This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The trial of anti-genocide journalist Sarah Wilkinson on charges under the Terrorism Act began on Friday 14 November, for her reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the state is treating as ‘support for Hamas’, the Palestinian resistance organisation banned in the UK as a terrorist organisation.
Sarah Wilkinson on trial
In an exclusive interview with the Canary, Sarah Wilkinson spoke before entering the Old Bailey to Gerry Tasker. She described the Starmer regime’s war on pro-Palestine journalism and the freedoms of speech and protest as state terror – and stressed that while she may be on trial, Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the right to freedom of the Palestinian people remain the real issue:
Gerry also spoke to Sarah as she left the court, where she updated him on the schedule of her case and that the state – its usual pattern – is making her wait more than a year for her full trial:
Wilkinson, like other journalists and activists charged under the Terrorism Act for opposing genocide and Starmer’s terrorism ban on non-violent protest group Palestine Action, faces up to fourteen years in prison simply for opposing Israel’s mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
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A violent settler attack took place in the occupied West Bank town of Beita on 8 November. Masked colonial Zionist settlers attacked journalists, Red Crescent volunteers, activists, and Palestinian farmers. 15 people were injured, including five journalists.
A well-organised, sustained, and violent attack from far-right settlers
That morning, a large group of residents and international activists made their way to the mountain area of town. They aimed to aid and protect the Palestinian farmers while picking their olives. Also present were several journalists and paramedics. After some time, the group began to see movement amongst the trees.
Al Jazeera photojournalist Louy Alsaeed told the Canary around 40 masked Israeli settlers suddenly appeared, descending the mountain and surrounding the area. Their attack was coordinated, sustained, and violent, with clubs, sticks and rocks used as weapons.
Alsaeed: “I felt as if I was really close to death”
Alsaeed said:
I felt really close to death, for the first time in my life. They tried to catch us, and started throwing rocks at us from above. It was very difficult to escape from that mountainous area. I kept running, but every time I looked back, I saw someone trying to catch me. Many journalists fell while trying to escape. I was one of them. I fell with all my equipment. We expected problems, but not like this. They planned this very well. They hid behind trees, and then made themselves into groups and attacked us.
Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamad Alatrash has severe bruising and pain from escaping the attack. He says the attack was an:
exceptional and extremely violent incident, aimed at harming people in the area.
“We could see the hatred in the settlers’ eyes…”
Alatrash told the Canary:
I was born and raised in an area where settlers were only a short distance from my home. But what I witnessed in this attack was exceptional. We could see the hatred in the settler’s eyes, the extreme violence in their behaviour, and the clear intent to kill, through the brutal blows they directed at several people. Everyone in the area was thinking only about individual survival. We had no choice but to move towards a rough and steep wadi area.
Reuters photojournalist Raneen Sawafta had difficulty jumping down, and was surrounded, isolated, and repeatedly beaten. She suffered multiple fractures and fragmentation in her knee joint. Photojournalist Nael Buaytal also suffered fractures in the ankle as a result of jumping.
Alatrash said:I could hear Raneen screaming loudly, and felt devastated I couldn’t help her. The settlers were only a few metres from me, as I was trying to jump and escape the mountain area. I was fully aware that if they managed to catch and surround me, they would kill me. I had no choice but to jump into the wadi.
Difficult times for farmers in the occupied West Bank
Many farmers in the occupied West Bank are unable to reach their land, because of violence from settlers and Israeli occupation forces (IOF). Until recently, the presence of activists, especially internationals, provided some protection for them, but not now. According to Alsaeed, settlers are stealing olives when farmers cannot get to their land. Israeli occupation forces (IOF) are also clamping down on activists who help farmers, prevented them from returning to Palestine at a later date.
But farmers continue persevering, despite the violence. Olive trees are deeply rooted in Palestinian heritage, culture and identity. The harvest is also relied on, economically, by 100,000 Palestinian families, and accounts for almost three quarters of the West Bank economy.
Evyatar settlement in Beita built on stolen Palestinian land
The settlers terrorising Beita live in Evyatar settlement, on Beita’s mountain. Founded in May 2021, Evyatar started as an unapproved outpost. It grew in size and, last year, was officially authorized as a new settlement. 16 acres of Palestinian land were declared ‘state land’ and seized for this settlement.
The settlers have recently erected a tent on the farmer’s land, the first step in gaining control of the area. Then they move in, restrict Palestinian access, and forcibly displace them. Eventually, these outposts are legalised, and expand into a settlement.
Beita has a long history of resistance against the occupation and Evyatar settlement. But protests have been met with extreme IOF violence. Since 2020, 18 demonstrators in Beita have been killed by the IOF, including American peace activist, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who they shot in the head. Thousands more have been injured. Children bear the brunt of this violence, and are receiving psychosocial support from the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Illegal settlers supported and protected by the IOF
Evyatar settlement was founded by the ultra nationalist Nachala Settlement Movement, set up by extremist settler leader Daniella Weiss. Weiss, a prominent far-right Israeli Orthodox Zionist, was symbolically sanctioned by the UK government earlier this year.
Alsaeed told the Canary:
No one can stop the settlers acting how they do. The problem is getting worse and worse because these attacks are under the protection of the soldiers and the government. I don’t think there is a solution.
13 year old is latest to be killed by violence in Beita
Beita has suffered repeated violent settler attacks during this olive harvest. Several weeks ago vehicles were set alight, and many Palestinians were injured. The IOF fired tear gas toward the Palestinians, which 13 year old Aysam Mualla inhaled. He suffered critical injuries, and died in hospital this week:
Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is an everyday occurrence, and Palestinian journalists risk their lives to expose crimes the Israeli occupation commit. Alatrash says he still feels “intense fear about going to areas of confrontation”, as he knows he could be subjected to another similar attack.
Until the international community takes decisive action, the cycle of violence and dispossession will continue. But Alsaeed and Alatrash say they will continue to give a voice to Palestinian communities deeply affected by the violence.
Featured images and video via David Reeb
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Education Minister, Paul Givan, of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) made a visit to Israel in October, assisted by the Department of Education (DoE), despite its private and propagandistic nature.
It transpired during a recent meeting of the Education committee at Stormont on 12 November, that the junket to the terrorist entity known as ‘Israel’ was aided on 10 occasions by the Department of Education (DoE), Interim Permanent Secretary Department of Education, Ronnie Armour, exposed.
Armour explained that the assistance was “largely [in the form of] short email responses”. He also acknowledged that a letter of acceptance issued by the department confirmed travel logistics.
Most controversially, the DoE, at Givan’s request, published a press statement publicising his visit to a school in East Jerusalem and praising Israel’s “inclusive” approach to education.
Under international law, the Ofek School is situated on land that is illegally occupied. The expropriation of indigenous Palestinian land remains central to Israel’s raison d’etat. Armour approved the press release though he insisted that at the time he was unaware of the school’s location. Under questioning from Sinn Féin MLA Pat Sheehan, he said:
Had I known about the location of the school, it would have been a factor to take into account.
Department of Education put out pro-Zionist propaganda in press release
He refused to specify what decision he would have made otherwise. He argued that factuality and business relevance were the main factors when approving releases. But the statement went beyond the merely factual:
It’s inspiring to see how Ofek School and the Israeli Ministry of Education are investing in the potential of gifted learners while maintaining an inclusive approach that ensures every student feels valued and supported.
The emphasis on inclusivity serves to whitewash the reputation of an apartheid settler-colony which terrorises the indigenous. It goes beyond relating strictly “to the business of the department”, as Armour claimed, serving as propaganda for a foreign entity. Alliance’s Michelle Goyle, described the trip as fundamentally political and said the civil service could have avoided being “dragged” into the matter if the DUP representative publicised the trip using his personal social media instead of government channels.
‘Israel’-funded trip reveals a corrupt system
When pressed about the involvement of DoE officials in a supposedly private matter, Armour insisted:
Officials were just passing emails on, though some responded directly to the [Israeli] embassy.
Sheehan also asked:
Do you not have a moral responsibility when making these decisions?
He continued:
Do you think it’s appropriate for the minister to visit a country responsible for the deaths of over 20,000 kids [which has] destroyed every school in Gaza, every university?
The Interim Permanent Secretary said:
My heart goes out to everybody who has suffered in that part of the world.
He insisted it wasn’t his role to take into account the politics at play. Sheehan countered by referencing the school’s location and the arrest warrants issued by out for Israeli politicians:
It’s not politics – it’s the law.
Concerns of local school staff ignored
Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) MLA Cara Hunter again pointed out the contradictions of the trip. She identified a photograph featuring an Israeli flag, a Union Jack, and a name card featuring Givan’s ministerial title.
Sinn Féin MLA Danny Baker rightly pointed to DoE officials’ obligation to the frontline staff in their department, saying:
You’re responsible for the wellbeing of teachers, pupils and school leaders and they’re all concerned [by your decisions].
Clearly, allowing propaganda through official channels shows a complete disregard towards staff and their concerns.
Armour apathetically maintained that regardless of the political context:
whatever scenario I had opted for was going to be controversial.
It’s hard to believe that, in the unlikely event of a minister visiting a school in Russia or Iran, Armour would have approved a glowing press release. Once again, ‘Israel’ gets special treatment, despite its army committing crimes well in excess of any other equivalent force.
Givan using controversy for political gain
It turns out Givan has already been invited back to the settler-colony already, so pleased were his benefactors with his prostration. In his words, Armour said:
An invitation has been received by the department for the minister to attend a conference in the new year.
Givan predictably survived a vote of no confidence on Monday, in a system that requires strong backing from unionist and nationalist parties for such a vote to succeed. One protester was ejected from the Stormont gallery for interrupting the DUP minister with shouts of “shame on you”, accusing him of backing genocide.
The Lagan Valley MLA has continued to make political capital out of the matter. They have been flooding his Facebook page with posts, alongside others celebrating victimising trans people, and photos of Remembrance Sunday.
A lot of bluster about issues entirely unrelated to the material concerns of his constituents, and the actual business of improving education.
An all too familiar template for a political right worldwide, eager to divide and distract rather than do anything useful for those they’re meant to serve.
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Reuters has revealed that during 2024, the US gathered intelligence indicating that Israel discussed the possibility of sending Palestinian soldiers into tunnels in Gaza believed to contain explosives, raising questions about the use of civilians as human shields, which is prohibited under international law.
The information was shared with the White House and analysed by intelligence agencies in the final weeks of former President Joe Biden’s administration. Two former US officials, who asked not to be named, have now revealed the information sparked internal debate about how widespread the practice was and whether Israeli soldiers were acting on instructions from military commanders.
Israel uses human shields – and the US knows it
The sources did not specify whether the Palestinians referred to were prisoners or civilians, and it was unclear whether the Biden administration had discussed the information with the Israeli government. White House and CIA officials did not comment on the report.
The Israeli army said in a statement that:
The use of civilians as human shields is strictly prohibited, and they may not be forced to participate in military operations.
It added that the military police’s criminal investigation division is investigating suspicions of Palestinian involvement in military operations. The Israeli government did not respond to questions about whether it had discussed this information with the United States.
The report noted that media reports accuse Hamas of using civilians as human shields, particularly by deploying its fighters in civilian facilities such as hospitals, accusations that the movement has denied.
The new intelligence also included legal warnings from Israeli lawyers that there was evidence that could lead to war crimes charges. According to former US officials, senior US officials believed that the information supported concerns about possible war crimes, which could place the US under potential liability if Israel’s involvement was proven.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
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A number of football stars and human rights groups have sent an open letter to UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin, calling for “the immediate exclusion of Israel from European football” over what they described as “grave violations and war crimes against Palestinians”.
Game Over Israel
The letter, prepared by the organisation Game Over Israel and published on its Instagram account, was supported by several human rights organisations, including Athletes for Peace, the Gaza Tribunal, and the Hind Rajab Foundation.
It was signed by more than 70 players from around the world, most notably former French star Paul Pogba, Moroccan Hakim Ziyech, Spaniard Adama Traoré and Dutchman Anwar El Ghazi.
The letter begins:
Football does not belong to anyone; it belongs to everyone because it is part of our shared human heritage.
The signatories expressed “deep concern about the failure of the European Football Association to take a moral stance by excluding Israel from European competitions”, stressing that “tolerance of Israel threatens to undermine the spirit and human essence of the game.”
The letter also stressed that it is necessary for “UEFA to uphold its legal and moral responsibilities and immediately expel Israel from European football”, adding that:
no sporting or civilised arena should welcome a regime that commits genocide, apartheid and crimes against humanity.
The letter accused UEFA of facilitating Israel’s violations by allowing its teams to participate in and finance international competitions, calling for an immediate and comprehensive ban on them.
This move comes days after a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October 2025, ending a two-year war on the Gaza Strip that resulted in — according to United Nations estimates — to the deaths of more than 69,000 Palestinians and the injury of some 170,000 others, most of them women and children, in addition to the destruction of about 90% of civilian infrastructure, with reconstruction costs estimated at $70 billion.
Featured image via the Canary
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
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After two years of genocide, it is no longer possible to hide complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Entire countries and corporations are — according to multiple reports by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese — either directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s economic proliferation.
In her latest report, “Gaza Genocide: a collective crime,” Albanese details the role 63 nations played in supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. She chronicles how countries like the United States, which directly funds and arms Israel, are a part of a vast global economic web.
The post Chris Hedges Report: The Member States Complicit In Genocide appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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US envoy Tom Barrack said on 13 November that the extremist-led government in Damascus will “actively assist” Washington and Tel Aviv in confronting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“I had the profound honor of accompanying Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa to the White House, where he became the first Syrian Head of State ever to visit since Syria gained its independence in 1946,” Barrack said on X.
He also hailed the former Al-Qaeda chief’s “commitment” to joining Washington’s ‘anti-ISIS’ coalition, “marking Syria’s transition from a source of terrorism to a counterterrorism partner – a commitment to rebuild, to cooperate, and to contribute to the stability of an entire region.”
“Damascus will now actively assist us in confronting and dismantling the remnants of ISIS, the IRGC, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist networks, and will stand as a committed partner in the global effort to secure peace,” the envoy added.
The post US Envoy: Syria Will ‘Actively Assist’ Washington In Confronting Hezbollah appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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It has been 10 days since political prisoners Qesser Zuhrah and Amu Gib ate any food.
It has been 9 days since Heba Muraisi ate any food.
It has been 7 days since Jon Cink ate any food.
It has been 4 days since Teuta Hoxha ate any food.
It has been 3 days since Kamran Ahmed ate any food.
After the first 2 to 3 days without food, your body begins breaking down its own fat stores for energy, then its muscles, vital organs, and bone marrow, eating itself alive. The first days are the hardest. Then, you stop craving food at all as your body settles into the inharmonious rhythm of starvation. By day ten, significant medical intervention is required.
The post On The Prisoners For Palestine Hunger Strike appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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The reckoning has begun. Israel’s descent into fascism echoes what Hannah Arendt, Malcolm X, and Frantz Fanon witnessed in their own time — the empire’s violence returning home.
Now, almost 80 years after the massacres of 1948, can Israel withstand the inevitable? Is the end finally upon Israel?
Lebanese scholar Leila Nicolas in a recent Al Mayadeen article applies Arendt’s “imperial boomerang” theory, arguing that the violence intrinsic to the subjugation of Palestinians is chipping away at Israel, like an axe to a tree.
Israel’s violence, Nicolas cautions, has come home to roost — producing the very totalitarian state Arendt warned against.
Homecoming
Arendt spoke of colonies as ‘laboratories of domination’ — spaces where the coloniser sharpens and expands its imperial toolkit beyond legal or moral constraint. These tools and practices, Arendt is likely to agree, are turning inward. In these laboratories, the coloniser perfected methods which circle back to Europe itself, sooner or later. The hallmarks of this playbook have been on public display since Israel’s establishment, institutionalising racism and weaponisation of the legislature to sustain its racist ethnostate.
Since its inception, Israel has been shaped by colonial violence. During the Nakba in 1947, Israeli armed forces massacred Palestinians — sparing not even children — and razed entire cities to the ground. Around 500 villages were destroyed during the founding years of the State of Israel. Forests were planted on their remains to hide they ever existed. And the story continues. Surely you’ve heard of Netanyahu?
In the words of Arendt:
Barbarism, once practiced on the periphery, will one day strike back at the centre.
Netanyahu, take note.
Israel’s boomerang moment
Israel never was and never will be a unique case. It’s another settler-colonial project which has failed to subjugate Palestinians into oblivion. The forces that sustain it — racism, militarism, and religious fanaticism — are those devouring the coloniser from within.
During the Gaza genocide, Israeli leaders and media figures called Palestinians “human animals” and framed its disproportionate response as a biblical war of “light versus darkness.” “Remember what Amalek did to you?” The butcher was heard saying.
Across the West Bank, settlers unleashed pogrom-like violence against Palestinians, largely protected by state forces loyal to far-right minister Itamar (in Arabic Himar) Ben-Gvir. The 2018 Nation-State Law legally enshrined Jewish supremacy, rendering Palestinians inside Israel as second-class citizens. In Arendt’s terms, Israel operates under a dual legal system — a formal apartheid.
Israel’s decision to arm thousands of extremist settlers has blurred the line between the military and ideological militias, ultimately losing control over the monster within.
As Nicolas points out, Israel’s war in Gaza is about much more than the wanton extermination of Palestinians. It erodes the ethical basis of Israeli society and pushes the state closer to the brink
Fanon: the coloniser dehumanised
Frantz Fanon, writing from the battlefields of French-mandated Algeria, described this psychological self-destruction in The Wretched of the Earth.
Colonialism, he wrote:
dehumanises the coloniser just as it dehumanises the colonised.
Violence, once a tool of domination, becomes an addiction. In Fanon’s words:
the coloniser becomes a creature of habit, intoxicated by power.
These words ring true decades on in the context of Israel’s militarised nationalism. The settler-colonial project has produced generations conditioned to see violence as normal, purity as virtue, and domination as destiny. And to think that Gen Z are wild.
While Arendt analysed the political structure of this decay, Fanon diagnosed its psychological wound.
Empire self-destructs
Israeli journalist Menachem Rahat, writing for HaMizrachi, a pro-Zionist outlet, warns of a historical pattern that he calls “the curse of the eighth decade.”
He notes that both previous Jewish sovereignties — the Davidic and Hasmonean kingdoms — collapsed around their eighth decade, not from external invasion but from internal division and moral rot.
The State of Israel, now in its eighth decade of life and about to celebrate its 75th birthday, is today closer than ever before to the danger of a fratricidal war, each man against his brother,
Rahat continues that they shouldn’t be worried about ‘Palestinian criminal gangs’ for the danger lies within.
Far more threatening and dangerous to our future is the division and polarisation within Israeli society.
It is a striking echo of Arendt’s imperial boomerang — the violence that defines a colonial power inevitably turns inward, and its founding myths unravel.
Arendt, Malcolm X, and Fanon, all warned that the empire falls not when the oppressed rise up, but when the coloniser cuts off its nose to spite its face. If Arendt’s prophecy holds, the colonial state cannot remain confined to its victims. Sooner or later, the machinery of dehumanisation turns inward.
Colonialism always comes home.
It’s coming home!
For Israel, that reckoning is underway — colonialism is coming home. As Malcolm X warned, the empire’s chickens always come home to roost.
The question is no longer if, but when. The passage of 80 years since this all began has not dulled international attention to Israeli transgressions. Support for Palestinians is louder than ever and the latest chapter of Israeli colonial violence in Gaza will not, and must not, be forgotten.
From rising global pressure, to growing condemnation from the International Court of Justice, is the outside world finally taking note? Is it enough to pierce through Israel’s colonial armour? Is God, the almighty, making a late comeback on Fergie time? All of the above?
Only one way to find out. Should I create a calendar invite?
2028, we’ve got our eyes on you.
Featured image via Naji Al Ali
By Jamal Awar
This post was originally published on Canary.
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In the waning weeks of President Joe Biden’s first term, the U.S. came into possession of intelligence of Israeli officials discussing their military’s use of Palestinians as human shields in Gaza — but refused to act upon this knowledge, reporting finds. U.S. officials received intelligence late in 2024 that the Israeli military had sent Palestinians into tunnels they believed were loaded…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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When I finally fled from my home in Gaza City to Khan Younis in southern Gaza this September, I left behind everything that reminded me of myself. I dreamed of returning, yet I kept wondering whether there was anything left for me to stay for in this land. In the south, I felt like a stranger. If exile feels this hollow inside Gaza, what would life abroad be like? I spent a whole month in a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Shawan Jabarin says US colleagues and funders have distanced themselves from West Bank-based Al-Haq over the sanctions
Al-Haq, a leading Palestinian human rights organization based in the West Bank, is not new to adversity. But since the group was sanctioned by the Trump administration in September, its world has shrunk.
Today, staff work without pay because the group’s banks closed its accounts. US-based funders have pulled away. YouTube has pulled hundreds of the group’s videos documenting Israeli forces’ human rights abuses against Palestinians. Perhaps most upsetting, US-based groups that had long collaborated have gone quiet, fearful that communications with Al-Haq may draw the attention of an administration that has made clear they are a target.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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I never thought I would see the day, but the day came Monday, when Ahmed al–Sharaa arrived at the White House for a sit-down with President Donald Trump and the usual gaggle of misfits who must be there to make sure the Trumpster understands at least a little of what is being said.
A freak-show terrorist amid all that retro Oval Office elegance: Who could have imagined so offensive a tableau?
Al–Sharaa, alert readers will know, is one of those dripping-with-blood Sunni jihadists who, during the West’s extended covert operation against the Assad regime in Syria, had the habit of changing their names and the names of their murderous militias whenever the world figured out who they were and the extent of their savagery.
The post Al-Qaeda Goes To Washington appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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On Saturday, 8 November, 2025, Dan Perry wrote in The Jerusalem Post about Israel’s projected lifting of the media blockade on Gaza. Perry laments that Israeli censorship has left all reporting of the atrocity in the hands of Palestinians, who refuse to be silent. To date, Israel has assassinated over 240 Palestinian journalists.
Perry writes: “The High Court ruled last week that the government must consider allowing foreign journalists into Gaza but also granted a one-month extension due to the still-unclear situation in the Strip.” He asserts that Israel had and has no motive for excluding foreign journalists save concern for their own protection.
The post Winter In Gaza appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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US President Donald Trump’s administration is advancing a controversial plan to build what US officials called “Alternate Safe Communities” for displaced Palestinians inside the Israeli-controlled areas in Gaza that make up half of the strip, The Atlantic reported on 10 November.
According to The Atlantic, the initiative envisions a string of US-backed settlements for Palestinians screened and approved by Israel’s domestic intelligence service. Anyone – or their relatives – found to be affiliated with or supportive of Hamas would be barred from entry, effectively separating them from the majority still living under Hamas administration on the western side of what Israeli troops now call the “yellow line.”
The post US To Build Internment-Style Camps In Israeli-Controlled Gaza appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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Israeli settlers carried out a large-scale arson attack on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the latest in a series of army-backed assaults that have surged since October.
Dozens of masked settlers targeted an industrial area east of Tulkarm, near Beit Lid, in the attack, setting fire to a dairy factory, surrounding farmland, several buildings and multiple trucks.
Settlers also hurled rocks at Palestinians on the scene, wounding at least four people.
The fire spread to a nearby nomadic Palestinian community, engulfing their tents.
The post Israeli Settlers Torch Factories And Farmland In West Bank Raid appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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As winter creeps into Gaza with its cold arrival, thousands of displaced people are enduring new chapters of suffering inside tattered tents that offer no protection from the wind or rain. After a long summer whose heat almost melted them, they now face the rainy season exposed, without cover or a floor to protect children from drowning in the mud.
In the camps stretching from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, the fear of drowning is renewed every evening. The rain, which was once a harbinger of life, has now become a constant source of fear.
Um Mahmoud, displaced from the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza, told the Canary:
Our tent is torn at the sides. We put pieces of nylon over it, but the wind comes in from everywhere. With the first rain, we don’t know where we will go or how we will protect the children.
Despite repeated promises to allow the entry of relief supplies and new tents, the occupation continues to prevent their entry through the crossings, leaving families who lost their homes in the last war to face their fate in tattered tarpaulins and with water seeping into their children’s bodies.
Gaza winter: the siege exacerbates the suffering.
According to UNRWA and human rights sources, the Israeli occupation prevents the entry of tents, basic aid, and cooking gas into the Gaza Strip, despite the dire humanitarian need.
More than 1.5 million displaced people are living without adequate shelter, their tents deteriorating due to the long summer heat and frequent winds, increasing the risk of drowning and disease as winter approaches.
The Government Media Office in Gaza indicates that the restrictions on the entry of relief supplies constitute collective punishment, violating the rights of civilians under the Geneva Conventions, at a time when the camps desperately need blankets, new tents, utensils, and clothing to meet basic needs.
According to UNRWA, aid entering Gaza since the ceasefire has reached only 28% of the required amount, deepening the humanitarian needs gap and leaving thousands of displaced people without protection from the winter cold and heavy rains.
A Cry from the Camps
Abu Ahmed, displaced from the northern Gaza Strip, told the Canary:
We fear every cloud that passes overhead. This time, the rain isn’t a blessing, but a fear of drowning and freezing cold. Our tent is dilapidated, and we have no alternative.
Humanitarian organisations are calling on the international community to pressure the Israeli occupation to open the crossings and allow the immediate entry of tents and basic shelter materials, in anticipation of a potential humanitarian catastrophe with the onset of winter.
In Gaza this year, winter brings not its usual blessings, but rather knocks on the doors of worn-out tents laden with fear and hunger. Thousands of families await delayed warmth and shelter before the rains turn into a disaster.
As winter approaches, Gaza’s tattered tents remain the last refuge for the displaced, and the youngest children bear the brunt of the cold, rain, and hunger. Every day that passes without the arrival of essential aid exacerbates the suffering of families and turns winter into a test of survival.
The message is clear: life in Gaza is not just about survival, but a constant struggle for the most basic necessities. The international community must act now before the coming rains become an unstoppable humanitarian catastrophe.
Featured image via Middle East Children’s Alliance
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
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In Gaza, the war didn’t end when the bombs stopped. After the smoke from the explosions subsided, another kind of death began to creep in silently: death by starvation and disease. Children are no longer just victims of bombs, but victims of a deliberate deprivation of the most basic necessities for survival.
Behind every closed crossing, a meal is held hostage, a vaccine dose is postponed, and a refrigerator storing blood or baby milk is shut down. Thus, politics becomes a tool of slow execution for an entire generation born amidst the rubble, finding nothing to keep them alive.
Gaza starvation — deliberate blockade
Bullets aren’t always fired from a gun barrel; sometimes death comes in the form of a confiscated milk carton or a refrigerator full of vaccines prevented from crossing. In Gaza, children don’t need a missile to die; it’s enough for the crossings to be closed to food and medicine.
The UN says nearly a million cans of ready-made infant formula have been stuck since last August, while shipments of syringes, solar refrigerators, and spare parts for medical generators are being blocked under the pretext that they are “dual-use items.” This means they can also be used for millitary purposes somehow.
But in reality, as aid organisations describe it, this is a siege policy designed to sever the lifeline of the Gaza Strip.
In a makeshift camp near Khan Younis, Khitam, a mother of twins who has been displaced for months, searches for a can of formula among the few stalls that are still selling anything. Her voice, a mixture of exhaustion and hope:
I gave birth to my twins a month before the end of the war. They wouldn’t breastfeed, and now I go from tent to tent looking for formula, which I only find by chance… or by borrowing.
Her story is not unique; hundreds of mothers are experiencing the same situation, while Ministry of Health reports indicate a sharp rise in child deaths due to hunger and malnutrition, and the complete absence of any guarantee of food or medical care.
Thousands of children at risk
In Geneva, UNICEF spokesperson Ricardo Perez warned that the continued detention of aid supplies “threatens the lives of thousands of children suffering from acute malnutrition,” emphasising that the aid that entered Gaza—some 5,500 truckloads in the past month—did not include the most critical life-saving items.
Meanwhile, UNICEF and the World Health Organisation are attempting to implement an emergency vaccination campaign targeting more than 40,000 children under the age of three, following months-long vaccine shortages. However, the two organisations say the campaign is at risk of being halted at any moment due to a lack of syringes and refrigeration equipment.
Save the Children described the situation as a silent food and health catastrophe, noting that rates of acute malnutrition have doubled, while cases of preventable diseases such as measles and polio are on the rise due to the collapse of cold chains and fuel shortages.
Behind the numbers lies a far more horrific reality: children going to bed hungry, mothers squeezing out the little milk they have left, and hospitals shutting off ventilators because generators have run out of fuel.
This is how war in Gaza manifests itself today—not as an explosion, but as a calculated slowness of death, where the siege becomes a silent weapon that first steals life from the youngest hearts.
Featured image via Reuters
By Alaa Shamali
This post was originally published on Canary.
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The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), which is named after a five-year-old girl murdered along with her family by an Israeli tank in Gaza and which pursues justice against Israeli perpetrators, says it has struck a triple blow this month. The targets: Israel’s habitual impunity and Europe’s collaboration in it.
In a statement released in its newsletter today, HRF writes that:
In the last ten days, the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) has delivered three powerful legal blows against Israeli impunity and European complicity. Together, they signal a new phase in the global struggle for justice.
First, our formal complaint against the European Investment Bank (EIB) — for channelling over €1 billion in EU funds to Israeli banks and companies blacklisted by the United Nations — has been deemed admissible and moved to formal assessment. For the first time, a European institution must account for its financing of apartheid.
Second, HRF has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against Israeli extremist Elkana Federman, accused of torture and the starvation of civilians during the war on Gaza. Federman is currently in Germany and under universal jurisdiction, German authorities are legally obliged to act.
Finally, HRF has lodged a war crimes complaint in Germany against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for his command responsibility in the 2008–2009 Gaza massacre (“Operation Cast Lead”), which killed over 1,300 Palestinians and obliterated entire civilian neighborhoods.
But in fact, the tireless Hind Rajab Foundation moves so fast that its newsletter, published today, can’t keep up with its own progress: yesterday it filed a fourth case, against alleged Israeli war criminal Sharon Dawit in Cyprus – a favourite bolthole of the occupation’s perpetrators – along with a detailed dossier of 424 Battalion sergeant Dawit’s humiliation of bound Palestinian abductees.
So relentless has the HRF been in its pursuit of Israeli war criminals that Israel’s agents were exposed plotting to kill both HRF director Dyab Abou Jahjah and his family.
Featured image via HRF website
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Riyasa, a young southern Lebanese girl living in Beit Leif — a small town near the border with Israel — says her life has completely changed since the last war between both sides. Her usual strolls near the forest have become more of a risk than a leisure activity, not because of wild animals, but because of Israeli war drones constantly buzzing over her head and over the heads of residents of the South in general. Israeli violations have now become the norm.
The Israeli violations of the ceasefire with Lebanon — which ended a 66-day full-scale war following nearly a year of mutual bombardments that began on October 8, 2023 — have become “a norm” for the Arab state. What changed in recent months is the gradual escalation Israel has carried out against Hezbollah personnel, civilians, and infrastructure, and even public workers. These violations left 140 civilians dead and 398 injured, with 2,950 violations recorded according to Information International, an independent regional research firm based in Beirut.
Israeli violations never stop
Following the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, a UN-brokered ceasefire under Resolution 1701 was meant to prevent further hostilities and maintain stability along the Lebanese-Israeli border. But in practice, the agreement has been repeatedly violated — primarily by Israel — through near-daily overflights, artillery fire, and cross-border attacks. Since October 2023, these violations have intensified in parallel with the Gaza war, as Israel justifies its strikes as “targeting Hezbollah positions.” Yet many of these attacks have hit civilian areas, farmland, and small villages across South Lebanon, displacing thousands of residents and destroying infrastructure. While the Lebanese Army and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have documented hundreds of breaches, the international response remains muted, leaving border communities to bear the brunt of an undeclared war that is steadily eroding what remains of the ceasefire.
Riyasa told the Canary:
We feel death is near since the drones are directly over our village. We barely go out, and if we go hunting, we return early because Israel might think we’re building something against it and could target us. If the drone is close, I don’t go out, I don’t go to the gym, I tell my siblings to come back home — our friends as well — because Israel targets whoever it wants with no accountability. The drone’s sound has become a synonym for death. Every time it’s near and going faster, we sense death is closer. We got used to the sound; when it speeds up, it means it’s targeting someone — whether it’s you or someone near you.
From her house, she can hear the constant Israeli bombardment and gunfire toward Aita al-Shaab, a border town that overlooks several Israeli outposts, where the IDF casually enters the empty town and blows up what remains of civilian structures about 1.5 km inside Lebanese territory. She also hears the distant airstrikes on other towns in southern Lebanon, where Israel claims it is targeting “Hezbollah activity and infrastructure” — yet without providing evidence.
Largest post-war attack
One such attack targeted excavator dealerships in Msayleh (60 km from the Israeli border) in the largest post-war attack. The strikes completed destroyed 6 excavator dealerships at 4 am on October 11, wiping out over 300 machines. The IDF claimed Hezbollah was using the equipment to “rebuild the areas it was operating in,” but Lebanese MP Kassem Hashem said that day:
This is a massacre of people’s livelihoods. Israel is only aiming to make southern Lebanon an uninhabitable area.
So why does Israel continue to violate the ceasefire, conducting airstrikes and destroying civilian structures?
Dr. Leila Nicola, a political analyst, told the Canary that there are:
many intersecting goals behind Israel’s daily attacks on the South — such as putting pressure on Hezbollah and the Lebanese government through escalation, and forcing Beirut into direct peace negotiations with Israel, which would amount to official recognition of the state. In addition, Israel seeks a security arrangement that gives it the upper hand in southern Lebanon while preventing Hezbollah from regaining strength — a goal it could not achieve through its previous wars or during its occupation of Lebanon (1982–2000).
Nicola added:
At this point, no one knows if things will escalate into a full-scale war in the coming months. For now, we remain in a status quo — an escalation short of full war. Hezbollah will not give Israel a pretext to expand its aggression, and Israel won’t launch a ground invasion since it has tried that before with limited success. Instead, it will continue this low-cost war that hurts Hezbollah and Lebanon economically, socially, and militarily — until it gets an American green light for a full-scale war. For now, the U.S. administration seems content with the pressure Israel’s campaign, alongside its economic and political pressure, is exerting on Lebanon.
Israeli violations — ‘We feel life has stopped’
In the town of Kfarshouba, on the eastern side of the border, Dima shares her frustration with the Canary:
We can’t reach our farms, especially the olive fields — people couldn’t harvest their crops because of the Israeli attacks. Everything changed since the ceasefire,” she adds, half-jokingly, “Death is near? We feel life has stopped. Of course, we fear war might break out again — drones are always above us, and gunfire from Israeli outposts has become more frequent.
Meanwhile in central South Lebanon, Zeinab, a nurse working in Bint Jbeil — known as the capital of resistance and liberation — expresses her disappointment at the lack of media and international attention:
It’s like there has to be a huge incident for anyone to notice us. Very few media outlets cover what’s happening here, and most treat it as if it’s a daily norm. Our lives have changed — there’s no sense of security in town anymore. No one trusts the situation, or Israel.
UNIFIL spokesperson Dany Ghafari told the Canary:
Israel still takes control of several points on the Lebanese side of the border, which is a violation of the 1701 agreement. We hand reports to the security council concerning this.
Shockingly, Ghafari said that:
We also have observed since 27th of November more than 7000 aerial violations, and more than 1400 on-ground violations by the Israeli military.
For those who remain in the South, every explosion is a reminder that the ceasefire exists only on paper — and that Lebanon’s borderlands are once again paying the price for Israeli violations the world refuses to see.
Featured image via author
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Riyasa, a young southern Lebanese girl living in Beit Leif — a small town near the border with Israel — says her life has completely changed since the last war between both sides. Her usual strolls near the forest have become more of a risk than a leisure activity, not because of wild animals, but because of Israeli war drones constantly buzzing over her head and over the heads of residents of the South in general. Israeli violations have now become the norm.
The Israeli violations of the ceasefire with Lebanon — which ended a 66-day full-scale war following nearly a year of mutual bombardments that began on October 8, 2023 — have become “a norm” for the Arab state. What changed in recent months is the gradual escalation Israel has carried out against Hezbollah personnel, civilians, and infrastructure, and even public workers. These violations left 140 civilians dead and 398 injured, with 2,950 violations recorded according to Information International, an independent regional research firm based in Beirut.
Israeli violations never stop
Following the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, a UN-brokered ceasefire under Resolution 1701 was meant to prevent further hostilities and maintain stability along the Lebanese-Israeli border. But in practice, the agreement has been repeatedly violated — primarily by Israel — through near-daily overflights, artillery fire, and cross-border attacks. Since October 2023, these violations have intensified in parallel with the Gaza war, as Israel justifies its strikes as “targeting Hezbollah positions.” Yet many of these attacks have hit civilian areas, farmland, and small villages across South Lebanon, displacing thousands of residents and destroying infrastructure. While the Lebanese Army and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have documented hundreds of breaches, the international response remains muted, leaving border communities to bear the brunt of an undeclared war that is steadily eroding what remains of the ceasefire.
Riyasa told the Canary:
We feel death is near since the drones are directly over our village. We barely go out, and if we go hunting, we return early because Israel might think we’re building something against it and could target us. If the drone is close, I don’t go out, I don’t go to the gym, I tell my siblings to come back home — our friends as well — because Israel targets whoever it wants with no accountability. The drone’s sound has become a synonym for death. Every time it’s near and going faster, we sense death is closer. We got used to the sound; when it speeds up, it means it’s targeting someone — whether it’s you or someone near you.
From her house, she can hear the constant Israeli bombardment and gunfire toward Aita al-Shaab, a border town that overlooks several Israeli outposts, where the IDF casually enters the empty town and blows up what remains of civilian structures about 1.5 km inside Lebanese territory. She also hears the distant airstrikes on other towns in southern Lebanon, where Israel claims it is targeting “Hezbollah activity and infrastructure” — yet without providing evidence.
Largest post-war attack
One such attack targeted excavator dealerships in Msayleh (60 km from the Israeli border) in the largest post-war attack. The strikes completed destroyed 6 excavator dealerships at 4 am on October 11, wiping out over 300 machines. The IDF claimed Hezbollah was using the equipment to “rebuild the areas it was operating in,” but Lebanese MP Kassem Hashem said that day:
This is a massacre of people’s livelihoods. Israel is only aiming to make southern Lebanon an uninhabitable area.
So why does Israel continue to violate the ceasefire, conducting airstrikes and destroying civilian structures?
Dr. Leila Nicola, a political analyst, told the Canary that there are:
many intersecting goals behind Israel’s daily attacks on the South — such as putting pressure on Hezbollah and the Lebanese government through escalation, and forcing Beirut into direct peace negotiations with Israel, which would amount to official recognition of the state. In addition, Israel seeks a security arrangement that gives it the upper hand in southern Lebanon while preventing Hezbollah from regaining strength — a goal it could not achieve through its previous wars or during its occupation of Lebanon (1982–2000).
Nicola added:
At this point, no one knows if things will escalate into a full-scale war in the coming months. For now, we remain in a status quo — an escalation short of full war. Hezbollah will not give Israel a pretext to expand its aggression, and Israel won’t launch a ground invasion since it has tried that before with limited success. Instead, it will continue this low-cost war that hurts Hezbollah and Lebanon economically, socially, and militarily — until it gets an American green light for a full-scale war. For now, the U.S. administration seems content with the pressure Israel’s campaign, alongside its economic and political pressure, is exerting on Lebanon.
Israeli violations — ‘We feel life has stopped’
In the town of Kfarshouba, on the eastern side of the border, Dima shares her frustration with the Canary:
We can’t reach our farms, especially the olive fields — people couldn’t harvest their crops because of the Israeli attacks. Everything changed since the ceasefire,” she adds, half-jokingly, “Death is near? We feel life has stopped. Of course, we fear war might break out again — drones are always above us, and gunfire from Israeli outposts has become more frequent.
Meanwhile in central South Lebanon, Zeinab, a nurse working in Bint Jbeil — known as the capital of resistance and liberation — expresses her disappointment at the lack of media and international attention:
It’s like there has to be a huge incident for anyone to notice us. Very few media outlets cover what’s happening here, and most treat it as if it’s a daily norm. Our lives have changed — there’s no sense of security in town anymore. No one trusts the situation, or Israel.
UNIFIL spokesperson Dany Ghafari told the Canary:
Israel still takes control of several points on the Lebanese side of the border, which is a violation of the 1701 agreement. We hand reports to the security council concerning this.
Shockingly, Ghafari said that:
We also have observed since 27th of November more than 7000 aerial violations, and more than 1400 on-ground violations by the Israeli military.
For those who remain in the South, every explosion is a reminder that the ceasefire exists only on paper — and that Lebanon’s borderlands are once again paying the price for Israeli violations the world refuses to see.
Featured image via author
This post was originally published on Canary.
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President Donald Trump has sent a request to the Israeli government for a full pardon of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from various corruption charges that have led to a years-long trial, further entrenching Trump’s allyship with the genocidaire as they discuss plans to shape the future of the region. Without evidence, Trump called the charges against Netanyahu “political”…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The BBC‘s anti-Palestinian propaganda during Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been appalling — one telling example came when it dropped a piece about British and Palestinian children sharing poetry ‘for impartiality’ reasons. The BBC Gaza coverage sinks to a new low.
We spoke to the project coordinator behind the collaboration to find out more.
Showcasing the humanity of Gaza’s children
The latest pro-Israel coup at the BBC is the culmination of longstanding efforts to further compromise its already dismal reporting on the illegal settler-colonial occupation of Palestine. But its decision to drop a piece showing the humanity of Gaza’s children exemplifies how the BBC has consistently prioritised Israeli lives over Palestinian lives.
In early 2025, the Hands Up Project brought British children together with children from Gaza via a poetry event. The educational charity seeks to connect children around the world through
online interaction, drama, and storytelling — and recently organised an event at a primary school in Dartington, Devon.
Hands Up had previously arranged an international poetry competition, which later became a book – Moon tell me truth – including the poems and illustrations of 9-to-15-year-old children from Palestine, India, Argentina, and Spain. An exhibition of the collection then toured the UK.
Dartington primary offered to host the exhibition. But as Hands Up coordinator Nick Bilbrough told us, the school had insisted on the event being purely cultural rather than political. Considering the fact that “it’s been really difficult to get any of our work into UK schools”, he said, the tough decision was made to remove a couple of poems that explicitly mentioned Palestine. This made it possible for the work of other Palestinian children to enter the school.
Soon after, local BBC journalists expressed interest. Bilbrough asked if they wanted to come to the school and “do an interview with me there, and with the teacher, and some of the kids”. He said “they loved that idea”. So they got all of the necessary permissions and then sent someone along to film.
Weeks of silence followed, until a BBC editor finally confirmed the broadcaster had dropped the story.
So why might BBC bosses have stepped in?
Bilbrough explained:
We did a live link-up with one of the young poets, Nada, who at that time was still in Gaza. She’s got three poems in the book. The kids at Dartington primary interviewed her. And I had a really lovely chat with her about why she writes poetry, and what it’s like to be a poet in Gaza.
He added that:
The kids were blown away by her – very inspired by her.
The children in Britain also “read out some of the poems that they’d written, inspired by the poetry of the children of Gaza”.
The BBC reporter got lots of content, and “obviously didn’t want to make it political in any way”. But as Bilbrough said:
All the kids know, even though the BBC‘s trying to keep it all quiet or doing their best to, what’s going on in Gaza. And responding to the question ‘What was it like to meet a poet from Gaza?’ they were saying things like ‘Wow, it’s amazing that, even though Israel is bombing them really badly, she’s able to write such beautiful poetry’.
So considering the longstanding pro-Israel bias at the BBC, it’s understandable that it wouldn’t want to green-light that kind of clear, factual statement specifically. But as Bilbrough stressed:
There was enough footage for them to show. I wasn’t talking about anything political, nor was the teacher. We were all just talking about the value of writing poetry in a difficult situation, and how inspirational the poems are.
He also argued that Nada’s efforts alone should have been reason enough to show at least a short report on the event:
Nada had gone out of her way. At that time, she was still in Gaza. She subsequently managed to get out. At considerable risk to herself, she had to go somewhere where she could do the Zoom link and it was quite risky for her to do that.
Indeed, the reporter suggested the piece may be “out by the end of the week” on local news programme BBC Spotlight. But the higher-ups clearly had a problem with that.
Below is a short clip that Bilbrough had recorded himself:
BBC Gaza coverage — when impartiality during a genocide becomes complicity
Many days came and went with no news. And then, weeks later, a BBC editor sent Bilbrough an email (which the Canary has seen), saying “some key people [have] been away” and “it’s taken time to fully understand what happened”. But the crux of the message was to inform him that:
After reviewing everything, we’ve decided not to proceed with the piece.
The explanation was that:
Every story we run is carefully considered, balancing editorial considerations, news value, and audience interest, while also being assessed in the context of what else is in the news at the time. In this case, it became clear that to meet our editorial standards, we would need to provide significantly more context to ensure due impartiality, which would be challenging within the scope of the piece.
Did they think poetry from Israeli bomber pilots was necessary to balance the story out? We’ll never know.
But as Bilbrough said, there was clearly more than enough material for the BBC to, at the very least, put out a dry 30-second report with a couple of quotes about the importance of children from around the world sharing poetry and sharing their humanity. That was apparently not something BBC editors wanted, though. Bilbrough added:
I just think they don’t want to show this human side of the children of Gaza.
That wouldn’t be surprising. Because this is just one instance of many where the BBC selectively humanises people according to whether the British state sees them as worthy or unworthy victims (depending on whether Britain’s adversaries or allies are to blame). One report earlier in the year, for example, showed that Israelis who died had got 33 times more BBC coverage, despite Israeli occupation forces killing at least 34 times more Palestinians. In short, it’s hard to argue that the BBC has even sought to be ‘impartial’ during the genocide. Instead, it has unapologetically taken Israel’s side.
Never forget
Nine-year-old Fatema Saidam wrote the following poem for the Moon tell me truth collection:
Eyes are for looking
And seeing sun
Tongues are for greeting
And saying fun
Legs are for walking slowly
And also run
Hands are for shaking with friends
Not for shooting gun
This is the humanity of Gaza’s children that BBC bosses have actively sought to silence or minimise in the last two years, with the excuse of ‘impartiality’.
Israel murdered Fatema and her entire family in October 2023. And it took the lives of over 20,000 more children in the following two years.
The BBC‘s behaviour since 2023 is a stain it will never be able to wash off. And we should never forget what it has done.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Nov. 11, 2025. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As Israel continues its “silent genocide” in the Gaza Strip one month into a supposed ceasefire with Hamas and Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank hit a record high, Amnesty International on Tuesday ripped the advancement of a death penalty bill championed by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Israel’s 120-member Knesset “on Monday evening voted 39-16 in favor of the first reading of a controversial government-backed bill sponsored by Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech,” the Times of Israel reported. “Two other death penalty bills, sponsored by Likud MK Nissim Vaturi and Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer, also passed their first readings 36-15 and 37-14.”
Son Har-Melech’s bill—which must pass two more readings to become law—would require courts to impose the death penalty on “a person who caused the death of an Israeli citizen deliberately or through indifference, from a motive of racism or hostility against a population, and with the aim of harming the state of Israel and the national revival of the Jewish people in its land.”
Both Hamas—which Israel considers a terrorist organization—and the Palestine Liberation Organization slammed the bill, with Palestinian National Council Speaker Rawhi Fattouh calling it “a political, legal, and humanitarian crime,” according to Reuters.
Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas, said in a statement that “there is no sugarcoating this; a majority of 39 Israeli Knesset members approved in a first reading a bill that effectively mandates courts to impose the death penalty exclusively against Palestinians.”
Amnesty opposes the death penalty under all circumstances and tracks such killings annually. The international human rights group has also forcefully spoken out against Israeli abuse of Palestinians, including the genocide in Gaza that has killed over 69,182 people as of Tuesday—the official tally from local health officials that experts warn is likely a significant undercount.
“The international community must exert maximum pressure on the Israeli government to immediately scrap this bill and dismantle all laws and practices that contribute to the system of apartheid against Palestinians.”
“Knesset members should be working to abolish the death penalty, not broadening its application,” Guevara Rosas argued. “The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, and an irreversible denial of the right to life. It should not be imposed in any circumstances, let alone weaponized as a blatantly discriminatory tool of state-sanctioned killing, domination, and oppression. Its mandatory imposition and retroactive application would violate clear prohibitions set out under international human rights law and standards on the use of this punishment.”
“The shift towards requiring courts to impose the death penalty against Palestinians is a dangerous and dramatic step backwards and a product of ongoing impunity for Israel’s system of apartheid and its genocide in Gaza,” she continued. “It did not occur in a vacuum. It comes in the context of a drastic increase in the number of unlawful killings of Palestinians, including acts that amount to extrajudicial executions, over the last decade, and a horrific rise of deaths in custody of Palestinians since October 2023.”
Guevara Rosas noted that “not only have such acts been greeted with near-total impunity but with legitimacy and support and, at times, glorification. It also comes amidst a climate of incitement to violence against Palestinians as evidenced by the surge in state-backed settler attacks in the occupied West Bank.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the devastating assault on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israeli soldiers and settlers have also killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Netanyahu is now wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and Israel faces an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice. The ICJ separately said last year that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end; the Israeli government has shown no sign of accepting that.
The Amnesty campaigner said Tuesday that “it is additionally concerning that the law authorizes military courts to impose death sentences on civilians, that cannot be commuted, particularly given the unfair nature of the trials held by these courts, which have a conviction rate of over 99% for Palestinian defendants.”
As CNN reported Monday:
The UN has previously condemned Israel’s military courts in the occupied West Bank, saying that “Palestinians’ right to due process guarantees have been violated” for decades, and denounced “the lack of fair trial in the occupied West Bank.”
UN experts said last year that, “in the occupied West Bank, the functions of police, investigator, prosecutor, and judge are vested in the same hierarchical institution—the Israeli military.”
Pointing to the hanging of Nazi official and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann, Guevara Rosas highlighted that “on paper, Israeli law has traditionally restricted the use of the death penalty for exceptional crimes, like genocide and crimes against humanity, and the last court-ordered execution was carried out in 1962.”
“The bill’s stipulation that courts should impose the death penalty on individuals convicted of nationally motivated murder with the intent of ‘harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people’ is yet another blatant manifestation of Israel’s institutionalized discrimination against Palestinians, a key pillar of Israel’s apartheid system, in law and in practice,” she asserted.
“The international community must exert maximum pressure on the Israeli government to immediately scrap this bill and dismantle all laws and practices that contribute to the system of apartheid against Palestinians,” she added. “Israeli authorities must ensure Palestinian prisoners and detainees are treated in line with international law, including the prohibition against torture and other ill-treatment, and are provided with fair trial guarantees. They must also take concrete steps towards abolishing the death penalty for all crimes and all people.”
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Jessica Corbett.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Israeli ‘actor‘ – for want of a better word – Gal Gadot has been announced as the 2026 winner of the ‘Genesis Prize’, called by some ‘Israel’s Nobel Prize’, for her ‘wartime support of Israel’, to the shock of none but the horror of many.
Gadot’s “I stand with Israel” post is still online at the time of writing, after more than two years of genocide. Gadot’s comments on Israel and its crimes in Gaza have included:
• denouncing calls for a ceasefire
• declaring that everyone should side with Israel, because terrorism
• whining that her Snow White film flopped because there is too much pressure on actors to condemn Israel (and her co-star – no speech marks – did, tweeting Free Palestine – and not because of her own support for genocidal Israel (and awful acting).Gadot is also using Thatcher-era anti-union laws to prosecute seven UK anti-genocide activists for protesting outside a location where she was filming
Gal Gadot and ’empathy’
But astonishingly, in spite of this record Gadot’s award was also – according to its Zionist organisers – for her “empathy for all innocent people affected by the war”. To be fair, Gadot did once post – in 2018, long before the current phase of the genocide, that “It is not a matter of right or left, Arabs or Jews, secular or religious,” she said. “It is a matter of dialogue, of dialogue for peace, and of our tolerance for each other”.
However, in a stunning show of tolerance, she then deleted it. In 2021 she also posted that her “heart breaks” about the “vicious cycle that has been going on far too long”, ‘both-sidesing’ Israel’s occupation and slaughter of Palestinians. Of course, she did all this without even mentioning Palestine.
And in October 2023, she posted that “Killing innocent Palestinians is horrific. Killing of innocent Israelis is horrific. If you don’t feel the same, I think you should ask yourself why that is” – but deleted it soon after a “backlash from Israelis who viewed it as slanderous against Israel” and apologised for posting it.
Enter butcher Netanyahu
Not exactly a tower of empathy, then – but given the record of the foundation that administers the prize it’s hardly surprising that it would go ahead anyway.
The Genesis Prize Foundation operates in collaboration with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s office and the World Zionist Organization’s ‘Jewish Agency for Israel‘. Unsurprisingly, then, winners of the prize since it was established in 2012 have included:
• Natan Sharansky – chair of the ‘Jewish Agency for Israel’
• late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, an “establishment bigot” and “racist Islamophobe” who led racist “Flag Day” marches in Israel where far-right settlers shout “Death to Arabs”
• billionaire Robert Kraft for his efforts to “combat the de-legitimization of Israel” and
fascist Argentinian president Javier Millei for “his unequivocal support of Israel during one of the most difficult times since the founding of the Jewish State,US Israel lobbyist Jonathan Greenblatt posted on X to congratulate Gadot on her ‘win’. However, he apparently felt he had to lock replies to prevent a flood of righteous outrage in the responses from anti-genocide human beings:
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
This post was originally published on Canary.
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The UK has suspended some intelligence sharing with the US as the British government raises concerns over the legality of US strikes in the Caribbean, according to CNN.
The move comes as America’s biggest warship arrives in the Caribbean Sea.
Venezuela has announced it is shifting to full guerrilla insurgency mode, shoring up defences in the event of any future US ground invasion. Venezuelan defence minister Vladimir Padrino López explained that his country:
will continue in our determination to prepare ourselves to defend our homeland in all areas, whatever the threat, its intensity, its proportion.
The intelligence suspension is limited to suspected drug trafficking vessels operating in the Caribbean. Anonymous sources cited by CNN note the UK is keen to distance itself from US strikes ordered by the Trump administration which they deem illegal as involvement could risk complicity. Neither the US nor UK have commented on the issue. CNN called the move:
a significant break from its closest ally and intelligence sharing partner.
The UK has carried out drug interdiction in the Caribbean for decades. It currently has two Royal Navy patrol vessels deployed in the region. The HMS Medway replaced HMS Trent in early October. Medway is in Miami. HMS Trent was visible until recently off Puerto Rico, through it’s AIS satellite tracker now appears to be turned off now.
One open-source X account reported that the Trent’s crew in Jamaica on 10 November, dealing with the fallout of Hurricane Melissa:
HMS Trent and Jamaican partners now working to repair Falmouth All Ages School, after it was damaged by Hurricane Melissa.
Work paused for a Remembrance service yesterday, both for Remembrance Sunday and for the victims of the Hurricane.
(Src: @HMSTrent) pic.twitter.com/983uld2wcZ
— UK Forces Tracker (@UKForcesTracker) November 10, 2025
The UK also has a permanent presence in Belize, used for jungle training and engagement with regional partners, as well as local forces, to advance develop peace and security.
Cracks in the alliance
The UK is not alone in its reluctance to share intelligence with its American counterparts. As noted by CNN:
Colombia has also suspended intelligence sharing with the US. President Gustavo Petro said:
The fight against drugs must be subordinated to the human rights of the Caribbean people.
Canada, whose coast guard also supports Caribbean counter-drug operations, has insisted its own intelligence should not be used for strikes.
The intelligence was typically sent to Joint Interagency Task Force South, a task force stationed in Florida that includes representatives from a number of partner nations and works to reduce the illicit drug trade.
Closer to home, the Conservative Party wheeled out their tired ‘lefty lawyers’ schtick:
The US is our closest ally & our key military, intelligence & security services partner.
It’s outrageous that Labour lefty lawyers are undermining our partnership & compromising our ability to tackle drug trafficking. Labour are a threat to our security https://t.co/d99MxSa4Wi
— Priti Patel MP (@pritipatel) November 11, 2025
This is a trope the party has used to rail against everything from accountability for war crimes to migration.
And US far-right commentator Laura Loomer said something bizarre about Shabana Mahmood being an Islamist:
NEW:
The UK has made the decision to halt sharing intelligence with the US.
In September I called for the US to stop sharing intelligence with the UK after the Islamic terrorist supporter Shabana Mahmood @ShabanaMahmood became the UK Home Secretary.
She now controls MI5, the… https://t.co/CPmKIFjBlT
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 11, 2025
Moving on…
Gunship diplomacy
Since September, the US has killed 75 people in 19 airstrikes in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. The Trump administration insists that is is fighting a legitimate war on drug and asserts that its airstrikes are lawful. An increasingly vast array of opponents, including legal experts, say they are extrajudicial killings.
The US narrative centres on fighting the ‘narco-terrorism’ of Latin American cartels. Both local and international critics say this is a return to bullying Latin America and gunboat diplomacy — with regime change in oil-rich Venezuela being the real American aim.
The US build-up is already substantial and highly aggressive. Everything from submarines to special forces motherships, shadowy spy planes to flying artillery platforms have been deployed into the region. Killer drones are also present. And long disused military bases are being rebuilt. El Salvador, whose authoritarian president Nayib Bukele is a close Trump ally, is also hosting shadowy military aircraft.
The US flagship Gerald R. Ford has also arrived, according to reports. The giant aircraft carrier and her support ships were re-assigned from the Mediterranean to add even more weight to Trump’s Caribbean task force.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies has a breakdown of US forces here. And here’s their donor list for transparency.
It’s reported that at least two senior special forces officers told a closed-door session in Washington they were at a loss to explain why the build-up was so vast:
In a Capitol Hill briefing last month, two senior U.S. Special Operations officers reportedly couldn’t explain why the administration deployed so many powerful military assets in the Caribbean to destroy small boats , source familiar with the closed-door session told CNN.
— Faytuks Network (@FaytuksNetwork) November 11, 2025
Good enough for Gaza?
Precise details of the UK’s withdrawal of intelligence are unclear. As so often with intelligence and special operations matters, the government refuses to confirm or deny anything to the press or parliament.
Yet, as intelligence scholar Dan Lomas pointed out, the UK is bound by various laws and treaties on intelligence liaison:
Worth adding that the best overview of the importance of law in intelligence liaison can be found in the ISC's report on International Partnerships from 2023 that shows the UK's legal obligations vs. liaison: https://t.co/Rclr3xUQ5P https://t.co/G6NRMmKNWu pic.twitter.com/rg7JvAMNDg
— Dr. Dan Lomas (@Sandbagger_01) November 11, 2025
The main contention for the British government seems to be complicity in strikes that flout International laws. If that is the case, surely it has wider implications for foreign policy and intelligence partnerships with allies.
MI6 and GCHQ are overseen by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) scrutinises the “policies, expenditure, administration and operations” of all UK intelligence agencies.
Given the above, there are some serious questions to ask of Starmer’s government. The UK not only shares intelligence with Israel, but gathers intelligence on Israel’s behalf. If it is the case that concerns over legality can change alter or limit that relationship — as they should — why hasn’t intelligence sharing been radically adjusted or been suspended with an ally currently on trial for genocide and war crimes?
Neither MI5 nor GCHQ had responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
This post was originally published on Canary.
-
The morning carried a different scent…
One that I had been waiting two years to smell.
The weapons of war had finally fallen silent,
as a ceasefire draped the land.— from The Scent of Life by Maryam Hasanat, Gaza author and refugee
On October 8th, 2025 the Occupation and the Occupied agreed to a permanent ceasefire. It’s the first step in a peace process that has been going on for generations.
Roy, my American Sufi friend, was not impressed when I told him about the celebrations in Gaza. The people are so desperate to have something to celebrate. I’m highly skeptical that anything good long term will result from this. Trump is an imbecile and Netanyahu has zero desire for peace. The anger at politicians in the West touches the most loving of people.
Omar Skaik, my Gaza refugee friend from The Greatest Man in Gaza, was more direct: I can hear bombs falling in the distance. I wonder how many Palestinians will die today? To him, it was just another day he hoped to survive as a father of three with a fourth on the way. He was walking to the market to buy ingredients for making hummus, when I called. In the background I could hear his fellow Palestinians’ exultations. At least someone in Gaza was happy. But Omar was the happiest Palestinian I knew, and his emaciated face revealed the truth. The suffering was not over. A trail of broken ceasefires was his proof.
I was marginally happier, glad the genocide might be over. Sentiments ranged from marginally good to horrifically bad in my cohort of Western Sufi friends and Gaza refugees—people I had been building friendships with since February, 2024, when I first decided to write about Palestinians and connect them with Western fundraisers. Social media had finally made a positive impact on my life. I was using Facebook’s friend and messeging features, as well as Zoom’s meeting rooms, to foster relationships between people seeking an end to the genocide. In addition I helped kickstart fundraising campaigns that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Palestinian families.
Farah Kamal, a twenty-year-old refugee well known to my Sufi friends and whose sister I wrote about in Marah’s Story, Or the Disintegration of a Country Family was suspicious: The bombing hasn’t stopped yet. The ceasefire was only for the media and hasn’t been implemented on the ground…I hope that Israel will not betray us. And just like she imagined, Israel continued bombing for the first 24hrs of the peace plan. From noon October 9th, when both sides formally approved the plan, until noon on October 10th, many innocent civilians died throughout Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) wouldn’t stop killing until they were ordered to. Thereafter, those Palestinians not mourning the newly martyred, flooded back to their beloved Gaza City, much of which had been reduced to rubble.
Farah was hoping to return to the life she led before October 7th, 2023, but she knew that would be hard, and she was tired of having to start over each time (eight in total) she had been displaced. I ask God to help us and give us patience, strength and perseverance. I hope that all the suffering we have endured will be rewarded on the Day of Judgment.
Palestinians supplicate God to right the wrongs, to make up for the suffering they went through. They survived two years of genocide, and are having trouble adjusting to a world without gunfire, bombs and terror. Later they would realize that the genocide hadn’t stopped, it was just reduced in intensity. All the things they were promised came slower than expected. The immediate lowering of food prices was helpful, but short lived. Israel still limited humanitarian aid, so many food items were out of reach for the average Palestinian. Hunger was only a missed meal away.
Those who had fundraisers kept pleading for money, stuck in a PTSD trance. They had spent the better part of two years trying to gather enough to pay for the basics of life, and they didn’t know what else to do. Many felt pressured to help those extended family members still dependent on their efforts. There were no jobs they could go back to. Their work places had been destroyed. Those who were physically able, returned to their former homes and tried to rebuild. Sweat-equity has always been one of Gaza’s biggest resources. But for some, there was nothing left of the neighborhoods they once loved, just dreams buried in rubble. In Farah’s case, her family could not access two houses they had built themselves because they fell behind the new Israeli occupation line. Even homeowners in Gaza could be homeless.
Of course, Farah will not give up. She’s an artist and a writer and spent the summer making a cookbook, A Palestinian Feast, that she sells as a fundraiser. From the introduction: This book is more than recipes. It is the story of Gaza, a land of resilience, love, and memory. Every dish here carries the laughter of grandmothers, the whispers of fathers, and the small, sacred moments around the table that keep hope alive. As you turn these pages, don’t just follow instructions. Sit at the table of the Palestinian heart, feel its dignity, and taste a love that survives despite everything. These dishes are our way of saying: We are here. We are unbroken. We deserve life. Our table is yours, and our hearts are open.
Other Palestinians were also hopeful. I am still waiting to leave Gaza for kidney treatment, Salah El-Din Youssef from my story The Cats of Gaza told me. I expect to receive a call from the World Health Organization (WHO) by the end of this week. We are still in a tent in Deir al-Balah with relatives, but my daughter Donna graduated from high school this week. It’s amazing how so many contrasting feelings and situations can be all spelled out in a handful of sentences. By the end of October, Salah’s approval from the WHO came through. Now he’s trying to find a way to travel to a hospital outside of Gaza while his daughter contemplates college.
Mohammed Kassab, from the story Medicine and Martyrs, started studying engineering online at Al-Aqsa University in August, two months before the ceasefire began. He was one of thousands of young people who, like Farah Kamal, had college delayed by October 7th. But otherwise his life remains unchanged. His family still clings to a tattered tent in a sea of refugees in Al-Mawasi.
Mays Astal, whose story I covered in The Women Who Live Between the Barbed Wire and the Sea, was looking for help relocating from the West Bank. She, her husband and their two children buried themselves in the sand inside a refugee camp in March 2024. They were trying to hide from Israeli tanks which were running over anyone they saw after burning down the tents. Mays was eight months pregnant at the time. They survived and made it across the border to Egypt in April 2024. Now her husband has been forced to go to Libya to work because he cannot enter the West Bank with his Gaza ID. Mays currently works as a Resilience Field Officer with Catholic Relief Services in the West Bank but is desperate to reunite with her husband. Such is the pain Palestinians endure. Relatives with Gaza or West Bank IDs cannot visit each other’s territories. Israel makes sure loved ones remain separated forever. Even in peace Palestinians like Mays face heartbreak.
Ali Lubbad, featured in the story The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza City as Seen Through the Eyes of a Pediatric Nurse, returned to his family’s apartment in Gaza City to find the doors blown off, the inside filled with dust and debris, and the water and sewage systems destroyed. His employer, Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, was also in ruins. Stark photographs revealed the damage: holes in patient’s rooms, cracks in the walls of the surgery center, hundreds of wires protruding from a ceiling charred from rooftop explosions. Any areas still intact are shrouded in darkness. There is no power. It will take millions of dollars to repair everything. Some of the children will die during their wait to be healed.
Gaza author Maryam Hasanat (see her autobiographical story Mary of Palestine) was initially ecstatic: I am crying, but this time because of joy. Maryam celebrated her 27th birthday on Friday, October 10th, the day the ceasefire took effect, and sent me a photograph of her three-and-a-half-year-old son Kamal celebrating with her at a restaurant. Maryam has a lightness of being that is seldom seen among people who have survived a genocide. Being an author helped. She is working on her poetry:
The daylight spoke of stillness.
I breathed it in, filling my lungs with ease.
Jasmine drifted by and whispered:
there is something in this world worth living for.— from A Scent of Life
After her brush with death in the spring of 2024, when no one knew if she would survive a complicated childbirth, it was a relief to see her happy and watch her transmit it to the page. She looked to me for writing advice: “I am compiling a collection of poems about Gaza. I’m thinking of calling it Writing Through the Ruins. What do you think?”
I suggested she share her work with her fellow Palestinians, both writers and the general population, for their opinions.
“I feel more comfortable sharing my writings with a foreign writer like you,” she replied.
I was warmed by Maryam’s trust in me. I felt like I was being invited into one of the most sacred parts of a Palestinian’s life, their home. Then I realized Maryam had no home. By Sunday she realized it as well: My heart is torn apart. I don’t know how I will raise my children, or how I will ever escape this nightmare that consumes and controls me. I still can’t believe that everything is gone. It feels like I’m still living inside a hell that never ends.
Neither she, nor I can write half a page without this seesawing of emotions. The trauma of war related PTSD grips Palestinians deeply, and Maryam, like everyone in Palestine, will need many years to heal from the suffering and sorrow.
On Sunday, October 12th we held our weekly Sufi-Gaza refugee meeting. The first since the ceasefire, it echoed with joy. Farah sang We Will Stay Here, an anthem of Palestinian love for their homeland. Her family members milled about in the background of her video, excited for their new freedom, their smiles communicating what they couldn’t say in English.
Omar updated us about his attempts to fix up his sister’s bombed out apartment in Gaza City: I’m hooking up a waterline so my extended family can move in. None of our other apartments survived the bombardment. It’s night time in Gaza and Omar showed us around using the light from his phone. There is no power in the building, so the flashlight on the phone doubles as our only source of light at night. The beam landed on his sleeping preschool children before cutting back to his face. I charge it at a nearby home that has solar panels, he tells us. Unfortunately, few panels are available for sale in Gaza, so Omar is unable to buy any for the apartment.
Omar’s friend Yahya, both a farmer and an iman (Muslim religious leader), was making plans to teach the recitation of the Quran to our group of Western Shadhiliyya Sufis online. He filled us in on the turmoil in the markets: Even with the entry of aid, there is a specter that haunts the citizens of Gaza, which is word of the crossing being closed. Upon hearing this news, the markets suddenly turn into ghost towns. Vendors bare their fangs, hide their goods, and raise prices exponentially… Palestinians in Gaza call them the Israeli army’s merchant brigade… Israel’s hands reach anyone who seeks to impose security and control… Israel wants chaos in Gaza.
Rawan Aljuaidi is worried about her baby boy Aboud. I’ve known her since she became pregnant with him in 2024. Aboud is her first child, and his body didn’t grow like it should have this summer due to malnourishment. He’s been sick for a month now: fever, cough and a runny nose. Rawan tells me. He hasn’t smiled in weeks, his body is exhausted and his breathing is weak. Those are the damages done by starvation. I wrote the story A Palestinian Mother and Son Starve With Dignity for Rawan, but babies can’t eat words, so Aboud’s suffering continues.
Omar’s two-year-old daughter Mariam also suffers. She has weak bones due to malnutrition and fractured her left leg while playing recently. Omar posted a photo of her leg in a cast on social media. One of his neighbors, named Jawdat, is the grandfather of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old Palestinian girl murdered in cold blood by Israeli soldiers January 29th, 2024 after they killed six members of her family and two Palestinian paramedics trying to rescue her. He wants to get the word out that Hind’s brother just turned five and is doing well. Children pay the highest price during genocide.
Some refugees are missing from the meeting. Israel has been known for shutting down the internet intermittently, and we wonder if that’s the case today. But eventually, most of the regulars show up, and they remind us that, though the war has stopped, their suffering has not. In truth, the bombing never stopped for more than a few days. It’s similar to other ceasefires Israel has brokered with Hezbollah, Syria and Lebanon: peace agreements that give Israel the opportunity to wage a low level war against the very people it claims to want peace with. Airstrikes using munitions donated by the USA cost them little and offer virtually no risk to military personnel. By Monday, October 20th, ten days since the implementation of the ceasefire, nearly a hundred more Palestinians were dead. Over one hundred more died in attacks on October 29th. In the first month of peace, two hundred and forty-one Gazans were murdered by the IDF, pushing the official death toll since October 7th, 2023 to over 69,000.
Still, the weekly meetings go on. They are places where Palestinians can gather with Westerners who will listen to their suffering. These meetings have brightened, and even saved, the lives of many Palestinians who had nowhere else to turn.
I will leave you with words of wisdom from the end of Farah’s cookbook: From Gaza where ovens still glow even when the lights go out, I send you flavors wrapped in stories, and stories wrapped in love. We don’t measure ingredients with cups or spoons, we measure them with the heart. In Gaza, we may not have everything, but we’ll always have a table big enough for hope.
The post A Torturous Truce first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eros Salvatore.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
The morning carried a different scent…
One that I had been waiting two years to smell.
The weapons of war had finally fallen silent,
as a ceasefire draped the land.— from The Scent of Life by Maryam Hasanat, Gaza author and refugee
On October 8th, 2025 the Occupation and the Occupied agreed to a permanent ceasefire. It’s the first step in a peace process that has been going on for generations.
Roy, my American Sufi friend, was not impressed when I told him about the celebrations in Gaza. The people are so desperate to have something to celebrate. I’m highly skeptical that anything good long term will result from this. Trump is an imbecile and Netanyahu has zero desire for peace. The anger at politicians in the West touches the most loving of people.
Omar Skaik, my Gaza refugee friend from The Greatest Man in Gaza, was more direct: I can hear bombs falling in the distance. I wonder how many Palestinians will die today? To him, it was just another day he hoped to survive as a father of three with a fourth on the way. He was walking to the market to buy ingredients for making hummus, when I called. In the background I could hear his fellow Palestinians’ exultations. At least someone in Gaza was happy. But Omar was the happiest Palestinian I knew, and his emaciated face revealed the truth. The suffering was not over. A trail of broken ceasefires was his proof.
I was marginally happier, glad the genocide might be over. Sentiments ranged from marginally good to horrifically bad in my cohort of Western Sufi friends and Gaza refugees—people I had been building friendships with since February, 2024, when I first decided to write about Palestinians and connect them with Western fundraisers. Social media had finally made a positive impact on my life. I was using Facebook’s friend and messeging features, as well as Zoom’s meeting rooms, to foster relationships between people seeking an end to the genocide. In addition I helped kickstart fundraising campaigns that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Palestinian families.
Farah Kamal, a twenty-year-old refugee well known to my Sufi friends and whose sister I wrote about in Marah’s Story, Or the Disintegration of a Country Family was suspicious: The bombing hasn’t stopped yet. The ceasefire was only for the media and hasn’t been implemented on the ground…I hope that Israel will not betray us. And just like she imagined, Israel continued bombing for the first 24hrs of the peace plan. From noon October 9th, when both sides formally approved the plan, until noon on October 10th, many innocent civilians died throughout Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) wouldn’t stop killing until they were ordered to. Thereafter, those Palestinians not mourning the newly martyred, flooded back to their beloved Gaza City, much of which had been reduced to rubble.
Farah was hoping to return to the life she led before October 7th, 2023, but she knew that would be hard, and she was tired of having to start over each time (eight in total) she had been displaced. I ask God to help us and give us patience, strength and perseverance. I hope that all the suffering we have endured will be rewarded on the Day of Judgment.
Palestinians supplicate God to right the wrongs, to make up for the suffering they went through. They survived two years of genocide, and are having trouble adjusting to a world without gunfire, bombs and terror. Later they would realize that the genocide hadn’t stopped, it was just reduced in intensity. All the things they were promised came slower than expected. The immediate lowering of food prices was helpful, but short lived. Israel still limited humanitarian aid, so many food items were out of reach for the average Palestinian. Hunger was only a missed meal away.
Those who had fundraisers kept pleading for money, stuck in a PTSD trance. They had spent the better part of two years trying to gather enough to pay for the basics of life, and they didn’t know what else to do. Many felt pressured to help those extended family members still dependent on their efforts. There were no jobs they could go back to. Their work places had been destroyed. Those who were physically able, returned to their former homes and tried to rebuild. Sweat-equity has always been one of Gaza’s biggest resources. But for some, there was nothing left of the neighborhoods they once loved, just dreams buried in rubble. In Farah’s case, her family could not access two houses they had built themselves because they fell behind the new Israeli occupation line. Even homeowners in Gaza could be homeless.
Of course, Farah will not give up. She’s an artist and a writer and spent the summer making a cookbook, A Palestinian Feast, that she sells as a fundraiser. From the introduction: This book is more than recipes. It is the story of Gaza, a land of resilience, love, and memory. Every dish here carries the laughter of grandmothers, the whispers of fathers, and the small, sacred moments around the table that keep hope alive. As you turn these pages, don’t just follow instructions. Sit at the table of the Palestinian heart, feel its dignity, and taste a love that survives despite everything. These dishes are our way of saying: We are here. We are unbroken. We deserve life. Our table is yours, and our hearts are open.
Other Palestinians were also hopeful. I am still waiting to leave Gaza for kidney treatment, Salah El-Din Youssef from my story The Cats of Gaza told me. I expect to receive a call from the World Health Organization (WHO) by the end of this week. We are still in a tent in Deir al-Balah with relatives, but my daughter Donna graduated from high school this week. It’s amazing how so many contrasting feelings and situations can be all spelled out in a handful of sentences. By the end of October, Salah’s approval from the WHO came through. Now he’s trying to find a way to travel to a hospital outside of Gaza while his daughter contemplates college.
Mohammed Kassab, from the story Medicine and Martyrs, started studying engineering online at Al-Aqsa University in August, two months before the ceasefire began. He was one of thousands of young people who, like Farah Kamal, had college delayed by October 7th. But otherwise his life remains unchanged. His family still clings to a tattered tent in a sea of refugees in Al-Mawasi.
Mays Astal, whose story I covered in The Women Who Live Between the Barbed Wire and the Sea, was looking for help relocating from the West Bank. She, her husband and their two children buried themselves in the sand inside a refugee camp in March 2024. They were trying to hide from Israeli tanks which were running over anyone they saw after burning down the tents. Mays was eight months pregnant at the time. They survived and made it across the border to Egypt in April 2024. Now her husband has been forced to go to Libya to work because he cannot enter the West Bank with his Gaza ID. Mays currently works as a Resilience Field Officer with Catholic Relief Services in the West Bank but is desperate to reunite with her husband. Such is the pain Palestinians endure. Relatives with Gaza or West Bank IDs cannot visit each other’s territories. Israel makes sure loved ones remain separated forever. Even in peace Palestinians like Mays face heartbreak.
Ali Lubbad, featured in the story The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza City as Seen Through the Eyes of a Pediatric Nurse, returned to his family’s apartment in Gaza City to find the doors blown off, the inside filled with dust and debris, and the water and sewage systems destroyed. His employer, Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, was also in ruins. Stark photographs revealed the damage: holes in patient’s rooms, cracks in the walls of the surgery center, hundreds of wires protruding from a ceiling charred from rooftop explosions. Any areas still intact are shrouded in darkness. There is no power. It will take millions of dollars to repair everything. Some of the children will die during their wait to be healed.
Gaza author Maryam Hasanat (see her autobiographical story Mary of Palestine) was initially ecstatic: I am crying, but this time because of joy. Maryam celebrated her 27th birthday on Friday, October 10th, the day the ceasefire took effect, and sent me a photograph of her three-and-a-half-year-old son Kamal celebrating with her at a restaurant. Maryam has a lightness of being that is seldom seen among people who have survived a genocide. Being an author helped. She is working on her poetry:
The daylight spoke of stillness.
I breathed it in, filling my lungs with ease.
Jasmine drifted by and whispered:
there is something in this world worth living for.— from A Scent of Life
After her brush with death in the spring of 2024, when no one knew if she would survive a complicated childbirth, it was a relief to see her happy and watch her transmit it to the page. She looked to me for writing advice: “I am compiling a collection of poems about Gaza. I’m thinking of calling it Writing Through the Ruins. What do you think?”
I suggested she share her work with her fellow Palestinians, both writers and the general population, for their opinions.
“I feel more comfortable sharing my writings with a foreign writer like you,” she replied.
I was warmed by Maryam’s trust in me. I felt like I was being invited into one of the most sacred parts of a Palestinian’s life, their home. Then I realized Maryam had no home. By Sunday she realized it as well: My heart is torn apart. I don’t know how I will raise my children, or how I will ever escape this nightmare that consumes and controls me. I still can’t believe that everything is gone. It feels like I’m still living inside a hell that never ends.
Neither she, nor I can write half a page without this seesawing of emotions. The trauma of war related PTSD grips Palestinians deeply, and Maryam, like everyone in Palestine, will need many years to heal from the suffering and sorrow.
On Sunday, October 12th we held our weekly Sufi-Gaza refugee meeting. The first since the ceasefire, it echoed with joy. Farah sang We Will Stay Here, an anthem of Palestinian love for their homeland. Her family members milled about in the background of her video, excited for their new freedom, their smiles communicating what they couldn’t say in English.
Omar updated us about his attempts to fix up his sister’s bombed out apartment in Gaza City: I’m hooking up a waterline so my extended family can move in. None of our other apartments survived the bombardment. It’s night time in Gaza and Omar showed us around using the light from his phone. There is no power in the building, so the flashlight on the phone doubles as our only source of light at night. The beam landed on his sleeping preschool children before cutting back to his face. I charge it at a nearby home that has solar panels, he tells us. Unfortunately, few panels are available for sale in Gaza, so Omar is unable to buy any for the apartment.
Omar’s friend Yahya, both a farmer and an iman (Muslim religious leader), was making plans to teach the recitation of the Quran to our group of Western Shadhiliyya Sufis online. He filled us in on the turmoil in the markets: Even with the entry of aid, there is a specter that haunts the citizens of Gaza, which is word of the crossing being closed. Upon hearing this news, the markets suddenly turn into ghost towns. Vendors bare their fangs, hide their goods, and raise prices exponentially… Palestinians in Gaza call them the Israeli army’s merchant brigade… Israel’s hands reach anyone who seeks to impose security and control… Israel wants chaos in Gaza.
Rawan Aljuaidi is worried about her baby boy Aboud. I’ve known her since she became pregnant with him in 2024. Aboud is her first child, and his body didn’t grow like it should have this summer due to malnourishment. He’s been sick for a month now: fever, cough and a runny nose. Rawan tells me. He hasn’t smiled in weeks, his body is exhausted and his breathing is weak. Those are the damages done by starvation. I wrote the story A Palestinian Mother and Son Starve With Dignity for Rawan, but babies can’t eat words, so Aboud’s suffering continues.
Omar’s two-year-old daughter Mariam also suffers. She has weak bones due to malnutrition and fractured her left leg while playing recently. Omar posted a photo of her leg in a cast on social media. One of his neighbors, named Jawdat, is the grandfather of Hind Rajab, the five-year-old Palestinian girl murdered in cold blood by Israeli soldiers January 29th, 2024 after they killed six members of her family and two Palestinian paramedics trying to rescue her. He wants to get the word out that Hind’s brother just turned five and is doing well. Children pay the highest price during genocide.
Some refugees are missing from the meeting. Israel has been known for shutting down the internet intermittently, and we wonder if that’s the case today. But eventually, most of the regulars show up, and they remind us that, though the war has stopped, their suffering has not. In truth, the bombing never stopped for more than a few days. It’s similar to other ceasefires Israel has brokered with Hezbollah, Syria and Lebanon: peace agreements that give Israel the opportunity to wage a low level war against the very people it claims to want peace with. Airstrikes using munitions donated by the USA cost them little and offer virtually no risk to military personnel. By Monday, October 20th, ten days since the implementation of the ceasefire, nearly a hundred more Palestinians were dead. Over one hundred more died in attacks on October 29th. In the first month of peace, two hundred and forty-one Gazans were murdered by the IDF, pushing the official death toll since October 7th, 2023 to over 69,000.
Still, the weekly meetings go on. They are places where Palestinians can gather with Westerners who will listen to their suffering. These meetings have brightened, and even saved, the lives of many Palestinians who had nowhere else to turn.
I will leave you with words of wisdom from the end of Farah’s cookbook: From Gaza where ovens still glow even when the lights go out, I send you flavors wrapped in stories, and stories wrapped in love. We don’t measure ingredients with cups or spoons, we measure them with the heart. In Gaza, we may not have everything, but we’ll always have a table big enough for hope.
The post A Torturous Truce first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eros Salvatore.This post was originally published on Radio Free.