Drunk on impunity, Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing and permanent recolonization of Gaza.
Israel uses the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction — this, even as many of the Palestinian children who’ve somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. “We are complicit,” says one angry, grieving doctor. “It is an abomination.”
Having gotten away with so many atrocities while the international community looks away, Israel just unveiled the latest escalation of its illegal collective punishment of Gazans by finally declaring out loud, “We are occupying Gaza to stay.”
Drunk on impunity, Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing and permanent recolonization of Gaza.
Israel uses the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction — this, even as many of the Palestinian children who’ve somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. “We are complicit,” says one angry, grieving doctor. “It is an abomination.”
Having gotten away with so many atrocities while the international community looks away, Israel just unveiled the latest escalation of its illegal collective punishment of Gazans by finally declaring out loud, “We are occupying Gaza to stay.”
Drunk on impunity, Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing and permanent recolonization of Gaza.
Israel uses the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction — this, even as many of the Palestinian children who’ve somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. “We are complicit,” says one angry, grieving doctor. “It is an abomination.”
Having gotten away with so many atrocities while the international community looks away, Israel just unveiled the latest escalation of its illegal collective punishment of Gazans by finally declaring out loud, “We are occupying Gaza to stay.”
As bombs rain down on Gaza and the world looks away, another settler colonial project is taking notes. From New Delhi to Tel Aviv, the ideological affinity between Israeli Zionism and India’s Hindutva movement has never been more pronounced as India strikes Pakistan.
And with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza facing little to no meaningful international accountability, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has every reason to believe that he, too, can escalate his ethno-nationalist project with impunity.
When Israel bombs a hospital, the world debates whether Hamas was hiding beneath it. When India bombs a mosque, it shrugs – wasn’t it probably a ‘terror hideout’?
In a Washington Post op-ed written from the LaSalle Detention Center, the Palestinian American activist and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil described “the breakneck speed” with which an immigration judge decided that the Trump administration would be allowed to deport him. He also questioned the basis of the case against him: “Why should protesting Israel’s indiscriminate killing of…
On Jan. 19, 2025, a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect—and, for an all-too-brief moment, the slaughter in Gaza halted. TRNN was on the ground in Gaza speaking with displaced Palestinians about their reactions to the ceasefire, the incalculable losses and horrors they had experienced during the previous 15 months, and their hopes for the future once they returned to the ruins of their homes. “I haven’t seen my family for 430 days,” journalist Mustafa Zarzour says. “I’ve been literally waiting for the moment to see my family—since the beginning of the war.”
Since the filming of this report, Israel broke the ceasefire agreement and re-launched its assault on Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating that Israel had “resumed combat in full force.” Netanyahu further stated Israel’s intent this week to conquer and control the Gaza Strip, adding that Gaza’s remaining Palestinian population “will be moved.” According to the UN, 90% of Gaza’s remaining population have been forced from their homes, and no aid has been allowed into the Gaza Strip since March 2, 2025—the longest period of aid blockage since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Transcript
Khalil Khater:
Honestly, I felt happy but not so much. You feel like your heart is split. I mean, it’s true people are returning to their homes, but I don’t have a home. And still, it’s bittersweet. I lost my brother and his children. It felt like he died again when they announced the ceasefire.
Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:
A huge joy that can’t be described—I was overjoyed. The first thing I thought was: I will find my son and bury him. I want to go to Gaza City, find my house and bury my son and look for reminders of him—pictures, or some mementos of him. Anything really, that has his scent. God is greater. God is greater. God is greater. There is no God but Allah.
Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:
Frankly, there are mixed feelings. Between joy and the fact that we have forgotten the meaning of joy. Because we’ve spent 470 days witnessing bloodshed, air strikes, explosions, displacement. But today, something has returned to us—something like joy. Despite all the blood and all the loss—we have all lost—I lost my brother. This joy is because despite all that happened we are still steadfast.
Mohammed Rayan – Head of Admissions, Shuhada Al Aqsa Hospital:
Frankly, our pain is vast and our wounds are big, there’s not really a lot of room for joy, honestly. What we will do is visit the graves of our martyrs and pay our respects to them. Our feelings swing between happiness and despair, pain and loss, hope, and the immense suffering that our people will continue to endure in the coming days. The loss—because there is no home in the Gaza Strip that has not suffered loss.
Khalil Khater:
I love your uncle and your cousins, sweetheart. OK, I’ll stop crying—for you. We’ll go to Gaza, God willing, and see your grandpa. You can play with your cousins, because you miss them a lot, right?
Chantings:
God is greater. God is greater.
Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:
I lost my brother, my son, and my brother’s children. I lost two brothers who were taken prisoner. My family had already lost 18 martyrs. My mother, the embrace of my loving mother. My siblings in the North, I’ve missed them so much.
Khalil Khater:
What did the war take? First it took my health. I’m really exhausted. It took the most important people from me. It took them. That’s what it took from me. I lost my work—I was a kindergarten teacher. I lost my home, where I used to feel safe, where I raised my children. Life in a tent is really, really hard. And I lost my brother, of course I can’t get him back, only memories remain. God rest his soul. God rest his soul. Praise be to God in every circumstance.
Rayef Mustafa Al Adadla:
I shall search for my second martyred son, who hasn’t been buried. Then we will return to our homes and fill them. We will rebuild them to say: we rebuild our nation, no matter what the occupation destroys.
Khalil Khater:
I don’t want to return to our old neighborhood because that’s it—we were kicked out of our home. There’s no place for us there. Our neighborhood was near the border, there are a lot of houses that were destroyed, and the building we were in was bombed many times. The tower block next to us was also bombed repeatedly.
Rayef Mustafa Al Adadla:
My house is destroyed, but I will return to it. Despite all the circumstances, I will set up a tent on its ruins or beside it. I will stay on my land, beside my house. We won’t go far. We won’t abandon Gaza, and we won’t emigrate, because we are steadfast—like the mountains. We will stay beside it in the same area, God willing.
Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:
Our house was struck six times. It’s just rubble now, but we will organize this rubble and build again, God willing. What will I find? I’ll find rubble. Blood mixed with rubble. I’ll find ashes. I’ll find… body parts. I won’t find any people, but I’ll return, rebuild it, and live there. We will thank God and continue with our lives. We will move forward, get married, have children—all of us will do this, God willing.
Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:
My house was destroyed early in the war, on day four. I think I’ll find it bulldozed. I hope I will find some photos of my son. Some of his belongings, to remind us of him. All will be well, God willing. We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Khalil Khater:
We’ve been waiting for a ceasefire for a long time. I didn’t sleep all night. I waited until 08:30 to hear them announce a ceasefire.
Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:
One and a half years. From the beginning of the war, I kept saying: “Tomorrow it will be over, tomorrow it will be over.” Hopefully—thank God—today, it’s over. God willing.
Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:
I haven’t seen my family for 430 days. I’ve been literally waiting for the moment to see my family—since the beginning of the war. From day one, I’ve been praying for it to end. We go, we come back again. We’ve been waiting to return for 470 days. Today, the feelings… I literally don’t know how to describe them. Beyond description. Peace means the oppressor and occupier leave all of Palestine—not just Gaza, and not just a ceasefire. Because this is a war of extermination. A war of extermination—where they committed every kind of war crime. It’s not two states. There is only one Palestine. They are the brutal occupier. So our peace is when the occupation leaves.
Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:
Peace and safety mean no massacres, no bodies, no mass extermination. No martyrs, no jets, no drones, no tanks.
Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:
God rest his soul—my older brother, who was my father’s successor, died. I want to see his kids. His kids are now my responsibility. So the first thing I want to do is see my brother’s children.
Khalil Khater:
When I truly believe that the war is over, I will go and throw myself into my mother’s arms. I don’t know… I’m sure that Gaza City will have changed. All its landmarks will have changed.
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) has been committing time every week to protesting against far-right ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, who has previously egged on the genocide in Gaza. But the Metropolitan Police have once again banned IJAN from gathering near Hotovely’s residence in Swiss Cottage, London, where the group had promised to protest until the UK followed the example of other countries by expelling its Israeli ambassador.
has intervened to block a protest group gathering in Swiss Cottage this Friday in an effort to prevent further serious disruption to the life of the community.
By “the life of the community”, the police are apparently referring to the ambassador of a country currently being investigated for genocide and whose prime minister is a wanted war criminal.
The Met has placed “Public Order Act conditions” on the IJAN protest, stating that:
It may now not take place in Swiss Cottage or anywhere in the shaded area on the map below.
Because of the wide area the police designated as a no-go zone, the ban seriously limits the protest from having any significant impact on Hotovely. But IJAN’s commitment to pushing for Hotovely’s expulsion is clear:
On 28 April, we protested in front of the Israeli ambassador's residence. @metpoliceuk banned us with an exclusion zone of 500 metres. 'Whether we are 1 or 500 m away, we still want @TzipiHotovely expelled for inciting genocide!' pic.twitter.com/K0utIEPTPD
In February, conditions were imposed requiring the protest to relocate outside the Swiss Cottage area. After an eight-week period where protests were held outside New Scotland Yard, the protest returned to Swiss Cottage last week, prompting a further assessment of its impact.
Chief Superintendent Jason Stewart suggested that “confrontation between this protest and counter protest groups” has played a part in encouraging the police to “use our powers to require the protest to take place elsewhere”. Counter protests have involved particularly aggressive scenes from genocide apologists:
Before the previous ban, the Swiss Cottage protest had been growing in size, and increasing police discomfort was clear. Police cracked down on activists – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – who were opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
One was Haim Bresheeth, a 79-year-old Jewish peace activist and an “advanced cancer patient with a serious heart condition”. His parents survived the Holocaust. He grew up in Israel, and fighting in two wars for the country turned him into a pacifist. Police arrested him in early November because of his opposition to Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and its decades-long oppression of Palestinian people.
Last week, around 200 people turned up at the protest:
Friday 2 May, IJAN & close to 200 people were back in Swiss Cottage to demand the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador who is advocating for the deliberate starvation of Palestinian children. Watch the event on Crispin Flintoff Show: https://t.co/2CoPqCgoL4
Pro-genocide agitators also attended, but “failed to disrupt” the event:
The Zionists, led by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, failed to disrupt the protest and were exposed as supporters of war crimes against children and women. They literally danced at the thought! pic.twitter.com/M5clpP1EIn
As the Israeli military kills two more Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a new documentary by Zeteo has uncovered critical details about Israel’s killing three years ago of the acclaimed Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The film, Who Killed Shireen?, identifies for the first time the Israeli soldier who allegedly shot Abu Akleh. We get response from two members of Abu…
We are cultural sector employees, in solidarity with the Palestinian people. On March 8, 2025, we sent an open letter to the president of the National Library of France (BnF) and to the Minister of Culture regarding their silence in the face of both the destruction of heritage and the massacre of human lives in Gaza, thus raising questions about culturicide.
The BnF’s colonial bias was denounced, particularly in its cultural programming and in its collaborations with Israeli institutions.
To this day, as the genocide perpetrated by the colonial State of Israel continues, neither the BnF nor the ministry has responded.
Translation and notes between brackets: Alain Marshal
The National Library of France (BnF), a leading institution, plays a major role in preserving and transmitting global cultural heritage, not only within France but also abroad, and has stood out for its remarkable actions in defense of humanity’s shared legacy.
However, its silence regarding the systematic destruction of Palestinian cultural heritage — especially since October 7, 2023, and in particular the destruction of libraries, schools, and universities in Gaza — raises serious questions. The Israeli army, in the context of a war that international bodies have deemed genocidal, has systematically targeted Palestinian cultural infrastructure, reducing to rubble treasures of knowledge and memory. Among the most shocking examples is the destruction of Gaza’s public and university library, in front of which an Israeli soldier was photographed posing amid the flames — a widely shared image that sparked global outrage.
This methodical destruction of Gaza’s heritage is a culturicide happening before our very eyes: an attempt to erase the identity and history of a people by annihilating its remnants, archives, and cultural legacy.
A methodical process since 1948
Since the founding of the State of Israel and the forced exodus of the Palestinian population, Israel has systematically worked to erase both the material and immaterial traces of Palestinian identity: demolishing homes and entire villages; wiping out places of memory and cultural heritage such as mosques, churches, libraries, and archives; restricting access to historical sites [notably the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam], etc. — a strategy aimed at depersonalizing and marginalizing Palestinians, both geographically and culturally.
Since October 7, 2023, this destruction project has escalated into a campaign of total annihilation. Israeli bombings — which are the most intense in modern history relative to the size and population density of Gaza — have led to the destruction of countless monuments, museums, libraries, and educational and cultural institutions in Gaza. These acts have been documented in reports such as that by LAP (Librarians and Archivists with Palestine) and the mapping project Gaza, Bombed Heritage and Virtual Museum. UNESCO has recorded Israel’s destruction of around 100 heritage, historical, archaeological, and cultural sites [along with the deaths of many individuals working to preserve and transmit heritage], who — like doctors and hospitals — have been deliberately targeted by the Israeli army.
This indiscriminate targeting of Palestinian educational and cultural infrastructure — despite Israel being a signatory to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict — is part of a strategy of uprooting, denying, and appropriating the Indigenous Palestinian identity. It is all the more urgent, therefore, that French and international cultural institutions take a clear stand against these acts of systematic destruction.
Double Standards
Despite the extreme urgency of the situation, the BnF has adopted a posture of withdrawal with regard to Palestine, invoking a supposed “obligation of neutrality.”
In a message dated April 29, 2024, BnF management stated: “Management has been made aware of the presence on TAD’s platforms of stickers whose form and content are explicitly violent and have shocked several of our colleagues, referring to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The institution would like to remind everyone that, under Article L121–2 of the French Civil Service Code, all civil servants are bound by an obligation of neutrality in the exercise of their duties. Any breach of this rule is subject to disciplinary action. We thank all staff for respecting this binding rule, which ensures the neutrality and serenity of our collective working environment.”
This injunction to silence stands in stark contrast to the explicit and substantial commitment it has shown to Ukraine, where the BnF not only took a public stance but also mobilized its resources, network, and collections. Following the Russian invasion in February 2022, the BnF expressed its solidarity with the Ukrainian people through numerous actions, including aid to Ukrainian libraries and their staff. [2] These initiatives reflect the BnF’s active engagement in support of Ukraine, in sharp contrast to its deafening silence on the situation in Gaza. The BnF’s “obligation of neutrality” thus appears to be selectively applied.
This disparity raises serious questions about the consistency of the BnF’s commitment to the protection of global cultural heritage, exposing it to accusations of blatant double standards. All the more so as, despite Israel’s repeated violations of international conventions and UN resolutions, documented over decades, the BnF has not hesitated to showcase this state [through numerous collaborative, promotional, and partnership initiatives] [3].
[Even after October 7, this bias persisted — promoting the Israeli perspective while erasing the destruction of Palestinian heritage. Whereas an entry for the “October 7 Massacre” was created in the BnF’s general catalog, no such entry exists for the genocide or culturicide committed in Gaza. And on November 26, 2024, the BnF hosted a program on the history and present-day destruction of books and libraries, mentioning recent examples (Ukraine, Timbuktu, Iraq) without a single word about the methodical destruction of libraries in Gaza, despite the extensive documentation available.
All this is especially troubling coming from the BnF, which suspended all institutional collaboration with Russian state institutions following the invasion of Ukraine. One can only wonder whether, behind its proclaimed “neutrality,” there is in fact an alignment with the geopolitical choices of France and the West more broadly — unwavering allies of Israel — and the regrettable remnants of a colonial legacy that relegates Indigenous cultures and/or Europe’s responsibility for their destruction to the background.]
The Bias of a Colonial Legacy
“Palestine,” wrote Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour, “poses a problem of conscience for the West. With the former British and French empires responsible for the division of the territory, finding a solution to the Palestinian question would require a complete revision of European colonial history.”
In its exhibition Le monde pour horizon (“The World as Horizon”), the BnF announced in a press release its intent to address the issue of destruction linked to French colonial conquests, promising a presentation of its collections illustrating the colonization of Africa, particularly Algeria. Some media outlets even hailed it as “an effort to distance itself from France’s heavy colonial history.” Yet this announcement has led to nothing: no such presentation has materialized — an absence all the more regrettable given that the Ministry of Culture has made cultural rapprochement between France and Algeria one of the priorities of the 2022–2027 presidential term. And yet the immeasurable devastation caused by French colonization, especially in Algeria, is well documented. From the earliest days of the conquest, Algerian libraries — both private and public — were devastated; their books and manuscripts either destroyed or looted. A significant portion of this looted heritage was donated to the National Library of France.
This dissonance was once again evident during the study day Détruire le livre? (“Destroy the Book?”), held on November 26, 2024, which claimed to explore the history and contemporary reality of book and library destruction in times of war. Yet again, the devastation wrought by Western imperialism — whether through French colonial conquests or, more recently, the destruction carried out by Israel — was completely ignored.
As the Brooklyn Museum Workers in Support of Palestine recently declared, “We also recognize the dissonance between the way cultural institutions historicize past justice movements and their failure to fully engage with movements of the present.”
Conclusion
As an institution entrusted with the preservation of universal heritage, the BnF cannot afford to ignore such a crime against culture and history. Its silence stands in flagrant contradiction to the values it claims to embody, calls into question the universality of its commitment, and contributes to erasing this genocide from the historical record. We condemn the passivity — if not complicity— of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in the face of this campaign of plunder and destruction, which undermines the very principles of preservation and transmission of knowledge and memory, which constitute its core mission.
Given the gravity of the situation and what has been set forth, we call upon the BnF to:
– publicly denounce this grave assault on world heritage, of which the destruction of the Edward Said Public Library is but one of the war crimes committed against Gaza and its inhabitants over the past fifteen months;
— suspend its 2010 framework agreement with the National Library of Israel (BNI) and cease all cooperation with Israeli state institutions, particularly regarding the development of joint research and development programs in information processing, computerization, and digitization; the organization of conferences and seminars; and the mounting of exhibitions;
— [take action, within its means, to safeguard and restore Palestinian historical and cultural memory.]
Endnotes [not part of the original letter]
[1] The titles included works by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé, and Banksy, as well as other books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, student revolts, and art, including a children’s coloring book entitled From the River to the Sea by South African illustrator Nathi Ngubane. Source: https://www.972mag.com/educational-bookshop-east-jerusalem-raid-arrests/
A public statement by Laurence Engel, president of the BnF, on May 4, 2022, expressing solidarity and support for the Ukrainian people, strongly condemning Russian aggression, announcing the suspension of all cooperation with Russian institutions, and urging Russian national libraries that are members of the CENL (Conference of European National Libraries) to withdraw from it;
The creation of a dedicated section on the BnF’s official website gathering information on cultural events in support of Ukraine, as well as a selection of online and reading-room resources related to Ukraine and the ongoing conflict;
Solidarity initiatives such as a special concert in support of Ukraine, with proceeds used to purchase and ship conservation materials to safeguard Ukrainian heritage;
Compilation of a collective bibliography entitled Ukraine in the Collections of the BnF, a collaborative effort by all departments aimed at showcasing Ukrainian heritage;
Hosting Ukrainian librarians in the framework of the “Courants du Monde” program in 2024 and supporting the creation and development of a Ukrainian digital library. Etc., etc.
[3] Notably:
Since 2010, the BnF has participated in the Rachel network, launched in 2008 by the National Library of Israel, to disseminate Hebrew manuscripts worldwide;
In 2021, a few months after “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” which left hundreds dead and thousands wounded in Gaza, the exhibition Living in Israel showcased the country’s architecture, urban planning, and lifestyles, while another exhibition was devoted to the film The Last Day of Yitzhak Rabin by Israeli director Amos Gitai;
In 2022, the conference French Studies in Israel focused on the development of knowledge about France as an academic field within Israeli universities, highlighting the cultural and educational ties between the two countries;
Thought I’d share with you an attempt to hold my MP to account for Westminster’s shameful complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. The talking-points may help if you’re about to do the same with your MP or senator.
Israel: after 19 months of non-stop genocide where do you stand Mr Cooper?
ku.tnemailrapnull@pm.repooc.nhoj
Dear Mr Cooper,
In your communications to me in February and October last year some remarks were misleading and sounded as if penned by Israel’s propaganda scribblers in Tel Aviv. Given your journalistic background it was hoped you would sniff out and reject such disinformation. With the situation in Gaza now so horrific a more considered reply would be welcome, please, from our representative at Westminster.
You said: “Israel has suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas.”
But you omitted the context. In the 23 years prior to October 7 Israel had been slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Why overlook this? 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, were held in Israeli jails on that fateful day. Over 1,200 were under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’ (B’Tselem figures). October 7 was therefore a retaliation against extreme provocation. Or were we expecting the Palestinians to take all that lying down?
Evidence is now emerging that the IDF inflicted many of the casualties on their own people that day in order to provide a pretext for their long-planned genocidal assault.
Early in the genocide JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, described the situation leading up to October 7 rather well:
The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence…. For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation….
For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.
For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians’ homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes orchards, and land that were in their family for generations.
The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.
You said: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law.”
The UN itself has made it clear that “Israel cannot claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies”, and many law experts have said the same.
On the other hand the Palestinians’ right to resist is confirmed in UN Resolution 3246 which calls for all States to recognize the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, and to assist them in their struggle, and reaffirms the Palestinians’ right to use “all available means, including armed struggle” in their fight for freedom.
Furthermore UN Resolution 37/43 gives them an unquestionable right, in their struggle for liberation, to “eliminate the threat posed by Israel by all available means including armed struggle”. And as China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.
You said “There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”
How right you are! Under international law Palestinians have an inalienable right to self-determination. They properly elected Hamas under international scrutiny in 2006, at the last permitted election. Hamas are the lawful and legitimate rulers in Gaza.
Israel is not the Western-style democracy it pretends to be. It is a deeply unpleasant ethnocracy with recently enacted discriminatory nation-state laws to emphasise its apartheid ‘bottom line’. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an Israeli human rights organization, has documented entrenched discrimination and socioeconomic differences in “land, urban planning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, and education.”
You said: “Leaving Hamas in power in Gaza would be a permanent roadblock to a two-state solution…..A sustainable ceasefire must mean that Hamas is no longer there, able to threaten Israel.”
The US and UK have no right to attempt coercive regime change. Besides, Israel has been a fatal threat to Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) since well before Hamas was even founded.
Sections 16 and 20 of Hamas’s 2017 Charter are in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.
(s.16) “Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.
(s.20) “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”
The correct and lawful way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, theft of Palestinian resources, and destruction of Palestinian heritage.
You said: “I support all steps to bring about a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders.”
Palestinians should not have to negotiate their freedom and self-determination. Under international law it’s their basic right and doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as Israel or the US, agreeing to it. The UK disrespects that, otherwise we would long ago have recognised Palestinian statehood along with the vast majority of nations that have already done so. And why is only Israel allowed to be “safe and secure”?
Britain’s refusal to recognise Palestine is disgraceful. We promised the Palestinian Arabs independence in 1915 in return for their help in defeating the Turks but reneged in 1917 (in favour of the shameful Balfour Declaration). We should have granted Palestine provisional independence in 1923 in accordance with our responsibilities under the League of Nations Mandate Agreement, but didn’t. In 1947 the UN Partition Plan allocated the Palestinians a measly portion of their own homeland and, without consulting them, handed the lion’s share to incomer Jews with no ancestral connection to it… thanks in large part to the Balfour betrayal.
The following year Britain walked away from its mandate responsibilities leaving Palestinians at the mercy of Israel’s vicious plan for annexing the Holy Land by military force – “from the river to the sea” – which they’ve pursued relentlessly ever since in defiance of international and humanitarian law, bringing terror, misery, wholesale destruction and ruination to the Palestinians. And now genocide.
Today Britain still refuses to recognise Palestinian independence although 138 other UN member states do.
You said: “Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”
The Israeli regime has long ignored representations on such issues, so where is the “robust action” you speak of?
According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, “The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence…. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.”
Law expert Ralph Wilde provides this opinion:
There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.
Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force….
You said: “The UK is doing everything it can to get more aid in and open more crossings, and we played a leading role in securing the passage of UN Security Council resolution 2720, which made clear the urgent demand for expanded humanitarian access.”
That went well, didn’t it? It’s sickening how Westminster still won’t accept the truth – that Israel is a depraved and repulsive regime, devoid of humanity, and we should not be supporting it in any way, shape or form.
For decades before October 7 Israel’s illegal control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza and military aggression, ethnic cleansing, restrictions on movement of goods and people, dispossession of prime lands, theft of Palestine’s key resources and destruction of its economy have bordered on slow-motion genocide.
And now the International Court of Justice has clarified that “a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent, it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit”.
The many means available to the British Government include sanctions – which it readily applies to other delinquent nations – and withdrawal of favoured-nation privileges, trade deals, scientific/security collaboration, and cessation of arms supplies. In Israel’s case the British Government, far from using its available deterrent means, has militarily assisted Israel in its genocide.
So let’s remind ourselves of the UK Lawyers’ Open Letter Concerning Gaza of 26 October 2023 which arrived at the UK Government with important warnings regarding breaches of international law — for example:
⦁ The UK is duty-bound to “respect and ensure respect” for international humanitarian law as set out in the Four Geneva Conventions in all circumstances (1949 Geneva Conventions, Common Art 1). That means the UK must not itself assist violations by others.
⦁ The UK Government must immediately halt the export of weapons from the UK to Israel, given the clear risk that they might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law and in breach of the UK’s domestic Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, including its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty.
The Department for Business and Trade (whose committee I believe you now sit on) dismissed a petition calling for all licences for arms to Israel to be revoked. Their excuse was that “we rigorously assess every application on a case-by-case basis against strict assessment criteria, the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria (or SELC)…. The SELC provide a thorough risk assessment framework for export licence applications and require us to think hard about the impact of providing equipment and its capabilities. We will not license the export of equipment where to do so would be inconsistent with the SELC.”
But they didn’t explain how Israel managed to satisfy those “strict assessment criteria” and survive such a “rigorous” process. Were we supposed to take it all on trust? There are 8 criteria and, on reading them, any reasonably informed person might conclude that Israel fails to satisfy at least 5.
You said: “In the longer term, I will continue to support the UK’s long held-position, that there should be a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security for both nations and the wider region.”
Why the longer term? Why not now? If Palestinian statehood had been recognised at the proper time (in 1923, or at least by 1948 when Israeli statehood was ‘accepted’) these unspeakable atrocities would never have happened.
QME and Plan Dalet
These are the never-mentioned driving forces behind the evil that poisons the Holy Land.
In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). It ensures the apartheid regime always has the upper hand over it neighbours. This is central to US Middle East policy and guarantees the region is kept at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.
Sadly the UK has superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for ‘security’ and other dubious reasons.
Plan D, or Plan Dalet, is the Zionist terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland written 77 years ago. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency and later to become the first president of ‘New Israel’. .
Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there to prevent it. As Plan D shows, “expulsion and transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) has always been a key part of the Zionists’ scheme, and Ben-Gurion reminded his military commanders that the prime aim of Plan D was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The Deir Yassin massacre signalled the beginning of a deliberate programme to depopulate Arab towns and villages – destroying churches and mosques – in order to make room for incoming Holocaust survivors and other Jews. In July 1948 Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population. They massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque. The remainder were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way. Of all the blood-baths they say this was the biggest. Israel’s great hero Moshe Dayan was responsible.
By 1949 the Zionists had seized nearly 80 percent of Palestine, provoking the resistance backlash we still see today. The knock-on effects have created around 6 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN plus an estimated 1 million others worldwide.
Israel Lobby
Considering Britain’s obligations towards the Holy Land since WW1, would you please let me know what you and your colleagues are now doing to stop this appalling extermination of the Palestinian people? And I do mean action not empty words. And would you please explain why Conservative Friends of Israel, which works to promote and support Israel in Parliament and at every level of the Party and claims 80% of Conservative MPs as signed-up members, are allowed to flourish at Westminster?.
MPs who put themselves under the influence of an aggressive foreign military power are surely in flagrant breach of the principles of public life (aka the Nolan Principles) which are written into MPs’ code of conduct and the ministerial code.
Being a Friend of Israel, of course, means embracing the terror on which the state of Israel was built, approving the dispossession of the innocent and the oppression of the powerless, and applauding the discriminatory laws against non-Jews who resisted being ejected and inconveniently remain in their homeland.
It means aligning oneself with the vile mindset that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial, imposes hundreds of military checkpoints, severely restricts the movement of people and goods, and interferes with Palestinian life at every level.
And it means giving the thumbs-up to Israeli gunboats shooting up Palestinian fishermen in their own territorial waters, the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy, the cruel 19-year blockade on Gaza and the bloodbaths inflicted on the tiny enclave’s packed population. Also the religious war that humiliates the Holy Land’s Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places.
I prefer to think that you know all this but must be mindful that the Israel lobby have Conservative Central Office in their pocket.
19 months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Financial Times (FT) has called out “the west’s shameful silence on Gaza”. But in the very same editorial, it remained silent itself about the fact that countlesslegal, academic, andhuman rightsexpertshavedescribed Israel’s war crimes in Gaza as a genocidal attempt to ‘cleanse’ the occupied Palestinian territory of its inhabitants. And this constant media gagging of key context is a massive part of the problem. Because how can you expect Western governments, with all their vested interests, to meaningfully hold Israel’s war criminals to account when even the media struggles to do so, despite that being their actual job?
Opinion from the FT's Editorial Board: 'The US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation. They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.'… pic.twitter.com/0REMlanpKz
The FT: speaking one truth doesn’t make up for all the others you conceal
To be fair to the FT, its editorial mentioned “accusations of war crimes against Israel”. It just didn’t clarify that those accusations have come from theUN, the International Criminal Court (ICC), numerouscountries, and humanrightsorganisations.
The paper also placed blame on Israel for blocking aid, collapsing this year’s ceasefire, and planning to ‘clear and hold territory’ in Gaza. It admitted that “each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land”. And it criticised Donald Trump’s “plan for Gaza to be emptied of Palestinians”, and how “senior Israeli officials have since said they are implementing Trump’s plan to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza”. But the FT couldn’t bring itself to use the term ‘ethnic cleansing‘ to describe this, despite numerousexpertsdoing so.
Selective blame and context
At the same time, the FT was unable to accuse Israel directly of massacring tens of thousands of people in Gaza. On average, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least one Palestinian child every hour in Gaza since their genocide began in October 2023. They have murdered around 17,492 children, including about 825 babies, 895 one-year-olds, 3,266 preschoolers, and 4,032 six-to-10-year-olds.
But the FT simply spoke of “19 months of conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians”. And this matters, because it had no trouble accusing Hamas directly, saying “Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack killed 1,200 people and triggered the war” (even though the group was not responsible for all deaths on 7 October). It even repeated that with an emotive adjective, stressing that “the group’s murderous October 7 attack is what triggered the Israeli offensive”.
So we’ve established that the FT’s stance is that 7 October triggered Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. But what does it think triggered 7 October? The paper criticised Hamas’s “continued stranglehold on Gaza”, but didn’t mention the long history of the oppressive Israeli stranglehold on Palestine, which clearly led to 7 October.
There was no mention of the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948, Israel’s decades-long consolidation of control via war and oppression after that, Western support for Israel as a Cold War anti-communist power, or its role as an ongoingtoolfor Western interests in the Middle East via ethniccleansing, apartheid, and war crimes.
FT propaganda is part of the problem
The FT is right, of course, that “US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally… should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity”. But it also needs to turn the mirror on itself as a prominent media outlet. Because it knows full well the very serious evidence of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Just in January 2025, it published a piece acknowledging that “many scholars… would conclude that Israel has committed genocide”. As it reported:
the Holocaust scholar Raz Segal says multiple Israeli leaders have made “explicit and unashamed statements of intent to destroy”. For instance, former defence minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” President Isaac Herzog called “an entire nation” “responsible” for Hamas’s attack. Many scholars, including Israeli Holocaust historians Amos Goldberg and Omer Bartov, say Israel committed genocide.
In short, the paper absolutely understands the context and can state it when the will is there. It isn’t ignorant or incompetent.
When the FT says “those who remain silent or cowed from speaking out will be complicit”, it should very much extend that accusation of complicity to itself. Because every time it consciously omits key vocabulary or context from its coverage, shifting responsibility for heinous war crimes away from Israel in the process, it it clearly gagging itself. So although it’s right to call out “the west’s shameful silence on Gaza”, it should accept that its own “cowed” coverage is a big part of the problem too.
The New Zealand Māori Council and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa made a high profile appeal to Foreign Minister Winston Peters over Gaza today, calling for urgent action over humanitarian supplies for the besieged Palestinian enclave.
“Starving a civilian population is a clear breach of international humanitarian law and a war crime under the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court,” said the open letter published by the two organisations as full page advertisements in three leading daily newspapers.
Noting that New Zealand has not joined the International Court of Justice for standing up to “condemn the use of starvation as a weapon of war”, the groups still called on the government to use its “internationally respected voice” to express solidarity for humanitarian aid.
The plea comes amid Israel’s increased attacks on Gaza which have killed at least 61 people since dawn, targeting civilians in crowded places and a Gaza City market.
The more than two-month blockade by the the enclave by Israel has caused acute food shortages, accelerating the starvation of the Palestinian population.
Israel has blocked all aid into Gaza — food, water, fuel and medical supplies — while more than 3000 trucks laden with supplies are stranded on the Egyptian border blocked from entry into Gaza.
At least 57 Palestinians have starved to death in Gaza as a result of Israel’s punishing blockade. The overall death toll, revised in view of bodies buried under the rubble, stands at 62,614 Palestinians and 1139 people killed in Israel.
The open letter, publlshed by three Stuff-owned titles — Waikato Times in Hamilton, The Post in the capital Wellington, and The Press in Christchurch, said:
Rt Hon Winston Peters Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston.Peters@parliament.govt.nz
Open letter requesting government action on the future of Gaza
Kia ora Mr Peters,
The situation in Occupied Gaza has reached another crisis point.
We urge our country to speak out and join other nations demanding humanitarian supplies into Gaza.
For more than two months, Israel has blocked all aid into Gaza — food, water, fuel and medical supplies. The World Food Programme says food stocks in Gaza are fully depleted. UNICEF says children face “growing risk of starvation, illness and death”. The International Committee of the Red Cross says “the humanitarian response in Gaza is on the verge of total collapse”.
Meanwhile, 3000 trucks laden with desperately needed aid are lined up at the Occupied Gaza border. Israeli occupation forces are refusing to allow them in.
Starving a civilian population is a clear breach of International Humanitarian Law and a War Crime under the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court.
At the International Court of Justice many countries have stood up to condemn the use of starvation as a weapon of war and to demand accountability for Israel to end its industrial-scale killing of Palestinians in Gaza.
New Zealand has not joined that group. Our government has been silent to date.
After 18 months facing what the International Court of Justice has described as a “plausible genocide”, it is grievous that New Zealand does not speak out and act clearly against this ongoing humanitarian outrage.
Minister Peters, as Minister of Foreign Affairs you are in a position of leadership to carry New Zealand’s collective voice in support of humanitarian aid to Gaza to the world. We are asking you to speak on behalf of New Zealand to support the urgent international plea for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza and to initiate calls for a no-fly zone to be established over the region to prevent further mass killing of civilians.
We believe the way forward for peace and security for everyone in the region is for all parties to follow international law and United Nations resolutions, going back to UNGA 194 in 1948, so that a lasting peace can be established based on justice and equal rights for everyone.
New Zealand has an internationally respected voice — please use it to express solidarity for humanitarian aid to Gaza, today.
Nā
Ann Kendall QSM, Co-chair Tā Taihākurei Durie, Pou [cultural leader] NZ Māori Council
Maher Nazzal and John Minto, National Co-chairs Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA)
The NZ Māori Council and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa advertisement in New Zealand media today. Image: PSNA
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Anyone who at this point is still prioritising concerns about tackling antisemitism in Britain, the United States or Europe over halting a 19-month genocide in Gaza is secretly in favour of that genocide. They need to be shamed – and urgently.
We are long past the time when there can be any doubt that what the International Court of Justice feared 16 months ago was a genocide is actually a genocide. Israel is no longer even shy about admitting it is starving Gaza’s population. It has been expressly blocking all food and water into Gaza for more than two months.
We are at the point where even patriotic Israeli scholars who have been desperately trying to ignore that reality are belatedly and reluctantly conceding that Israel’s genocide in Gaza is indisputable.
The BBC’s role is not to keep viewers informed. It’s to persuade them a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics they cannot hope to understand
You can tell how bad levels of starvation now are in Gaza, as the population there begins the third month of a complete aid blockade by Israel, because last night the BBC finally dedicated a serious chunk of its main news programme, the News at Ten, to the issue.
But while upsetting footage of a skin-and-bones, five-month-old baby was shown, most of the segment was, of course, dedicated to confusing audiences by two-sidesing Israel’s genocidal programme of starving 2 million-plus Palestinian civilians.
Particularly shocking was the BBC’s failure in this extended report to mention even once the fact that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been a fugitive for months from the International Criminal Court, which wants him on trial for crimes against humanity. Why? For using starvation as a weapon of war against the civilian population.
I have yet to see the BBC, or any other major British media outlet, append the status “wanted war crimes suspect” when mentioning Netanyahu in stories. That is all the more unconscionable on this occasion, in a story directly related to the very issue – starving a civilian population – he is charged over.
Was mention of the arrest warrant against him avoided because it might signal a little too clearly that the highest legal authorities in the world attribute starvation in Gaza directly to Israel and its government, and do not see it – as the British establishment media apparently do – as some continuing, unfortunate “humanitarian” consequence of “war”.
Predictably misleading, too, was BBC Verify’s input. It provided a timeline of Israel’s intensified blockade that managed to pin the blame not on Israel, even though it is the one blocking all aid, but implicitly on Hamas.
Verify’s reporter asserted that in early March, Israel “blocked humanitarian aid, demanding that Hamas extend a ceasefire and release the remaining hostages”. He then jumped to 18 March, stating: “Israel resumes military operations.”
Viewers were left, presumably intentionally, with the impression that Hamas had rejected a continuation of the ceasefire and had refused to release the last of the hostages.
None of that is true. In fact, Israel never honoured the ceasefire, continuing to attack Gaza and kill civilians throughout. But worse, Israel’s supposed “extension” was actually its unilateral violation of the ceasefire by insisting on radical changes to the terms that had already been agreed, and which included Hamas releasing the hostages.
Israel broke the ceasefire precisely so it had the pretext it needed to return to starving Gaza’s civilians – and the hostages whose safety it proclaims to care about – as part of its efforts to make them so desperate they are prepared to risk their lives by forcing open the short border with neighbouring Sinai sealed by Egypt.
Yesterday, an Israeli government minister once again made clear what the game plan has been from the very start. “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, said. Gaza’s population, he added, would be forced to “leave in great numbers to third countries”. In other words, Israel intends to carry out what the rest of us would call the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as it has been doing continuously for eight decades.
Simply astonishing. We’ve had 19 months of Israeli government ministers and military commanders telling us they are destroying Gaza. They’ve destroyed Gaza. And yet, Western politicians and media still refuse to call it a genocide.
What is the point of the BBC’s Verify service—supposedly there to fact-check and ensure viewers get only the unvarnished truth—when its team is itself peddling gross distortions of the truth?
The BBC and its Verify service are not keeping viewers informed. They are propagandising them into believing a clear crime against humanity by Israel is, in fact, highly complicated geopolitics that audiences cannot hope to understand.
The establishment media’s aim is to so confuse audiences that they will throw up their hands and say: “To hell with Israel and the Palestinians! They are as bad as each other. Leave it to the politicians and diplomats to sort out.”
In any other circumstance, it would strike you as obvious that starving children en masse is morally abhorrent, and that anyone who does it, or excuses it, is a monster. The role of the BBC is to persuade you that what should be obvious to you is, in fact, more complicated than you can appreciate.
There may be skin-and-bones babies, but there are also hostages. There may be tens of thousands of children being slaughtered, but there is also a risk of antisemitism. Israeli officials may be calling for the eradication of the Palestinian people, but the Jewish state they run needs to be preserved at all costs.
If we could spend five minutes in Gaza without the constant, babbling distractions of these so-called journalists, the truth would be clear. It’s a genocide. It was always a genocide.
The BBC documentary ‘The Settlers,” directed by Josh Baker and written by Louis Theroux, has recently aired to much international attention. It aims to give Western viewers an inside look into the minds of Israeli settlers – those who occupy Palestinian land in the West Bank, often with open ideological commitment to ethnic cleansing and supremacy.
The film achieves its goal to a certain extent, as it exposed the raw, unfiltered language of settlers who speak brazenly about displacing Palestinians from their ancestral homes.
But while the documentary was willing to give settlers the microphone to lay out their dangerous visions for the future, it fell painfully short in giving equal weight to the lived reality of those whose lives are being shattered by those very ideologies.
The BBC‘s racist, institutional bias in favour of Israel has been clear throughout the state’s settler-colonial genocide in Gaza. In particular, its propaganda strategy involves the omission of key context. And a new article about falling support for Israel in the US is a perfect example. Because the BBC couldn’t bring itself to mention Israel’s war crimes, ethniccleansing, or apartheid – not even once. And the only mention of genocide was to note that former president Joe Biden rejected the label “Genocide Joe”.
But there’s not even a mention in the BBC article of reports or rulings from international legal institutions or human rights organisations.
They can do journalism. They just prefer to do PR for war criminals.
The BBC certainly can provide background and research when it wants to. For example, the article outlines fairly well the factors that established Israel as the next step in Western colonialism. It mentions the New York Zionist campaign in the subways to “collect money to try to get England to open the doors” to Palestine when Britain was in control of the territory. It quotes a woman saying:
My brother would go on the subway trains, all the doors open on the train and he’d shout ‘open, open, open the doors to Palestine’
The article also quotes historian Rashid Khalidi, whose family British colonialists expelled from Palestine in the 1930s. He said:
On the one side, you had the Zionist movement led by people whom are European and American by origin… The Arabs had nothing similar… [The Arabs] weren’t familiar with the societies, the cultures, the political leaderships of the countries that decided the fate of Palestine. How could you speak to American public opinion if you had no idea what America is like?
The piece makes it clear that experts were warning the US government of the risk of intensifying conflict in the Middle East if Washington backed the creation of Israel. It later explains how the war of 1967 showed the US “the importance and the significance of Israel as a major military and political power in the Middle East”, further strengthening the US-Israeli love-in. And it even mentions how Trump’s proposals for Gaza “upended international norms, flying in the face of international law”.
Just no talk of ‘genocide’. No ‘apartheid’. No ‘war crimes’. And no ‘ethnic cleansing’.
In short, the BBC is perfectly capable of giving context when it wants to. It cannot plead ignorant or incompetent. It simply chooses to avoid mentioning the international condemnation of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and apartheid. That is a conscious choice, and an utterly despicable one.
Freedom House, the $94 million, nominally independent “human rights” NGO, has been suspiciously quiet as the Trump administration disappears, imprisons, and deports activists opposing the US and Israel’s assault on Gaza.
The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil on March 8 kicked off an harrowing wave of free speech suppression aimed at those protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Over 300 high-profile arrests and deportation threats followed Khalil, including that of Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, who has been rotting in a prison for 41 days for simply writing an op-ed critical of Israel in a student paper. She is being held in gulag-like conditions in a Louisiana prison, far from her family, despite the fact that the State Department’s own internal report found she broke no law. Since March 8, Freedom House has published dozens of reports, essays, blog posts, articles, media quotes and social media posts. But, strangely for an alleged human rights group, none have mentioned the White House’s unprecedented crackdown on free expression.
Freedom House’s own website makes clear that defending “free speech” is central to its mission. “Free speech and expression is the lifeblood of democracy, facilitating open debate, the proper consideration of diverse interests and perspectives,” they wax romantically. Which makes it all the more strange they have said nothing about these textbook cases of criminalizing freedom of expression.
TRNN reached out to Freedom House several times for comment on their silence, or to explain why they haven’t issued a statement of solidarity with any of those who disappeared for Gaza activism, but the organization did not return our emails. Freedom House receives over 80% of its budget from the US State Department and, by its own admission, has been hit hard by Trump’s cuts to foreign aid. In their statement asking for private donors to fill the void left by the Trump cuts, they hinted at one reason why they are silent on Trump’s authoritarian crackdown—it seems only “America’s adversaries” can be authoritarian, not the US or its allies. “Freedom House has been severely impacted by the disruption of US foreign assistance,” they wrote, “and the termination of critical programs that Congress funded to counter America’s authoritarian adversaries and support the global struggle for democracy.”
It seems only “America’s adversaries” can be authoritarian, not the US or its allies.
So what happens when the US is the authoritarian in question? It seems the response is to simply act like the draconian suppression of speech doesn’t exist. Trump’s crackdown on Gaza activists isn’t the first time the US has been authoritarian, of course. The US has long had the world’s largest prison population by a wide margin, long had a deeply racist and unequal justice system, long visited authoritarian violence and economic hardship on other countries—including the underlying genocide in Gaza in question.
But Trump’s deportation and imprisoning of people for—by the White House’s own admission—pure political speech marks a meaningful escalation that is clearly in conflict with Freedom House’s already limited, negative rights framework of “freedom.” Plenty of other freedom of speech organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have aggressively defended Khalil and others by filing lawsuits, issuing statements, and making clear where they stand. Why hasn’t an organization with tens of millions of dollars like Freedom House done the same?
The answer is obvious: Freedom House is not an independent organization. They are, and always have been, a soft power organ of the US State Department that uses the thin patina of independence to meddle and concern troll the human rights abuses of “foreign adversaries” while downplaying and whitewashing those by the US and its allies. Israel, for example, always gets their nice green “free” label despite currently carrying out what Amnesty International labels a “genocide” and militarily occupying 4.5 million Palestinians who, even before Oct. 7, were either subject to decades of siege in Gaza or brutal occupation in the West Bank. But don’t worry, Freedom House bifurcates the West Bank from Israel’s score. Why? It’s unclear. Israel has waged a decades-long occupation of Palestine, where the freedom of movement, commerce, food, everyday internal travel, and basic human dignity of Palestinians is subject to the whims of Israeli leaders, but, Freedom House has to get that score above 70 and bestow Israel with a nice green label, lest they get angry phone calls from Congress and the White House.
The silence from the risibly named “Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners” program housed within Freedom House is the most conspicuous. We tried to reach them specifically for comment, but they also did not respond to our request. The program is named after the late Washington Post columnist Fred Haitt, whose most impactful contribution to American politics was lying and lobbying for the Invasion of Iraq both in his personal capacity and as editorial page editor at the Post. Which is the perfect face of an organization entirely neoconservative in its feigned concern for “freedom,” a selective tool of shallow moralizing unconcerned with introspection or criticism of the myriad ways the United States suppressed freedom of speech and human rights. Even when Trump comes into office and unleashes an unsophisticated, explicitly illiberal attack on basic liberal rights, Freedom House can’t bring itself to release a token statement or half-hearted condemnation to maintain the pretense of independence. Instead, its reaction is cowardly silence and moving on to condemn safe, official Bad Guy Countries like China and Cuba.
Killing civilians wholesale, starving them to convince those unaffected to change course, and shepherding whole populations like livestock into conditions of further misery would all qualify as heinous crimes in international law. When it comes to Israel’s war in Gaza, this approach is seen as necessary politics, unalloyed by the restraints of humanitarianism. When confronted with these harsh realities on the ground, unequivocal denials follow: This is not happening in Gaza; no one is starving. And if that were the case, blame those misguided savages in Hamas.
As the conflict chugs along in pools of blood and bountiful gore, the confused shape of Israel’s intentions continues in all its glorious nebulousness. Pretend moderation clouds murderous desire. There is no sense that those unfortunate Israeli hostages captured by Hamas in its assault on October 7, 2023, matter anymore, being merely decorative for the imminent slaughter. There is even less sense that Hamas will be cleansed and removed from the strip, however attractive this idea continues to be.
Such evident limits have not discouraged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, who have decided that more force, that old province of the unimaginative, is the answer. According to the PM, the cabinet had agreed on a “forceful operation” to eliminate Hamas and salvage what is left of the hostage situation.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, Brigadier-General Effie Defrin, has explained on Israeli radio that the offensive will apparently ensure the return of the hostages. What follows will be “the collapse of the Hamas regime, its defeat, its submission”. Anywhere up to two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza will be herded into the ruins of the south. Humanitarian aid will be arranged by the Israeli forces to be possibly distributed through approved contractors.
The IDF chief of staff, Lt. General Eyal Zamir, confirmed that the approved plan will involve “the capture of the Strip and holding the territories, moving the Gazan population south for its defence, denying Hamas the ability to distribute humanitarian supplies, and powerful attacks against Hamas.”
Within the Israeli cabinet, ethnocentric and religious fires burn with bright fanaticism. The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich remains a figure who ignores floral subtlety in favour of the blood-stained sledgehammer. He remains that coherent link between cruel lawmaking and baffling violence. “Within a few months,” he boasts, “we will be able to declare that we have won. Gaza will be totally destroyed.” With pompous certitude, he also claimed that the next six months would see Hamas cease to exist.
Such opinions, expressed at the “Settlements Conference” organised by the Makor Rishon newspaper in Ofra, a West Bank settlement, give a sense of the flavour. Palestinians are to be “concentrated” on land located between the Egyptian border and the arbitrarily designated Morag Corridor. As with any potential abuser keen to violate his vulnerable charges while justifying it, Smotrich tried to impress with the idea that this was a “humanitarian” zone that would be free of “Hamas and terrorism”.
The program here is clear in its chilling crudeness. Expulsion, relocation, transfer. These are the words famously used to move on populations of a sizeable number in history, often at enormous cost. That this should involve lawmakers of the Jewish state adds a stunning, if perverse, poignancy to this. They, the moved on in history, the expelled and the condemned wanderers, shall expel others and condemn them in turn. Smotrich also points the finger at desperation and hopelessness, the biting incentives that propel migration. The Palestinians will feel blessed in their banishment. “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”
Impossible to ignore in Smotrich’s steaming bile against the Palestinians is the broader view that no Palestinian state can arise, necessitating urgent, preventative poisoning. In addition to the eventual depopulation of Gaza, plans to reconstitute the contours of the West Bank, ensuring that Israeli and Palestinian traffic are separated to enable building and construction for settlements as a prelude to annexation, are to be implemented.
The issue of twisting and mangling humanitarian aid in favour of Israel’s territorial lust has raised some tart commentary. A statement from the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a forum led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), does not shy away from the realities on the ground. All supplies, including those vital to survival, have been blocked for nine weeks. Bakeries and community kitchens have closed, while warehouses are empty. Hunger, notably among children, is rampant. Israel’s plan, as presented, “will mean that large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies.”
The UN Secretary General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator have confirmed that they will not cooperate in the scheme, as it “does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.”
The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have made the same point. Despite all being solid allies of Israel, they have warned that violations of international law are taking place. “Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and a Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change”.
To date, a promise lingers that the offensive will only commence once US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar takes place. But no ongoing savaging of Gaza with some crude effort at occupation will solve the historical vortex that continues to drag the Jewish state to risk and oblivion.
Although Britain’s political class has stood firmly behind Israel amid its genocide in Gaza, the apartheid state continues to embarrass its allies. In particular, a new report shows Israel recording the entry of 8,630 items of death and destruction from the UK in “four separate shipments… between September 2024 and February 2025”. This was despite the Labour government supposedly banning items the occupying power could use for its war crimes in Gaza.
The UK: still arming Israel despite ban?
The report from Drop Site News notes that the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has “refused to specify what the deliveries contained”. But Israel itself apparently described the imports as “Bombs, Grenades, Torpedoes, Mines, Missiles And Similar Munitions Of War And Parts Thereof”.
528 such items went to Israel in September 2024, 4,500 in November, and 3,602 in January and February 2025.
Drop Site quotes a British government spokesperson saying:
In September, we suspended export licenses to Israel for items used in military operations in Gaza. Our remaining licenses relate to non-military items, military items for civilian use or not for use in military operations in Gaza, or components for items for re-export to other countries.
The outlet also mentions the role that the highly controversial RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus has likely played in helping to supply Israel with the tools it needs to commit war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
What are a few loopholes between colonial powers?
The lucrative business of F-35 fighter jets, which has caused so much death and destruction, marked a highly controversial exemption from Labour’s licence suspensions in 2024. The only condition was that F-35 parts couldn’t go straight from the UK to Israel.
However, it seems the settler-colonial power has received numerous shipments of aircraft parts since the apparent ban. According to defence minister Maria Eagle, “there have been no exports of F-35 parts direct to Israel via RAF Marham since the licensing suspension”. However, as Drop Site mentions:
evidence suggests that these transfers did not stop in September. The import data shows a further thirteen courier shipments of aircraft parts under “Customs Code 88” directly from the UK to Israel taking place from October 2024 to March 2025.
Of these deliveries, Israel described 11 of them as “parts of airplanes, helicopters, or unmanned aircraft”. The other two were “parachutes, parachute accessories, and parts thereof” and “rotor parts”. The DBT reportedly refused to confirm if these related to F-35s.
Serious questions to answer
Former Foreign Office adviser Mark Smith previously revealed efforts under Tory and Labour governments “to suppress inconvenient truths” about UK allies. He spoke about official use of bullying, manipulation, and stonewalling to prolong “complicity with war crimes“.
This month, the High Court “will review the decision-making process of the UK government, and rule whether they have acted unlawfully by continuing to export some arms to Israel”. The judgement will probably come a few months later.
After 19 months of conflict that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and drawn accusations of war crimes against Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is once more preparing to escalate Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
The latest plan puts Israel on course for full occupation of the Palestinian territory and would drive Gazans into ever-narrowing pockets of the shattered strip.
It would lead to more intensive bombing and Israeli forces clearing and holding territory, while destroying what few structures remain in Gaza.
This would be a disaster for 2.2 million Gazans who have already endured unfathomable suffering.
Each new offensive makes it harder not to suspect that the ultimate goal of Netanyahu’s far-right coalition is to ensure Gaza is uninhabitable and drive Palestinians from their land. For two months, Israel has blocked delivery of all aid into the strip.
Child malnutrition rates are rising, the few functioning hospitals are running out of medicine, and warnings of starvation and disease are growing louder. Yet the US and European countries that tout Israel as an ally that shares their values have issued barely a word of condemnation.
They should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.
In brief remarks on Sunday, US President Donald Trump acknowledged Gazans were “starving”, and suggested Washington would help get food into the strip.
But, so far, the US president has only emboldened Netanyahu. Trump returned to the White House promising to end the war in Gaza after his team helped broker a January ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Under the deal, Hamas agreed to free hostages in phases, while Israel was to withdraw from Gaza and the foes were to reach a permanent ceasefire.
But within weeks of the truce taking hold, Trump announced an outlandish plan for Gaza to be emptied of Palestinians and taken over by the US.
In March, Israel collapsed the ceasefire as it sought to change the terms of the deal, with Washington’s backing. Senior Israeli officials have since said they are implementing Trump’s plan to transfer Palestinians out of Gaza.
On Monday, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip.”
Netanyahu insists an expanded offensive is necessary to destroy Hamas and free the 59 remaining hostages. The reality is that the prime minister has never articulated a clear plan since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack killed 1200 people and triggered the war.
Instead, he repeats his maximalist mantra of “total victory” while seeking to placate his extremist allies to ensure the survival of his governing coalition.
But Israel is also paying a price for his actions. The expanded offensive would imperil the lives of the hostages, further undermine Israel’s tarnished standing and deepen domestic divisions.
Israel has briefed that the expanded operation would not begin until after Trump’s visit to the Gulf next week, saying there is a “window” for Hamas to release hostages in return for a temporary truce.
Arab leaders are infuriated by Netanyahu’s relentless pursuit of conflict in Gaza yet they will fete Trump at lavish ceremonies with promises of multibillion-dollar investments and arms deals.
Trump will put the onus on Hamas when speaking to his Gulf hosts. The group’s murderous October 7 attack is what triggered the Israeli offensive.
Gulf states agree that its continued stranglehold on Gaza is a factor prolonging the war. But they must stand up to Trump and convince him to pressure Netanyahu to end the killing, lift the siege and return to talks.
The global tumult triggered by Trump has already distracted attention from the catastrophe in Gaza. Yet the longer it goes on, the more those who remain silent or cowed from speaking out will be complicit.
Israeli strikes carried out on the evening of 5 May on Yemen’s Hodeidah port and surrounding areas, including a concrete factory near Bajil, injured 56 people and killed one, while damaging 70 percent of the port’s five docks and infrastructure, Yemeni sources reported.
At least 21 people were injured in the Bajil strike, while the Yemeni Health Ministry later said 35 people were injured and one person killed in the broader Hodeidah attacks. Civilian areas such as Al-Salakhanah and Al-Hawak neighborhoods were also reportedly hit.
Nasruddin Amer, head of Ansarallah’s media office, vowed that the group would respond to the Israeli attack and that the strikes would not deter further operations.
We are taking this building amidst the current and renewed wave of the student Intifada, following the uprising of student action for Palestine after the heroic victory of Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, which shattered the illusion of zionist-imperialist domination and brought Palestine to the forefront for all justice-loving people of the world. We respond to the call made by the Palestinian student movement in Gaza to “raise the pace and ceiling of your struggle and your honorable stances, quantitatively and qualitatively, against the institutions, corporations, and governments that participate in the slaughter of our children, our students, and our people.
Last fall, Microsoft fired software engineer Hossam Nasr and data scientist Abdo Mohamed after they held a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza outside the company’s headquarters.
Nasr and Mohamed are members of No Azure for Apartheid, a group calling on Microsoft to stop providing its cloud computing to the Israeli military.
“As technology workers, we are hyper aware of the fact that our work—especially with the advancement of AI and cloud technologies—has the potential to enable any company and any organization to inflict harm and violate human rights,” reads a petition circulated by the organization.
Pro-palestine law students at New York University have secured a major victory against the university administration’s attempts to silence protests. On May 4, the NYU administration confirmed that 31 law students who had been barred from campus and prohibited from sitting for final exams, unless they sign away their right to protest, are now permitted to take their exams.
“This type of public pressure, the backlash that [the administration] got from not allowing students to sit for exams, was not something that they expected,” said one of the affected NYU law students, who spoke to Peoples Dispatch about this latest decision.
Just days after the World Food Programme said it had run out of food in Gaza, the hearing commenced at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. Thirty-nine states, the United Nations and three other international organizations presented oral arguments. All states but two — the U.S. and Hungary — condemned Israel’s denial of humanitarian assistance to the starving people of Gaza. Although Israel refused to orally address the ICJ, it filed a written statement with the court. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Israel decided “not to take part in this circus” and called the ICJ hearings part of a “systematic persecution and delegitimisation of Israel.”
Patricia Pérez Galeana, representing Mexico, quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s April 29 statement to the UN Security Council: “The humanitarian situation throughout the Gaza Strip has gone from bad, to worse, to beyond imagination.”
Israel is very adept at drawing attention away from itself and onto other countries as it carries out its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. In a recent incident, when the ‘Conscience’, an aid boat attempting to reach the starving people of Gaza, was hit by drones (likely fired by Israel) a mile out of Maltese international waters, all attention descended upon the Maltese authorities.
The vessel was flying the flag of the Pacific Island of Palau; however, prior to the drone hit, Palau withdrew the registration, leaving the crew vulnerable to accusations of being without official papers. Israel had also made accusations of terrorism, claiming that the crew of activists were Hamas militants. There is no basis to the claim that the peaceful activists have any military connections or intentions. The crew are internationals of conscience, who had gathered together from various countries in an attempt to break the blockade of Gaza, carry essential supplies, and draw attention to the desperate plight of people in Gaza.
A nearby Maltese tug boat was the first to arrive at the boat’s aid, having been alerted by the authorities to the SOS distress call. The tug boat was equipped with a fire hose and managed to extinguish the fire totally. However, with holes in the boat from the drone attack and extensive damage to the generator, the boat has been slowly taking on water. When the authorities arrived shortly after, the captain of the ‘Conscience’ informed them that the crew would not abandon their vessel or let any of the authorities board it.
The fears of the crew of sabotage from an unknown person or persons boarding their boat are not unrealistic. Besides incidents of sabotage, activists from the earlier Freedom Flotilla Coalitions, in attempting to break the siege of Gaza, have experienced deaths, arrests, theft, and the destruction of vessels. In 2008 the ‘Dignity’, was rammed – with clear lethal intent by the Israeli military. The damage was so extensive that the boat took on water, leaving it unseaworthy. Although the authorities in Israel and Egypt ignored the call for help, the Lebanese responded and rescued the sixteen international activists on board. In 2010, ten activists were murdered by the Israeli military. In 2018, Dr. Swee Ang, a passenger on the ‘Al Awda’ freedom boat, describes how prior to reaching the Gaza coastline, they were boarded by the Israeli military, arrested, humiliated, and stripped naked. Their boat was confiscated.
The young, well-known environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, is already in Malta and, along with other internationals, hopes to join the ‘Conscience’ as early as possible. However, being well-known is no guarantee of survival or success, as orthopaedic surgeon David Halpin can testify from his experience on the ‘Dignity’. The Israelis have a documented history of committing crimes against anyone – Palestinian or international, if they are perceived to challenge their Zionist aspirations to turn all of Palestine and beyond, into a Jewish State.
The Maltese authorities agreed to allow the boat to come into Malta and to assist with repairs. However, they insisted that the boat go through the normal customs procedures of inspection. With concerns for Malta’s security and a responsibility for the security of those on the boat from further attack, the Maltese Navy blocked all vessels from approaching the ‘Conscience’. Included in those blocked, from the area around the boat, were activists connected with the freedom flotilla. This led to a standoff between the two groups as each tried to express their security concerns while also addressing the vessel’s evident need for assistance.
All eyes turned away from Israel’s war crime and toward Malta. Sandwiched between Zionist political pressure from Israel on one side and pressure from international humanitarian groups on the other side, the Maltese authorities were thrown into the spotlight as the potential villains. The Maltese people and the internationals were ready to protest in the capital city of Valletta in support of the humanitarian venture. However, the protest was called off after it appeared that the crew and supporters of the ‘Conscience’ were in genuine negotiations with the Maltese Government.
This is a narrative that is still unfolding. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between the activists and the Maltese Government, we must remind ourselves that the real villain here is not Malta, but Israel. If justice is ever to be achieved, the Israeli Government must be held accountable for its ongoing theft and coveting of Palestinian land. Only then will Palestinians be free of this hundred-year-plus catastrophe that has led to displacement, occupation, and genocide.
World-renowned political cartoonist Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of the new McCarthyist assault on free expression and higher education. While employed as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Booth became a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics, and his work became a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing in March. Facing charges that certain cartoons contained anti-Semitic tropes, J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as “reprehensible.”
In a statement about his firing, Booth writes: “The reality – and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn – is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with the largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans/black/immigrant, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research – speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.”
In this special edition of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc sits down with Booth in the TRNN studio in Baltimore to discuss the events that led to his firing, the purpose and effects of political art, and how to respond to the repressive crackdown on art and dissent as genocide is unfolding and fascism is rising.
Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us.
A wave of authoritarian oppression has gripped colleges and universities. Life on campus looks in some ways similar but in other ways very intensely different than it did when I was a young man in the 1960s. International students like Mahmoud, Khalil are being abducted on the street and disappeared by ICE agents in broad daylight, and hundreds of student visas have been abruptly revoked. Faculty and graduate students are being fired, expelled, and doxxed online. From Columbia University to Harvard, Northwestern to Cornell, the Trump administration is holding billions of dollars of federal grants and contracts hostage in order to bend universities to Trump’s will and to squash our constitutional protected rights to free speech and free assembly.
Now, while the administration has justified these unprecedented attacks as necessary to root out so-called woke scours like diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and trans athletes playing college sports, the primary justification they’ve cited is combating antisemitism on campuses, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism, opposition to Israel, its political ideolog, Zionism, and Israel’s US-backed obliteration of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Now, our guest today is Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of this top-down political battle to reshape higher education in our country. Booth is a world-renowned political cartoonist based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in venues like Harvard’s Magazine, The Nation, The Village Voice, The Atlantic. Until recently, he was a lecturer at the Annenberg School [for] Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. And just days after the Trump administration announced it was freezing $175 million in federal funds depend, Booth was fired.
Booth’s work has become a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing, facing charges that certain cartoons he made contained antisemitic tropes. J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as reprehensible.
In a statement about his firing posted on his Patreon page on March 20, Booth wrote this: “The reality and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans, Black, immigrants, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research, speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.
Today we’re going straight to the heart of the matter, and we’re speaking with Mr. Fish himself right here in The Real News Studio. Welcome. Good to have you with us.
Dwayne Booth:
Great to be here.
Marc Steiner:
So I gotta ask you this question first. Just get it out of the way. So where did the fish come from?
Dwayne Booth:
Oh my gosh. Well, that’s a long tale. I attempted to name my mother, had gotten my stepfather a new bird for Father’s Day. And this was right after I dropped out of college and was living in the back of my parents’ house and fulfilling the dream of every parent to have their son return. I’m not getting a job, I’m going to draw cartoons, and my real name is Dwayne Booth, and I wasn’t going to start. I started to draw cartoons just as a side, and I couldn’t sign it “Booth” because George Booth was the main cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, and I couldn’t just write “Dwayne” because it was too Cher or Madonna, I wasn’t going to go for just this straight first name.
So I attempted to name this new bird that came into the house. My mother asked for names and I said, Mr. Fish is the best name for a pet bird, and she rejected it. So I said, I’ll use it. And I signed all my cartoons “Mr. Fish”, and I immediately got published. And one of the editors, in fact, who published me immediately had pretended to follow me for 30 years. Mr. Fish, I can’t believe Mr. Fish finally sent us. Oh, it was locked in. I had to be Mr. Fish.
Marc Steiner:
I love it. I love it. So the work you’ve been doing, first of all, it’s amazing that a person without artistic training creates these incredible, complicated, intricate cartoons. Clearly it’s just innate inside of you.
You have this piece you did, I dunno why this one keeps sticking in my head, but the “Guernica” piece, which takes on the Trump administration and puts their figures in the place of the original work, to talk about that for a minute, how you came to create that, and why you use “Guernica”?
Dwayne Booth:
Well, it’s called “Eternal Damn Nation”. And one of the things that we should be responsible and how we communicate our dismay to other people. Now, what we attempt to do as artists is figure out the quickest path to make your point. So we tend to utilize various iconic images or things from history that will get the viewer to a certain emotional state and then piggyback the modern version on top of it, and also challenge the whole notion that these kinds of injustices have been happening over and over and over again. Because the Picasso piece is about fascism. Guess what? Guess what’s happening now? So you want to use those things to say that this might refer to a historical truism from the past, but it has application now, and it speaks to people, as you said, it resonated. Why did it resonate? Because it seems like a blunt version of truth that we have to contend with.
Marc Steiner:
So when you draw your pieces, before we go to Israel Palestine, I want to talk about Trump for a moment. Trump has been a target of your cartoons from the beginning. And the way he’s portrayed eating feces — Can I say the other word? Eating shit and just having shit all over him, a big fat slob and a beast of a fascist. Talk about your own image of this man, why you portray him this way. What do you think he represents here at this moment?
Dwayne Booth:
Well, it’s interesting because, in many ways, what I try to do with the images, the cartoons that you’re referring to, is, yes, I try to make it as obscene as I possibly can because the reality is also obscene. So I always want to challenge somebody who might look at something like that and say, oh my gosh, I don’t want to look at it. It’s important to look at these things.
The reality is, yes, I create these metaphors, eating shit and being a very lethal buffoon and clown. Those, to me, are the metaphors for something that is actually more dangerous. He’s being enabled by a power structure and being legitimized by these power brokers that surround him to enact real misery in America and the rest of the world, so you don’t want to treat somebody respectfully who is doing that. You want to say, this is shit. This is bullshit. This is an obscenity that we have to not shy away from and face it.
And if it is that ugly, if the metaphor is that ugly, again, challenge me to say that I should be respecting this person in a different way, should be pulling my punches. No, no. We should be going full-throated dissent against this kind of person and this kind of movement because it is an obscenity and we have to do something about it.
Marc Steiner:
The way you portray what’s happening in this country at this moment in many of your cartoons, in many of your works, Trump next door with Hitler, Trump as a figure with his middle finger to the air, all of that, when you do these things. How do you think about transient that into political action?
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s one of the tricks with satire, and I think that satire, I don’t think people know how to read satire anymore. What stands —
Marc Steiner:
It’s a lost art.
Dwayne Booth:
It’s a lost art. People think that Saturday Night Live is satire, and it’s not. It’s comedy, it’s burlesque is what it is.
Marc Steiner:
It’s burlesque.
Dwayne Booth:
It’s burlesque, it’s parody —
Marc Steiner:
It’s burlesque.
Dwayne Booth:
And what it does is it allows people to address politics in a way that ends with laughter and ridicule, which is the physiological reaction. And when you laugh at something, you’re telling your body, in a way, that it’s going to be okay. We can now congregate around our disdain and minimize the monstrosity by turning Trump into a clown or a buffoon. Only then we can say we’ve done our work. Look at how ridiculous he is. Now we can rely on other people, then, to do something about it.
Satire is supposed to, from my understanding through history, is supposed to have some humor in it. A lot of the humor is just speaking the blatant truth about something, and it’s supposed to reveal social injustices and political villainy in such a way that when you’re finished with it, you’re still upset and you do want to do something about it. Again, if we have to start worrying about how we are communicating our disdain about something that is deserving of disdain, Lenny Bruce quote, something that always has moved me and is the reason I do what I do. When he said, “Take away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”
Marc Steiner:
Yes, I saw that in one of your pieces.
Dwayne Booth:
We need that tool. So when I am addressing something that I find upsetting, I lead with my heart because it is a visceral reaction. It’s very, very upsetting. I pour that into the artwork that I’m rendering, and then I share with other people because people are suffering. I know what suffering feels like. So the emotional component is really, really important to me.
And if you notice, looking at the cartooning that I do about Trump, is those are very involved, most often, fine art pieces. They’re not the whimsy of a cartoon because it’s more serious than that. I want to communicate through the craft that I bring to the piece that I’m willing to spend. Some of those things take me days to complete.
Marc Steiner:
I’m sure.
Dwayne Booth:
This is so important to me, and you’re going to see my dedication to, A, giving a shit and wanting to do something about it. If I can keep you in front of that piece of art longer than if it was just a zippy cartoon, it might seep into your understanding, your soul, and your enthusiasm to also join some sort of movement to change things.
Marc Steiner:
What popped in my head when I first started looking into the piece was the use of humor and satire in attacking fascism, attacking the growth of fascism. Maybe think of Charlie Chaplin.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah, The Great Dictator
Marc Steiner:
That was so effective. But the buffoonery that he characterized Hitler with is the same with Trump. It is frightening and close.
Dwayne Booth:
It is. And I would say, again, one thing I just want to be clear about is that there can be elements of parody and burlesque in there, because what that does is that that invites the viewer into the conversation. It says that this is not so dangerous that you should cower. This person is a fool — A fool who is capable of great catastrophic actions, but he’s an idiot. He’s an idiot. You’re allowed to be smarter than an idiot, and you’re allowed to lose patience with an idiot.
So the second question. So, OK, if you can inspire somebody to be upset and recognize that they are somewhere in this strategy coming from an authoritarian of I will devour you at some point, and maybe this is where… I don’t know if you want to get into the college experience necessarily right now, but that was one of the things that’s interesting about being a professor for. I taught there for 11 years, and it’s always been in my mind. I love teaching, but I was hired as a professional because I was a professional cartoonist. I’m actually a college dropout, and so I bring the practice of what I do into the classroom.
One of the things that was very interesting is, as the world blows up, colleges and universities are institutions of privilege. There’s no way around it. There’s students, yes, that might be there with a great deal of financial aid or some part of a program that gets them in, but by and large, these are communities of privilege. So it was very interesting to see when the society was falling apart, when there was an obvious threat before it was exactly demonstrated about academic freedom and so forth, the strategy from many colleagues that I spoke to was, all right, if we hold our breaths and maybe get to the midterms, we’ll be okay. If we can hold our breaths and just keep our heads down for four years, maybe things will be better. And my reaction was just, do you realize that that’s a privileged position? There’s people who are really suffering. If that is what your strategy is moving forward, then we are doomed because there’s no reason to be brave and stick your neck out.
Marc Steiner:
A number of the things running through my head as you were just describing this, before we go back to your cartoons, which I want to get right back to, which is I was part of the student movement into the 1960s. We took over places, we fought police, we got arrested and expelled from schools. I was thrown out of University of Maryland after three semesters and got drafted. Don’t have to go into that story now, but that happened. So I’m saying there’ve always been places of radical disruption and anger and fighting for justice.
How do you see that different now? I mean, look, in terms of the work you do and what happened to you at Annenberg, tossing you out.
Dwayne Booth:
Well, that’s a two-part question, and we can get to the second part of that in a second. But when it comes to that question of what has happened to college campuses, essentially, is look around. The commodification of everything has reduced the call for speaking your mind, for free speech. Because if you’re going to be indoctrinated into thinking that the commodification of everything is what’s calling you to a successful life, then colleges and universities become indoctrination centers for job placement, way more than even… When I was in college, it was different. You were there to explore, to figure out who you were, what you wanted to do, literally, with the rest of your life. It wasn’t about like, OK, this is how you play the game and keep your mouth shut if you want to succeed. That is the new paradigm that is now framing the kinds of conversations and the pressures inside the classroom to “succeed”.
But my thing with my classes, I would always tell my class a version of the very first day is, what you’re going to learn in this class is not going to help you get a job [Steiner laughs]. What it’s going to do, if I’m successful, and I hope I will be, is it will allow you the potentiality to keep a white-knuckled grip on your soul. Because the stuff we’re looking at is how did the arts community communicate what the humanitarian approach to life should be? That’s not a moneymaking scenario. In fact, there’s examples all through history where you’re penalized for that kind of thinking.
But what is revealed to students is that this is a glimpse into what makes a meaningful life. It’s not surrendering to bureaucracy and hierarchy. It’s about pushing back against that.
Marc Steiner:
Right. And the most important thing in an institution can do — And I don’t want to dive too deep into this now — But is make you question and make you probe and uncover. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not teaching, and you’re not learning.
Dwayne Booth:
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s where we are now. Just even asking the question has become a huge problem. Even when everything started to happen with Gaza and with Israel, we had some conversations in class, without even getting, I wasn’t even trying to start conversations about which side are you going to be on? This is why you should be on this side and abhor the other side. It wasn’t even questions like that. The conversations we ended up having was the terror on the campus to even broach the subject.
My classes where we spoke very frankly about, I can’t even say the word “Israel”, I can’t say it. And it was also among the faculty. And I don’t know if you’ve spoken to other faculty members at other universities, and this shouldn’t be shocking, but at some point, a year ago, we were told, and we all agreed unanimously, not to use school email. They’re listening. We were going to communicate with WhatsApp or try to have personal conversations off campus because we do not trust the administration not to surrender all of our personal correspondence with these congressional committees attempting to blow up universities.
And they did that with me. There was some communication about Congress wants all of your communication with colleagues and students.
Marc Steiner:
That literally happened.
Dwayne Booth:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
They wanted all your communication?
Dwayne Booth:
Yes. And I wasn’t alone. This is what’s going on on college campuses. So A, it’s a really interesting thing to ask because I don’t own the correspondence I have on the servers at school. I don’t. So it’s not even up to me. I can say no, but they’re still going to do it. So that kind of question, what that does is say, you are under our boot. We want to make sure that you understand that you are under our boot and that you’re going to cooperate.
So what was my answer to that? My answer was, fuck you. Because this is coming after a semester where a couple of times I had to teach remotely because not only there were death threats on me, but being the professor in front of this class, there were death threats on my students. So knowing that and really being angry at the main administration and the interim president Jameson for surrendering to this kind of McCarthyism. Again, that’s an easy equation to make, but it’s accurate. It’s a hundred percent accurate.
Marc Steiner:
I’m really curious. Let’s stay with this for a moment before we leap into some other areas here, that when did you become first aware that they were coming after you? And B, how did they do it? What did they literally do to push you out?
Dwayne Booth:
Me being pushed out, it’s an interesting question to ask because Annenberg actually protected me. Jameson wanted me out when The Washington Free Beacon article came out in February of last year.
Marc Steiner:
The one that accused you of being an antisemite?
Dwayne Booth:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Dwayne Booth:
So again, what do we do with that? We clean house. We don’t look at the truth of the matter. We don’t look at the specifics. We don’t push back, we surrender. That’s the stance of the administration. So he wanted me fired, but the Dean of Annenberg was just like, no. So they protected me. It’s the School for Communication. It has a history of…
Marc Steiner:
It’s a school where you’re trained journalists and other people to tell the truth and tell the stories and dig deep and put it out there.
Dwayne Booth:
And to say no when you need to say no.
Marc Steiner:
Yes.
Dwayne Booth:
Right. So that happened. So they protected me. I was there because Annenburg protected me. It didn’t stop the administration, as you said at the beginning of the segment, Jameson then makes a public statement that basically says I’m an antisemite and that I’m reprehensible.
So that went on for all of last year, not so much the beginning of this semester because everybody was very focused on what the election was going to reveal.
So I was given the opportunity to develop a new class for this coming fall. So I took off the semester, was paid to develop this new course for, actually, about the alternative press and the underground comics movement of the ’60s and ’70s.
Marc Steiner:
I remember it well [laughs].
Dwayne Booth:
Very good. And so that’s considered the golden age for opinion journalism, which is lacking now. So I’m like, this is a great opportunity to, again, expose what our responsibility is as a free and open society. Let’s really talk about it. I even was going to start a newspaper as part of the class that students were going to contribute to. It was going to be a very big to-do.
Trump won. The newspaper was the first thing to be canceled. We don’t want to invite too much attention from this new regime on the campus. Again, it’s this cowardice that has real ramifications, as you were saying. These funds, as soon as there’s money involved, the strategy for moving forward becomes an economic decision and not one that has to do with people and their lives.
So me being let go, I was part of a number of adjuncts and lecturers who were also let go. So it’s not an easy connection to say that I was specifically targeted as somebody who should be fired. But that said, you could feel some relief. And as a matter of fact, being let go and then being, again, the attacks from the right-wing press increased, and all of a sudden we’re like, finally UPenn has gotten rid of the antisemite. And then we’re back in this old ridiculous argument.
And luckily, I’m not alone. I’m not so much in the spotlight because many people are stepping forward and, again, trying to promote the right kind of conversation about this.
Marc Steiner:
One of the things, a bunch of things that went through my head as you were talking, I was thinking about the course you wanted to teach on alternative press. I you ever get to teach that course again, I have tons of files for you to have, to go through.
Dwayne Booth:
[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was writing the textbook.
Marc Steiner:
Textbook. Oh, were you? OK.
Dwayne Booth:
I’m going to France, actually, and I’m going to interview Robert Crumb. I’m staying over his house. Oh, that’s great.
Marc Steiner:
Oh, that’s great. He must be really old now.
Dwayne Booth:
Yes. I’m really looking forward to it.
Marc Steiner:
[Laughs] I was there at the very [beginning]. I helped found Liberation News Service.
Dwayne Booth:
Oh, see.
Marc Steiner:
And I was at Washington Free Press back in the ’60s.
Dwayne Booth:
See? So you know. I curated an exhibit on the alternative press for the University of Connecticut a couple years ago. Hugely popular. They have an archive that is dizzying. It might be the biggest in the country. And so when I was curating and putting together that exhibit, I would go in and I would be, all day, I wouldn’t even eat, and I would pore through these newspapers and magazines at the time. And I would leave, and I would actually have this real sense of woe because looking at what that kind of journalism was attempting and accomplishing made me feel like we have lost.
Marc Steiner:
Every city and community had an underground paper across the country, and Liberation newspapers were there to service all those papers and bring them together. The power of the media in that era was very different and very strong.
Dwayne Booth:
Well, the work that I do as a cartoonist and somebody who uses visuals to communicate this stuff, that was all through these newspapers, all through this movement. The idea being is the arts community is there — Well, let’s do it this way. The job of journalism, one could say, is that it provides us with the first draft of history, which we’ve heard.
Marc Steiner:
Exactly.
Dwayne Booth:
So the idea as a journalist, what you’re supposed to be asking yourself is what is the real story here? And I’m going to approach it and try to be objective about it, but what is the real story here? The job of an artist in the arts community is to ask the very same question. What is this story really about? What does this feel like? But rather than searching for the objective version of that, it’s about looking for the subjective. This is how I feel about it. And that invites people in to share their own stories. Because really we’re just stories. We’re really just stories.
Marc Steiner:
Storytellers.
Dwayne Booth:
Exactly. So if you can have a form of journalism that not only draws on straight journalism but also can bring in Allen Ginsburg to write a poem that will then explore what does it mean to be a human being? Why are we vulnerable and why do we deserve protection? Until you have that inside of a conversation, why argue in favor of protecting, say, the people of Gaza?
Marc Steiner:
Let’s talk a bit about that. Now, look, this is what got you fired [laughs].
Dwayne Booth:
Well, I don’t… Well, again.
Marc Steiner:
It’s part of what got you fired.
Dwayne Booth:
It created a lot of heat for me last year, we can say.
Marc Steiner:
It is a very difficult question on many levels, being accused of being an antisemite or a self-hating Jew. If you criticize Israel, whether you use the word genocide or slaughter, whatever word you use has infected the entire country at this moment. Campuses, newspapers, everywhere, magazines. And in itself, it seems to me, also creates antisemitism. It makes it bubble up. Because it’s always there, it’s just below the surface. It doesn’t take much to unleash it. So I think we’re in this very dangerous moment.
Dwayne Booth:
We are. But I would say that, with that broad description, if people only approach the question with that broad of an approach, I think we’re in trouble.
Marc Steiner:
What do you mean by that?
Dwayne Booth:
I think the question of attempting to criticize Israel and then being called an antisemite is conflating politics with religion, nationalism with religion. Because really, again, look at it. Just look at all of the conversations that people have been having. To criticize the state of Israel is criticizing the state of Israel. It has really nothing to do with criticizing Judaism at all. Now, if somebody is Jewish and supporting Israel, OK, they’ve made that connection for themselves. So therefore, you can’t have an argument that says, you’re hurting my Jewishness, my Jewish identity by attacking a nation state, because they’re two different things. And if you’re protecting the virtue of a nation state, that is nationalism.
Marc Steiner:
It is. I don’t want to digress on this too deeply, but I think that when you are part of a minority that has been persecuted — My grandfather fought the czars, people in the streets of Warsaw, in the pogroms. My dad fought the Nazis. When you know that they just hate you because of who you are, which is the excuse they used to create Israel out of Palestine, which makes it a very complex matter. It was FDR who would not let Jews here and said, you have to go. You want to get out of those camps? You’re going there.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah. There is that. Yep.
Marc Steiner:
So what I’m saying to all that, I’m saying it’s a very complicated matter.
Dwayne Booth:
And so the argument, though, and I totally agree with you. So what is important for that, the fact that it is a complicated matter, then you need to create space for the conversation to happen, and you have to create the space to be large enough to accommodate all of the emotion, the emotional component that is part of this, because that’s also very, very real. And then the less emotional stuff, like what is the intellectual argument piece of this? So yes, it is all completely knotted up, but the solution is to recognize how complicated it is and then create the space for people then to untangle it.
Because again, that’s why I said about the broad approach. The broad approach is not going to help us. The broad approach is going to actually disenfranchise people from wanting to enter into the conversation. Because you don’t want to say, and as you can see it happening over and over again, anybody who says, I’m against Israel, what Israel is doing, immediately they’re called, they’re shut down by people who don’t want to have that conversation, as being antisemitic. And nobody wants to feel like they could be called an antisemitic, especially if they are not one. Remember, people who are antisemitic, they tend to be proud of the fact that they are antisemitic.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah, I know. But there are a lot of antisemites out there, a lot of racists who don’t admit that they’re antisemitic or racist.
Dwayne Booth:
Again, and the question, they don’t admit it. So again, so that’s where you need that kind of conversation to turn the light on in that darkness and give them the opportunity to either defend their antisemitism, have their antisemitism revealed so that they can then self-assess who they are. Because a lot of prejudices people have, they don’t know that they have them, and they have not been challenged.
So much of what we think and feel is reflexive thinking and feeling. You can’t burn that flag. I’m an American, it’s hurting my heart. Let’s look at the issue. What is trying to be communicated by the burning of the flag? It’s not shitting on your grandfather for fighting in the Second World War. But again, if somebody is going to have all that knotted up into this emotional cluster, it’s up to us as sane human beings who are seeking understanding and also empathy with each other to be able to enter in those things assuming, until it’s disproven, that we actually have the potential for empathy and understanding among each other. But you need to create the space and the conversation for that to happen.
Marc Steiner:
What was the specific work that had them attack you as an antisemite at Annenberg? What did they pull out?
Dwayne Booth:
They pulled out some cartoons that I had. It was interesting because they pulled out mostly illustrations that I had done for Chris Hedges. I’ve been Chris Hedges’s illustrator for a very long time.
Marc Steiner:
He used to work out of this building [laughs].
Dwayne Booth:
Yes, exactly. And so what they did was they pulled out these illustrations completely out of context from the article that I was illustrating, had them as standalone pieces, which again, if you’re doing cartoons or you’re doing any illustrations, what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to be provocative and communicate with a very short form. If it’s something as fiery as this issue, then you need, potentially, more information to know what my intent is as an artist. Those were connected to Chris Hedges’s articles that had them make absolute sense. So those were shown without the context of Chris Hedges’s articles.
They showed a couple cartoons that also were just standalone cartoons that had been published and posted for four months without anything except great adulation from readers, because I also work for Scheer Post, which is Robert Scheer’s publication. And I’ve known Bob for decades. And if you don’t know who Bob is, you should know who Bob is. He was the editor of Ramparts and has a very long history of attempting independent journalism.
Marc Steiner:
I can’t believe he’s still rolling.
Dwayne Booth:
He is. He’s 89.
Marc Steiner:
I know [laughs].
Dwayne Booth:
It’s amazing. And so he was running my cartoons. He lost more than half of his family in the Holocaust. He knows what antisemitism looks like. And so these cartoons that were pulled, again, I had nothing but people understanding what I was trying to say. But taken, again, out of context, shown to an audience that is looking for any excuse to call somebody an antisemite, which is the Washington Free Beacon, who has called everybody an antisemite: Obama, Bernie Sanders, just everybody. And framing the parameters of that slander, presenting it to their audience who blew up, again, then started writing me: I want to rape your wife and murder your children. I know where you live. All of those sorts of things all of a sudden come out. So that happened.
And so again, there I am — And I’ve had hate mail. I’ve had death threats before. I’ve never been part of an institution where the strategy for moving forward is being part of a community was… All right. I was told to just not say anything at first. We’ll see if we can weather this. And then when the Jameson statement came out, I wrote to my dean and I said, I have to say something now. I can’t sit back and just let these people frame the argument because it’s not accurate.
Marc Steiner:
Right, right.
Dwayne Booth:
Then I started to talk to the press, and again, started to say, we need to understand that there is intent and context for all of these things, and I cannot allow the truncation of communication to happen to the degree where people are silenced and then people are encouraged to self-censor.
Marc Steiner:
So I’ll ask you a question. I’ve been wrestling with this question I wanted to ask you about one of your cartoons. It’s the cartoon where Netanyahu [inaudible] are drinking blood.
Dwayne Booth:
It’s not Netanyahu. I know which… Is it with the dove?
Marc Steiner:
Yeah.
Dwayne Booth:
OK. Yeah. Netanyahu is not in there.
Marc Steiner:
That’s right, I’m sorry. So the first thing that popped in my head when I saw that picture was the blood libel against the Jews by the Christians that took place. My father told me stories about when he was a kid how Christian kids across from Patterson, the other side of the park, would chase him. You killed, you drank Jesus’s blood, you killed Jesus, the major fights that they had. So talk a bit about that. That’s not the reaction you want us to have.
Dwayne Booth:
No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It is interesting because I think that’s probably the leading one that people — And now when all this started up, again, they don’t even show it, they just describe it, and they describe it so inaccurately [Steiner laughs] that it just makes me crazy.
Marc Steiner:
You’re not shocked, are you [both laugh]?
Dwayne Booth:
No, no. But in the cartoon, it’s actually, it’s power brokers. These guys look like they’re power brokers from the 1950s. I like to draw that style of… And if you want to look at these guys, they look completely not Jewish. I pulled them from, like I said, they’re basically clip art from the 1950s. So they’re power brokers at a cocktail party. It’s playing off of the New Yorker style of the cocktail party with the upper class.
So they’re upper crust power brokers. Behind them is a hybrid flag that is half the American flag and half the Israeli flag. And they are drinking blood from glasses that says “Gaza”. And there is a peace dove that is walking into the room and somebody says, who invited that lousy antisemite.
As a cartoonist, understand that when it comes to, as I said earlier, trying to figure out how to make the point as quickly as you can and as eye catching as you can. If you look through the history of the genre, drinking blood is what monsters do. They do it all of the time in their criticism of people who are powerful and who are called monsters. I, frankly, when I was drawing it, I [wasn’t] like, well, this might be misinterpreted as blood libel. I didn’t know what blood libel was.
Marc Steiner:
I’m sure you didn’t.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah. And again, and it was posted for a long time and nobody’s said anything about it. But then when it was called that, it became a very interesting conversation because it was like, oh, OK. So now I can see how that would flood the interpretation of the cartoon. And again, this is what happens in regular conversation. And particularly if you’re communicating as somebody who uses the visuals as your form of communication, there’s a thousand ways to interpret a visual.
Marc Steiner:
There are.
Dwayne Booth:
There are. And as the artist, you have to understand that you’re going to do the best that you can and hope that the majority of people are going to get what you’re trying to do. Which brings us, again, back to that second question or that point that I was making earlier, which is let’s have the conversation afterwards. If you understand that my intent was playing off of not a Jewish trope but a trope of criticizing power — Which, actually, out of curiosity, I went through the internet and I all of a sudden started to assemble, through time, using people are drinking blood constantly who are evil. So it’s used and so forth.
And so the challenge with something like that was to then try to communicate that that was not my intent. I know a communications, a free speech expert, in fact. She and I had a really interesting conversation about it because she is such a radical, she’s been more radical than I am. She wanted me to know that it was blood libel, and she wanted to hear me say, yes, I knew it was blood libel, but I’m going to use that to force the conversation and reclaim what that blood libel was supposed to be as, A, this ridiculous thing that actually is being applied as a truism in this circumstance.
But all of a sudden it became this academic conversation and I was just like, whoa, I don’t need it to be that, because you don’t want to upset everybody and confuse what your communication is, obviously. So I said, it wasn’t that. She goes, you sure [Steiner laughs]? Are you sure you weren’t trying to do that? I’m like, no, I wasn’t trying to do that. So that’s what that one was.
Marc Steiner:
So I’m glad we talked about this because I think that… I’m not going to dwell on this cartoon, but when I first showed this to some of my friends —
Dwayne Booth:
You’re not alone [crosstalk]. I get it. I totally get it.
Marc Steiner:
As I was preparing for our conversation, that was their first reaction as well.
Dwayne Booth:
Right. Right.
Marc Steiner:
Because your cartoons, they’re really powerful, and they get under an issue, and it glares in front of your eyes like a bright light. And they’re very to hard look at sometimes, whether it’s Trump eating shit, literally [both laugh], and the other images you give us. It’s like you can’t allow us to look away. You want us to ingest them.
Dwayne Booth:
I want you to ingest them and then have an honest reaction. And then, again, it doesn’t have to be in a conversation with me, have a conversation with somebody else. Because that cartoon that you were talking about, it started a bunch of debates.
Marc Steiner:
The Trump one?
Dwayne Booth:
No, no, no.
Marc Steiner:
Oh, the blood libel.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah, yeah — Don’t call it the blood libel one. See what I mean, man [both laugh]? So it started, what I would say is necessary debate to really get to the bottom of issues. Again, that’s really what we should be doing. We should be encouraging more and more difficult conversations. Because we’re not, and look at where we are. People are uncomfortable to even go into the streets. You don’t have to shout. You don’t have to carry a sign. People are being conditioned to be uncomfortable with making a statement in the name of humanity, even though humanity is suffering in real time in front of us. Look at Gaza. For me, there’s no way to frame the argument that can justify that. There’s just no way. There’s too many bodies, there’s too many dead people. There’s too much evidence that the human suffering that is happening over there right now in front of the world needs not to be happening.
Marc Steiner:
It needs not to be happening. [I’ll] tell [you] what just popped through my head as you were saying that, a couple things. One was the Vietnam War where millions of Vietnamese were slaughtered, North, South, all over. And we didn’t call that a genocide. We called that a slaughter. And then I was thinking as you were speaking about… I speak at synagogues sometimes about why we as Jews have to oppose what Israel’s doing to Gaza.
Dwayne Booth:
And I’ve gone to synagogues and seen those talks. That’s also what I’m [crosstalk] —
Marc Steiner:
They’re very difficult talks to have people just…
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
Because it’s an emotional issue as much as it’s a —
Dwayne Booth:
Exactly.
Marc Steiner:
— Logical and political issue. And so, when I look at your work, again, it engenders conversation. It makes you think it’s not just his little typical political cartoon. It’s like you sink yourself into your cartoons like an actor sinks himself into a part. That’s what I felt looking at your work.
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny because just hearing you say that, it’s true that quite often I forget about my cartoons soon after I do them because I’m already onto the next one. And I’ve done searches for things and found my cartoons that I’ve forgotten. I have no memory of doing them [Steiner laughs]. Some of them I don’t even get, and I literally have to call my older brother and say, what was I trying to say with this? He’s very good at remembering what I was trying to say and can decipher my cartoons for me.
But yeah, it is a form of meditation. If you look at the work that I do, again, if you’re going to stick with a piece of art for hours, you have to be able to sustain your focus on it. So I meditate while I’m doing it and see if it feels true to my emotional reaction to what’s going on, then I post it.
Marc Steiner:
So lemme ask you this question. So think of one of your most recent cartoons, I dunno which one, I’ll let you think of it since I don’t know what your most recent cartoon is, and it’s about Gaza and Israel and this moment. Describe it and what you went through to create it.
Dwayne Booth:
One of the most recent ones that I did was, as the death toll continued to climb, and I think it was right after Trump started to talk about how beautiful he’s going to make Gaza once we take over. The normalizing of that, and even the attempts to make it a sexy strategy, hit me so hard that my approach to that was, OK, well what would that look like? What would the attempt to normalize that amount of human suffering, what would that look like?
Well, it sounds like a travel poster that is going to invite people to the new Gaza. So I decided to do a travel poster riffing off of an old Italian vintage come to Italy poster, just like a Vespa. Let’s get a Vespa in there and a sexy couple. Now, I don’t want to render something that has Gaza completely Trumpified already. We’ve seen what that looks like. Let’s, OK, satire. But let’s talk about, let’s visualize what that would look like right now moving towards that. So I have this young couple on a Vespa coming down a giant mountain of skulls, heading to the beach. And out in the beach there’s some Israeli warships. And it’s rendered, at a glance, to be very gleeful, but then you start to notice the details of it and the attempt to normalize, again, an ocean of skulls, [and] nobody’s recognizing the fact that these are a slaughtered population. So that’s what I thought.
And so, again, sometimes what you want to do is you want to say, alright, this is an ugly truth that’s being promoted as something that is beautiful, I’m going to show you what that looks like as something that’s been beautified. And the reaction, of course, is just like, oh my God, this hits harder than if I showed the gore, in the same way that if you go back to Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”, right? He published that anonymously. And he also, it’s very interesting because it’s about what do we do with the poor, bedraggled Irish people? We make them refuse for the needs of the British. We will cook the children, kill some of the grownups, make belts, make wallets, all of these things to feed the gentry of the British.
What’s very interesting about that is he sustained the irony of that all the way through. You don’t have the sense, he did not turn it into parody or burlesque or wild craziness. He presented it as a solution to the problem. Now, if you look at that, it actually makes business sense. It would actually solve the problem — Minus all the horror of killing babies and killing a bunch of people. It makes good business sense.
Now, if you look at that and you see that as a parallel to what is justified by big business and corporations now, it happens every single day. It’s been completely normalized. Look what’s going on with the environment. Look at the Rust Belt across this country. All of that stuff is rendered in service of profit and economics the same way that “Modest Proposal” was, and people have been conditioned to see it as normal and ignore the human suffering.
Marc Steiner:
I’m curious. The first one is, where’s that latest cartoon published?
Dwayne Booth:
I actually gave it to Hedges for one of his columns, and then I posted it and people wanted prints. I’ve sold prints of it. And it was also in the paper that comes out of Washington that Ralph Nader does… Gosh, what’s it called? The Capitol…
Marc Steiner:
I should know this
Dwayne Booth:
Myself. I should know this too, because I’ve been doing cartoons for them for a few years now.
Marc Steiner:
Capitol Hill Citizen.
Dwayne Booth:
That’s it. See, I missed the word “hill”. Thank God.
Marc Steiner:
Capitol Hill Citizen.
Dwayne Booth:
Which is a great newspaper. And it gives me the opportunity to see my stuff on physical paper again, which looks gorgeous to me. I’d rather —
Marc Steiner:
Now that you’ve described the cartoon, I saw it this morning as I was getting ready for this conversation. I didn’t know whether it was the latest one you’ve done.
Now that you were facing what we face here, both in Gaza and with Trump and these neofascists in charge of the country, your brain must be full of how you portray this. I just want you to talk a bit about, both creatively and substantively, how you approach this moment when we are literally facing down a neofascist power taking over our country and about to destroy our democracy. People think that’s hyperbole, you’re being crazy. But we’re not.
Dwayne Booth:
No, it’s happening.
Marc Steiner:
And if you, as I was, a civil rights worker in the South, you saw what it was like to live under tyranny, under an authoritarian dictatorship if you were not white. I can feel the entire country tumbling in at this moment. So tell me how you think about that and how you approach it with your work.
Dwayne Booth:
It’s an interesting time because, in many ways, my work is quadrupled. Partly because it’s just what I’ve always done, but the other part is I don’t see this profession stepping up to the challenge at all. I don’t see any single-panel cartoonists who are hitting the Israel Gaza issue nearly as hard as I am.
Marc Steiner:
No, they’re not.
Dwayne Booth:
No. And I see a lot also, of the attacks on Trump. And again, it always strikes me as, how would the Democratic Party render a cartoon? That’s what I see out there. And it’s too soft. It is just way too soft. So as I increase my output, I feel the light getting brighter and brighter on me, which makes me feel more and more unsafe inside this society because yes, they’re targeting people who are not citizens, but what’s next? We all know the poem.
But at the same time, I feel like it’s a responsibility that I have, and I’m sure that you probably have this same sense of responsibility. Speaking up, talking out loud, even though it’s on my nervous system, it is grinding me down in a way that is new.
But that said, my numbers of people who are coming to me are increasing. I’m actually starting a substack so I can have my own conversations with people and so forth, because we have got to increase this megaphone. We just have to.
In fact, one thing that was interesting is just this last October I was invited to speak at a cartooning conference in Montreal. And the whole reason to have me up there and to talk about it was was from the perspective of the people, the organizers, I was the only American cartoonist who was cartooning about Gaza.
Marc Steiner:
Really?
Dwayne Booth:
Yeah. And I’d had conversations, remember, that there’s some cartoonists who are doing some things that, again, are just a little bit too polite. Because if we’re looking at this thing and we do think that this is a genocide, you can’t pull your punches. And so, in fact, when this stuff had happened with me initially with the Washington Free Beacon, I reached out.
There’s another colleague I have who’s a cartoonist, whose name is Andy Singer, and he and I have been in communication over the years, and he’s somewhat fearless on this issue. He and I were talking, and we came up with this idea, let’s publish a book that has cartoonists who, over the last many decades, have had a problem criticizing Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.
We sent it out to our colleagues and other international cartoonists and so forth. We found two, Matt Wuerker and Ted Rall, who were willing to participate in this project. I had a number of conversations with others who just contacted me privately and said, I can’t do it because I’ll lose my job. I can’t do it because I’ll be targeted and I’m too afraid. I can’t get close to this subject, my editor won’t let me do it, so I can’t do it. International cartoonists, different idea, a whole different approach, sending me stuff. I can tell my story. I’ve been jailed. I’ve been beaten up for this kind of work. And so it became a very interesting thing.
Again, the United States is, by and large, it’s an extremely privileged society. And yet, when it comes to issues like this, it demonstrates the most cowardice because we’ve been made to be way too sensitive about our own discomfort to advance the cause of humanity and justice, love, all of those things because we’ve seen that there is a penalty for doing that, and we do not want to give up certain creature comforts. We don’t want to be called something that we are not, and we need to be uncomfortable. In many ways we have to break soft rules. We have to chain ourself to fences and then make it an inconvenience to be pulled from those fences.
Marc Steiner:
This has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you being here today and for all the work that you do. And I think that we’re at this moment where the reason that many of us who are part of Jewish Voices for Peace and other organizations is to say those voices are critical in saying this is wrong and has to end now. And I appreciate the power of the work you do. It’s just amazing. And we encourage everybody, we’ll be linking to your work so people can see it and consume it. And I hope we have a conversation together in the future.
Dwayne Booth:
Thanks. I agree. Thanks a lot, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
Good to have you sliding through Baltimore.
Dwayne Booth:
Thank you.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, let me thank Dwayne Booth, also known as Mr. Fish, for joining us today here for this powerful and honest conversation. We will link to his work when we post this episode. You want to check that out.
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A top Israeli minister has vowed that Israel’s military will “conquer” Gaza and flatten everything that’s left, regardless of whether or not that plan endangers the lives of the remaining Israeli captives being held in the Strip — undercutting Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and the media’s narrative about Israel pushing for a deal. On Sunday, Netanyahu’s security cabinet approved a plan…
New York City event organizers have cancelled a Pride month concert by R&B artist Kehlani after pressure from Mayor Eric Adams’s office against the outspoken pro-Palestine artist. The concert, billed as “Pride with Kehlani,” was slated to take place on June 26 in Central Park. It was organized by nonprofit SummerStage, which puts on free concerts across New York.
Israel’s security cabinet has approved plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza, which includes the expulsion of 2.4m Palestinians. Only three months ago, Donald Trump expressed his desire to do exactly the same.
Trump gets his Gaza waterfront development
According to the BBC, Israel will ‘expand its military offensive against Hamas’. But this is the BBC, and we all know what that really means. Israel is planning to wipe Gaza off the map.
In a briefing later on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the expanded campaign would displace most Palestinians in Gaza as air strikes and other military operations continued.
Which, translated from Israeli war machine propaganda, means they plan to bomb the rest of Gaza to death, or force them to leave – so Trump can then enter.
War Criminal Netanyahu has announced a plan to forcibly expel and ethnically cleanse the entire Palestinian population, flatten, and annex Gaza.
This comes after 64 days of blocking food and aid. This was always their plan.
— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) May 5, 2025
Israel: bullshit ‘military conquest’
They claim the ‘forceful operation’ will save the rest of the hostages, but that’s the same excuse they’ve used for the last 18 months while they’ve obliterated Gaza, and murdered over 50,000 Palestinians.
BREAKING: Israel to FULLY OCCUPY Gaza, take over aid distribution
Israel’s security cabinet has approved a plan for the complete military conquest and occupation of Gaza.
Netanyahu also confirmed he is advancing the Trump plan to enable the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians… pic.twitter.com/VJBa1HrEn3
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister and war criminal, said they will ‘move’ the population of Gaza – which is over two million people. What he means is they are going to ethnically cleanse, and murder, even more Palestinians from and in their homeland. This is exactly what Trump wanted.
Netanyahu and Trump said they would ethnically cleanse Gaza, it’s happening right now.
JUST IN: Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich:
“The time has come to pounce on Gaza Occupy it. Establish military government, take territory from them, and implement President Trump’s plan to remove 1.5-2 million Gazans from Gaza.” pic.twitter.com/DZyPgH7sa4
For two months, Israel has been blocking all humanitarian and commercial aid. The United Nations has said Israel is using humanitarian aid, such as food, as a political tool – which is a war crime.
Another four month old baby has starved to death today in Gaza.
Yousef al-Najjar weighed only 3 pounds when he died.
This is a deliberate policy on the part of Trump and Netanyahu, they are starving Palestinian babies to death in order to force Palestinians into submission https://t.co/YRuxZAQWWA
Trump and Netanyahu think they can either starve Palestinians to death, or force them to comply.
After two months of devastating blockade and starvation of Gaza, Israeli officials demand that we shut down the universal aid distribution system run by the UN and NGOs like NRC. They want to manipulate and militarize all aid to civilians, forcing us to deliver supplies through…
Israel’s leaders are now openly declaring their plans to permanently seize the entire Gaza Strip and expel its inhabitants — an intention that has long been evident to anyone paying attentionhttps://t.co/iqdkM5M8zz
Both Trump and Netanyahu have made their ethnic cleansing plans clear as day. Yet the majority of the media are pretending they’re not. The BBC’scalled it ‘expanding their military offensive’, Sky Newsused ‘capture all of the Gaza Strip’, and the New York Timesdescribed it as ‘forceful entry into the territory’. All of them are beating around the bush. And the bush is on fire.
Trump: we will help Israel ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Every single Israel leader: we will ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Western media: it’s complicated
— The Ghost of Albert Camus (@AlbertsGhost) May 5, 2025
This was Trump’s plan all along. Gaza wiped off the map so he can build his cushty little waterfront apartments with his pal Netanyahu. Because who cares about Palestinians?
Israel is doing this in full public view because of the support from Western governments. Which means now, they have been able to formally announce their plans for ethnic cleansing and permanent illegal occupation – knowing they would not be met with resistance from the powers that be.
JUST IN: Israel’s Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich: