March 27, 2024 | Read Online Source : Palestine Nexus
Heba Almaqadma
It was the evening of Oct. 10, 2023. My family and I were sitting in our home in the Al-Tawam neighborhood of north Gaza. That night, we were trying to find peace of mind, worried about what the future had in store for us.
All of a sudden, bombs started raining from the sky. The windows of our home all shattered as glass, rocks, and concrete went flying everywhere. We lost electricity as smoke and debris filled our home, reducing visibility to zero. We ran to the basement, fearing the next bomb was for us.
That’s when I realized our lives would never be the same again. As we sat in the basement, we looked at each other in silence. My whole family was trembling in fear. Little did we know, a genocide was awaiting us.
If only I had known to plan for a genocide, I would have cherished those last moments at home, my last night in a bed, my last morning coffee, my last kibbe dipped in hummus, my last day at work, my last laugh, my last birthday celebration, my last everything. If only I had known, I would have packed up a few of those memories with me.
But I didn’t have a chance to do that, because we decided to evacuate immediately. That’s one of the horrible things we have to do all the time: Try to guess the least worst option among terrible options.
But we decided to evacuate. My family of 10 squeezed into our car, kids on top of adults. Within a few seconds, there was another massive explosion in front of us.
The next thing I can remember, blood was everywhere in the car. I grabbed my 9 year old brother, Adam, who is handicapped, and I held him tightly.
I still remember the sound of my mom’s voice at that moment. “Adam is dead Heba, I can’t feel him!” she said. I looked at Adam, and told her that he was okay, that he was just in shock. We were all shocked. Somehow, we survived.
I held Adam as we got out of the car and started running back home. My dad was in front of me, the rest of my family was behind me. Who was I supposed to look after?
Adam was too scared to be left alone even for a few seconds, and so I couldn’t leave him. I could feel my hands going numb from holding him so tight. “Dad,” I said. “Help me, I can’t hold Adam anymore.”
My Dad shouted: “My finger is cut Heba, I can’t.” I realized my dad’s hand sliced open and blood was gushing everywhere.
Debris littered the streets, almost looking like an earthquake. But it was not an earthquake. It was a bomb sent to kill us. Maybe it was a dumb bomb, an imprecise bomb, that can land 100 feet away from its target. Half the bombs Israel sends to kill us are dumb bombs.
Israel exports sophisticated military technology to the world, but when it comes to us Palestinians in Gaza, the latest technology is not needed, since Israel’s “focus is on (creating) damage, not on precision.” That’s what an Israeli army spokesperson said on Oct. 10th, 2023, the same day Israel bombed our home.
We rushed to our neighbors house hoping and praying they were home. Their son is a nurse and treated my dad while we waited for an ambulance. Hours passed with no ambulance. We later found out that two of the ambulances that tried to reach us were bombed. Eventually, an ambulance arrived, al-hamdullilah.
We sheltered at al-Shifa hospital while my family was being treated. My 1-year old niece, Sarah, needed stitches in her head and hand. She was in so much shock she couldn’t even cry. My brother Mohammed had a splint in his head, and needed surgery, which we were eventually able to get for him 76 days later. My dad’s hand was so badly wounded the doctors thought they might have to amputate it. But thank god, we cared for it, and cleaned it every day, and he still has his hand.
We took refuge in al-Shifa hospital for a month. We barely had anywhere to sleep and we did not have access to clean water. Every day, hundreds of people would arrive at the hospital, some severely injured, some already dead. The agony of the families of the victims was too much too bare. The only thing I can remember now from al-Shifa was the never ending screams of pain that filled the hallways of the hospital.
Then, we were forced to move to the south, to Khan Younis. We made the dangerous journey on foot. For the first time, I felt what my grandparents must have felt during the Nakba in 1948. I understood why they kept the keys to their homes. Those keys were filled with memories.
We stayed in Khan Younes for 24 days, where we had almost nothing. We had no gas for cooking, no electricity, no means of transportation and no safe place to shelter in. We were among the lucky ones just to be able to take a shower. Then, we were ordered by the Israeli military to leave. We moved again, this time to Rafah.
As I walk through the streets of Rafah today, all I see is fear. The fear of life and the fear of death. We are living in fear every moment of the day. We now also fear that we will never have our lives back.
In this war, who am I? To the world, it seems I am just a number. A person who is counted on a list of people displaced, people injured or people hungry and thirsty. And if the next bomb is for me, I will be another number to add to the number of people killed in the genocide, and then I will be forgotten.
Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza.Credit: Mahmoud Essa / AP Gideon Levy
Mar 13, 2024 11:40 pm IST
Dear friends and former friends: It’s time to sober up from the sobering up.
It was baseless to begin with, but now, nearly half a year after your “eyes were opened,” it’s time to return to reality. It’s time to go back to seeing the whole picture, to reactivate the conscience and the moral compass that were shut off and stored away on October 7, and to see what has happened since then to us and, yes, to the Palestinians.
It’s time to remove the blindfolds you put on, not wanting to see and not wanting to know what we’re doing to Gaza, because you said that Gaza deserves it and its catastrophes no longer interest you.
You were angry, you felt humiliated, you were stunned, you were terrified, you were shocked, and you grieved on October 7. This was fully justified. It was a huge shock for everyone.
But the conclusions you derived from this shock were not just mistaken, they were the opposite of the conclusions that should have been drawn from the disaster.
You don’t come after people in their sorrow, certainly not Zionist leftists whose sorrow is their art, but it’s time to shake off the shock and wake up. You thought that what happened on October 7 justifies anything? Well, it doesn’t. You thought that now Hamas must be destroyed at all costs? Well, no. It’s not just about justice, but about recognizing the limits of force.
It’s not that you are evil and sadistic, or racist and messianic, like the right. You only thought that October 7 suddenly proved what the right always said: that there is no partner because the Palestinians are savages.
Five months should be enough for you to get over not only your gut reaction, but also your conclusions. October 7 needn’t have changed any of your moral principles or your humanity. But it turned them inside out, which is a serious cause for concern about the steadfastness of your moral principles.
Hamas’s vicious, barbaric attack on Israel does not change the basic situation in which we live: of a people that has been harassing and tyrannizing another people in different ways and at varying intensities for over a century now.
Gaza didn’t change on October 7. It was one of the most miserable places on the planet before October 7 and became even more miserable after it.
Israel’s responsibility for the fate of Gaza and its guilt did not change on that terrible day. It is not the only guilty party and does not bear full responsibility, but it has a decisive role in Gaza’s fate.
The left cannot evade this responsibility and guilt. After the shock and anger and sorrow, it’s time now to sober up from the sobering up and to look not only at what was done to us, as the Israeli media commands us to do day and night, but also at what we are doing to Gaza, and to the West Bank, since October 7.
No, our catastrophe does not make up for that, nothing in the world can make up for that. The right is celebrating Palestinian suffering, reveling in it and wanting more, while the left looks away and keeps dreadfully silent. It is still “sobering up.” It’s time to stop that.
What the whole world sees and understands should also be understood by at least part of what was once the camp of conscience and humanity. We won’t go into the Zionist left’s part in the occupation and apartheid, or dwell on its hypocrisy.
But how can an entire people avert its eyes from the horrors it is committing in its backyard, with no camp remaining that will cry out against them? How can such a brutal war go on and on without any opposition within Israeli society?
The Zionist left, which always wants to feel good about itself and consider itself enlightened, democratic and liberal, needs to remember that one day it will ask itself, or be asked by others: Where were you when it all happened? Where? You were still sobering up? It’s time for that to end, because it’s already getting late. Very late.
GazaThe moral bankruptcy of the West is no longer a metaphor or a figure of speech. It’s a reality. It’s a reality that’s confirmed every day, wherever you look.
This West, with its incessant lessons in good governance hammered into the world’s ears through grand speeches, its doxa of self-righteousness, its beacon of civilization handing out good and bad points to obedient states or those who dare to raise their heads, has just demonstrated, in the space of a few years, all its hypocrisy, all its spinelessness, leading irreparably to its bankruptcy.
Firstly, in its calamitous management of Covid-19 and the many deceptions and untruths repeated ad nauseam by the media, the fallout from which will continue to affect the most gullible for years to come. Then, in the war that NATO has in fact been fomenting for a long time and is waging against Russia through the Ukraine and its pompous president. And now in its abject support for the colony called ‘Israel’, denounced for decades by numerous NGOs and activists who have been on the ground to bear witness to the odious apartheid system perfected by the Zionist regime against the indigenous population. All these political leaders and their servile entourage have proved to be impostors, manipulators, swindlers and often as corrupt as they are corrupting.
These last three major events in the convulsions of a sick world, one after the other, bear witness to the imposture of a system that is collapsing before our very eyes, largely because its political leaders, whose probity was supposed to be exemplary, have proved to be champions in every category in their propensity to lie, distort facts and cheat in every possible way, and what’s more, in an increasingly outspoken manner, having taken justice hostage and the public for idiots incapable of discerning between truth and deception. Fortunately, against these ill winds, there are still a few people of integrity and activity, who do their investigative work as it should be done, in order to disentangle truth from falsehood, without succumbing to the multiple advantages offered to them to divert them from their task. But our government thugs ignore them, when they don’t hunt them down and leave them to rot in prison, like Julian Assange who revealed what compromises them.
The conclusion for Western citizens is therefore bitter: it’s our governments and their system, not those appointed by our governing bodies, who are on the wrong side of history and are dragging us down with them. It is our governments and their systems that are the examples we must never follow. It’s our governments, their systems and the institutions they have set up to control everything that doesn’t belong to them, but which they covet by any means, including the most unworthy, the most brutal, the most unjust, that must be overthrown, because they are the absolute barbarians in their ways and practices with our peers. And when Western leaders talk about the axis of evil, pointing the finger at others, it’s definitely themselves they’re talking about. The very people who will have to take the initiative to depose them, willingly or by force!
As for the most urgent situation that should mobilize us all, so many innocent lives are being sacrificed before our very eyes, how can we add to all that has already been written on the ongoing Palestinian drama, without falling into repetition and duplication? The news floods us every day, every hour, with its unbearable stories. To the point of reaching the unspeakable… when words can no longer say… when words fail… when they choke in our throats with impotence, unable to translate the desolation, suffering and death that lurk at every moment, every blink of an eyelid, thanks to the murderous complicity of our governments. Shouldn’t we step back and take a cooler, more detached look at the situation, and ask ourselves what authorizes such crimes, without most of our political and media leaders, who are usually so quick to deliver their sentences from the heights of their certainties when no one asks them anything? And to begin with, don’t we have to point out here, perhaps more than anywhere else, the incalculable number of lies that have been told about this whole tragic story, right from the start? Should we not point out the countless falsifications that have been propagated by the conniving media, which have fed a story riddled with deception – and continue to do so, shamelessly? Shouldn’t we be taking apart piece by piece an affabulation that has been presented to us as ‘truth’, when all the clues and testimonies prove the opposite of what we’re being told?
In reality, historic Palestine is the truth, while the Israeli colony is a delusion, an invention, a virtual projection. And it’s to this truth that we must return. We need to reconcile ourselves with geography and history. And to abandon once and for all all the misleading and fallacious narratives that turn a so-called divine promise, which everyone can interpret in their own way, into a tangible reality on which to base the life and evolution of a people.
We in the West are collectively bankrupt! Our lofty principles, our fine words, our erudite and convoluted texts, our complex articles of law and our pointed law that we want to impose on all nations in the name of our ‘universal values’ are nothing but hot air, the inanity of which the peoples of the world are discovering and verifying every day through the inadequacy between what we proclaim loud and clear, and our variable-geometry actions during our interventions. And the more time passes, the more we are seen as liars, profiteers and impostors. Unable to apply the law and justice we pride ourselves on, when they don’t suit us. A permanent double standard. Without the slightest coherence. We are in constant contradiction. We respect neither our words nor our writings. Nor our partners, of course. We lie, we cheat, we bias constantly. We have no honor, no dignity. We deny ourselves again and again. And we think we can continue to get away with it. Well thought-out. Well-oiled. But our only compass, our only obsession, is to maximize profits… whatever the cost, including human lives, when in the eyes of the powerful few who control this deadly system, they are worth nothing. Is one life worth another? In their eyes, of course not! Whatever they may say, a white supremacist’s life is worth much more, infinitely more than the life of any swarthy person, condemned from the start.
Gaza
A bloodless people has been fighting for nearly a century for its land, its rights and its dignity, in the name of justice. We look on, multiply empty and useless declarations, and think that this situation can continue as long as our military powers are in control and guarantee our security. Well, that’s the end of it! Whether you accept it or not, things will never be the same again as they were before the armed revolt of the Gazan resistance factions united under the banner of Hamas. The settlement ‘Israel’ will never again be what it thought it was and projected for itself. Despite its victorious declarations, it will not recover from the fateful blows of determined Palestinian resistance. And in the process, the collective West, which for decades supported the deceptive myth of Israel’s “right to exist” and never forced it to comply with UN Resolutions, will also collapse. The axis of resistance will gain ground and numbers, and the Atlanticist forces that thought they were invincible will be defeated. Like the Israeli army. The wheel turns, history goes on and doesn’t repeat itself. Back home, the mess will be such that the far-right, always on the lookout to re-establish a new order after a troubled period, will be voted in by crowds disoriented and lost from having believed in a promising future that will not have kept its promises, since these were nothing but illusions, lies and betrayals by those who used them to rise to power and stay there. And perhaps a few will then remember that promises are only binding on those who believe them… and will have plenty of time to ponder the lessons and take the measure of the change that lies ahead.
In the meantime, while the illusionists who distract us here in our still somewhat unspoiled latitudes quibble about which words to use and which not to use in declarations that nobody listens to or takes seriously anymore, the real resistance fighters over there long ago realized that they had to rely solely on themselves and their ability to fight against our failing but still well-armed states. And since the West only hears the language of force, they have organized themselves accordingly. They have patiently armed themselves, trained and hardened themselves for what lies ahead. The fight will be tough, severe and no-holds-barred. They know this and are ready to give their lives. And they give it… convinced that, in the end, victory will be theirs.
We no longer have that capacity. We no longer have that inner strength. We no longer have that determination. We think that our words and a few peaceful demonstrations – of course! – are enough. We’re at the end of civilization, busy with our leisure, our individual well-being, our futile distractions, our ego-centric interests, our extra day off, our few fewer wrinkles, our pension plans, our ‘coached’ self-fulfilment. We no longer have the slightest notion of solidarity. Nor the slightest capacity for revolt. We were fooled by the crooks at Covid, who then supported the Nazi party in Kiev, and are now fuelling the genocide in Gaza, which has us numb without standing up to them as we should. Our struggles are at the margins, on the periphery of the essential. To the point where we no longer know who we are: man or woman? We still imagine ourselves to be the center of the world, envied by all those who would dream of joining our lands. But given the opportunity and the right conditions, most of these poor wretches would like nothing more than to stay at home, with their families, their customs and their cultures, which often have nothing to envy to ours.
Palestine: settlers storm the Al-Aqsa mosque again …
A few years ago, I wrote that the countdown to the end of Israeli colonial rule had begun. But before it did, the pain and agony would be terrible, no doubt culminating in the destruction of the al-Aqsa Mosque in favor of the rebuilding of the Zionist Temple… and would be the detonator of the great overthrow. We’re almost there. While all eyes are focused on the horrors in the Gaza Strip, the racist settlers are lashing out with impunity at what’s left of the West Bank, and the stranglehold on al-Aqsa Mosque is tightening dangerously. The deadline is approaching. The world will be turned upside down and the current order of things will never be the same again. The Knesset has just voted by a large majority against the establishment of any Palestinian state. At least things are clear. But, contrary to what they believe, the settlement ‘Israel’ and its deleterious ramifications will be wiped out and swallowed up by the forces of the axis of resistance, for whom the red line has been crossed. And our states, the hodgepodge of technocrats and zealous civil servants who unconditionally support this suicidal madness, may well be swept away by this hurricane.
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
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.
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.
Support our work: https://democracynow.org/give We continue to look at the International Court of Justice’s interim ruling in South Africa v. Israel with Stockton University professor Raz Segal and human rights lawyer Diana Buttu. We discuss Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the ruling, the role of the United States in stymying international action and more. We also hear more from ICJ president Joan Donoghue’s delivery of the ruling, including the court’s acknowledgement of the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe
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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