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shibboleth
You cant compare it. The Palestinians have endured a century of oppression and injustice. Gaza is the largest prison in the world and has been for decades. Thousands of Palestinian hostages are detained in Israel, many of whom are young children. Israel has stated it will end this conflict – and will do so in the only way it knows, by systematic extermination. Last century, another national and ideology attempted the same and was repulsed and defeated. It is incumbent and essential we do the same now.
What is worth pointing out also is that Gaza, itself, is a huge refugee camp:
During the 1948 Palestine war and more specifically the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled or were expelled to the Gaza Strip.[38] By the end of the war, 25% of Mandatory Palestine’s Arab population was in Gaza, though the Strip constituted only 1% of the land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip#1948%E2%80%931959:_All-Palestine_government
So basically you have Israel that ethnically cleansed the native population in 1948, pushed many of them into a crowded Gaza; since then Israel has occupied them, waged invasions multiple times, put a harsh blockade on these refugees – and now Israel wages a war of genocide against this refugee camp.
And then they wonder why groups like Hamas emerge?!
If this is not the epitome of evil, what is?
I don’t think people understand that, Jack – despite the information being widely available. They are unable or unwilling to process what has happened and to compare it to their own situation. It is not dissimilar to having an abusive parent who is exposed as a sadistic, brutal paedophile; the first reaction is one of denial, which often persists. To confront the truth is simply too painful. Try parking in front of someone’s driveway in England and you will find trouble. Imagine then expelling the residents at gunpoint, stealing their possessions and installing your own family in their house. And you have the Police and Army supporting you. It ain’t right under any measure. You know it, I know it and everybody else knows it too – but some are complicit in their silent support.
What is clear is the sense of impotency in the ordinary man and woman, to influence in any small way, the conduct of people whom they trusted to represent their views. When complicity in genocide is so apparent within the British parliamentary system and the Establishment, the feeling of helplessness in the face of impunity and dishonest propaganda is greatly exaggerated. What is clear, politicians will not stop this genocide – but ordinary people can and have done so in Britain before.
Fifty years ago, half a dozen ordinary men stopped a genocide on the other side of the world with a peaceful, principled protest and in doing so, saved thousands of innocent lives – people whom they had no previous connection and owed no allegiance other than solidarity between men.
Not far from me is another aircraft factory who supply fighter jets and armaments to many countries that are used against civilian populations predominately in the Middle East. Half a century on, the only principle that matters is profit.
These are true heroes. Just look how history remembers their incredible courage. If you haven’t seen this before, please take the time to have a watch. Nae Paseran.
I was just checking out the reviews of some books on Amazon, one of which was a book by Norman Finkelstein entitled Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom (published in 2018), and in the first (lengthy) review it said the following:
His objective, he writes, is to refute the ”Big Lie” -ie the “official consensus” that Israel acts in “self-defence” — by “exposing each of the little lies”.
“In the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead” Finkelstein writes, “as many as three hundred human rights reports were issued”. These overwhelmingly gave the lie to Israeli hasbara (propaganda). For instance, in a chapter examining the often unthinkingly-accepted Israeli claim that Hamas used civilians as “human shields”, Finkelstein quotes Amnesty International’s categorical exoneration of Hamas and other Palestinian fighters on this charge:
“In the cases investigated by Amnesty International of civilians killed in Israeli attacks, the deaths could not be explained as resulting from the presence of fighters shielding among civilians, as the Israeli Army generally contends. In all of the cases investigated by Amnesty International of families killed when their homes were bombed from the air by Israeli forces, for example, none of the houses struck was being used by armed groups for military activities.”
Amnesty did, however, find ample evidence of the use of human shields by Israeli troops.
__________________And from the little (so far) I’ve read of Amnesty’s latest report, the IDF/Israel have been doing the same again since October 7th last year – ie lying through their nasty rotten evil teeth to justify bombing schools and hospitals etc where civilians are sheltering – as I’m sure just about everyone who follows Craig concluded a long time ago. As I said in a recent post – it having just occured to me – surely the only way the IDF would be able to determine if Hamas were in a given location – a school, for example – would be by a drone, or drones, and if that’s the case, then they must have footage and, as such, proof and evidence that Hamas WERE in said location (had a command and control center or whatever in said location), and yet the IDF/Israel have never ONCE made such footage public as far as I am aware (and I’m pretty sure I would be if they had), which of course you WOULD do if you had such footage/evidence, AND do so quite regularly.
I posted this yesterday in the comments section of Craig’s current article, but I thought I’d post it on here as well as it amounts to a comprehensive account/compilation of just how evil Israel is:
Just came across this on JVL’s website, posted yesterday – i.e. an article in Haaretz published a couple of days ago. The following is from the JVL introduction:
« Israeli historian Lee Mordechai has compiled a massive archive of material called “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War” which Ha’aretz says “constitutes the most methodical and detailed documentation in Hebrew (there is also an English translation) of the war crimes that Israel is perpetrating in Gaza. It is a shocking indictment comprised of thousands of entries relating to the war, to the actions of the government, the media, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli society in general.” »
And here’s a link direct to the Haaretz piece:
« A Massive Database of Evidence, Compiled by a Historian, Documents Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza
A woman with a child is shot while waving a white flag . Starving girls are crushed to death in line for bread. A cuffed 62-year-old man is run over, evidently by a tank. An aerial strike targets people trying to help a wounded boy. A database of thousands of videos, photos, testimonies, reports and investigations documents the horrors committed by Israel in Gaza.
by Nir Hasson, Ha’aretz »
But it’s all just Israel defending itself, as our political masters keep telling us.
Susan Abdulhawa’s address at Oxford University last week. Highly recommended.
Re my 11.25 post a couple of days ago (up the page a tad), isn’t it funny how in past conflicts Israel has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields but bomb them anyway, and that Hamas just go on doing the same again and again. Will they NEVER learn!
Or could it be that Israel is spouting complete and utter B/S so as to justify blowing women and children and the elderly and disabled and sick and non-combatents to bits.
Allan Howard
Exactly and from what I know there have not been 1 single incident where a palestinans fighter somehow have, against someones will, taken that indivudlal, in effect hostage, and used that inidivudal as a human shield. Still media, politicians to this day claim that this is what palestinians do and the reason why so many are killed in Gaza. It is such cynical so evilly corrupt argument.
As Norman Finkelstein said years ago:
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN:Well, the question is whether or not there is a significant difference between what Israel does and what the Palestinians do, apart from the fact that Israel does it in a much higher proportion than Palestinians. If you indiscriminately fire on a civilian population, which Israel routinely does, under international law — and here I can quote the president of Tel Aviv University, Yoram Dinstein, who’s one of the leading international experts on these matters; he says, “There’s no difference whatsoever between intentionally targeting civilians and indiscriminately firing into a civilian crowd.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2006/6/29/aipac_v_norman_finkelstein_a_debate
Ana from The Young Turks also had a good argument on this topic:
Video: https://www.instagram.com/todaywithjulius/reel/CzDyFq5rzN_/Besides, for all the talk about palestinians, allegedly having this or that base in civilian areas, meanwhile, in reality, Israel’s military HQ lies in Tel Aviv right in the middle of civilian population/buildings:
https://x.com/JanieceTurner/status/1395491586377756681
But of course that is nothing that western msm ever bring up or considering to be an example of human shielding by Israel.American jewish actor Wallace Shawn speak specificially about the evil committed by Israel:
Video: https://x.com/RyLiberty/status/1886414989470396746
As he said in the link, the nazis (like most perpetrators of evil crimes) tried to keep their crimes a secret, Israel however boast about their atrocities, openly!:‘Demonically evil’: US actor Wallace Shawn compares Israel’s actions in Gaza to Nazi Germany
‘It’s worse, because they kind of boast about it. Hitler had the decency to try to keep it secret,’ says 81-year-old actor and playwright
It’s disgusting, Jack. This morning, the third prisoner exchange, Herzog calls the treatment of the three released Israelis “a crime against humanity” as they appear evacuated and malnourished. Much media amplification as usual, but no consideration of who was responsible for the lack of food and basic sanitary conditions in Gaza over the last 15 months? I’ve seen images of thousands of innocent dead Palestinian children whilst their neighbours on the other side of the prison fence watch and cheer. There can be no two-state solution with Israel as one party unless the Zionist entity is proscribed globally.
Finally, an article in the Guardian worth reading. Mark Smith. From another former diplomat and senior policy adviser in the F.O. Gaza is a genocide and the UK is complicit.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/09/uk-foreign-office-war-crimes-arms-gaza-yemen
Yes it is absurd, it is like Israel “forgot” that they put a food blockade on Gaza = obviously people are going to be malnourished and starve. The bombastic claims by Israel regarding the frail-looking israeli captvies also expose the racism of Israel. 1 israeli, that is malnourhished, is obviously worse than not just 60000 malnourished palestinians but also worse than 60000 killed palestinians. And the western media play along, the poor israeli captives are worthy of all sympathy while the hundreds of palestinians released by Israel that have suffered far worse treatment get no support.
As a rabbi explained:
At Goldstein’s funeral, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin claimed that even one million Arabs are “not worth a Jewish fingernail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Goldstein#Veneration_by_extremists
The whole israeli society needs to be deprogrammed from their ethnocentric/narcissistic/chauvinistic worldview.
Going back to my second post on this thread to Clark – re withholding your tax for moral and ethical reasons. Article in the Guardian tonight urging Americans to do just that.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/20/americans-government-taxes
machine-translation of a German (!) interview with Francesca Albanese.
Naturally this is the only decent German daily, JUNGE WELT.German-language original:
https://archive.is/ZyX2GI have to post the entire text here since for some time now archive.is won´t do machine-translated versions:
From: Issue of 01.03.2025 , page 1 (supplement) / weekend supplement
genocide in Palestine“If we are against it, we have to say so”
On the role of the international community in the Israeli genocide in Palestine. A conversation with Francesca Albanese
Interview: Fabian LinderYour work as UN Special Reporter since 2022 has been hampered in many ways, for example by a travel ban to Israel, which also affected your predecessors. During your visit to Germany, event organizers were deprived of rooms and you were accused of anti-Semitism. How do you deal with this?
What I have seen in Europe over the past 16 months has scared the crap out of me. Not as a special rapporteur, but as a European. Because if there is one thing I have always taken for granted, it is that in this part of the world I can think freely, that I can speak freely, that I am free to meet with others, that we have spaces where we can disagree and that people have a right to be heard by government. All of that has collapsed this year. When you see the security you enjoy in a system disappearing, you ask yourself what you are going to do next. When those who are supposed to protect me no longer protect me but come with a baton.
I have seen the German police beating children, young girls who are taking to the streets to protest against the crimes, to protest against the slaughter of children. For me, that is a sign that we are in a very dark place. We cannot afford to hold back. If we are against it, we must say so. Jewish organizations have been attacked in this country, Jewish people have been arrested and imprisoned. What is even more shameful is that they have been lectured about anti-Semitism.
What is needed to eliminate these grievances?
Where is the reason in people? Instead of behaving like parts of a machine, they can speak critically to what is presented to them and judge that a critical attitude towards the State of Israel because of the crimes it commits against the Palestinians is not anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is discrimination against Jewish people because they are Jews, just as discrimination against Palestinians because they are Palestinians is racism.
This is what we should be alarmed about as people and as a society. Instead, the government claims that criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic and people obey. This is normal in 2025 and is why I keep reminding myself of what Primo Levi (Italian, Jewish anti-fascist resistance fighter, Auschwitz survivor and writer, jW ) used to say: that there are few monsters in life. The great evil is committed because ordinary citizens do not recognize the atrocities that are being committed and become part of them. Primo Levi wondered from the darkness of the concentration camp what the people who lived in nice apartments or houses thought when they saw the camp.
My question to the German people is: do they see Palestinians as human beings or not? Is it normal that we saw the bodies of children hanging on the wall after the explosion? Is it normal that we saw parents carrying the bodies of their children in plastic bags? Is it normal that a child named Hind Rajab screamed and cried for help from the car where his dead relatives lay, spoke to an emergency operator who assured her that she would be rescued, but the girl was murdered by the Israeli army with 335 bullets, as were the Palestinian rescue team? Is it normal that Mohammed Bahar, a boy with Down syndrome, was killed by Israeli army dogs and the last words he had were to forgive the dog because it was not its fault? Is it normal that Palestinians are put in prisons that have been turned into torture centers and that the rapes of Palestinians are even shown on Israeli television?
There are Israeli podcasts where participants said that seeing these people die gave them strength. What kind of monsters have we become if this doesn’t shake us? If people don’t move in the face of this because they don’t see Palestinians as human beings, then they have learned absolutely nothing from the past.
In the context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Israel and other UN member states have been violating international law for decades. How does this affect that same international law?
Failure to stop a genocide that is being televised is very serious. It creates a sense of despair and illusion about the normative, preventive and remedial power of the legal order at the national level. When you have laws that are not enforced, everything weakens, including the ability to maintain law and order. You lead a society into chaos. You prepare society to live in lawlessness, where might makes right. It is no different at the international level. Even people who see international law as a tool for emancipation, to secure rights, may resort to means that are less peaceful than legal means.
So there is the element of the erosion of the power of the law. For Palestine, this is the final nail in the coffin of self-determination, after 50 years of hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of a political system that talks about peace in pursuit of statehood, while Israel continues to destroy any possibility for the Palestinians to exist as a people on what little land they have left on which to establish a state. The UN member states have been the custodians of this process. Look at where this hypocrisy has led.
It is also about a multilateral order that is confident in itself. Although the system is not perfect, we in the West in particular have benefited from it, have been protected from major wars – it is clear that we have been better off in the last 80 years than before. Unfortunately, we have taken it for granted.
How do you assess the role of the federal government?
The German government has legal obligations and what it is doing violates international law. So when I hear Chancellor Olaf Scholz denying that this is genocide and saying he thinks that assessment is inaccurate or inappropriate, then that is for the International Court of Justice, ICJ, to decide. The Chancellor is wrong when he says that it is not time to talk about genocide.
Now, when it comes to the crime of genocide, the ICJ speaks of a crime that must not only be punished, but also prevented or stopped. This is the obligation that the States Parties to the ICJ Statute have had since January 26, 2024 at the latest, when the ICJ recognized the possibility or risk that the rights of the Palestinians, which are protected by the Genocide Convention, could be violated. This means nothing other than that there is a plausible risk that genocide will be committed. In April, the ICJ also reminded the Federal Republic and other States Parties in the Nicaragua v. Germany case that they are obliged not to supply weapons to states that could commit not only genocide but also other crimes under international humanitarian law. And it is clear that Israel is committing crimes against civilians. Germany is acting contrary to its obligations under international law.
What does this mean for the United Nations?
They are just an assembly like the General Assembly. It is a platform, as we have seen in recent years. The Security Council was necessary but not sufficient. The Council declared the settlements and colonies illegal, but nobody stopped the colonies from expanding. Ultimately, it is not the United Nations that is the problem – it is the member states that are not abiding by international law. They have entered into international obligations and treaties. The United Nations should not be used as an excuse to distract from the responsibility of all member states.
US President Donald Trump wants to expel the inhabitants of Gaza and turn the coastal region into a “Riviera of the Middle East”.
It is clear that the United States has never cared much about international law. Regardless of what it says on the international stage, it has violated international law. When I heard about Trump’s comments, I really did not know what to think. We should not be having a discussion about it. Such plans are illegal and only mean that all of this – the forced displacement of the Palestinians, the ethnic cleansing, the lack of reparations for the crimes they suffered and the permanent violation of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination – becomes official US foreign policy.
Is this the new normal? Are we going to use this as a benchmark for our discussion? I don’t think it’s just a bluff. It’s a strategy. In Europe, we are being attacked by the US, if I take seriously the words of the US Vice President at the Munich “Security Conference”. He comes to lecture us about democracy. Now we understand how many people around the world have felt.
Europe should rethink its alliances in a new, multipolar order. It is time to break dependence on the United States, which has become too costly economically and politically. Perhaps we need to go through a period of austerity, and that is OK, because independence and freedom are more important than having more money to buy more goods.
A few days ago, Morocco announced a deal with the Israeli arms company Elbit. It can be assumed that Moroccan forces will also use these weapons in occupied Western Sahara. Two countries that have occupied foreign territory for decades and denied the population living there or displaced there the right to self-determination. How do you assess this increased cooperation, which aims to normalize relations with mutual recognition of the occupation?
This type of friendship has a very telling name in southern Italy that comes to mind when it comes to forming an alliance to justify each other’s crimes. It is unlawful and involves unlawful actions. The fact that there are more states engaging in unlawful activities does not make the wrong right, it only makes the number of wrongdoers greater.
That is why I say this trend must be stopped. There are many ways to stop it and I urge people to consider all the peaceful means at our disposal, including the most legal avenues, such as going to court. I do not believe that the conditions in Morocco are such that the king can be held accountable in domestic courts. So there should be an outcry against this in other countries. With other members of the Arab League or the Organization of the Islamic Conference, this kind of normalisation is the worst thing because it is again a partnership around unlawful activities, a permanent occupation that violates the right of self-determination of peoples – from Western Sahara to the occupied Palestinian territories.
In the context of Western Sahara, European countries, particularly Spain, maintain close trade relations with Morocco despite the occupation. EU courts have repeatedly declared trade agreements void in the past when they include occupied territories. Why does international law work in these cases and why not when it comes to Israel and the occupied territories?It is clearly the political system that continues to make Israel untouchable, and that should not be the case. We need to give civil society a clear idea of where the sectors are that should be investigated first. If norms are there and norms are being violated, then there are enforcement mechanisms of law. That is my toolbox as a lawyer. If our governments do not intervene, then the next stop is the courts. First national courts and if that does not work, there is a European Court of Human Rights.
The European Court of Human Rights has not yet heard a case on Palestine. I do not rule out that it could happen because it is about corporate responsibility. It is also beneficial for other countries because the European Court of Human Rights also looks at international law. The Court cannot simply avoid the fact that there are certain obligations that are permanent and international, so that they cannot be delegated. One of these is the right of Palestinians to self-determination, which is being violated by multinational corporations and the arms industry.
If that is maintained because it is being violated by European companies, for example, it can have a positive impact on the way all these companies and businesses are run in other parts of the world. Because the violation of the right of self-determination by private companies is very visible in other parts of the world. Think of colonialism in Congo. King Leopold may no longer rule there, but can the Congolese really control their resources? We should make sure that companies do not engage in illegal activities, which today clearly do not only involve the violation of children’s rights and women’s rights or environmental rights. The focus on this is often just a face-saving checklist. It is also about them respecting people’s right of self-determination.
There are other examples in the international community.
I am thinking of the nine states that launched an initiative in The Hague on January 30, the “Hague Group” (Namibia, South Africa, Malaysia, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Senegal, Honduras and Belize, jW ). They have decided to break off trade relations with Israel – that is, no buying from or selling to Israel’s arms industry and no transfer of military equipment. These are just a few, but the most urgent obligations of the international order. There are countries that I know for sure that are considering joining the group or are in the process of joining.
There are repeated attempts to prevent events at which you want to appear. How are you continuing to work in the face of adverse circumstances?
I know that many people are desperate, but I am not. Because the world has always been an unjust place for many, and now we see it unveiled. It can be seen in all its ugliness. Now is the time for all to see that.
That is why it is so important for me to continue to give lectures. Of course I feel insulted when the University of Munich or the Free University of Berlin betray me. But I know that they have become pawns in the hands of politicians and political interests. Ultimately, if I remain true to my commitment to have a grassroots approach, I cannot just say that to the Palestinians and Israelis. I owe it to the Germans, the Italians, the Danes and everyone else. Even if we have to sit on a meadow with our feet in the mud, I will be there, because the situation is so brutal and so extreme that we have to deal with the extreme.
All of the murders committed in Gaza by Israel since October 2023 are horrific. The use of 2,000lb bombs on civilian neighbourhoods, the deliberate shooting of women and children, starvation and destruction of hospitals and medical facilities. And then the killing of paramedics and other medical staff. The torture of doctors held captive in Israeli prisons.
The killing of paramedics by the IDF this week was equally horrific and nauseating – but the lies perpetrated by Israel and the disposal of the bodies and ambulances in shallow graves is way beyond the line for designating this country as a rogue state and a danger to the world. There cannot be a two state solution; Israel must be disbanded and returned to the Palestine people. I’m sure America can absorb the population of Israel in one of their midwestern States and once the criminal trials transit through The Hague, hopefully the Jewish people can live in peace in their new home uncontaminated by Zionism.
What we are witnessing is worse than what the Nazis perpetrated on Jews in WWII or in the killing fields of Cambodia with the Khmer Rouge. Perhaps we have to go back to the Crusades to find a realistic comparison. Not much has changed since then for the indigenous Arabs.
Our government is just as complicit as the USA and other ‘allies’ who continue to arm Israel and provide military and intelligence support to enable atrocities like the above on a daily basis. I’d be really interested to hear from those who may have some suggestions. How we can bring our government down and call GE with no political party participation whatsoever, for example. How we can blockage US military bases and stop the firms manufacturing and exporting arms, munitions and military equipment to Israel and the USA.
I fear the UN and ICC have become impotent. It’s past time for the UN to demand the removal of all Israeli personnel from Gaza and the West Bank with immediate effect? And sanctions? Not a chance – unless we can mobilise and act accordingly – without violence – to bring this country to a complete standstill for as long as it takes to do the right and proper thing to proscribe Israel and dissolve the Balfour agreement without delay.
Autopsies conducted on 15 Palestinian paramedics and civil emergency responders who were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza show they were shot in the upper body with “intent to kill”, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, which is demanding an international investigation into the attack.
The killings took place in the southern Gaza Strip on 23 March, days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory, and sparked international condemnation.
The results of the postmortems join a growing body of evidence that sharply contradicts Israel’s account of the incident, including video footage that shows the vehicles were travelling with headlights and flashing red lights that identified them, with personnel wearing hi-vis vests, at the time they were fired on.
Germany, one of Israel’s closest backers in the EU, called for an urgent investigation into the incident on Monday. “There are very significant questions about the actions of the Israeli army now,” the foreign ministry spokesperson Christian Wagner said after the video footage emerged.
“An investigation and accountability of the perpetrators are urgently needed,” he said, adding that a full investigation of the incident would be “a question that ultimately affects the credibility of the Israeli constitutional state”.
Those killed included eight Red Crescent staff, six members of the Gaza civil defence agency and one employee of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
The bodies were later found buried near the site of the shooting in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah city, in what the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs described as a mass grave.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) initially said its soldiers “did not randomly attack” any ambulances, insisting they fired on “terrorists” that were approaching in “suspicious vehicles”.
Lt Col Nadav Shoshani said troops had opened fire on vehicles that had no prior clearance from Israeli authorities and had their lights off, a statement contradicted by video recovered from the mobile phone of one of those killed.
The IDF later changed its story and conceded its earlier account had been “mistaken”. It claimed on Sunday that at least six of the medics were linked to Hamas, but has provided no evidence. None of those killed were armed.
It said on Monday that its initial investigation into the killings had shown that the incident occurred “due to a sense of threat”, and claimed six Hamas militants had been in the vicinity.
The Israeli army chief, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir ordered a more in-depth investigation into the attack after completion of the initial one.
The president of the Red Crescent in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Younis al-Khatib, told journalists in Ramallah: “There has been an autopsy of the martyrs from the Red Crescent and civil defence teams. We cannot disclose everything we know, but I will say that all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill.”
He called for an international investigation into the killings, which the IDF has separately announced it was looking into.
“Why did you hide the bodies?” Khatib asked of the Israeli forces involved in the attack. “We call on the world to form an independent and impartial international commission of inquiry into the circumstances of the deliberate killing of the ambulance crews in the Gaza Strip.
“It is no longer sufficient to speak of respecting the international law and Geneva convention. It is now required from the international community and the UN security council to implement the necessary punishment against all who are responsible.”
In the past 18 months of war Israeli forces have conducted attacks that have killed hundreds of medical workers and the staff of NGOs and UN organisations, including foreign nationals working in Gaza. Six members of World Central Kitchen, including the Briton James Kirby, died in a sustained Israeli attack on their clearly marked vehicles.
Human rights organisations have long accused Israel of a culture of impunity with few soldiers ever facing justice.
A Palestinian journalist was killed and several others wounded on Monday, when Israel struck a media tent near Nasser hospital in Khan Younis.
According to the Palestinian Civil Defence, an organisation affiliated with Hamas’s interior ministry, two people – Helmi al-Faqawi and a civilian, Yousef al-Khazandar – were killed when the Palestine Today agency’s tent was struck.
Israel’s military razed huge swathes of land inside the perimeter of Gaza and ordered troops to turn the area into a “kill zone” where anybody who entered was a target, according to testimony by soldiers who carried out the plan.
Israeli combatants said they were ordered to destroy homes, factories and farmland roughly 1km (0.6 miles) inside the perimeter of Gaza to make a “buffer zone”, with one describing the area as looking like Hiroshima.
The testimonies are some of the first accounts by Israeli soldiers to be published since the latest war started in October 2023 after Hamas’s attack on Israel. They were collected by Breaking the Silence, a group founded in 2004 by Israeli veterans who aim to expose the reality of the military’s grip over Palestinians. The Guardian interviewed four of the soldiers who corroborated the accounts.
Titled “The Perimeter” and published on Monday, the report said the stated purpose of the plan was to create a thick strip of land that provided a clear line of sight for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to identify and kill militants. “This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished,” it said.
Soldiers were “given orders to deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighbourhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions”, the report added.
The ultimate result, however, was the creation of “a death zone of enormous proportions”, the report said. “Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland, a strip of land eradicated in its entirety.”
It stretches along the frontier with Israel, from the Mediterranean coast in the north to the strip’s south-east corner next to Egypt.
A sergeant in the combat engineers corps said that once an area in the perimeter “was pretty much empty of any Gazans, we essentially started getting missions that were about basically blowing up houses or what was left of the houses”.
This was the routine, they said: “Get up in the morning, each platoon gets five, six, or seven locations, seven houses that they’re supposed to work on. We didn’t know a lot about the places that we were destroying or why we were doing it. I guess those things today, from my perspective now, are not legitimate. What I saw there, as far as I can judge, was beyond what I can justify that was needed.”
Some soldiers testified that commanders viewed the destruction as a way of exacting revenge for the 7 October attacks by Hamas, which sparked the current war when Palestinian militants killed hundreds and kidnapped Israeli and foreign citizens.
While Israel says the war is targeted at Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, is fighting allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the international criminal court, including starvation of civilians and “extermination”.
The IDF did not respond to a request for comment on the report and combatants’ accounts.
One of the soldiers who provided testimony to Breaking the Silence on condition of anonymity said their unit was told to shoot anyone in the perimeter area on sight. The mentality in their unit, they said, was that there was no such thing as a “civilian” and everyone who walked into the perimeter would be considered a “terrorist”.
Rules on who can be killed on sight appeared to vary for different units, according to the accounts.
A sergeant in the armoured corps said that in 2024 he was given “shoot to kill” orders for any male adult who entered the perimeter. “For women and children, [the order was] ‘shoot to drive away’, and if they come close to the fence, you stop [them]. You don’t kill women, children, or the elderly. ‘Shoot to drive away’ means a tank fire,” he said.
But a captain in an armoured corps unit who operated in Gaza earlier in the war, in November 2023, described the border area as a “kill zone”, saying: “The borderline is a kill zone. Anyone who crosses a certain line, that we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death.”
Another captain said there were “no clear rules of engagement at any point” and described a “generally massive use of firepower, especially, like with tanks”. They added: “There was a lot of instigating fire for the sake of instigating fire, somewhere between [wanting to produce] a psychological effect and just for no reason.
“[We] set out on this war out of insult, out of pain, out of anger, out of the sense that we had to succeed. This distinction [between civilians and terrorist infrastructure], it didn’t matter. Nobody cared. We decided on a line … past which everyone is a suspect.”
How Palestinians would know they were crossing an invisible line was not made clear to them, the soldiers said. “How they know is a really good question. Enough people died or got injured crossing that line, so they don’t go near it.”
Before the latest war, Israel had previously established a buffer zone inside Gaza that extended to 300 metres, but the new one was intended to range from 800 to 1,500 metres, according to the testimonies.
Satellite imagery has previously revealed the IDF destroyed hundreds of buildings that stood within 1km to 1.2km of the perimeter fence, in a systematic demolishing act that rights groups say may constitute collective punishment and should be investigated as a war crime. Last week, Israel’s defence minister said the military would seize “large areas” in Gaza in a fresh offensive.
The perimeter accounts for just over 15% of the Gaza Strip, which is entirely off-limits to Palestinian residents. It represents 35% of the strip’s entire agricultural land, according to the report.
Despite shoot-to-kill orders, a warrant officer stationed in northern Gaza said Palestinians kept going back to the area “again and again after we fired at them”.
The officer said the Palestinians appeared to want to pick edible plants growing in the area. “There was hubeiza [mallow] there because no one went near there. People are hungry, so they come with bags to pick hubeiza, I think.”
Some got away with their food and their lives, the officer said. “The thing is that, at that point, the IDF really is fulfilling the public’s wishes, which state: ‘There are no innocents in Gaza’.”
In an interview with the Guardian, the same officer said the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 made many Israelis feel the “need to pick up a gun”.
“A lot of us went there, I went there, because they killed us and now we’re going to kill them,” they said. “And I found out that we’re not only killing them – we’re killing them, we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/07/israel-military-gaza-perimeter-land-testimony-report
Further reading on the IDF’s Perimeter policy.
https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/inside/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Perimeter_English-2.pdf
Omri Boehm´s planned then cancelled Buchenwald speech on the occasion of the liberation of this KZ 80 years ago.
machine-translation from GermanThe emphasis via paragraph structure are mine.
“(…)
The Jewish-American historian Yosef Chaim Yerushalmi was one of the leading experts on the history of Jewish memory. His classic work, “Zakhor,” published in German in 1988 under the title “Zachor – Remember!”, ends with a question: “What if the opposite of forgetting is not remembering, but justice?”Yerushalmi himself never answered the question until his death in 2009, nor did he bother to explain what he meant by it. But it is a good starting point for reflecting on the meaning and power of remembrance at a time when this remembrance is facing new, unbearable challenges. According to Yerushalmi, there is a sharp distinction in Jewish tradition between history and memory.
History is written in the third person and claims to convey factual knowledge about the past. Memory, on the other hand, can only be narrated in the first person, whether in the singular or the plural. It is neither merely factual nor merely descriptive; rather, it makes a claim on us, it is a call to action. The essential difference, therefore, is that history is truly about the past, while memory is ultimately directed toward the present and the future. And this is precisely why it is possible to remember—and yet forget.
In other words: the opposite of forgetting is not only knowledge of the past, but also future compliance with the obligations imposed on us by that past.
The Highest Moral Goal
This insight allows us to resolve a contradiction that seems to lie at the heart of Jewish life and reflection. On the one hand, Judaism is known to be intensely concerned with memory; on the other hand, it stands in a prophetic tradition that is primarily interested in the future, or even in the utopian and ideal. But this is not a contradiction at all. For when the prophets repeatedly demand, “Remember!”—Zakhor!—they actually want us never to forget that we can only do justice to the past if we strive for justice in the future.
I would like to take this a step further, because I consider Yerushalmi’s thoughts here to be only the beginning. The highest goal that the prophets showed us is not justice, but peace. Martin Buber, for example, saw this clearly.
However, Hermann Cohen expressed it most clearly when he explained that justice cannot be the highest moral goal because it depends on consideration and judgment and is therefore based on incompleteness and divisions. In contrast, peace in Jewish tradition represents what harmony was for the Greeks: the perfect or the whole. The word “shalem” means “whole” in Hebrew and is the origin of the Hebrew word for peace: “shalom.” Peace completes justice by universalizing it. Could it be, then, that the opposite of forgetting is neither merely remembering nor justice, but peace? In these reflections, Cohen had in mind not only the prophets, but also the central ideal of the Enlightenment, to which Kant dedicated his most influential work: “Perpetual Peace.”
To Heraclitus’s teaching that “war is the father of all things”—a view traditionally convincing to all those who call themselves “realists”—the Hebrew prophets and Kant propose a radical alternative. For them, the ideal of peace, rather than the supposed necessity of war, is the origin of human relationships, human politics, and human law.
Kant, of course, knew just as well as the prophets before him that the reality of our world is brutal. But that was precisely the point. His point was that, in the midst of brutal or, as he wrote, “barbaric” reality, we must submit ourselves to laws whose ideal is peace, because only in this way can it be ensured that peace remains possible despite everything. #
The path of a humanity that does not remain true to the ideal of peace, Kant warned, inevitably leads to annihilation. When we remember the horrors of Buchenwald today, when we revisit the unbearable images captured here when the camp was liberated by American troops, and when we look into the eyes of the last survivors still among us—some of whom can be seen in these very images—I am reminded of Kant’s warning and the teachings of the prophets. Can we ever prevent forgetting if remembering is not accompanied by an unwavering commitment to peace?
There are, of course, other, competing Jewish traditions of remembrance. An alternative tradition begins with a demand that is all too familiar to us today: “Remember (zakhor) what Amalek did to you” and “exterminate his seed.” This tradition or peace – which do we choose? And at what price?
Complete Dehumanization
“Toward Perpetual Peace” was published in 1795 and seemed completely utopian during Kant’s lifetime. “Good in theory, but useless in practice,” was the well-known saying of his “realist” opponents even then. The core ideas of the text were nevertheless incorporated into international law after the Second World War, in response to the devastation of the war and the images from the concentration camps.
In the photographs that emerged from Buchenwald—and from Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, and so many other places—humanity looked in the mirror and discovered that it was not only involved in an unleashed war and mass murder. The fanatical anti-Semitism that had led to Nazi Germany’s attempt to systematically exterminate the Jews was also an attack on the very idea of human dignity.
Even then, the idea of human dignity was not new, but through these images it was finally recognized as a central foundation for our shared life on earth and—something often overlooked—incorporated for the first time into national constitutions and international conventions.
The achievement of documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Basic Law lies in the fact that they make it clear that the rule of law and international law are not arbitrary enactments, but arise from a moral obligation. After atrocities like those at Buchenwald, a previously seemingly completely utopian idea became the core idea of a development whose goal was to protect people not only as citizens by their states, but also from their states – even when they are not citizens at all – like the Jews here in Buchenwald.
In other words: By incorporating human dignity into law, humanity refused to recognize war – the ultimate contradiction of every ideal – as the father of all things. Instead, it chose to inscribe a great “Never again” into human existence by deriving the binding nature of our laws from the ideals of dignity and peace. As the strongest expression of our obligation to the future because of our obligation to the past.
It is sometimes claimed that the phrase “never again” can be formulated in two ways. One is simply never again. The other is – in light of the genocidal anti-Semitism that culminated in the “Final Solution” – “never again for us.”
According to this, the future task is to ensure that Jews are never again threatened with annihilation.
It is time to abandon this distinction.
“Never again” is only valid in its universal form, and only then can it do justice to its specific formulation. Especially since a world in which only the Jews are to be spared the war of extermination they had to endure in the future is a world in which they too will not be spared further wars of extermination. A world in which a repetition of the horrors of Buchenwald remains possible is a world in which these horrors can be repeated everywhere – and can also affect Jews again. All the more so since antisemitism is, as we know, far from over.
Only an international community that commits to forever ruling out the possibility of unlimited wars is a community that can guarantee that the same crimes will not be repeated. When the brutal massacre of October 7 is mentioned these days, the cry is sometimes “Never again!”
Others look at the destruction and hunger in Gaza and say the same thing. If both are meant to be a comparison to the Holocaust, one is as misleading as the other. However, there is also a grain of truth in both statements.
Firstly, insofar as both point to the shocking fact that twice the complete dehumanization of societies was not prevented; secondly, insofar as both reveal that the international community, while divided by its various alliances, is united in its willingness to tolerate and sometimes even justify dehumanizing crimes that undermine the possibility of peace. Only an international community that would oppose this would be one that is truly committed to ensuring that a Buchenwald never happens again.
It is no exaggeration to say that today, on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald, the world is entering a new era. The United States, which liberated this camp, thus began a long-standing liberal-democratic alliance with Europe. Today, these same United States are turning away from their liberal European allies, as well as from the rule of law and international law, while Vladimir Putin is waging a brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.
This, in turn, is forcing the EU to rearm itself into a major military power in order to take its protection into its own hands. And while this is happening, right-wing populists everywhere on the Old Continent are enjoying unprecedented levels of support and are allying themselves with like-minded people around the world.
These European nationalists are extremely dangerous not necessarily because they deny their fascist and anti-Semitic roots. They are particularly dangerous because they claim to be the ones truly taking responsibility for the past, not despite, but precisely because of their contempt for the rule of law, international law, and the European Enlightenment.
We should warn loudly against these people – but at the same time, we should not forget to question ourselves. So that we – as the democratic left, the democratic right, and the democratic center – can be absolutely certain that we are a genuine alternative in the common fight against the nationalists. An alternative that unequivocally commits to the rule of law and international law.
An alternative that understands why we must resist the temptation emanating from neorealist doctrines that dismiss human dignity and peace as naive, noble lies and call for expanding Europe’s power at the expense of the rule of law. Doctrines of this kind will quickly take us from “never again” to “again.”
It’s not soberly realistic to overlook the wars of extermination from which ideals like human dignity and peace protect us. Therefore, it’s necessary, especially today, to remember Buchenwald. However, that’s not enough. We must also ensure that we never forget.
(…)”And this as contrast (first video) / addition:
John Mearsheimer provided 3 excerpts from his discussion on this issue with Glenn Greenwald.
Prof. John Mearsheimer: Why Israel’s Destruction of Gaza is “A Genocide”
13 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uypAZMwzJ9UProf. John Mearsheimer: Trump Pushing a “Radical Agenda”
13 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akSS1ZCaCFEProf. John Mearsheimer Condemns Trump Admin Speech Crackdowns
9 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqLuyAzsZjM“In recent weeks I’ve sat down to try and write about Gaza and, every time I steel myself to write about one atrocity, another atrocity is committed. Palestinian journalists have been burned alive, babies have frozen to death, medics have been executed and buried in mass graves, kids are being killed in their sleep. Meanwhile, in the US and Germany, speaking out about dead Palestinian babies can land you on a deportation list. Arguing that international human rights law should be respected can put you at risk of being snatched off the street and stuck in a detention centre.
I don’t know where to start and I don’t know what is really left to say at this point. After 18 months of endless carnage, it should be clear to everyone that this is not a war. That this is not self-defence. What is happening in Gaza is, quite simply, annihilation. A litany of genocide experts have stated this. Respected international organizations like Amnesty International have concluded that Israel is committing genocide – and yet our politicians are still funding this.
Palestinians aren’t just being exterminated with US-supplied bombs. The more insidious killer now is disease and starvation. On 2 March – more than a month ago – Israel cut off supplies to Gaza in an attempt to change the terms of the ceasefire agreement. Calling this an “aid blockade”, as headlines tend to do, doesn’t do justice to the horror of what is happening: this is not an “aid blockade” so much as it is a starvation campaign.
Gaza, after all, has been reduced to rubble; it’s not like there is food growing in the strip that people can rely on. An analysis of satellite imagery by the UN in November found that more than 90% of cattle had died and about 70% of land for crops in Gaza has been destroyed or damaged since the beginning of this iteration of the war in the territory.
Water is also being used as a weapon of war. In early March, a week after stopping any food or other humanitarian supplies from getting into Gaza, Israel cut off the electricity supply to Gaza’s main operational desalination plant. The situation now could not be more desperate. “Gaza is a killing field, and civilians are in an endless death loop,” the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Tuesday.
This is not an ‘aid blockade’ so much as it is a starvation campaign
Emboldened by Donald Trump and his visions of building hotels and casinos on top of these killing fields, Israel is not even trying to hide its aims any more. It wants to rid Gaza of Palestinians and annex the West Bank. And it will starve, kill and terrorize Palestinians until they “voluntarily” agree to leave en masse to somewhere like Sudan or Somalia – those being a couple of the countries the US and Israel have recently floated as potential relocation areas.“We will see to the general security in the Gaza Strip and will allow the realization of the Trump plan for voluntary migration,” Benjamin Netanyahu recently said. “This is the plan. We are not hiding this and are ready to discuss it at any time.”
The deputy parliament speaker Nissim Vaturi, meanwhile, recently went on Kol BaRama radio, to call for the Gazafication of the West Bank. “We need to separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza. We are being too considerate,” Vaturi said. “We will soon turn Jenin [in the West Bank] into Gaza,” he added.
If this is the first time you’ve seen this statement, by the way, it’s because it wasn’t covered by the same mainstream western outlets that have devoted thousands of words to asking if a college student saying “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a call for genocide. Although, to be fair, if the western media did cover every public incitement to genocide made by Israeli politicians and thought leaders, then there would be no space to cover anything else.
Rather than calling out these incitements, certain elements of the media seem keen to normalize the people making them. Last month, for example, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former defense minister, joined the ADL for a fireside chat in New York with CNN’s Bianna Golodryga. The international criminal court, let me remind you, has issued an arrest warrant for Gallant for war crimes. The court found “reasonable grounds” to believe Gallant and Netanyahu “bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”. CNN, I should note, has done some excellent reporting on Gaza. But for the network to sit down for a cozy “fireside chat” with Gallant – while Palestinian journalists are being burned alive, no less – is appalling.
Normally, when I write an opinion piece, it feels like I’m having a little tete-a-tete with the reader. But I don’t really know who I’m writing this piece for. If you’ve read up to here then there’s a good chance you already agree with me, that you’re already appalled by what’s happening and that you’re using your own voice as best you can. And if you are not devastated at this point, then there is simply no convincing you to care.
I have written a lot of op-eds where I’m essentially just begging people – including some of my colleagues in the western media – to give a damn about Palestinian suffering. To remember that Palestinians are humans too. To remember that starving civilians is a war crime, one which should not be sanitized with the passive voice and obfuscating language. To understand that this isn’t some distant foreign policy issue: this genocide is US-taxpayer funded. Meanwhile, unprecedented attempts to suppress free speech in the US on Palestine have turned this into a domestic issue.
I’m done begging people to care about Palestinians now. I’m writing this not because I hope to change any minds, but because the only power I have – the only power that many of us have – is to continually raise our voices and say that we do not consent to this.
“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this,” the journalist Omar El Akkad wrote. When that day comes, nobody can pretend they didn’t know.“
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/13/gaza-killing-starved
