamas militants on Israel. Since the start of the Gaza war, Netanyahu has emphatically opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state and has even said that it will reoccupy Gaza for the foreseeable future.
The statement by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs clearly shows that the Saudis are not happy with Israeli policies and that there will be no prospect of normalizing relations with Israel under the current circumstances.
It states: “The Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognised on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops and all the Israeli occupation forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip. The Kingdom reiterates its call to the permanent members of the UN Security Council that have not yet recognized the Palestinian state, to expedite the recognition of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, so that the Palestinian people can obtain their legitimate rights and so that a comprehensive and just peace is achieved for all.”
Towards the end of the Trump Administration (between August 2020 and January 2021), a series of agreements were reached between the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and Israel to normalise their relations, which came to be known as the Abraham Accords. The ceremonies were held with great fanfare on the Truman Balcony of the White House, hosted by President Trump, flanked by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, in order to give the impression that they represented major and historic peace agreements. It should be stressed that at least the first three countries on the list were not at war with Israel and in fact had covert cordial relations with her.
A close examination of the Abraham Accords shows that they were a series of cynical moves to bribe some Arab regimes to normalise relations with Israel by bypassing the Palestinians. Israel’s long-term plan to isolate and bypass the Palestinians by reaching agreements with Arab regimes outside the immediate neighbourhood was enthusiastically championed by Pompeo and Kushner, and behind them by Netanyahu.
The UAE wanted to buy some advanced US weapons, including F-35 fighter jets. They were promised that they would be able to buy them if they normalised relations with Israel. After doing so, the United States reneged because Congress opposed the sale of those sophisticated weapons to the UAE. Once the UAE decided to normalise relations with Israel, little Bahrain also decided to follow suit.
In 1993, Sudan was first added to the list of states that sponsored terrorism, but the overthrow of President Al-Bashir in April 2019 improved relations between Sudan and the United States and in December 2019 the two countries announced their intention to exchange ambassadors. Sudan’s Ambassador to the United States presented his credentials in September 2020.
US government promised to remove Sudan from the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) list if the Sudanese government agreed to normalise relations with Israel. Sudan agreed, and on 14 December 2000 the US Government removed Sudan from the SST list, just in time for Sudan to normalise her relations with Israel and to join the Abraham Accords. Of course, after the breakout of the latest civil war in Sudan between various army factions, the situation has gone from bad to worse.
There has been a long-lasting conflict between Morocco and the Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, about the ownership of the Western Sahara. Large parts of Western Sahara were controlled by the Moroccan Government and known as the Southern Provinces, whereas some 20% of the Western Sahara was controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the Polisario state with limited international recognition.
The United Nations officially considers Morocco and the Polisario Front as the main parties to the conflict and has called on them to reach a negotiated settlement. The Obama administration disassociated itself from the Moroccan autonomy plan in 2009 and put the option of an independent Western Sahara on the table. Clearly, the issue had to be settled by the UN negotiation through consultation with both sides. However, Trump unilaterally and illegally gifted the Sahara to Morocco if she normalised relations with Israel.
Then it was the turn of Saudi Arabia, which came under enormous pressure to normalise relations with Israel but, even before the events of 7th October, Saudi Arabia refused to join the Abraham Accords without the acceptance of the two-state solution by Israel. The latest statement by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs shows that Saudi normalisation of relations with Israel is dead in the water, at least for the time being.
Of course, genuine peace between Israel and the Arab states would be very Welcome, provided that it brought with it positive gains for both sides and was not at the expense of the Palestinians.
Instead of rejecting those phony agreements and pushing for some real and lasting solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Biden Administration supported those agreements and even pressured Saudi Arabia to join them. The realization of total US support, created a feeling of impunity among the Israeli right-wing government and was responsible for excessive demands by Netanyahu’s latest extreme right government, which contributed to the disastrous terrorist attack on 7th October and Israel’s indiscriminate war and genocide in Gaza.
Given the events of the past four months and the collective punishment that Israeli government has inflicted on Gaza and the West Bank, it would be highly unlikely that any Arab government would dare to normalise relations with Israel due to their fear of their own populations.
A Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the discussions between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States of America on the Arab-Israeli peace process:
If committed activists needed an additional reason for why what they are doing is essential and just, then the ICJ’s ruling is a chilling reminder of what is at stake here.
The moral and brave approach by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), hoping for a ruling that would bring an end to the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza, was not matched by the court on Friday, January 26, 2024.
I am not underestimating the significance of the court’s ruling. True, the court confirmed the right of South Africa to approach the ICJ and substantiated the facts it presented, including the assumption that Israel’s actions could be defined as genocide under the terms of the genocide convention.
In the long run, the language and the definitions used by the ICJ in its first ruling will constitute a huge symbolic victory on the way to Palestine’s liberation.
But this is not why South Africa approached the ICJ. South Africa wanted the court to stop the genocide. And therefore, from an operative point of view, the ICJ missed an opportunity to stop the genocide, mainly because it still treated Israel as a democracy and not a rogue state.
Palestinians, and whoever supports any struggle against crimes committed by countries of the global north, ceased a long time ago to be impressed by symbolic actions. Actions against rogue states only are meaningful if they have an operative side to them.
The operative actions suggested by the ICJ are basically a demand from Israel to submit, in one month’s time, a report on measures taken to prevent genocide in Gaza.
No wonder, the Israeli government has already hinted that such an assignment would not be high on its agenda and, most importantly, would not have any impact on its policies on the ground.
Even if the ICJ would have demanded, as it should have, a ceasefire, it would have taken quite a while to implement it, given the Israeli intransigence. But the message to Israel would have been clear – and effective.
License to Commit Genocide
The important thing to remember in any engagement with Israel is that what matters is not how the message is intended but how it is understood by Israeli policymakers.
The Western solidarity with Israel, shown on October 7, 2023, was understood by its policymakers as a free license to commit genocide in Gaza. Similarly, opting for a report instead of action is understood in Israel as a slight slap on the hand, which gives Israel at least another 30 days to continue its genocidal policies.
If this is the case, what would be left of Gaza in a month? What would be the magnitude of the genocide in a month’s time, if not only the West but also the ICJ, refuses to call for an immediate ceasefire? I am afraid that there is no need to answer these terrible questions.
More importantly, the crime has already been committed, it is not as if there is still time to stop it. Therefore, unless the ICJ believes that Israel’s actions be reversed and rectified, it sends a very confused message. It seems to hint that, although the actions may be a crime, if the carnage is limited, then this would be welcomed by the ICJ.
History of Failure in Palestine
The ICJ seemed to lack courage when it refrained from demanding what many countries in the global south and a huge number of people in the global civil society were asking for in the last three months.
If this whole process ends with the usual conclusion that international law has no power to stop the destruction of Palestine and the Palestinians, this will have even a greater impact on the question of Palestine.
In fact, this awareness could severely undermine the confidence, which is already very low, of the global south in the universality of intentional law.
Ever since its final institutionalization after the Second World War, the international law failed to deal properly with colonialism as a crime and was never able to challenge settler colonial projects like Israel.
It also became clear that imperialist policies pursued by the US and Britain, in clear violation of international law, are totally exempt from international law’s jurisdiction. Hence, the US was able to invade Iraq with a stark violation of international law and Britain now plans to send, without fear of reprisal, asylum seekers to Rwanda.
In the case of Palestine, throughout 75 years of the ongoing Nakba, international law – through its official and informal representatives, practitioners and delegations – was completely ineffective. It did not stop the killing of one single Palestinian; it did not lead to the release of one single Palestinian political prisoner, nor did it prevent the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Indeed, the list of its failures is too long to be detailed here.
But There is Hope
There is a new, important lesson that should shape our activity and inform our hopes for the future.
We already learned that there is no hope for change within Israeli society, a lesson that was ignored by those involved in the so-called peace process.
The failure to understand the DNA of the Zionist society allowed Israel, since its inception, to kill Palestinians incrementally and massively either directly, by shooting them, or indirectly, by denying them basic human conditions for living.
This process, led by the US, was based on the formula that only after “peace” is restored, Israel would be obliged to change its ruthless policies on the ground.
This false paradigm has totally collapsed, even if the Biden Administration attempts, these days, to resurrect it, along with the few Palestinians who, for some reason, still put their faith in the two-state solution.
And now comes the new, important lesson: not only can we not hope for a change within Israel, we cannot rely on international law to protect the Palestinians from genocide.
This, however, does not mean that there is no hope in the future for liberation and decolonization. The Zionist project is in the process of imploding from within.
Israel’s Jewish society is disintegrating, its economy is failing, and its international image is deteriorating.
The Israeli army did not function in October and the government is in tatters and unable to provide basic services to its citizens. Under these circumstances, only wars and cynical Western interests will keep this project alive, but for how long?
And yet, such a process of implosion in history can be long, brutal and violent as it transpires in front of our eyes these days.
And we are not just onlookers. The activists among us understand that we have to double and triple what we already know has to be done.
We continue, outside of Palestine, to try and move the ‘B’ and ‘D’, in Boycott and Divestment, to ‘S’, as in Sanction.
This effort can be intensified by pushing in two directions. On one hand, we should exert more pressure on the governments of the global south to be more active, particularly in the Arab and Muslim worlds. On the other hand, we should find better ways to increase the electoral pressure on our representatives in the global north.
There is no need to tell the Palestinian Resistance what to do to defend itself and its people. There is no need to tell the liberation movement how to strategize for the future. Wherever they are, Palestinians who are involved in the struggle will continue to persevere and be resilient. What they truly need is for any external effort to be more effective, realistic and bold.
One can not but admire what the solidarity movement with Palestine has already achieved, especially in the last three months.
However, if its loyal and committed activists needed an additional reason for why what they are doing is essential and just, then the ICJ’s ruling is a chilling reminder of what is at stake here.
If there is hope to stop the genocide all over historical Palestine, it lies in the ability of the global civil society to take the lead. Because it is far too obvious that governments and international bodies are unwilling or unable to do so.
– Ilan Pappé is a professor at the University of Exeter. He was formerly a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Haifa. He is the author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, The Modern Middle East, A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, and Ten Myths about Israel. He is the co-editor, with Ramzy Baroud of ‘Our Vision for Liberation.’ Pappé is described as one of Israel’s ‘New Historians’ who, since the release of pertinent British and Israeli government documents in the early 1980s, have been rewriting the history of Israel’s creation in 1948. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/wJcZ4YBUZpY?feature=oembed&The fallout has been growing from the so-called investigation by The New York Times into alleged mass rapes of Israeli women by Hamas fighters on 7 October – as I discuss with my colleague Nora Barrows-Friedman in the video above.
As The Electronic Intifada has reported, Israel’s sensational claims are not backed by any substantial evidence.
Rather, the lurid allegations of sexual violence appear calculated to demonize Palestinians and justify or distract from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Yet mainstream media and politicians continue to disseminate this atrocity propaganda without regard for the obvious holes in the Israeli narrative.
The Times article, published in late December, gave added credence to these claims, especially since its lead writer was Jeffrey Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter.
But as we demonstrated, it is a journalistic fraud.
Members of the family of Gal Abdush, the deceased woman portrayed by Gettleman as a victim of the alleged “broad pattern” of sexual violence have repudiated the article and accused the Times of misleading and manipulating them. They say there is no evidence that Abdush was raped.
Gettleman also relied extensively for “evidence” on ZAKA, an extremist Jewish group that collects bodies and body parts for burial, and whose leaders have fabricated numerous accounts of atrocities from 7 October.
A recent investigation by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper accuses ZAKA of using bodies of people killed on 7 October as props for fundraising and that as part of its effort “to get media exposure, ZAKA spread accounts of atrocities that never happened, released sensitive and graphic photos, and acted unprofessionally on the ground.”
Now some of Gettleman’s colleagues at the Times are also raising questions, wary of being caught in yet another of the newspaper of record’s notorious journalistic scandals.
On 28 January, The Intercept revealed that the Times pulled a high-profile episode of its podcast The Daily that was based on Gettleman’s mass rapes article.
The decision not to air the episode was taken “amid a furious internal debate about the strength of the paper’s original reporting on the subject,” according to The Intercept.
The episode was supposed to go out on 9 January but as criticism of Gettleman’s reporting grew internally and externally, The Daily shelved the original script and put the episode on hold.
A new script was drafted, one that according to The Intercept, “allowed for uncertainty, and asked open-ended questions that were absent from the original article.”
But even that new script “remains the subject of significant controversy” within the Times newsroom and has yet to air. Some New York Times staffers fear “another Caliphate-level journalistic debacle,” The Intercept reports.
That’s a reference to the 2018 multipart podcast Caliphate, which the Timeshad to retract after it turned out that the main character – a Canadian Muslim claiming to have been a former ISIS fighter in Syria – had fabricated his entire story.
But rather than learning the lessons from this – or its false reporting on Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” that helped pave the way for the 2003 US-led war of aggression against Iraq – the Times leadership appears to be doubling down.
“There seems to be no self-awareness at the top,” one Times staffer told The Intercept.
The newspaper’s editors allowed Gettleman to publish a follow-up article on 29 January, in an attempt to patch up his original story.
As I explain in the video above – a segment from The Electronic Intifada’s livestream of 31 January – Gettleman fails to address the criticisms of his story.
Instead he spins, distorts and provides new claims that lack any credibility – anything but take responsibility for his egregious malpractice and spreading of atrocity propaganda.
In 2011, Hillary Clinton’s State Department disseminated false claims that Libyan forces had been given the drug Viagra so that they could carry out mass rapes as a weapon for war.
These fabrications were part of the Obama administration’s push to justify the US military intervention that overthrew the country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi and, among other things, turned Libya into a haven for human trafficking, including torture and sexual violence.
This week’s event at Columbia University – where Clinton now teaches – is set to be another forum for her to spread atrocity propaganda to justify war, this time on behalf of Israel.
Additional resources on Israel’s “mass rapes” propaganda
A general view of a tent city in the southern area of Khan Younis, built by Egypt and the Palestine Red Crescent Society, to shelter thousands of Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. Mohammed TalateneDPA via ZUMA Press / APA images
An Israeli entrepreneur who participated in the genocide in Gaza has pitched a plan to a European firm for the territory’s future.
The Gaza Strip – which the plan assumes would be conquered and controlled by Israel – would be divided into two zones. In the northern zone, Palestinian collaborators would be permitted to live in relative comfort, while those who refuse to serve and obey their Israeli masters would be banished to a southern “area of terror.”
The Electronic Intifada has seen a copy of this so-called “day-after plan.”
The pitch exposes the frightening colonial mindset and condescendingly racist view of Palestinians pervasive in Israel. It also reveals an underlying desire to conquer and control every inch of Palestine, including Gaza.
The plan was submitted by Or Bokobza, an Israeli reserve officer in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit, who was deployed in Gaza for several weeks during October and November.
Bokobza lives in New York City, but was in Israel on 7 October when the Palestinian resistance group Hamas led a military operation that destroyed the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, which is responsible for enforcing Israel’s siege on the territory.
Bokobza “immediately reported for duty and was deployed to root out the Hamas fighters that day,” according to a glowing profile in The Wall Street Journal.
Bokobza, who spent eight years in Israel’s army, far longer than the mandatory service requirement, has also participated in “every war since 2005.”
He is also the chief executive of Venn, a company that makes software for large-scale residential landlords to manage, monitor and extract maximum rents and revenue from tenants. It has received $100 million in venture capital, according to The Wall Street Journal.
At least 15 percent of his employees also enlisted as reservists with Israel’s military after the genocidal war on Gaza was declared.
Now Bokobza undoubtedly hopes to profit from the destruction and slaughter – although his proposal is pitched as good for Israel and even good for Palestinians in Gaza.
Another Israeli businessman Eran Haggiag is also named in the proposal, The Electronic Intifada learned. Haggiag is a co-founder of Bokobza’s company Venn.
Post-genocide dreams
Bokobza’s proposal calls for the total destruction of northern Gaza and its reconstruction as a managed colony – Gaza 2.0, where Palestinians who behave according to the rules set by Israel will be allowed to stay. Those who misbehave will be expelled to a hellscape in southern Gaza, or as he calls it, Gaza 1.0 – the “area of terror.”
The plan reads as a cross between a Silicon Valley elevator pitch and the script for a sci-fi horror movie.
But to the extent it purports to be a real plan, it is not the first of its kind. In the early 1990s, when the Oslo accords were signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, media hyped that Gaza would turn into a “Singapore on the Mediterranean.”
Such notions were revived again after Israel redeployed its occupation forces to the perimeter of Gaza in 2005 and then began imposing an ever-tightening siege.
The condition behind these pie-in-the-sky promises – whether in Gaza or the West Bank – has always been that Palestinians surrender any hopes of self-determination and instead settle for economic crumbs while Israel retains all real power over their lives.
In the event, under the guise of the “peace process,” Israel began to isolate Gaza and systematically “de-develop” its economy, as scholar Sara Roy describes. At the same time it has accelerated its colonization of the West Bank, corralling Palestinians into ever-shrinking islands of land surrounded by a sea of Israeli settler-colonies.
Bokobza’s vision is in this tradition, albeit with the nightmare softened by the cheerful language of a real estate brochure and sprinkled with upbeat tech charlatanry.
“A week ago I stood in Gaza watching the sunrise over a land destroyed by conflict,” says his proposal submitted to the European firm in late November.
“Gaza is a truly beautiful place, with incredible views, beaches and full of potential,” he says of the killing fields where thousands of dead Palestinians still lie under the rubble of their homes and in makeshift mass graves.
“On 7 October, I put on my army uniform and in that moment I switched from being Or the entrepreneur to Or the soldier and I immediately started to think like a soldier again,” he says.
“You take orders and you execute. You can question the how but not the why, not the big picture or the strategy, I realized that we all put on our army uniform on 7 October and started thinking like soldiers, especially our leaders.”
While participating in the genocide and the bombing and shelling campaign described to be “among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history,” Bokobza dreamed of what to do on the ruins “with the help of the US and certain Arab states” in order to serve Israel’s pipe dream of subduing Palestinian resistance once and for all.
His plan would permanently partition northern and southern Gaza respectively into “the area of hope and the area of terror.”
Bokobza hoped Israel would start implementing the plan as soon as December 2023 and begin turning Gaza into “the poster boy of hope for the Palestinian people.” But that assumed that Israel would quickly defeat the Palestinian resistance and gain control of all or most of Gaza.
That has not happened, however, as the resistance continues to inflict heavy losses on the Israeli invaders in every part of Gaza.
Meanwhile, according to the plan, “the south will serve as a transition area for those awaiting relocation” – an apparent endorsement of ethnic cleansing of those Palestinians who cannot prove their loyalty and utility to Israel.
Residents of this imaginary plan would be recruited “through inspiring brochures that we will drop in the millions from the sky,” which will contain plan details and application procedures.
This plan does not explain how Palestinians displaced, starving, dying of thirst, living with untreated injuries, illnesses and trauma, and cut off from communications, will submit their “applications,” or why they would even consider trusting Israel.
“Applicants will commit to not having any association with terror groups and their residency will be revoked if they do,” Bokobza writes.
Bokobza describes a digital application process and a committee to determine who could live in the proposed Gaza 2.0 made up of Saudis, Emiratis, Americans, Israelis and Palestinian collaborators.
“One mistake and you’re out to the old Gaza without a way to come back for a few years,” Bokobza says, bringing together all the mindsets common to a landlord, prison warden and colonizer.
Helping Joe Biden
Bokobza is not shy that his motivation is entirely Israel’s benefit.
“This is not altruism for the Palestinian people,” he writes, adding that his plan would be the biggest blow to Hamas.
He calls for the Israeli government to begin implementing the project initially, before turning it over to Palestinian collaborators under Israeli supervision – similar to the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.
Bokobza also hopes that a plan marketed as helping Palestinians will result in “changing sentiment towards Israel in the international community” for the better.
Headlines would, he hopes, “turn to ‘Israel brought a solution’ instead of ‘Israel kills children.’”
Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza during its genocide. The United Nations has acknowledged that most victims are women and children.
Bokobza also markets his plan as an effort to bring “a success story” that will aid US President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
Destroy everything
Realizing Bokobza’s terrifying vision would begin with the total destruction of all buildings still standing in northern Gaza.
“We have taken over northern Gaza, most of the population evacuated south, we are eliminating all of Hamas’ infrastructure,” he writes.
“We will eliminate any infrastructure in northern Gaza that limits us from building the Gaza of the future.”
He repeatedly calls for total destruction.
“Demolition: Complete demolition of existing structures in Gaza City, paving the way for a fresh start and the construction of a robust infrastructure.”
On reflection, perhaps the closest analogy for this cynical and dystopian vision is Theresienstadt, the Nazi concentration camp that the German government used as a transit camp for Czech Jews who would be deported to death and labor camps across German-occupied Europe.
In Nazi propaganda, Theresienstadt was described as a “spa town,” where elderly Jews could “retire” in safety.
Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza
The Gaza Strip is a graveyard for thousands of children, the United Nations has said.
Since October 7, Israeli attacks have killed at least 10,000 children, according to Palestinian officials. That is one Palestinian child killed every 15 minutes, or about one out of every 100 children in the Gaza Strip.
Thousands more are missing under the rubble, most of them presumed dead.
The surviving children, who have endured the traumatic impact of multiple wars, have spent their lives under the shadow of an Israeli blockade, influencing every aspect of their existence from birth.
A displaced Palestinian child sheltering in a UNRWA school in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Thursday Photo: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
Feb 4, 2024 4:17 am IST Gideon Levy
Two hundred and sixty names of babies whose age was 0; names of babies who didn’t get to celebrate their first birthday, nor will they ever celebrate anything else. Here are some of their names: Abdul Jawad Hussu, Abdul Khaleq Baba, Abdul Rahim Awad, Abdul Rauf al-Fara, Murad Abu Saifan, Nabil al-Eidi, Najwa Radwan, Nisreen al-Najar, Oday al-Sultan, Zayd al-Bahbani, Zeyn al-Jarusha, Zayne Shatat. What dreams did their parents have for them? Then there are hundreds of names of one- and two-year old children; toddlers three or four years of age; children who were five, six, seven or eight, up to the youths who were 17 when they died.
Thousands of names, one after the other, out of the 11,500 children killed by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza over the last four months. The list flows like credits at the end of a long movie, a mournful tune in the background. The Al-Jazeera network posted the list of names known to it over the weekend, a total of half the 11,500 who were killed, according to Hamas’ health ministry. A child killed every 15 minutes, one out of every 100 children in Gaza.
Around them remained the children who witnessed the deaths of their loved ones, the parents who buried their babies, the people who had extricated their bodies from the fire and rubble, thousands of crippled children and tens of thousands forever in shock. According to UN figures, 10,000 children lost both parents in this war, a war in which two mothers die every hour.
No explanation, no justification or excuse could ever cover up this horror. It would be best if Israel’s propaganda machine didn’t even try to. No stories of “Hamas is responsible for it all,” and no excuses pointing to Hamas hiding among civilians. Horror of this scope has no explanation other than the existence of an army and government lacking any boundaries set by law or morality.
Think of these babies, who died in their cribs and their diapers, of the children who tried to run for their lives to no avail. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the 10,000 tiny bodies lying side by side; open them and see the mass graves, the overcrowded emergency rooms, with ambulances spewing out more and more children who are rushed in, unclear if dead or alive.
It’s happening, even now, just over a one-hour drive from Tel Aviv. It’s happening without being reported in Israel, without any public debate over the violent rampage Israel has allowed itself to wage in Gaza this time, more than ever before. This is also happening without anyone in Israel reflecting on what will come of this mass killing, on what Israel might gain from it and what price it will pay for it. Don’t bother us, we are killing children.
The clichés are hackneyed and pathetic: “They started,” “there is no choice,” “what would you have us do?” “The IDF is doing everything it can to avoid the killing of innocent people.” The truth is that Israel doesn’t care, it doesn’t even take any interest. After all, Palestinians don’t love their children, and in any case, they would have only grown up to become terrorists.
In the meantime, Israel is erasing generations in Gaza, and its soldiers are killing children in numbers competing with the cruellest of wars. This will not and cannot be forgotten. How can a people ever forget those who killed its children in such a manner? How can people of conscience around the world remain silent over such mass killing of children? The fact that Israel is not deliberating this issue internally, with no tears or conscience in evidence, only desiring more of this war, until a “final victory” is achieved, does not bind the world. The world sees and is shocked.
The truth is, it’s impossible to remain silent. Even Israel, so absorbed in its grief and its concern for the fate of the hostages; Israel, which itself sustained horrors on October 7, cannot ignore what is happening in Gaza. It takes seven minutes to display the list of thousands of dead children, passing at the same speed as their miserable lives did. By the end, one cannot remain silent; these are seven minutes that leave you choked up, distressed and deeply ashamed.
Secretary Blinken admits that the U.S. has been unable to investigate the “evidence” presented by Israel claiming 13 of UNRWA’s 13,000 Gaza employees participated in October 7. Biden took Israel’s word for it anyway.
WORKERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY FOR PALESTINE REFUGEES (UNRWA) PREPARE MEDICAL AID FOR DISTRIBUTION TO SHELTERS, DEIR AL-BALAH, NOVEMBER 4, 2023. (PHOTO: SULIMAN EL-FARA/APA IMAGES)
In the latest demonstration of the boundless cruelty of U.S. President Joe Biden and his despicable administration, they have turned the backbone of what little aid Palestinians in Gaza receive into a political football, to be toyed with and batted around while jeopardizing that support for people who are already near the edge of what any human, however brave, can possibly endure.
It’s the latest in what feels like an eternal cycle of the United States and Israel beating up on the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for political gain. There have been many hearings on Capitol Hill over the years bashing UNRWA and calling for either a complete structural overhaul of the agency or its dismantlement and absorption into the larger United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
The root of the attacks, prior to October 7, 2023, has been UNRWA’s unique mission which is to provide humanitarian assistance — including food, housing, medical aid, and the role that has taken up the bulk of its budget for years, education — to Palestinian refugees exclusively. Because of this mandate, Israel and its supporters blame UNRWA for the definition of “refugee” in the Palestinian context, which includes not only those made refugees by the 1948 and 1967 wars, but also their descendants born into refugee status.
Many on the pro-Israel and Israeli right and center believe doing away with UNRWA would essentially allow Israel to do away with Palestinian refugees because they believe UNRWA is the only thing maintaining that generational definition.
They’re wrong, of course. International law is clear on this point, as the UN states: “Under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found. Both UNRWA and UNHCR recognize descendants as refugees on this basis, a practice that has been widely accepted by the international community, including both donors and refugee-hosting countries. Palestine refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises.”
There’s no ambiguity there, but that hasn’t stopped the controversy. UNRWA has been routinely accused of keeping Palestinians as refugees, not giving them the tools to move on to an independent lifestyle as individuals. This is a key ideological component in the denial of Israel’s responsibility for the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians. It absolves Israel of all responsibility for the ongoing poverty and hopelessness that decades of dispossession, occupation, and siege have wrought on Gaza and the West Bank.
Yet, while American politicians don’t think twice about trying to score points by bashing UNRWA, Israelis have always known that they need the agency, despite all their hateful rhetoric about it. For years, Israel would bash UNRWA mercilessly in the media, but would always tell the United States that its operations were necessary, especially in Gaza. Without UNRWA, Israel would be expected to ensure that a humanitarian catastrophe did not ensue, so Israel needs the agency.
In 2018, emboldened by a reckless U.S. administration under Donald Trump, Netanyahu suddenly changed that position and called for the U.S. to dramatically cut its support of UNRWA. Trump eagerly did so. When Netanyahu made that sudden shift, it surprised and disturbed many in his own government who disagreed with the decision. Just about the only positive step Joe Biden took when entering office was to restore UNRWA’s funding. But Trump’s action made the question of UNRWA’s funding even more politically charged than it had always been.
Unable to investigate
The old cycle seems to be playing out again, but this time, the highly charged politics in Washington are more intricate.
On January 26, Israeli allegations against a dozen UNRWA employees surfaced. The agency immediately fired nine of them and said that two others were dead, hoping their swift and pre-emptive action would stave off rash U.S. actions. Nonetheless, the United States and a host of other countries immediately suspended funding for UNRWA, over the actions of 12 of over 30,000 employees, 13,000 of whom are in Gaza.
It’s worth pausing over that last fact for a moment. Twelve out of 13,000 Gaza employees have caused all of this, and it’s based on evidence that has not been made public. You’d never know that from much of the media coverage, which is, once again, treating Israeli allegations as proven facts. Nor could you tell by the U.S. response. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated, “We haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But they are highly, highly credible.”
That is a stunning statement. They are simply taking Israel’s word for it, and on that basis, they are suspending aid to nearly two million people who need that aid more than anyone in the world.
Recall that Israel, in October 2021, labeled six Palestinian organizations as being connected to “terrorist groups,” specifically referring to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The “evidence” Israel presented was so threadbare that European countries dismissed it as baseless, and even the Biden administration, which has repeatedly supported Israeli claims based on no evidence that turned out to be false, could not accept the Israeli charges, though it avoided explicitly calling out Israel’s attempted deception.
Yet now, Israel has presented a “dossier” that contains its case against the twelve UNRWA workers. The actual evidence has not been made public, and even the United States, as noted above, has admitted it can’t verify the Israeli claims. But the U.S. suspended UNRWA’s funding anyway and led seventeen other countries to follow suit.
Not in Israel’s immediate interests
Israel saw matters going in a worrisome direction, however. The funding suspension will still allow UNRWA to operate through February, so there is time to reverse these decisions. And Israel is concerned that if that does not happen, the humanitarian situation will become so dire that Europe and maybe even the United States will not be able to resist the pressure from outraged populations and finally be forced to press for a permanent ceasefire.
Not only would UNRWA’s humanitarian efforts be shut down, but the UNRWA infrastructure that other groups use to distribute aid would also become unavailable. That will significantly accelerate the already crisis-level state of starvation, malnutrition, exposure, infections, curable diseases, lack of clean water, and all the other conditions that are killing Palestinians with accelerating speed, but much more quietly than Israeli bombs and bullets.
Fearing it could be pressed into ending its military operations, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel, “UNRWA is currently the international organization that plays the most dominant role in the entry and delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and because there currently is no alternative, Israel is not pushing to shut down UNWRA.”
The Israeli official made clear what the Netanyahu government’s reasoning was. “If UNRWA ceases operating on the ground, this could cause a humanitarian catastrophe that would force Israel to halt its fighting against Hamas. This would not be in Israel’s interest and it would not be in the interest of Israel’s allies either.”
The United States quickly got the message. Even before the Israeli official spoke to The Times of Israel, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield shifted the American tone. “We need to look at the organization, how it operates in Gaza, how they manage their staff and to ensure that people who commit criminal acts, such as these 12 individuals, are held accountable immediately so that UNRWA can continue the essential work that it’s doing,” she said.
It’s not clear what “held accountable” means in this context since UNRWA has already fired the workers in question and even signaled it is open to criminal prosecution of anyone in “acts of terror.” Thomas-Greenfield also said that “fundamental changes” would be needed for funding to be restored. That’s a vague bit of wording that has been used many times in the past in reference to UNRWA. It’s unclear what it means here, exactly, but the general thrust of her speech was that funding should be restored.
“We shouldn’t let [the allegations] cloud the great work that UNRWA does,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “UNRWA has provided essential humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people and UNRWA is the only organization on the ground that has the capacity to continue to provide that assistance.”
So, it would seem that the United States is prepared to back off of UNRWA and restore the funding, right? And then the other countries, who followed the U.S. down this rabbit hole, would follow it back out.
Well, it might not be that simple. As with everything during an election year, politics make this more complicated.
On January 30, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing about UNRWA. The committee heard from one witness, Mara Rudman, who critiqued UNRWA but argued for President Biden’s “pause” on funding, rather than killing the agency. She said, “Is UNRWA, or any of the UN entities perfect? Far from it. The recent termination of 12 UNRWA employees who allegedly participated in the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7, provides one of the more extreme examples. It also shows the need for the ongoing oversight the Biden administration displayed in communicating to the UN that action and thorough investigation was required. For the services UNRWA provides to a desperate population, however, there is no substitute at this time.”
The termination of the twelve employees was a pre-emptive act of desperation and panic. UNRWA was not shown the evidence — merely accusations about the workers. But in this time of incomprehensible human suffering in Gaza, they wanted to do all they can to avoid the worst, so they fired the nine workers who remain alive. It shows how dedicated they are to their mission.
UNRWA submits lists of all its employees in the West Bank and Gaza to Israel. Somehow, Israel had no problem with these twelve, despite their supposedly extensive knowledge of the membership of Hamas and other Palestinian groups. None of this seems to bother Rudman much.
But she was the best of the witnesses, by far. The other three were Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a far-right pro-Israel think tank; Marcus Sheff, CEO of IMPACT-se, a right-wing Israeli institution that leads the propaganda campaign against allegedly inflammatory Palestinian textbooks; and Hillel Neuer of the far-right UN Watch, a group whose mission is to paint the UN as a cesspool of antisemitism.
For Biden, the hearings, as well as the general tone and tenor in Washington after years of bashing UNRWA, present a problem. If he doesn’t restore UNRWA’s funding, conditions in Gaza will grow much worse very quickly, and calls for a ceasefire will be overwhelming, as will Biden’s downward trend in polls. If he restores UNRWA’s funding, he will find himself under attack from Republicans as well as some Democrats.
In the wake of the hearing this week, one of Israel’s leading advocates in Congress, Brad Schneider (D-IL), bluntly stated, “We have to replace UNRWA with something else. I support getting rid of UNRWA.”
Not to be outdone in anti-Palestinian animus, the ever-eager AIPAC shill, Ritchie Torres (D-NY) tweeted, “UNRWA, long funded by your tax dollars, has been governing Gaza at the behest of Hamas so that Hamas, which sees governing as a distraction, could dedicate itself to murdering Jews in Israel.”
Had Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken not reacted in knee-jerk fashion to the unsubstantiated Israeli allegations, this would be less of a problem. They could have noted that UNRWA immediately fired the workers in question, that it had launched an investigation, and that its work was needed now more than ever. Biden could then have talked about reviewing UNRWA over the coming weeks and months, and made some political show of it without jeopardizing the aid to Gaza, which even the Israeli government doesn’t want to see cut.
But nothing is as familiar to Joe Biden as the own-goal. By suspending the aid to UNRWA, he now has to take positive action to restore it, which will leave him even more vulnerable to bipartisan attack.
Netanyahu, for his part, is not going public with his desire to see UNRWA’s funding continued for a while until a more convenient time for it to be decimated. On the contrary, he is maintains his public call for UNRWA to be terminated, despite the message he conveys more quietly. He is very likely content to undermine Biden as much as he can.
Even government officials from both the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government have been forced to acknowledge the crucial role UNRWA plays. That this has become a political hot potato is not just a testament to Biden’s incompetence, but also to his mindless cruelty and unquenchable hostility to the Palestinian people.
WORKERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY FOR PALESTINE REFUGEES (UNRWA) PREPARE MEDICAL AID FOR DISTRIBUTION TO SHELTERS, DEIR AL-BALAH, NOVEMBER 4, 2023. (PHOTO: SULIMAN EL-FARA/APA IMAGES)
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