Hamas released Romi Gonen, 24, kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. Emily Damari, 28, was kidnapped from her home in the Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Likewise Doron Steinbrecher, 31, a veterinary nurse, was taken from the same kibbutz. The delight and relief of their families are the delight and relief of all of us. Their kidnapping was a war crime, for which — among other things — Hamas leaders were indicted at the International Criminal Court.

The Palestinian hostages released by Israel need to be celebrated with just as much joy and fervor. 90 of them — 69 women and 21 children — had to wait an extra 8 hours for their freedom, while Israeli troops forbade displays of joy by their friends and relatives outside Ofer Prison, and even attacked them with flash bombs, and rubber-coated metal bullets.

Many of the Palestinians let go on Monday just after midnight were prisoners of conscience, jailed for social media posts just as they might have been in Russia or Saudi Arabia. Palestinians, being stateless and without citizenship, do not have the right to have rights. They have no right to free speech. The sort of idle expression of sentiment on Facebook that barely draws a yawn in the United States can mean years of confinement.

Al Jazeera (itself banned in Israel) reported that one of the Palestinian hostages released was journalist Rula Hassanein. Let us consider her case. The Committee to Protect Journalists explained that on March 19, Israeli military personnel — without providing any justification — detained Hassanein, an editor for the Ramallah-based Wattan Media Network, at her residence in the Al-Ma’asra neighborhood of Bethlehem in the Palestinian West Bank. She was manacled and hooded, and had her laptop and cell phone seized. She was then transferred to Damon Prison, near Haifa.

CPJ said that Hassanein appeared before the Judea military court, located in Ofer Prison northwest of Jerusalem, on March 25. She was charged with incitement on social media and supporting a proscribed organization deemed illegal under Israeli law.

Remember, she is a working journalist published in several regional newspapers. She was arrested for tweeting or retweeting her distress at the Israeli total war on Gaza. She did not do anything that would be punished with jail time in a democratic country. She didn’t present a clear and immediate danger of violence. She is the victim of a brutal foreign military occupation.

ICJ explained, “The health of Hassanein’s prematurely born daughter Elia, who suffers from a weak immune system and ulcers on her palms, feet, and mouth, has declined since her mother’s arrest as she was exclusively breastfed, according to those sources and medical reports, reviewed by CPJ. Hassanein gave birth last year to twins, Elia and Youssef, two months early due to health complications, and lost Youssef three hours after birth, those sources said.”

I just hope Elia, her daughter, is OK after so many months of separation from her mother.

Al Jazeera writes that another released Palestinian hostage, an 18-year-old girl, had also been arrested for her social media posts. It quotes her mother:

“I’ll hug her right away. Of course, I’ll hug her. At first, it’ll just be tears of joy…

“They accused her of incitement because of posts she wrote on Facebook,”

She called the charges “ridiculous.” And so they were.

Al Jazeera added, “The father of another young man who hasn’t yet been released told AFP his son was also arrested for social media activity.”

So some of the 90 let go today were guilty of using social media while Palestinian.

Since Israeli military and prison authorities routinely practice torture, some of those released bear physical and psychological scars that will haunt them the rest of their lives, no less than do the released Israeli hostages.

“Release,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024

The Israeli newspaper Arab 48 reported, “In media statements, the female prisoners spoke about the harsh conditions they endured in Damon Prison, including abuse, beatings, isolation, and humiliation, which exacerbated their suffering and added to the pain of imprisonment.”

The newspaper says that many of the women seemed feeble and unsteady as they got off the vehicles carrying them.

It should be remembered that large numbers of Palestinians are taken hostage by the Israeli military, which lodges no charges against them and provides them with no opportunity to defend themselves. That is why they are legitimately called “hostages” rather than prisoners. There is no due process.

Since American news outlets won’t mention any of these Palestinian hostages or their ordeal, let me at least give their names here from Al-Sharq. The transliteration is done by ChatGPT:

Walaa Khaled Fawzi Tanjeh
Nawal Mohammed Mahmoud Abd Fteihah
Rawda Mousa Abdel Qader Abu Ajamiya
Aseel Osama Omar Shahadeh
Tamara Moammar Hussein Abu Luban
Nafisa Rashid Fareed Zorba
Yasmin Abdul Rahman Rasheed Abu Sarour
Khaleda Kana’an Mohammed Jarrar
Jenin Mohammed Taha Amro
Fatima Nemer Mohammed Rimawi
Zahra Wahib Abdel Fattah Khadrajj
Fatima Mohammed Suleiman Saqr
Dalal Mohammed Suleiman Khoshib
Mona Ahmed Qasem Abu Hussein
Bushra Jamal Mohammed Taweel
Raida Janem Mohammed Abdel Majid
Rana Jamal Mohammed Eid
Marjana Mohammed Mustafa Heresh
Halima Faik Suleiman Abu Amara
Rola Ibrahim Abdel Rahim Hassanein
Balqees Issa Ali Zawahreh
Dohaa Azam Ahmed Al-Wahsh
Shaimaa Mohammed Abdel Jalil Rawajbeh
Salwa Atiyah Mahmoud Hamdan
Fatima Yousef Ali Al-Farakhneh
Roz Yousef Mohammed Khweis
Haneen Akram Mahmoud Al-Mas’aeid
Jihad Ghazi Ahmed Joudeh
Nidaa Ali Ahmed Zghaybi
Amal Ziyad Omar Shojaiya
Ayat Yousef Saleh Mahfouz
Ola Mahmoud Qasem Joudeh
Lubna Mazen Saleem Talalwah
Hadeel Mohammed Hussein Hijaz
Rasha Ghassan Mohammed Hijjawi
Wafaa Ahmed Abdullah Nemer
Zeina Majd Abdel Rahim Barbour
Naheel Kamal Mustafa Masalmeh
Tihani Jamal Abdel Ashour
Aya Omar Yousef Ramadan
Shaimaa Omar Yousef Ramadan
Israa Hader Ahmed Ghoneimat
Donia Ishtayeh Marouf Ishtayeh
Alaa Jadallah Nabhan Qadi
Khitam Aref Hassan Khabaybeh
Alaa Sameer Harb Abu Raheimeh
Aseel Mohammed Jamal Eid
Shatha Nawaf Abdel Jabbar Jarab’ah
Bara’a Hatem Hafez Foqaha
Saja Imad Saad Daraghmeh
Dania Saqr Mohammed Hanatsheh
Raghad Waleed Mahmoud Amro
Raghad Khader Deeb Mubarak
Al-Yamama Ibrahim Hassan Al-Hraynat
Ashwaq Mohammed Eyad Awad
Hanan Ammar Bilal Malwani
Eman Ibrahim Ahmed Zeid
Saja Zuheir Mohammed Al-Maadi
Israr Abdel Fattah Mohammed Al-Lahham
Maiser Mohammed Said Al-Faqih
Abeer Mohammed Hamdan Ba’ara
Samah Bilal Abdel Rahman Soof
Lateefa Khaled Ramadan Mashasha’
Margaret Mohammed Mahmoud Al-Ra’ee
Alaa Khaled Mohammed Saqr
Israa Mustafa Mohammed Berri
Lana Farouq Naeem Fawaleh
Tahreer Badran Badr Jaber
Abla Mohammed Othman Abdel Rasool
Fahmi Mohammed Fahmi Faroukh
Ahmed Waleed Mohammed Khashan
Jamal Ibrahim Salama Al-Atimeen
Ahmed Bashar Jumaa Abu Alya
Mohammed Anan Fawzi Bashkar
Ibrahim Sultan Ibrahim Zummar
Abdul Rahman Amjad Jameel Khedair
Maw’ed Omar Abdullah Al-Hajj
Essam Ma’moon Mohammed Abu Diab
Thaer Ayoub Rasheed Abu Sarah
Qasem Eyad Mohammed Ja’afreh
Yousef Jamal Eyad Al-Hraymi
Saeed Mazeed Saeed Saleem
Mahmoud Mohammed Dawood Al-Yawat
Firas Jihad Ahmed Al-Maqdisi
Abdul Aziz Mohammed Abdul Aziz Atauna
Fadi Bassam Mohammed Hindi
Osama Nasser Jubran Abduh Atayah
Ayham Ali Issa Jaradat
Adam Khalil Ibrahim Hadrah
Laith Muhammad Naji Kumail.

However, in Hebrew, this palindrome magic doesn’t hold up because the two “T” sounds in טֵבֵת come from two different letters: ט (tet) and ת (tav).

This begs the question: Why does the Hebrew alphabet have two letters for the same sound?

It turns out, they didn’t always sound identical! In ancient Hebrew, much like modern Arabic, these letters had distinct pronunciations:

ת (tav):

corresponds to the Arabic ت (tā) and has a, plain soft “T” sound like in the English word ‘top.’

ט (tet):

corresponds to the Arabic ط (ṭā) which has a heavy, emphatic “T” sound. It is pronounced with a deeper resonance, involving the throat and with more pressure on the tongue.

Over time, these subtle differences faded in most Hebrew dialects, merging the two sounds into one.

A great example is the Arabic word طَيِّب (ṭayyib), meaning “good” or “pleasant,” which parallels the Hebrew word טוֹב (tov) with the same meaning. Incidentally, it appears in our parsha this week – describing baby Moses:

“וַתֵּרֶא אֹתוֹ כִּי טוֹב הוּא”

“when she [his mother] saw how good/beautiful he was…” (Exodus 2:2)

Credit: ChatGPT

Both words not only share similar roots and meanings but also preserve the use of the emphatic “T” sound represented by ط in Arabic and ט in Hebrew, showing their shared Semitic roots.

The palindrome of Tevet symbolizes the desire for balance and harmony, much like the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of Israelis and Palestinians for this ceasefire to bring an end to the war on the Palestinians in Gaza, and the safe release of all the hostages.

But a palindrome symbolizes much more than a general wish for harmony and peace: you get what you give. If you give human rights and equality to all people living under your control, you get peaceful relations between different communities—even when they have vastly differing narratives. Benjamin Franklin summed up the connection between giving liberty and living in safety when he said:

Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Reprinted from The Times of Israel with the author’s permission

This principle was demonstrated on Friday when the International Development Committee (do we even have one of those?) issued a Report on the situation in Israel and Palestine.

The committee is not a court, and noted its lack of ability to render a legal verdict, but said: “In line with a growing list of experts, we believe that there is a plausible risk that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza may have included grave violations of international humanitarian law, which has given rise to accusations of genocide.”

They add, “this Report also calls on the Government to set out further details and a timeline for the recognition of a Palestinian state — a statement of intent to match the rhetoric of this and previous Governments. This recognition, alongside safety and security for Israel, are necessary for a sustainable and long-lasting peace.”

Although there are individual congressmen who might say such a sensible thing, I can’t imagine a whole committee of our US House of Representatives coming up with such language.

The Committee is entirely correct. As I pointed out in my book, Gaza Yet Stands, the statelessness of the Palestinians is a constant obstacle to their well-being. Stateless people don’t have the right to have rights. You can make a treaty with them, like the 1993 Oslo Accords, which Israel signed off on, and then just entirely renege on it. What are they going to do? Sue?

That Palestinians have no citizenship in a state also means that there is no real reason for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adhere to the terms of the ceasefire deal his cabinet approved just before midnight on Friday. Apparently incoming president Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff flew to Israel last weekend and read Netanyahu the riot act. Netanyahu blew off and humiliated Joe Biden for over 15 months, but he folded after some choice expletives from Witkoff.

Photo by @nomundodejr Jr.: https://www.pexels.com/photo/thames-river-panorama-with-big-ben-and-westminster-bridge-london-england-17487791/

I’m not sure why, but Trump appears to have felt that it was important for his image that the Gaza War wind down before his inauguration, and Netanyahu decided not to cross him, even though the Israeli cabinet did not want this deal and Netanyahu did not want the deal. The members of the far, far right Jewish Power bloc, the Israel equivalent of Neo-Nazis, resigned in protest, including Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The problem is that the long 3-stage peace process in Gaza will only succeed if both Hamas and the Israeli government abide by it. And we can’t be sure that Trump or Witkoff will keep the pressure on.

Moreover, when they speak about Palestine, many US congressmen and senators appear to have a nervous breakdown and they start shouting AIPAC slogans and denigrating and dehumanizing Palestinians, so you can’t expect this Congress to play a positive role in upholding the peace process.

If Washington loses interest or turns even more malicious than usual, and given that the Palestinians are stateless and without any power or leverage, then Netanyahu can restart his extermination of the Palestinians of Gaza at any time.

The UK parliamentary committee continued, “We call on the Government to treat the removal of Palestinian civilians from the West Bank, through co-ordinated destruction of property and settler violence, as forcible transfer, which is illegal under international law, rather than simply displacement. Finally, we restate our view that it is imperative that UNRWA — United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — be permitted to carry on its UN-mandated role across the Occupied Palestinian Territory unimpeded, in the light of laws passed recently by the Israeli Knesset that will effectively ban UNRWA from the region.”

Beyond Gaza, the committee is worried about the Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from Occupied Territories, including the Palestinian West Bank, and urges the government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer to recognize these actions as severe violations of international law. [They violate the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.]

Member of Parliament for the Labour Party Sarah Champion heads the committee, and has a long record of speaking out about Palestine — and of visiting there.

( Middle East Monitor ) – The report by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics at the beginning of the new year, 2025, regarding the reverse immigration of Jews was like fuel poured on the fire of political conflicts in Israel, because the bleak number appearing in the headlines of the Israeli media represented the balance of reverse immigration of Jews outside the Occupation state. 82,000 were removed from the population figure, which was bad news for its political and security circles.

This shocking statistic immediately turned into a new political debate among Israelis, added to their series of endless debates, especially since the available data indicated that this immigration was concentrated on professionals, doctors and technicians due to their despair over the conditions of the state.

While right-wing supporters have exploited these shocking figures to criticise those who are migrating from the state, opponents of the government have used them to attack it. Between the two sides, the phenomenon of reverse migration has turned into another battlefront added to the seven-front war fought by the Occupying state, and evidence that life in it has become unbearable.

While Israelis appear in a hurry to disagree and differ about the accuracy of these figures, and to put the blame on each other, it is impossible to understand what is causing the sharp jump in this reverse migration, given the assertions of the Israelis who are migrating outside the state that they have lost hope in it.

At the same time, this data confirms that experts in the fields of technology, economics, medicine and culture are the main examples of those migrating from the state, because they are no longer able to find a place for themselves in a state that promotes laws limiting their personal freedom, stifle creativity and suppress their private property. It is worth noting that reverse migration of Jews began during the time of the protests that took place against the legal coup, with the Gaza war giving many of them the sense that it was time to leave.

Moreover, the unfair economic policy of the right-wing government, the Haredi’s opposition to compulsory military service, the threats against academic institutions, the attacks on the Supreme Court, the ongoing war in Gaza and the failure to return the kidnapped soldiers, have all restored the fears of Israelis, their lack of confidence in their state, and their fear that they will face more trouble and will not be able to return to it in the future.

Along with the media outlets that have reported the data on reverse Jewish immigration, in recent months, Israeli research centres have noticeably focused on the growing trend of educated young Jews leaving the country, which could harm its economy and social structure. Their motivation behind leaving includes political instability, the economic situation, the cost of living, social tensions and fears of a legal coup.

“Exodus,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024

What truly worries Israel is the age of these immigrants, as 48 per cent of them are between 20 and 45 years old, and 27 per cent are children and adolescents. The vast majority are under 45 years old and are looking for a better quality of life, due to the deteriorating economic situation, the increasing cost of living and the difficulty of obtaining housing and employment, with a greater degree of inability to access good public services.

There is a prevalent belief among Israelis that the repercussions of this reverse migration on Israel will be major, while the right-wing government is content with attacking the phenomenon through “populist” posts on the Internet, without in-depth analysis, and without providing practical solutions. This is because, in practice, these immigrants have a decreased sense of belonging to the state and its culture, and their connection to it has declined, due to the shock of war, the loss of confidence in the leadership and the economic crisis.

The increasing number of Israelis who are reverse migrating from the Occupying state nowadays coincides with the wave of anti-Occupation sentiments and hatred that is raging in the world due to its crimes against the Palestinian people. Given the political and social division that the country is witnessing, the immediate result of this phenomenon is the radical step towards immigrants being separated from the country, family, friends and immediate surroundings and, in some cases, there is no way back.

In conclusion, the phenomenon of Jews’ reverse migration from Israel signifies a moral failure of the state, and an explicit declaration of its failure to strengthen the connection of Jews coming from all over the world to an Occupied land that is not their land. This is an expected result of the deepening social division in recent years, the prevalence of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric among them and the state’s permission allowing extremist fascist forces to drag the rest of the Israelis into dangerous internal conflicts that may destroy what remains of the state’s immunity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Middle East Monitor

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Scott D. Sagan, a Stanford political scientist, and researcher Katherine E. McKinney point out that the Truman administration’s bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 would violate international law as it is accepted today. That acceptance is not just verbal or aspirational. It is embodied in treaties adopted by national legislatures and therefore has a binding character. The US Senate, for instance, ratified the Charter of the United Nations together with the Statute of the International Court of Justice on October 24, 1945.

McKinney and Sagan write of Hiroshima, “More than 70,000 men, women, and children were killed immediately; the munitions factories on the periphery of the city were left largely unscathed. Such a nuclear attack would be illegal today. It would violate three major requirements of the law of armed conflict codified in Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions: the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution”

They explain later that these principles, codified in the first protocol to the Geneva Conventions (ratified by 174 countries), require combatants “to not intentionally attack civilians (the principle of distinction or noncombatant immunity); to ensure that collateral damage against civilians is not disproportionate to the direct military advantage gained from the target’s destruction (the principle of proportionality); and to take all feasible precautions to reduce collateral damage against civilians (the precautionary principle).”

The Israeli military repeatedly and publicly violated all three of these principles in its total war on Gaza civilians, as has been documented by the International Criminal Court, South Africa, Ireland, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The Likud Party and the parties to its right that dominate the current Israeli cabinet desperately wish to undo all these three principles, which were legislated by the international community after the end of WW II. That is because they are committed to genociding the Palestinian people, and international law is very inconvenient to this aspiration.

In 1945, President Truman alleged that Hiroshima was a legitimate military target. But McKinley and Sagan point out that, while Hiroshima housed certain military-related industrial sites, an army command center, and troop embarkation docks, the bustling metropolis of over 250,000 residents -— men, women, and children -— was far from being “a military base”… In fact, they say, fewer than 10 percent of those who perished in the city on August 6, 1945 were members of the Japanese armed forces.

Alas, they say, U.S. planners of the attack made no effort to “minimize, as much as possible, the killing of civilians.” They say that the historical record of discussion by principals such as Robert J. Oppenheimer, Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves and Secretary of War Henry Stimson shows that the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was purposefully detonated above the city’s residential and commercial hub, rather than above valid military targets, to amplify the psychological impact on the Japanese population and the leadership in Tokyo.

International humanitarian law has subsequently been erected and widely adopted by treaty in order to prevent the Trumans, Oppenheimers, Groves’s and Stimsons of the future from ever behaving this way again with impunity.

1948 and after are a new era, where, fitfully and in a staccato fashion, the human community is trying to turn a page on the mind-boggling butchery of the mid-20th century, which included the horrors of the genocide of Europe’s Jews.

Netanyahu and his cronies want to pocket the good will toward Jews created by revulsion at the Holocaust, but to hold themselves harmless from the very legal strictures, such as the Geneva Conventions, that underpin the sentiment of “never again.”

Thus, Israel and the United States are signatories to the United Nations Charter and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Last summer, the ICJ ruled that the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank has departed so starkly, in so many ways, and for so long from the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 on the treatment of occupied populations that it is now illegal.

I can’t tell you how inconvenient for a Greater Israel aggressor like Netanyahu this ruling is. It is also inconvenient for the US government, Netanyahu’s patron and enabler, which is why Washington has ignored the ruling, despite its treaty obligations to abide by it.

Netanyahu’s response to this series of inconveniences? Tear it all down! He wants to abolish international humanitarian law.

The United States, on the other hand, still has uses for IHL, as in its campaign against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Hiroshima on the Mediterranean,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

These are Biden’s revelations to O’Donnell about his discussions with Netanyahu regarding the Israeli use of disproportionate force in Gaza:

Biden: “When I went to Israel immediately after the attack led by Hamas, eight days later or whatever it was, I told him that we were going to help. And I said, ‘But Bibi, you can’t be carpet bombing these communities.’ And he said to me, ‘Well you did it. You carpet bombed Berlin. You dropped a nuclear weapon. You killed thousands of innocent people because you had to in order to win a war.’”

Biden: “I said, ‘But that’s why we came up with the [United Nations]. New deals by which—how what we do relative to civilians and military.’”

O’Donnell: “So he was comparing twenty-first-century war tactics, battle tactics, with World War II?”

Biden: “Well, what he was really doing was going after me for saying, ‘You can’t indiscriminately bomb civilian areas. Even if the bad guys are there. Even if the bad guys are there, you can’t take out two, 10, 1,500 innocent people in order to get one bad guy.'”

“And he made the legitimate argument, his perspective -— ‘Look, these are the guys that killed my people. These are the guys that are all over in these tunnels. Nobody has any idea of the miles of tunnels that are down there. The only way to get to them is to take out the places under which they got to the tunnels.’”

Needless to say, Netanyahu’s argument that he was justified in razing all civilian objects in Gaza to the ground to get at some Hamas fighters was not in fact “legitimate.” Like the Hiroshima holocaust, these tactics violate current international legal norms, which is why there is an arrest warrant out for Netanyahu from the International Criminal Court.

That Biden thought Netanyahu’s argument was “legitimate” tells you everything you need to know about the hypocrisy, bankruptcy and sheer evil of current American foreign policy. As Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling said at The New Republic, “it’s bad.” Biden had some successes domestically. His eager and steadfast pursuit of a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza will haunt his legacy, and will forever stain the escutcheon of the United States of America.

The Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom register our profound concern regarding the interruption of education and the damage to Lebanese educational facilities as a result of the intensified Israeli military campaign which began in September 2024. Widespread aerial bombardments across Lebanon combined with a ground invasion in the south have killed more than 4,000 people, of whom at least 316 are children, and injured 16,500, of whom 1,456 are children.[1] The ceasefire announced on 27 November 2024 is a welcome development, but the damage to the education sector will have lasting effects. It remains far from clear whether the ceasefire will be sustainable or whether its terms will protect Lebanese educational facilities, scholars, researchers and students from ongoing Israeli attacks.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) mandated that education facilities, including universities and schools, close on 24 September 2024. The beginning of the school year was then postponed from 14 October to 4 November 2024 for public schools; however, private schools were granted permission to start the academic year using either online or in-person formats, with each school bearing the risk associated with its chosen methods. Over 1,177 facilities, including schools, were transformed into shelters to house the more than 1.3 million people displaced from South Lebanon and South Beirut. Even in the cases of schools that were able to continue providing instruction, traveling to them was a safety risk for students and staff.

Similar to the situation in primary and secondary schools, instruction and related educational activities at universities were suspended between 28 September and 6 October 2024. In early October, the MEHE announced that over 80,000 university students had been displaced. Many universities resorted to online instruction to continue the academic year. Further, as the Israeli bombardments damaged over 50 hospitals and killed health workers, university hospitals had to expand their health care provision. Teachers and students in medical school were redirected to support this expansion. The American University of Beirut, the largest private sector employee in Lebanon, reported that half of its students had been displaced and a further 700 had become homeless. Université Saint Joseph de Beirut reported that 20% of its staff and one third of its students had been displaced.

Educational facilities located in South Beirut were under consistent threat of aerial bombardment. According to the Beirut Urban Lab, 78% of the schools, universities and vocational institutes in that area were in the vicinity of announced Israeli air strikes. Particularly in Haret Hreik, Azad University was within the area of 27 strikes and Al-Afak Institute was in the area of another 24 strikes.

The Lebanese University, the only public university in Lebanon, was severely impacted by the Israeli military campaign. Its main campus in Hadath in South Beirut, which houses many core faculties, was damaged in an air strike on 9 November 2024. Approximately 30,000 students at the Lebanese University were displaced. In response, the university implemented an emergency plan to provide temporary housing for displaced staff and students, launched online registration and teaching, implemented programmes to pay students fees, and provided psychosocial support. Facilities across Lebanese University branches have further been used to house displaced members of the university.

University communities are also grieving the deaths of students, scholars and staff—from Lebanese University, Lebanese American University, American University of Beirut, Université Sainte Famille Batroun, Phoenicia University, and the University of Sciences and Arts Lebanon, who were killed as a result of Israeli attacks since September 2024.

As described above, the higher education sector faces extreme hardship as it contemplates continuing the academic year. Additionally, revenue shortfalls from tuition fees and the interruption of research activities will impact the future work and sustainability of these institutions. The National Erasmus+ Office in Lebanon, which supports capacity building in higher education, has further reported that foreign staff and students have begun to leave the country. Concurrently, there are fears that Lebanese students may look abroad for higher education opportunities as international scholarships become increasingly available. This will further adversely affect the sustainability of higher education in Lebanon.

The right to education is an internationally protected human right, and educational institutions are protected under international law including under Article 94 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 13 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Israeli military attacks in Lebanon, including on educational facilities and their environs, are direct infringements on these rights and protections, as well as on academic freedom. We express solidarity with our colleagues in Lebanon and urge international organizations to support Lebanese educational institutions as they resume their important activities and rebuild their sector.

to my reality: not dust and not fire. What

will I do without roses from Samarkand? What

will I do in a theater that burnishes the singers with its lunar

stones? Our weight has become light like our houses

in the faraway winds. We have become two friends of the strange

creatures in the clouds … and we are now loosened

from the gravity of identity’s land. What will we do … what

will we do without exile, and a long night

that stares at the water?   — Mahmoud Darwish

Newark, Del. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Ebrahimi Nabavi was an Iranian satirist.  On January 15, 2025,   he took his life at the age of sixty four in Silver Spring, Md.   He never felt at home, whether in Brussels or in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.  He always wanted to go back to Iran. He was one of the reformists who took on the mantle to criticize the Islamic Republic.   He was imprisoned.  He shared the same block with other famous prisoners. 

He did stand-up comedy.  He wrote satirical views on different media outlets, first in Iran and later in Europe and in the U.S.  

I didn’t always agree with him.  He wrote an article to which I felt the need to reply.  I wish I had known him better. 

But what happens to luminaries who die in exile, either naturally or by taking their own lives?

In 1942, Stefan Zweig took his life in Brazil.   He had seen the devastation of his homeland Austria and, later Germany, by the Nazis.  He could not tolerate it. 

Such people tend to be more sensitive than others.  They are not weak but more emotional perhaps.  Or this world of ours is too much for them to handle. 

Gholamhossein Saedi, a renowned playwright, a physician from Tabriz was one of them.  He immigrated to Paris. He never liked the city, even though he tried.   He wrote his essays and tried very hard to become part of Parisian intellectual life.  He said, I can relate to Paris, but Paris is not Tehran.  My pen does not write well in Paris.  

Gholamhossein Saedi; h/t Wikimedia

“All the buildings in Paris are like a theatre décor.   I feel as if I am living in a post card,” he wrote.

In a way he also committed suicide.  He died at the age of 49. 

I met him in Tehran after the Revolution at his house and then, much later, in Paris.  He was not the same man.

He was laid to rest in Père Lachaise where many famous people are buried.   A few weeks ago, his tombstone was desecrated in a terrible way. Someone urinated on it.

Saedi was a famous person; he had been incarcerated by the Shah and then by the Islamic Republic.  A few of his plays were turned into films, among them the Cow by the famous film maker, Dariush Mehrjoui. 

Ebrahim Nabavi took his life perhaps because he could not stand to be away from his homeland.

Who knows?

What drives some people to suicide?   

They both shared one thing:   A long-lasting love for Iran.  An Iran they could neither live in nor leave behind.

For the 546-page world report, in its 35th edition, Human Rights Watch reviewed human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In much of the world, Executive Director Tirana Hassan writes in her introductory essay, governments cracked down and wrongfully arrested and imprisoned political opponents, activists, and journalists. Armed groups and government forces unlawfully killed civilians, drove many from their homes, and blocked access to humanitarian aid. In many of the more than 70 national elections in 2024, authoritarian leaders gained ground with their discriminatory rhetoric and policies. 

“Israel’s decades-long systematic repression of Palestinians worsened dramatically and plunged civilians in Gaza into a horrifying abyss, but possibilities for international justice are emerging,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Continued weapons sales to Israel by its partners despite vast evidence of its unchecked atrocity crimes are putting those countries and officials at risk of direct complicity.”

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• In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and the leader of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif, for the attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, that included war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• The Israeli authorities continued to commit the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution through their repression of Palestinians. In July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion finding that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory is unlawful and that all illegal settlements should be evacuated and dismantled.
• In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the UN reported that Palestinians killed 6 Israeli settlers and 16 soldiers, while Israelis killed 719 Palestinians, from October 7, 2023, to October 7, 2024, far more than in any other year on record based on UN data available since 2005.
• Evidence emerged throughout 2024 of ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian detainees deported from Gaza to detention facilities in Israel.
• Armed groups in the Gaza Strip are holding an estimated 100 hostages, including the bodies of over 30 people believed to have died during the hostilities. In August, captors intentionally killed six Israeli hostages, apparently to prevent their rescue by approaching Israeli forces. Human Rights Watch found that Hamas’ military wing—the Qassam Brigades—and at least four Palestinian armed groups committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians during the October 7, 2023 assault on southern Israel.
• In October 2024, the Israeli parliament passed legislation aimed at preventing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in areas under Israeli sovereignty and banning communication with UNRWA staff , endangering access to humanitarian aid and basic services to Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory. The ban will take effect in early 2025.

All countries which provide weapons to Israel, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, should suspend weapons transfers due to the Israeli military’s repeated, unlawful attacks on civilians. Countries should defend the ICC; execute its arrest warrants; and increase public and private pressure on the Israeli government to stop violating the laws of armed conflict, comply with its obligations as well as the ICJ’s binding orders and advisory opinion, and ensure that aid can be taken into Gaza and safely distributed and that Palestinians in Gaza can access basic services. 

Via Human Rights Watch

New York (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Early in the year, State Department officials briefed Joel Rayburn from the Trump transition team there could be a humanitarian “catastrophe” in Gaza when a new Israeli law barring contact with the UN refugee agency for Palestinians takes effect at the end of the month.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is the primary aid agency operating in the Gaza Strip. After more than a year of war, the UN and other aid organizations warn Gaza is close to uninhabitable. Tens of thousands of houses have been destroyed. More than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 107,000 injured. In the future, these numbers are likely to prove three to four times higher. And still worse could be ahead.

During President Trump’s first term, his administration gradually cut all U.S. assistance to UNRWA. The Biden administration later resumed U.S. aid to the agency. Last March, Congress passed a law that bans the U.S. from funding UNRWA until at least 2025.

Why should the horrific policy errors of the past be compounded with monstrous new policy mistakes?           

The origins             

The fate of UNRWA is one of the many dilemmas I scrutinized while working on The Fall of Israel (2025). After achieving an initial truce in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat, used it to lay the groundwork for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

Bernadotte tried to balance the different interests of the Israelis and Palestinians, the major powers in the region and the UN Partition Plan. Having witnessed the horrible outcome of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe and hoping to avert a catastrophe in Palestine, he also proposed that the UN should establish a Palestine conciliation commission and Arab refugees would have a full right to return to their homes in Jewish-controlled territory.

Just hours after his proposal, Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem by the Jewish paramilitary Stern group, while pursuing his official duties. One of those who planned the killing was Yitzhak Shamir, the future prime minister of Israel, and the predecessor and onetime mentor of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current PM.

Ever since then, UNRWA has been a lifeline to generations of Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the adjacent Arab countries. Created as a purely temporary measure, UNRWA’s mandate has been subject to renewal every three years ever since.

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Historically, the United States has been UNRWA’s largest financial contributor, with more than $7.3 billion since 1950. From the start, these contributions have been subject to a variety of legislative conditions and oversight measures, however.

Funding threats     

Decades of U.S. policy toward Israel and the occupied territories, however ambiguous, was reversed almost overnight, when the Trump administration executed a series of dramatic policy changes in 2018 and canceled nearly all U.S. aid to the West Bank and Gaza, plus $360 million in annual aid previously given to the UNRWA. Subsequently, the Biden administration restored much of the funding, yet provided Israel weapons and financing for the mass atrocities of those the UNRWA funding was supposed to help.

After allegations surfaced connecting a few of the 30,000 UNRWA employees with the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks against Israel, the Agency fired nine staff members following a UN investigation. While it denied allegations that the agency has widespread links to Hamas, Congress enacted a March 2024 prohibition on U.S. funding to UNRWA (P.L. 118-47), which is set to last until late March, 2025.

To put things into context: The Empire State Building is said to have 21,000 employees. Imagine what would happen if six of them would be suspected of terrorism and therefore the entire building would have to be dismantled and all employees fired? It would be an absurd collective punishment for the alleged crimes of a few.

Worse, the Israeli laws passed on October 28, 2024 and scheduled to take effect 90 days later, would endanger the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.

Millions of lives threatened                    

The new U.S. and Israeli legal measures emboldened Jewish settlers, particularly the Messianic far-right. In May 2024 they launched several attacks on the UNRWA headquarters, setting fire to the perimeter of the building in East Jerusalem. The attacks against UNRWA came after months of far-right settler protests outside of the building, following Israeli claims of UNRWA-Hamas links; accusations that lacked verification, according to U.S. intelligence.

Among the protesters was Aryeh King, a deputy mayor of Jerusalem and a prominent advocate for settlements, who called Palestinian Gazans “Muslim Nazis,” described them as “sub-human” calling for captured Palestinians to be “buried alive” in December 2023.

By the year-end of 2024, some 265 UNRWA staff had been killed in hostilities since October 7, 2023. Despite a record-high number that suggests intentional targeting, those behind the Israeli strikes have not been prosecuted.

More than 5.9 million Palestinians, including three of four in Gaza, are registered with UNRWA as refugees.

The stakes

In Gaza, nearly two million Palestinians are displaced and dependent on aid for food, water and medical services. U.S. officials say there’s no serious backup plan for providing humanitarian supplies and services to Palestinians. With the new U.S.-Israeli laws, senior UNRWA emergency officers presage social order in the Strip could collapse.

Here are some ways to preempt such disasters:

• The White House should pressure Israel to suspend and nullify the impending adverse acts against UNRWA
• S. Congress should lift current prohibition on UNRWA funding through March 2025
• UNRWA’s funding should be broadened by the U.S. and internationally in light of the devastation and genocidal atrocities caused in Gaza
• The Agency’s existence should be premised on the implementation of all relevant and existing UN resolutions both the U.S. and the international community have voted for.

How probable are such measures in the conceivable future? Highly unlikely.

What’s the alternative? Far worse, far worse.