( Middle East Monitor ) – The most well-known football stadium in the Gaza Strip is chaotic, with masses of people flooding the pitch and seating. Everyone is carrying a bag on their back and some clothes. Some are helping sick people or carrying wounded relatives, while others are walking alone, struggling along on bare feet.

“We left the bodies of our children killed in Israeli air strikes either under the rubble or on the street,” an old man explains. He fled northern Gaza under heavy Israeli bombing.

Today, the people are not rushing to take their seats and enjoy a football match or a circus. They look for an empty place to rest after fleeing relentless Israeli bombing. The stadium is an encampment for displaced persons.

“Thanks be to Allah, we are safe,” said 72-year-old Hassan Abu Wardeh, who arrived in the stadium along with his sick wife and 13 children and grandchildren. “After the start of the third Israeli ground incursion into our area, we remained 25 days in our home,” he told me. “They were the worst days I have ever lived.”

That started on 6 October, when the Israeli occupation forces attacked Jabalia, concentrating on its refugee camp. Then the incursion was extended to the other north Gaza cities, including Beit Hanoun in the east and Beit Lahiya in the west.

“Since the start of their incursion, the Israeli occupation forces have been targeting homes and refugee shelters in Jabalia refugee camp, the beating heart of the city, clearly to put pressure on the inhabitants to run away,” explained Abu Wardeh. “However, most people persisted and stayed in their homes. We know that there is an Israeli plan to force us out of our land.”

Day after day, the Israeli occupation forces have targeted homes and refugee shelters alike, killing and wounding hundreds of people. The intensity of the bombardment meant that all rescue teams in the north had to suspend their services, including the Civil Defence and Ambulance teams.

Putting further pressure on Palestinian civilians to force them to leave, the occupation state has also targeted the three major hospitals in northern Gaza. Anyone seeking medical assistance and treatment has to go south to Gaza City.

Not content with dropping bombs and missiles on northern Gaza, said Abu Wardeh, the occupation forces have also used barrel bombs in the streets to displace the local population.

They detonate them without warning.

The sheer cruelty and brutality of the occupation forces saw Abu Wardeh ask his sick wife, his children and grandchildren to leave the house and move to Gaza City. His brother, who lived next door, moved 19 members of his family north to Beit Lahiya.

“I stayed at home along with two of my children and one of my grandchildren,” he said. “Five hours after the evacuation of the house, an Israeli missile turned it into rubble. It was a miracle that we survived.” It took another five hours for volunteers and neighbours to pull him and his children out from under the rubble.

“My grandson suffered from light bruises. I was happy that we were alive, but was very sad to hear that seven homes in our neighbourhood were bombed at the same time and 27 neighbours were killed. Only seven bodies were retrieved; the rest are under the rubble.”

This is how the Israeli occupation regime has been forcing the displacement — “evacuation” — of the northern Gaza Strip. People are killed, wounded or abducted. Hospitals have been destroyed, medical staff have been killed or arrested, and humanitarian aid is stopped from reaching the area. At the same time, the regime destroys entire residential compounds and is building massive sand barriers to separate northern Gaza from Gaza City.

Abu Wardeh, whose parents were forced out of Al-Majadal during the 1948 Nakba, is afraid that he is facing a new Nakba. The regime drops leaflets telling the people that they must leave their homes because they are in the middle of an “operation area”.

Then the occupation forces destroy their homes and destroy their refugee shelters.

During the ongoing incursion, the Israeli forces have killed more than 2,200 people in northern Gaza alone. A further 6,300 have been wounded while more than 1,000 have been detained — basically abducted — including children.

Spokespersons for the Israeli occupation army have declared several times that they will not allow the Palestinian residents of northern Gaza to return to their homes. According to Haaretz, the Israeli regime is carrying out ethnic cleansing as part of the “Generals’ Plan” laid out by one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military aides. Fanatical Jewish settlers are waiting expectantly to build illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory.

“I am afraid that we will never return to Jabalia,” added Abu Wardeh. “In any case, I am still hoping to return not to Jabalia, but to Al-Majdal.”

The right of return upon which his hope depends is entirely legitimate. It still seems a long way from happening though.

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.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

—-

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “‘Huge increase’ in displaced people in Gaza City: MSF”

In a statement, the city government said: “This persistent fuel stoppage has disrupted essential services, including the operation of water wells and desalination plants, leaving over 1.2 million citizens and displaced individuals in Khan Younis without potable and usable water.”

The city also raised concerns about the suspension of sewage treatment facilities, warning that untreated wastewater could flood the streets, exacerbating the risk of environmental and health disasters, and facilitating the spread of diseases and epidemics.

Calling for immediate action, the city government urged the international community and human rights groups to “urgently intervene to end the Israeli war on Gaza, which has destroyed all aspects of life.” It further urged UN agencies to “pressure Israel to resume fuel supplies and allow the entry of essential equipment and spare parts to prevent the complete collapse of public services.”

The Israeli offensive against Gaza has continued for over 13 months, leaving more than 43,700 people dead and making the enclave nearly uninhabitable. The ongoing blockade has resulted in severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice due to its actions in Gaza.

Via Middle East Monitor .

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License< Bonus Video added by Informed Comment: Al Jazeera English: “Displaced in central Gaza face worsening conditions with sewage floods, scarcity and health crises”

Morocco’s Atalayer reports that Rabat will attempt to double sustainable energy generation in the Sahara by 2030.

What is so special about 2030? It is the soccer World Cup centenary, a World Cup for the ages. The first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930.

Spain, Portugal and Morocco jointly submitted the successful bid as hosts that year, with each country providing 6 or 7 stadiums. For Morocco, this success boosts its prestige in the Arab world and Africa. Countries fight tooth and nail over this honor. Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 World Cup was one of the reasons Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed an economic boycott on it 2017-2020. They were that jealous.

So Morocco wants literally to shine in 2030, by showing off its impressive progress toward greening its grid.

Morocco gets 44% of its electricity from renewables, up from 37% only 3 years ago. It has about 4.6 gigawatts of green energy.

About 1.3 GW of Morocco’s wind and solar plants are sited in the Western Sahara, a region Morocco absorbed in 1975-1979 when Spanish colonialism there ended. Some of the Amazigh tribes there had long ties with the Moroccan monarchy before the 1884 Spanish conquest. Some of the 600,000 people in Western Sahara, however, weren’t happy to become part of Morocco, and the POLISARIO party has long led a movement for independence.

But Morocco is a country of 38 million people, and its military is the 5th most powerful in Africa. So it has gradually made its claims stick, de facto. Moreover, most economists don’t consider the Western Sahara to have the makings of a viable independent country. What is important is that they have a democratic say in their own affairs.

Plus the Trump family helped the Moroccan government in this endeavor.

The Trump family?

Yes, Kushner persuaded Morocco to join the Abraham Accords recognizing Israel. In return, the United States recognized the Moroccan claim on the Western Sahara.

And now that it was the U.S. position, French President Emmanuel Macron swung around and also recognized the territory as Moroccan.

Billionaire Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch intends to install another 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity into the Sahara. Integrating the territory into the country’s green energy grid is one of the ways Rabat is weaving it into the fabric of the country’s economy.

Akhannouch will put $2.1 billion into these projects, and they will generate green energy jobs for the local population.

The entire episode demonstrates the ways in which renewable energy is increasingly intertwined with nation-building projects, with all their virtues and vices.

—

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

The World’s Largest Concentrated Solar Power Plant | A Brief History of the Future | PBS

In May 2023, renowned Black American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates spent ten days in the West Bank and Israel, where he spent half his time with Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli soldiers who now oppose the occupation.

Going to Palestine was “a huge shock to me”, he told the New York Times. Coming back, he felt, as he told US journalist Peter Beinart, “a responsibility to yell” about what he’d seen – which he describes as apartheid and compares to the segregated Jim Crow South in the United States.

As he was writing his new book, The Message, the October 7 Hamas attacks happened, followed by the ongoing war in Gaza. He doesn’t cover these events in the book, though he has talked about them in interviews, including one in which he described the decision not to allow a Palestinian state legislator to speak at the Democratic National Convention that nominated Kamala Harris as “deeply inhumane”.

Review:

The Message – Ta-Nehisi Coates. Penguin Random House. Click here to Buy.

Coates is among the most celebrated and accomplished writers in the US. He is also, importantly, a Black writer in a world still dominated by white Americans. He first grabbed attention with a 2014 essay on America and slavery in The Atlantic, titled “The Case for Reparation”. Subsequently, he has written five books, including a novel, The Water Dancer, set on a Virginia slave plantation. He was even hired to write a Superman movie.

Coates has deliberately cast himself as part of the legacy of Black American writing, most notably through lyrical language that echoes the writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin. After reading his memoir about the experience of being Black in America, Between The World and Me, fellow writer Toni Morrison said she regarded him as Baldwin’s heir.

Slavery, censorship and culture wars

The Message is a series of three essays directed at Coates’ writing students at Howard University. In it, he chronicles three very different journeys. The final essay, about his trip to Israel–Palestine, takes up almost half the book.

His first trip is to Senegal, in search of the origins of Afro-American slavery. In the second, he visits a small town in South Carolina where there have been attempts to ban Between The World and Me from being taught in schools. Not surprisingly, all three sections are haunted by his awareness of racism and colonialism. His name, Ta-Nehisi, is a deliberate reference to the ancient Egyptian term for the kingdom of Nubia, sometimes translated as “land of the Blacks”.

Coates recognises that Western defence of slavery depended on defining the African as subhuman, just as Western colonialism justified itself with an ideology of racism. In Senegal, he visits the island of Goree, for four centuries the largest slave trading port on the African coast, now a world heritage site.

But like other African-American writers who have gone to Africa in search of their roots, he recognises that he is an outsider: “We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places, and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined.”

These thoughts echo again when Coates struggles to come to terms with Israel, where both Palestinians and Israelis hold deeply felt emotional connections to the land, which makes compromise difficult.

In Chapin, South Carolina, teacher Mary Wood faced calls for her firing for teaching Between the World and Me, and pushed back against an attempt to ban her teaching it. The Message is frustrating in its lack of detail about the case, but Woods’ battle with the local school board has been widely reported as part of ongoing conflict within the US over censorship of books dealing with racial and sexual injustice. Coates is too focused on the fate of his own book to stand back and analyse the bigger conflict it represents.

America’s culture wars, which are echoed in Australia, are essentially battles over how to define a national identity – or, as Coates writes, to “privilege the apprehension of national dogmas over the questioning of them”. Our attack on “black armband” history (as named by Geoffrey Blainey in 1993) is paralleled by right-wing American denials of the centrality of slavery to the creation of the US, and debates over “critical race theory”.

Coates: Israel is not a democracy

Coates’ account of his trip to Palestine has been the most controversial aspect of his book. Significantly, he begins this section with an account of his visit to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.

His sense of the horrors recorded there makes his account of Israeli occupation and dispossession of Palestinians more poignant. Reflecting on the memorial, Coates writes: “Every time I visit a space of memory dedicated to this particular catastrophe I always come away thinking that it was worse than I thought, worse than I could ever imagine.”

Aware of the racism that surrounds him as a Black American, Coates can imagine himself as both Palestinian and Israeli. This generosity of imagination does not prevent critical analysis. His accounts of life in the occupied West Bank underline the reality that Israel has imposed a regime that is effectively based on the subordination and dispossession of Palestinians – and a deliberate attempt, he writes, to deny any possibility of a genuine two-state solution.

The Israeli lobby is outraged by claims Israel has created an apartheid regime: many see the term as motivated by anti-Semitism. This is the implicit message of much of the pro-Israeli lobby, as summed up in the demands that Australian universities adopt a particular definition of anti-Semitism.

The strength of Coates’ analysis is that he minimises neither the reality of anti-Semitism, nor that of Israel’s domination of Palestinians. Defenders of Israel struggle to accept that once-persecuted people can become the persecutors. Yet, as Coates writes, “There was no ultimate victim, that victims and victimizers were ever flowing”.

In Coates’ view, Israel is not a democracy. To claim otherwise, he believes, is to deny the reality of Israel’s effective control of seven million Palestinians living on the West Bank and Gaza, who are now subject to dispossession and destruction in ways that resemble the worst carnage of World War II.

It is extraordinary that our politicians who can extol the virtues of multiculturalism remain blind to the realities of Israeli occupation, and indeed to the growing assertion of Jewish supremacy over those Israeli residents, around 25% of whom are not Jewish.

“Those who claimed Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East were just as likely to claim that America was the oldest democracy in the world,” he writes. “And both claims relied on excluding whole swaths of the population.”

Coates comes closest to explaining this paradox in his account of a plaque in Jerusalem that bears the name of a former US ambassador and proclaims “the unbreakable bond” between the two nations. This bond, it reads, is based on the shared ideals of the Bible, language that reverberates among many evangelical Christians today.

For millions of Americans, criticism of Israel becomes criticism of the US itself. The strength of the Israeli lobby in the US is enormous. The Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which spent over 100 million dollars this year, helped at least 318 American politicians win their seats in the recent US elections.

Not surprisingly, Palestinian voices go largely unheard in the US. Coates points to a study that demonstrates over a 50-year period ending in 2019, only 2% of opinion pieces discussing Palestine had Palestinian authors. (The study covered four major mainstream publications, including the New York Times and Washington Post.)

Honesty and egocentrism

Many reviews of The Message have been critical. Paul Sehgal in The New Yorker described it as “a public offering seemingly designed for private ends, an artefact of deep shame and surprising vanity which reads as if it had been conjured to settle its author’s soul”. I think the book is stronger than Sehgal suggests.

The Message is written as a conversation with Coates’ writing students, and his growing realisation that “becoming a good writer would not be enough”. He acknowledges his own limits: “I had gone to Palestine, like I’d gone to Senegal, in pursuit of my own questions and thus had not fully seen the people on their own terms.”

In fact, though, he did pay attention. The section on Palestine includes conversations with both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as references to the voluminous literature on the conflict. (Unfortunately, he does not include footnotes or a bibliography.) Since the publication of this book, Coates has become an active advocate for Palestinian rights. He recognises he has come late to this debate.

Yes, as his own words suggest, there is egocentrism in The Message. But I read it as an honest attempt to think through how a writer can best influence the world when confronted by slaughter and inhumanity. The Message is an unashamedly personal book. At times, it reads as if the author were in analysis, working through the privileges and burdens of being a successful writer and intellectual.

At several points, he refers to himself as both a writer and a steward, with an obligation to speak out about injustice to others. He writes of his books as his children, which “leave home, travel, have their own relationships, and leave their own impressions”. (He hints that of his five “children”, his favourite is his novel, The Water Dancer.)

I only wish the ardent defenders of Israel who occupy our parliament could be persuaded to read Coates’ book. At least it might persuade them that criticism of Israel’s refusal to recognise the claims of Palestinians is not equivalent to anti-Semitism.

Dennis Altman, Vice Chancellor’s Fellow and Professorial Fellow, Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

( Al Jazeera English ) – Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the United States marks a shift in US policy – from the Joe Biden administration’s hypocritical denial of American complicity in Zionist genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to an unapologetic endorsement of all these actions.

Besides bringing Washington’s support for all of Israel’s excesses, crimes and violations out into the open, Trump’s return to the White House will also intensify and make even more overt the persecution of those who dare resist white supremacy and its Zionist incarnation.

Under Biden, those who opposed American-funded and -facilitated Zionist genocide, from university students and civil servants to racial justice activists and authors, already faced threats from politicians, police harassment, baseless accusations of anti-Semitism in the media and relentless intimidation from employers, university administrators and far-right-linked Zionist “self-defence” groups.

And yet, Trump says Biden has been “weak” in countering “Hamas radicals” and he would do even more to shut down anticolonial resistance as president. On the campaign trail, he called for the deportation of foreign nationals who support Palestinian resistance and, since being elected, has nominated pro-Israel hawks to key intelligence and security posts in his government, signalling he intends to keep his promises on cracking down on anti-Zionist activists. For example, Trump named Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who once introduced a bill cracking down on criticism of Israel on the grounds of “ensuring the security of God’s chosen people”, as his secretary of homeland security.

Another indication that Trump’s second term will be marked by a new crackdown on anticolonial and antiracist resistance came in the form of a strategy to “combat anti-Semitism” titled “Project Esther”, drafted by the prominent Trump-aligned conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.

The Heritage Foundation has been open about its intention to transform “Project Esther” into government policy under a second Trump administration. It states within the strategy document itself – which was published on October 7 to mark the first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel – that it hopes “Project Esther” would present “an opportunity for public-private partnership when a willing administration occupies the White House”.

Created by the same minds that brought us the authoritarian, Christian nationalist “Project 2025”, “Project Esther” syncretises the story of Queen Esther, the Jewish heroine celebrated during Purim for saving Jews of ancient Persia from extermination at the hands of Vizier Haman, with modern day Zionist narratives of defence and victimhood to depict her as a defender of Jews against activists, academics and progressive members of Congress in the US who oppose racism, apartheid and genocide. The strategy paper, supposedly designed to be “a blueprint to counter anti-Semitism in the United States”, includes several fundamental aspects of fascistic thought and practice as outlined by Umberto Eco, such as syncretic culture, xenophobia, a cult of heroism and anti-intellectualism.

Targeted individuals – including numerous Black, Brown and Jewish elected representatives who voiced any criticism of Israel, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer – are collectively mischaracterised as members of “Hamas Support Organisations (HSO)”, part of a “Hamas Support Network” and equated with Purim’s villain, Haman. Through this framing, the campaign targets prominent social justice advocates and progressive Democratic Party representatives as enemies of the Jewish people, using the mythology of Queen Esther to justify their persecution and repression.

“Project Esther” shamelessly states its aims to eliminate anticolonial perspectives from the US education system, limit the dissemination of related information and restrict advocates’ access to American society, the economy and Congress. It seeks to prosecute alleged legal and criminal violations by “HSO” members, disrupt their communications, restrict demonstrations and rally the Jewish community, allies and the American public against anticolonial resistance movements.

“Crushing Resistance,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024.

With fearmongering rhetoric draped in patriotism and “American values” and the latest Zionist spin on rebranding offensive aggression as “defence”, “Project Esther” institutionalises repression of dissent within a fallacious, fascistic theoretical framework, casting itself as the final bulwark against an imaginary threat of “foreign influence” and valiant protector of citizens from brown-skinned heathen hordes who have supposedly promised to infect white American open society with an anticapitalist agenda. Typically, “Project Esther” ideologues see themselves as heroes, courageously waging a holy war, much to the tune of the Ku Klux Klan’s infamous portrayal in Birth of a Nation.

Calling on “the silent majority” to “break its silence and speak” to “recover its voice and convert its words into actions to render impotent an illegitimate, hateful minority that threatens America’s soul” by, among other accusations, “corrupting our education system”, “Project Esther” weaponises xenophobic trends bolstered by the incoming Trump administration to threaten and fracture anticolonial movements that conscientiously oppose Zionism and white supremacy alike.

Under the guise of combating hate and appealing to a supposedly terrorised and humiliated underclass, “Project Esther” seeks to frame antiracist opposition to Zionist apartheid and genocide as inherently anti-Semitic. However, this exposes Zionism itself as white supremacy and a modern embodiment of anti-Semitic ideology, much like Haman in the myth of Queen Esther, actively targeting Jewish organisations such as Jewish Voice for Peace and the Reformed Jewish movement.

“Project Esther” criticises what it sees as “complacency” within the American Jewish community, invoking the Zionist-manufactured anti-Semitic ideal of a “new Jew” who rejects traditional beliefs that interpret oppression and hardship as divine punishment for sins. This vision disparages traditional reliance on defence as passive and weak, promoting instead an assertive, offensive approach to resistance. In line with this view, Zionists adopt the anti-Semitic notion that Jews have been responsible for their own suffering, advocating for segregation and land acquisition in a new homeland as the ultimate solution.

Notably, fearmongering has long been used by Zionists to encourage Jewish, preferably white, immigration to Israel as a means to restock the Israeli military and combat the Palestinian “demographic threat”. By amplifying the partnership between US white supremacy and Zionist expansionism, “Project Esther” presents a serious threat to anticolonial and justice-oriented intersectional movements across the country, on the one hand, and minorities, including Jews, on the other.

“Project Esther” promises to continue to speed up the mobilisation of Zionists and right-wing anti-Semites, now emboldened by Trump’s victory, to dismantle resistance to their racist policies through financial and academic audits, “name and shame” campaigns and “lawfare”. While shielding Zionist policies and aligning with US white supremacy, the document – riddled with misinformation about “anti-Israel and anti-Zionist Jew-haters attempting to lay siege to our education system, political processes, and government” – reinforces the incoming Trump administration as well as Zionist vigilante groups like the “Jewish Defence League” and their natural allies, American neo-Nazis, to stifle free speech and dissent.

Ultimately, campaigns like “Project Esther” manipulate Jewish historical trauma to promote white supremacy and suppress anticolonial, antiracist movements while gaslighting the public to accept Palestinian solidarity, even when expressed by Jews, as anti-Semitic. This alignment not only stifles dissent to right-wing agendas, it also perpetuates a fascist narrative that promotes violence against those who resist oppression, casting them as an existential threat. This Zionist-white supremacist partnership poses a direct challenge to justice movements, and humanity as a whole, using fear, propaganda and violence to undermine efforts for genuine solidarity and liberation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s or Informed Comment’s editorial stance.

Reprinted with the author’s permission from Al Jazeera English.

The report says, “The developments in this report lead the Special Committee to conclude that the policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period are consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”

It goes on to specify: “The targeting of Palestinians as a group; the life – threatening conditions imposed on Palestinians in Gaza through warfare and restrictions on humanitarian aid – resulting in physical destruction, increased miscarriages and stillbirths – and the killing of and serious bodily or mental harm caused to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are violations under international law. Civilians have been indiscriminately and disproportionally killed en masse in Gaza . . . ”

Genocide as the term is used in contemporary International Humanitarian Law does not have the connotation of killing millions of people. It has become a technical term for trying to wipe out even a portion of a people simply because they belong to that people. Trying to prevent them from having children is one of the actions listed as indicating genocidal intent in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention. That is why the Special Committee mentions “increased miscarriages and stillbirths” happening as a result of Israeli actions in Gaza. It also talks about the “unchilding” of the 800,000 Palestinian minors in Gaza, who have been deprived of their childhoods and subjected to physical and emotional traumas that will scar them for the rest of their lives, making them prone to depression and other debilitating mental conditions.

One of the things that most alarmed the committee is the Israeli use of artificial intelligence for targeting, in ways that certainly increased the civilian death toll and showed a reckless disregard for civilian lives in direct contradiction of International Humanitarian Law.

It expressed grave concern over the unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure and the exceptionally high civilian death toll in Gaza. They said that this way of proceeding raised significant questions about Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to guide its military operations.

The Special Committee cited Israel’s +972 Magazine and The Guardian among other sources suggesting that the Israeli military lowered the thresholds for target selection and simultaneously increased the previously accepted ratio of civilian to combatant casualties. Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine reported that the Israeli Rules of Engagement permitted the killing of 15 to 20 civilians for every militant killed. Those aren’t military Rules of Engagement, they are instructions for shooting fish in a barrel (my comment, not the UN’s).

The Special Committee observed, “These directives reportedly enabled the military to use artificial intelligence systems (which rely on mass surveillance to process large volumes of data), to rapidly generate tens of thousands of targets, as well as to track targets to their homes, particularly at night when families shelter together.”

And by the way, there was very little human supervision of these targeting decisions made by AI, which is known to have a 10% error rate. At 43,000 dead from drones and air strikes, 70% of them women and children, that could be 4,300 that were straight up errors having nothing to do with Hamas. Not that the children of Hamas members deserved to die when their father returned home in the evening. They were children.

They continued, “Reliance on the artificial intelligence-assisted targeting purportedly accelerated decision-making to the point of soldiers reportedly authorizing strikes in a matter of seconds, while the home-tracking of targets and night strikes would have disproportionately increased civilian casualties.”

They said that they were profoundly troubled by the indiscriminate loss of life reportedly caused by these AI-enhanced targeting mechanisms, noting that fatalities were multiplied because AI targeting was combined with explosive weaponry with wide-area effects.

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

The report concludes that Israel’s approach approach ignores Israel’s legal obligations under international humanitarian law to make a distinction between civilians and combatants and to implement sufficient safeguards to minimize harm to non-combatants.

The report concludes in this regard, “As stated by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.”

The Special Committee asserts that Gaza has become “unliveable” for Palestinians. It points to statements of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres where he underlines that no justification exists for the collective punishment of the Palestinian population.

The report notes that Israel has not yet complied with Guterres’ call for a cease-fire, a call that has been reiterated in Security Council resolution 2735 (2024), and that the Israeli government has similarly ignored no less than three binding orders issued by the International Court of Justice.

In view of these persistent violations, the Special Committee aligns with the Secretary-General’s assessment that the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza represents a moral failure that reflects poorly on humanity as a whole. They say, “In the light of those ongoing violations, the Special Committee shares the view of the Secretary-General that the humanitarian crisis has become a moral stain on us all.”

( The New Arab ) – In what war criminal and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “history’s greatest comeback,” sexual predator, game show host and former Wrestlemania idol Donald Trump was re-elected as US President.

Netanyahu, ever quick to kiss Trump’s ring, has been scheming toward this very moment since last October when Hamas fighters embarrassed his government by breaking out of Gaza’s prison walls and attacking Israeli military bases.

Indeed, Netanyahu’s investment paid off. Trump’s re-election reshuffles the Middle East colonial deck in Netanyahu’s favour, shifting US policy from the Democratic Party’s hypocritical complicity with and denial of Zionist genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity to a shameless embrace and encouragement of these malevolent actions.

Though historically Trump has been far from an ally to the Palestinian people, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recently using “Palestinian” as a pejorative on the campaign trail, he sent a message to Netanyahu to conclude the “Gaza war” by inauguration day.

Trump likely seeks to distance himself from the growing discontent over the Biden administration’s perceived weakness in failing to rein in its Israeli junior partner, allowing him to focus on advancing a series of xenophobic, regressive domestic policies aimed at “Making America Great Again.” 

Emboldened by Trump’s green light and timeline, Netanyahu may escalate his genocidal actions leading up to the inauguration, while a lame-duck President and defeated Vice President lick their wounds and walk off into the sunset, hopefully via The Hague.

That said, Trump is anything but predictable and could very well shift course entirely due to Netanyahu’s persistent grovelling, providing continued imperial backing for belligerent Zionist expansionism. 

In their demagoguery, corruption, racism and lack of social conscience, Trump and Netanyahu are mirror fascist images.

They deploy a right-wing, ethnocentric populist appeal with dog whistles and fear-mongering to consolidate their power. Operating above and outside the law, they are both avoiding corruption trials, inhabiting the same unrestrained, tyrannical Hobbesian world.

Essentially, Trump and Netanyahu aim to promote private capital by fragmenting the working class, pushing relentless privatisation of social resources and eroding workers’ rights and union protections. They rely on a fabricated white, Western “nation” to advance their nationalist agendas, claiming to protect the purity and security of their in-groups and white, Western interests while promoting a racist capitalist system of global apartheid.

Raised in the shadows of powerful fathers, the two leaders developed a narcissistic need for power, fame and wealth, indulging in corrupt extravagance and throwing spiteful tantrums when challenged.

Their motivations centre on domination, personal gain and the thrill of victory, driven by an insatiable desire to inflate their own grandiose egos. With little regard for integrity or the welfare of others, they routinely scapegoat society’s disadvantaged people to deflect criticism and wield power, prioritising in-group social identity over truth and morality.

Media manipulation is another shared skill. Trump, the reality show star, mastered this during his campaigns, using an array of far-right media networks to spread misinformation, xenophobia and deflect criticism.

Similarly, drawing on skill first honed as a furniture salesman, Netanyahu, the quintessential Teflon politician, has polished the arts of spin, cajolery and propaganda, deftly seizing on the October 7 events to push his agenda unchecked.

With atrocity propaganda eagerly consumed by Israel’s compliant press and promoted by a liberal Zionist “opposition,” he shepherds the Israeli flock to endless war, perpetually delaying his pending corruption trial.

Trump and Netanyahu’s Ur-Fascism

Beyond similarities in their backgrounds, personalities and motivations, Trump and Netanyahu exemplify figureheads of what Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco described as “Ur-fascism.’ 

Ur-Fascism combines traditionalism, irrationalism and authoritarianism to manipulate and control through several defining traits.

It adopts a cult of tradition, whether a delusion of a once “great” America, or a vast Judean Kingdom, fusing diverse, often contradictory teachings into an unchangeable “truth,” rejecting intellectual progress and embracing mysticism to legitimise its ideology. This rejection of modernism ties into an anti-Enlightenment stance, superficially accepting technology yet viewing reason, rationality and liberal values as corrupt.

Irrationalism lies at Ur-Fascism’s core, glorifying action over thought and condemning intellectual culture as weak and untrustworthy.

In this environment, disagreement equals betrayal, and questioning established norms is cast as subversive. Thriving on a fear of difference, it fosters racism and xenophobia, uniting followers against outsiders as a trick to divert attention from internal corruption.

Ur-Fascism is nurtured by social frustration, appealing to a disillusioned middle class and those lacking social identity by promoting nationalism and a sense of unity through battles with imagined enemies.

“Fascist Hell,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3, 2024

Whether through Trump’s villainisation of immigrants or Netanyahu’s “Amalek,” followers are made to feel both humiliated by and superior to their enemies, creating a contradiction that leads to inevitable defeat.

This struggle manifests in a heroic narrative where death and martyrdom are celebrated. Toxic masculinity further defines Ur-Fascism, with disdain for women and nonstandard sexualities and a fetishisation of violence and weapons. 

Misogynoir, deeply embedded in Zionist and American white supremacist ideology, fuses religious and fascistic dogmas to cast non-whites, including immigrants and Palestinians as “demographic threats” while erasing Indigenous female identities and lives.

In place of these identities, a Western femininity is constructed, where women are integrated into male-dominated, capitalist and militaristic structures “whether they like it or not.” In fascistic, genocidal escapades, controlling women, who uphold cultural, reproductive and territorial continuity, symbolises ultimate conquest. 

Ur-Fascism’s qualitative populism denies individual rights, presenting the people as a unified entity whose will is interpreted by the leader, bypassing democracy through controlled media and staged public support.

Language is deliberately simplified to suppress critical thinking, reminiscent of Orwell’s Newspeak, often disguised in seemingly innocuous forms like talk shows. Through this web of manipulation, Ur-Fascism ultimately seeks to dismantle rational discourse, undermine democracy and create a society ruled by fear, conformity and unquestioning loyalty to a single leader.

Globalisation of white supremacy

The Trump-aligned Heritage foundation has produced complementary documents which outline the globalisation of American white supremacy and Zionism with “Project 2025” and “Project Esther,” respectively.

The texts, which read like dystopian fascist manifestos, detail plans which attempt to institutionalise apartheid and genocide, with vigilante groups under the guise of ‘self defence’ as enforcers.

Netanyahu’s appointment of Yechiel Leiter — a prominent settler and former member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), an FBI designated terrorist organisation — as ambassador to the US signals his intent to escalate his campaign in Gaza, push toward the annexation of the West Bank and embolden already manifest fascist Zionist mob attacks with the assistance of Mossad beyond Israel (e.g. Amsterdam, Toronto).

In a possible scenario, if Netanyahu persists in his crusade, Trump could broker one of his signature “deals,” offering to recognise annexation of the West Bank, a move articulated by far-right Israeli Minister Smotrich, in exchange for a halt to Zionist aggression against Lebanon and Iran. Trump could then posture as a “peacemaker,” at the expense of the Palestinian and Lebanese people, of course.

That said, recent reports of an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump may prompt the vindictive President-elect to abandon any thoughts of diplomacy with Iran, aligning perfectly with Netanyahu’s fervent ambitions to pull US forces into a war with Iran in a fascist tag-team effort straight from hell.

Reprinted from The New Arab with the author’s permission.

(Jerusalem) – Israeli authorities have caused the massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since October 2023 and are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report is being published at the time of an ongoing Israeli military campaign in northern Gaza that has most likely created a new wave of forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months. Israeli forces have carried out deliberate, controlled demolitions of homes and civilian infrastructure, including in areas where they have apparent aims of creating “buffer zones” and security “corridors,” from which Palestinians are likely to be permanently displaced. Contrary to claims by Israeli officials, their actions do not comply with the laws of war.

“The Israeli government cannot claim to be keeping Palestinians safe when it kills them along escape routes, bombs so-called safe zones, and cuts off food, water, and sanitation,” said Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Israel has blatantly violated its obligation to ensure Palestinians can return home, razing virtually everything in large areas.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 39 displaced Palestinians in Gaza, analyzed Israel’s evacuation system, including 184 evacuation orders and satellite imagery confirming the widespread destruction, and verified videos and photographs of attacks on designated safe zones and evacuation routes.

Human Rights Watch: “Gaza: Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza”

The laws of armed conflict applicable in occupied territory permit displacement of civilians only exceptionally, for imperative military reasons or for the population’s security, and require safeguards and proper accommodation to receive displaced civilians. Israeli officials claim that, because Palestinian armed groups are fighting from among the civilian population, the military has lawfully evacuated civilians to attack the groups while limiting civilian harm. Human Rights Watch research shows this claim to be largely false.

There is no plausible imperative military reason to justify Israel’s mass displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, Human Rights Watch found. Israel’s evacuation system has severely harmed the population and often served only to spread fear and anxiety. Rather than ensure security for displaced civilians, Israeli forces have repeatedly struck designated evacuation routes and safe zones.

Evacuation orders have been inconsistent, inaccurate, and frequently not communicated to civilians with enough time to allow evacuations, or at all. The orders did not consider the needs of people with disabilities and others who are unable to leave without assistance.

As the occupying power, Israel is obliged to ensure adequate facilities to accommodate displaced civilians, but the authorities have blocked all but a small fraction of the necessary humanitarian aid, water, electricity, and fuel from reaching civilians in need in Gaza. Israeli attacks have damaged and destroyed resources that people need to stay alive, including hospitals, schools, water and energy infrastructure, bakeries, and agricultural land.

Israel is also obliged to ensure the return of displaced people to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area have ceased. Instead, it has left swathes of Gaza uninhabitable. Israel’s military has intentionally demolished or severely damaged civilian infrastructure, including controlled demolitions of homes, with the apparent aim of creating an extended “buffer zone” along Gaza’s perimeter with Israel and a corridor which will bifurcate Gaza. The destruction is so substantial that it indicates the intention to permanently displace many people.

Israel should respect the right of Palestinian civilians to return to the areas in Gaza from which it has displaced them. For almost eight decades, Israeli authorities have denied the right to return of the 80 percent of Gaza’s population who are refugees and their descendants who were expelled or fled in 1948 from what is now Israel, in what Palestinians call the “Nakba,” or the catastrophe. This ongoing violation looms over the experience of Palestinians in Gaza, with many of those interviewed speaking of living through a second Nakba.

From the first days of the hostilities, senior officials in the Israeli government and the war cabinet have declared their intent to displace the Palestinian population of Gaza, with government ministers stating that its territory will decrease, that blowing up and flattening Gaza is “beautiful,” and that land will be handed to settlers. In November 2023, Israeli Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Avi Dichter said, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”

Human Rights Watch found that forced displacement has been widespread, and the evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy. Such acts also constitute crimes against humanity.

The Israeli authorities’ organized, violent displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, who are members of another ethnic group, is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors. Such actions of the Israeli authorities amount to ethnic cleansing.

Victims of serious abuses in Israel and Palestine have faced a wall of impunity for decades. Palestinians in Gaza have been living under an unlawful blockade for 17 years, which constitutes part of the continuous crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution that Israeli authorities have been committing against Palestinians.

Governments should publicly condemn Israel’s forced displacement of the civilian population in Gaza as a war crime and crime against humanity, and pressure it to immediately halt those crimes and comply with the International Court of Justice’s multiple binding orders and with the obligations laid out in its July advisory opinion.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor should investigate Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of the right to return as a crime against humanity. Governments should also publicly condemn efforts to intimidate or interfere with the court’s work, officials, and those cooperating with the institution.

Governments should adopt targeted sanctions and other measures, including reviewing their bilateral agreements with Israel, to press the Israeli government to comply with its international obligations to protect civilians.

The United States, Germany, and other countries should immediately suspend weapons transfers and military assistance to Israel. Continuing to provide arms to Israel risks complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other grave human rights violations.

“No one can be in denial about the atrocity crimes the Israeli military is committing against Palestinians in Gaza,” Hardman said. “Transfer of additional weapons and assistance to Israel by the United States, Germany, and others is a blank check for further atrocities and increasingly puts them at risk of complicity.”

A report published by the United Nations Commission regarded Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s health facilities as war crimes and crimes against humanity. Chair of the UN Commission, Navi Pillay, stated: “By targeting healthcare facilities, Israel is targeting the right to health itself, with significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population. Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.”

Moreover, Israel’s assault on the Palestinian healthcare sector has been unparalleled in its inhumanity. An analysis by the charity Save the Children, covering the period from October 7, 2023, to early April 2024, showed that the rate of Israeli attacks on healthcare in Gaza is higher than in any other conflict worldwide since 2018. According to Save the Children, on average, Israel carried out 73 attacks per month on Palestinian healthcare facilities. Ukraine followed with 67 attacks per month, while the Democratic Republic of Congo averaged 11 attacks per month.

As part of Israel’s strategy to destroy the health sector, it has also targeted healthcare staff. For example, last May, Dr. Adnan Al Bursh, head of the orthopedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital, was reportedly abducted by the Israeli army and tortured to death. After one year of the Israeli war on Gaza, an estimated 986 Palestinian healthcare personnel were killed by Israel, along with 85 civil defense workers. Al Jazeera indicated that 34 hospitals and 80 health centers became inoperative, in addition to the destruction of 131 ambulances.

International healthcare staff in Gaza do not feel safe from Israeli attacks either. For instance, in the previously mentioned Save the Children report, Dr. Simon Struthers, a pediatrician at a field hospital in Rafah, stated: “We can’t take risks and must be careful which route we take because of what’s going on. We’re fearful of what’s coming from Israeli forces, rather than the local population, who are very supportive of us.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) argued last year that the Israeli military’s persistent and seemingly illegal assaults on healthcare facilities, staff, and transportation were further dismantling Gaza’s medical infrastructure and said that they should be examined as potential war crimes. The HRW quotes special adviser on Palestinian health A. Kayum Ahmed: “Israel’s repeated attacks damaging hospitals and harming healthcare workers, already hard hit by an unlawful blockade, have devastated Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure. The strikes on hospitals have killed hundreds of people and put many patients at grave risk because they’re unable to receive proper medical care.”

Sadly, many Palestinians may have died from natural causes and diseases such as cancer, diabetes or other treatable conditions, whose lives might have been saved if not for Israel’s destruction of Palestinian hospitals. These victims are not counted among those who died due to direct Israeli fire, though their deaths can still be attributed to the conditions created by the occupation and blockade. Even in times of ceasefire, Palestinians will continue to die unnecessarily as it will take time for the Palestinian healthcare sector to recover to its previous state—which was already severely under-resourced due to Israel’s longstanding blockade on Gaza.

You may think that the circumstances of the Gaza War explain this attack on Palestinian healthcare. In fact, the targeting of healthcare facilities is not a new tactic in Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian people. According to a 2017 report issued by the charity Medical Aid for Palestine, 147 hospitals and clinics, along with 80 ambulances, were either damaged or destroyed in Israeli military offensives on Gaza between 2008 and 2017. Additionally, 145 medical staff, most of them ambulance drivers, were either injured or killed. In the West Bank, between October and December 2015, there were eight armed Israeli raids on Palestinian hospitals. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) documented 92 instances of damage to ambulances and 147 injuries to medical workers.

Considering the scale and history of attacks on the health sector and the targeting of Palestinian healthcare personnel by Israel, along with the failure of governments and the international community to hold Israel accountable — often appearing complicit — healthcare professionals and their representative bodies across the world should show solidarity with their colleagues in occupied Palestine. Healthcare organizations should also express their support by boycotting healthcare products produced in Israel and its illegal settlements before it is too late.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Al Jazeera English: “Israel shells Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza”