An Israeli delegation in Cairo is negotiating with mediators a potential extension for the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, according to Egyptian security officials cited byReuterson 28 February.
“Hamas opposes the extension and insists on proceeding to the second phase of the deal as originally agreed,” the sources said. They added that Tel Aviv seeks to extend the first phase for another 42 days.
Israeli sources had previously told the British news outlet that Tel Aviv sought an extension and the release of three Israeli captives per week in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
According to a military source cited by Times of Israel, Tel Aviv “still prioritizes dismantling Hamas’s ability as an authority in Gaza.”
Hamas released a statement on Friday confirming “its full commitment to implementing all the terms of the agreement in all its stages and details.”
“We call on the mediators, guarantors, and the international community to pressure the Zionist occupation to fully commit to its role in the agreement and immediately enter the second phase of it without any hesitation or evasion,” it added.
US envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, is expected to travel to Israel on Sunday to negotiate an extension of the first phase of the ceasefire deal, which ends on 2 March. Tel Aviv has continuously delayed talks for phase two of the agreement.
Israel recently imposed new conditions on the Gaza ceasefire agreement, demanding a full disarmament of Hamas’s military wing.
According to reports, Israel is looking to violate the deal by maintaining its military presence along the Philadelphi Corridor on southern Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Israel’s Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said on Thursday that the corridor will remain “a buffer zone just as the case is in Lebanon and Syria.” Tel Aviv is also reportedly planning for a resumption of its brutal war against Gaza
A recent report by Haaretz says that “as far as [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is concerned, there is no second stage” of the deal.
The report says Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer recently told Witkoff that Netanyahu’s plan is to secure the release of all captives in a single stage, and that Hamas will receive prisoners in exchange. Otherwise, “Israel will return to intense warfare” and reimplement a “version” of the Generals’ Plan – which saw the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from north Gaza, the killing of thousands, and the destruction of the Gaza health sector.
Five Microsoft employees were removed during a company town hall meeting after staging a protest against the company’s contracts supplying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services to the Israeli occupation military.
The demonstration took place on Monday, following an Associated Press (AP) investigation that revealed Microsoft and OpenAI’s advanced AI models had been utilised by the Israeli occupation military to select bombing targets in recent attacks against Gaza and Lebanon.
The report also highlighted a 2023 Israeli air strike that hit a vehicle carrying a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.
As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella presented new products at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, a group of employees positioned themselves about 15 feet to his right. They then unveiled T-shirts which spelled out the question: “Does Our Code Kill Kids, Satya?”
Photos and videos of the protest, which was live-streamed across Microsoft, show CEO Satya Nadella continuing his speech without acknowledging the demonstrators. Two men quickly approached the protesting employees and escorted them out of the room.
Microsoft defended its actions in a statement, saying: “We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard. Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”
This is not the first time Microsoft has taken action against employees protesting its involvement with Israel. In October, the company fired two workers for organising an unauthorised vigil for Palestinian refugees at its headquarters. Microsoft said the dismissals were “in accordance with internal policy” but did not provide further details.
For months, a group of Microsoft employees has been raising concerns about the company’s contracts with the Israeli occupation military, particularly its Azure cloud computing services.
The AP investigation, which drew from internal Microsoft data and documents, revealed that Israeli military usage of AI models through the Azure platform surged nearly 200 times following 7 October 2023.
Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist who was among the Microsoft employees fired in October for organising a vigil for Palestinian refugees, criticised the company for prioritising profits over ethical commitments.
“The demands are clear,” said Mohamed, who is involved with the activist group No Azure for Apartheid. “Satya Nadella and Microsoft executives need to answer to their workers by dropping contracts with the Israeli military.”
The non-profit news website The Maple published a list of 85 Canadians with Israeli citizenship who have served in the Israeli occupation army.
The website announced that this is the initial list and that it intends to publish additional lists of additional Canadians that have joined the Israeli military.
The article, entitled “Meet 85 Canadians That Have Fought For Israel,” featured in online publication The Maple provides a link to the list.
According to the article, its purpose is to provide a database of “mini-profiles for as many Canadians that have fought in the Israeli military at any point as I could find,” said its author, because “there is little existing research in Canada beyond one-off news articles about who these soldiers are and how they came to make the life choices that they did.”
The list has sparked anger by Israeli circles, with Israeli Channel 14 describing the move a “scandal”.
“I don’t think it’s an acceptable thing to happen in Canada,” Rebecca Garner, who served in the IDF from 2011 to 2014, and whose name was enrolled in the list, told the National Post, a Canadian English-language broadsheet newspaper.
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners were let out from Israel’s prisons early on 27 February in exchange for the handover of the bodies of four Israeli captives who were held in Gaza, as part of the seventh and final round of exchanges for phase one of the ceasefire.
The bodies of the four Israeli captives were handed over silently and not covered by the media, as Tel Aviv had demanded that Hamas refrain from holding its customary captive release ceremony.
Five hundred and ninety-six Palestinian prisoners were released overnight out of the 642 detainees whose release was held up by Israel last weekend. There are 46 other prisoners who are expected to be released in the coming hours, which include women and children.
Among the released were those with high sentences and life sentences. The prisoners were received in the occupied West Bank and southern Gaza’s city of Khan Yunis. Nearly 100 have been exiled to Egypt.
The world’s longest-serving political prisoner, Nael al-Barghouti, referred to as the “dean” of Palestinian detainees, was among those released and exiled to Egypt.
He spent 45 years in Israeli custody, including 34 consecutive years. He was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit deal that saw 1,000 prisoners, including late Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, get released. However, he was rearrested in 2014 and slapped with a renewed life sentence.
US envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, is expected to travel to Israel on Sunday to negotiate an extension of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
According to reports, Israel is looking to violate the deal by maintaining its military presence along the Philadelphi corridor on southern Gaza’s border with Egypt. Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that the corridor will remain “a buffer zone just as the case is in Lebanon and Syria.” Tel Aviv is also reportedly planning for a resumption of its brutal war against Gaza after having imposed new conditions, including the full disarmament of Hamas and the release of all remaining captives in a single swap.
According to a report by Haaretz, “as far as [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is concerned, there is no second stage” of the deal.
The report says Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer recently told Witkoff that Netanyahu’s plan is to secure the release of all captives in a single stage, and that Hamas will receive prisoners in exchange. Otherwise, “Israel will return to intense warfare” and reimplement a “version” of the Generals’ Plan – which saw the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from north Gaza, the killing of thousands, and the destruction of the Gaza health sector.
Through a Child’s Eyes, produced by Defense for Children International – Palestine, premiered on February 25, 2025.
Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) is an independent, local Palestinian child rights organization dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Since 1991, we have investigated, documented, and exposed grave human rights violations against children; provided legal services to children in urgent need; held Israeli and Palestinian authorities accountable to universal human rights principles; and advocated at the international and national levels to advance access to justice and protection for children.
Armenian Christians, the smallest recognized community in occupied al-Quds, are reeling under pressure from Israeli settler-colonial policies aimed at imposing exorbitant taxes, seizing their properties, displacing them, and ultimately Judaizing the historic city center.
On February 18, the Armenian Patriarchate in the holy city issued an urgent communiqué, warning that the local Zionist municipality is attempting to confiscate and auction off properties it owns there.
The Patriarchate is situated in the Armenian Quarter, one of the four sections of the walled Old City, alongside the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Quarters.
This small Armenian community, located in the southwestern corner of the 12.6-hectare Old City, numbers only a few hundred people. As the oldest Armenian diaspora, it has maintained a presence in the neighborhood for nearly 1,700 years, as per historical accounts.
For years, the Armenian community has resisted the expansion of Jewish-only settlements in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds. However, their enduring heritage is now at risk of being erased.
The Israeli regime claims that the Patriarchate has unpaid taxes dating back to 1994—an accusation the Patriarchate denounces as unjust, crippling, and only recently imposed.
It warns that this move could set a dangerous precedent for all Christian communities in the city.
In an effort to halt the foreclosure process on its centuries-old properties, the Patriarchate has filed a petition. The hearing was initially scheduled for February 24 but has since been postponed.
Unjustified tax apartheid
After issuing a desperate appeal and urging supporters to share it on social media platforms, the Armenian Patriarchate came under vicious attack from Zionist hate-mongers, who falsely accused it of evading taxes for 31 years.
In reality, as a Press TV website investigation revealed, Christian church-owned properties were exempt from property taxes for two centuries until a 2018 decision by the Zionist municipality, approved by Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime, overturned this longstanding policy.
Armenian Quarter in al-Quds, the place of 1,700 years of Armenian history
The Zionist settler-colonial authorities then imposed the so-called Arnona, an annual municipal property tax levied on local residents in the occupied al-Quds.
Without any legal basis, the municipality arbitrarily ruled that the historic 200-year exemption applied only to places of worship, while all other church-owned properties would be subject to retroactive taxation from 1994.
This date was chosen because it marked the signing of an agreement between the Zionist regime and Jordan, recognizing Amman’s custodianship over Muslim holy sites in the Old City—while Tel Aviv remained the occupying power.
Overnight, the municipality’s decision saddled the small Armenian community with a 24-year debt. Under Zionist regime laws, properties weighed down with such heavy debts can be seized and auctioned to cover the outstanding amount.
This aggressive campaign was spearheaded by Nir Barkat, a Likud politician, and then-mayor, who sought to tax so-called “non-religious” church properties for a total of $200 million, even ordering the freezing of their bank accounts.
The Armenian Patriarchate was not alone in its resistance. Other Christian leaders also vehemently opposed the move, going so far as to close the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in protest.
The dispute further strained relations between the Israeli regime and the Holy See, which cited local tax disputes as a key reason for delaying ongoing bilateral negotiations on property and economic matters.
Armenian Christians as the primary target
As the smallest and most vulnerable Christian community in the city, Armenians have been the primary target of the Zionist regime’s apartheid policies. The Armenian Patriarchate emphasizes that no other Christian community has faced such unprecedented and irreversible measures.
Following the municipality’s issuance of a seizure order, the Armenian Patriarch sent a letter to Netanyahu, urging him to intervene and halt the municipality’s actions regarding the tax dispute.
The Patriarchate has challenged the legality of these measures, asserting that no judicial ruling has ever subjected it to such obligations.
The petition asserted that the municipality disregarded the statute of limitations for the period between 1994 and 2018, demanding an exorbitant sum without clearly defining the presumed tax base.
The municipality’s actions have been described as aggressive and particularly unjustified; given that it itself owes the Patriarchate millions of shekels in overdue rental fees.
Armenian Quarter numbers only a few hundred people due to Zionist apartheid policies
Despite this, the Patriarchate has refrained from legal action to recover the debt, instead opting for prolonged negotiations to reach an amicable resolution.
In its statement, the Patriarchate also noted that it has repeatedly attempted to present these arguments to municipal authorities, who have refused to reassess the validity of the debt, despite clear violations of legal deadlines and procedures.
The official responsible for rejecting the review of the debt—because the deadline for objections had passed—is the same individual who originally determined the astronomical debt.
“In other words, the municipal employee is acting as the claimant, judge, and executor of the administrative order, serving the interests of his employer—the municipality,” the statement declared.
The petition is therefore directed against both the municipality and the official in question. A hearing was scheduled for February 24; however, just four days before the date, it was announced that the session had been postponed indefinitely due to weather conditions.
If the petition is rejected, the municipality will be authorized to immediately resume the seizure of properties in order to erase the long history of Armenian Christians in the occupied holy city.
Christian communities’ condemnation
Church representatives in the occupied al-Quds, along with the World Council of Churches (WCC), have expressed their solidarity with the Armenian Patriarchate through an official statement.
On February 21, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued a declaration condemning the municipality’s “unjust foreclosure order” and calling for “immediate intervention.”
Christian leaders in occupied al-Quds voiced their “great concern” and “steadfast solidarity” with the Orthodox Armenian Patriarchate in its fight for justice against what they described as an “unverified and exorbitant” tax debt, denouncing it as “dubious and morally unacceptable.”
“It is inconceivable that Christian institutions, which for centuries have safeguarded the faith, served communities, and preserved the sacred heritage of the Holy Land, should now face the threat of property seizure under Israeli administrative measures that disregard due process,” they stated.
Particularly alarming, they noted, is the municipality’s attempt to enforce the debt determination without judicial review, in open defiance of the committee formed to handle such negotiations.
This “reckless move,” they warned, threatens the Orthodox Armenian Patriarchate, sets a dangerous precedent for other Christian institutions, and undermines religious freedom.
They further explained that seizing these assets would strip both the Armenian Patriarchate and its community of essential economic resources, jeopardizing their ability to sustain their presence and fulfill their pastoral mission.
The statement concluded with a powerful declaration: “The targeting of one Church is an assault on all.” The leaders urged Israeli occupation to immediately intervene, halt all foreclosure proceedings, and ensure the resumption of negotiations.
The WCC, a global Christian inter-church organization representing 352 member churches, echoed this condemnation in a separate statement, denouncing the Israeli actions as “a blatant attack on religious freedom” and “an alarming violation of the historic status quo” governing the Holy Sites of al-Quds.
Other hostile moves against Christians
The imposition of a fictitious tax debt is just one example of Zionist attempts to appropriate Armenian property and intimidate the Armenian community.
Another significant case is the ongoing multi-year effort to seize the Cows’ Garden, an undeveloped one-hectare section of the Armenian Quarter.
The controversy erupted in 2020 when the Armenian Patriarchate signed a ten-year contract with the local municipality to convert the vacant land into a parking lot for Jewish settlers in the Old City and pilgrims visiting the Western Wall.
Both Armenians and Palestinians staged protests against the lease agreement, voicing concerns over Armenian land ownership. The Patriarchate maintained that the deal was strictly a financial arrangement, not a sale deed.
The following year, the parking lot was opened, and the Patriarchate signed a new contract with Israeli investors from the Dubai-registered Xana Gardens company to lease the land for 99 years and construct a luxury hotel.
This sparked even fiercer protests and led to the uncovering of an internal corruption scandal. By the end of 2023, the Patriarchate canceled the contract, stating that the investors had misled them regarding financial commitments and final development plans.
In response, the Israeli company escalated its efforts to forcibly acquire the land, resorting to lawsuits, threats, and physical intimidation of Armenians.
Since then, the Armenian Christian community has erected temporary guard stations and has been physically safeguarding the disputed land around the clock for months.
Jewish mobs have been recorded attacking Armenians on multiple occasions. Under the protection of Israeli occupation police, the company sent bulldozers to the site, and at one point, the owner arrived in person, openly calling for the expulsion of Armenians.
Zionist extremists frequently vandalize the Armenian Quarter with hate graffiti, including slogans such as “Death to Arabs and their Armenian Friends.” They have also targeted Armenian families with harassment and violence.
Meanwhile, investigations have revealed the company’s ties to the far-right settler movement, which aids Israeli settlers in seizing Muslim and Christian properties across occupied al-Quds.
Armenians and Palestinians fear the long-term consequences of these policies, warning that they will disrupt the demographic balance and further the ongoing Judaization of the Old City.
Hamas has rejected a report by the American daily newspaper The New York Times that has misrepresented recent remarks by a senior official of the Palestinian resistance movement, emphasizing that the comments are “inaccurate” and “taken out of context.”
In a statement released on Monday, the Gaza-based group said the interview conducted with Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of its political bureau, and published several days ago did not contain the full content of the answers, and his exact remarks were quoted out of context.
Hamas stressed that the published interview did not include the true remarks made by Abu Marzouk, and did not convey the true meaning of what he had said.
On Monday, The New York Times ran an article titled: “Hamas Official Expresses Reservations About Oct. 7 Attack on Israel” claiming that Abu Marzouk voiced doubts regarding the October 7 attack.
According to the article, Abu Marzouk admitted he would not have endorsed the assault had he been aware of the destruction it would cause in Gaza.
Hamas in its statement stated that Abu Marzouk confirmed that the large-scale surprise attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, against the usurping Tel Aviv regime on October 7, 2023, reflected the Palestinian people’s right to resistance and their rejection of Israel’s siege, occupation, and settlement expansion activities.
Abu Marzouk also emphasized that the criminal Israeli regime had committed appalling war crimes and genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Abu Marzouk told the New York Times that Hamas would not give up its positions and Palestinian people’s right to use all forms of resistance, including armed resistance, to fight off the Israeli occupation and liberate their land.
“The resistance weapon belongs to our people and its purpose is to protect our people and our holy sites, so it is not permissible to drop or surrender it as long as the [Israeli] occupation exists on our land,” the high-ranking Hamas official told the newspaper.
Backed by the United States and its Western allies, Israel launched the war on Gaza, after Hamas and other Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movements carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Israeli regime in response to its decades-long campaign of oppression against Palestinians.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has led to the killing of at least 48,346 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injury of 111,759 others since early October 2023.
A ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement went into effect in Gaza on January 19, halting Israel’s aggressive campaign against the coastal region.
I have long argued that the Israeli war and genocide in Gaza must be a catalyst for change in the overall political discourse on Israel and Palestine, particularly regarding the need to free Palestine from the confines of victimhood. This shift is necessary to create space where the Palestinian people are seen to be central to their own struggle.
It is unfortunate that centring a nation in a conversation about its own freedom from colonialism and military occupation requires years of advocacy. This is the reality that Palestinians face, though, often due to circumstances far beyond their control.
As outrageous as US President Donald Trump’s comments about buying Gaza were, they were a crude interpretation of a pre-existing culture that views Palestinians as marginal actors in their own story. While previous US administrations and their Western allies didn’t use such blatant language as Trump’s “taking over the Gaza Strip”, they did treat Palestinians as irrelevant to how the West perceived the “solution” to the “conflict”, language that rarely adhered to international and humanitarian laws.
For many Palestinian intellectuals, the fight for justice has been waged on two fronts: one to challenge global misconceptions about Palestine and the Palestinian people; and the other to reclaim the narrative altogether.
Recently, I have argued that reclaiming the narrative by centring Palestinian voices is not enough.
Many of these supposedly “authentic” Palestinians do not represent the collective aspirations of the Palestinian people.
This argument responds to the Western exposition of certain types of Palestinians whose narratives do not directly challenge Western complicity in the Israeli occupation and war. These voices often focus on highlighting the victimisation component of the “conflict”, often indicating that “both sides” should be supported — or blamed — equally.
This is why it was refreshing to talk with the iconic Norwegian Professor of Emergency Medicine Mads Gilbert, who is fighting to decolonise the concept of solidarity in medicine and, by extension, western solidarity as a whole.
Prof. Gilbert has spent much of his career working in Gaza, as well as among Palestinian doctors and communities in the West Bank and Lebanon. Since the start of the war, he has remained one of the most tireless voices in exposing the Israeli genocide in the Strip.
Our conversation touched on many subjects, including a term that he has coined: “evidence-based solidarity”. This concept applies evidence-based practice in medicine to all aspects of solidarity, both within and beyond Palestine.
It means that solidarity becomes more meaningful when it is supported by the kind of information which guarantees that the support does more good than harm.
A good example was his explanation of the field hospital as a strategy to cope with man-made crises, such as the genocide in Gaza. Our discussion elaborated on an article by Gilbert and other colleagues, published on 5 February in the BMC Medical Journal, entitled “Realising Health Justice in Palestine: Beyond Humanitarian Voices”.
The article was a critical response to another piece, published last May by Karl Blanchet and others, entitled “Rebuilding the Health Sector in Gaza: Alternative Humanitarian Voices”. Gilbert found the original article reductionist for failing to recognise that the crisis in Gaza was “entirely manufactured” and for overlooking the centrality of “Palestinian perspectives”.
This conversation may seem rhetorical until it is placed within its practical context. Field hospitals, which could be seen as the ultimate act of solidarity, in Gilbert’s view often deplete local resources and exacerbate the challenges facing Palestinian healthcare. He pointed out how the establishment of these temporary foreign-run facilities can contribute to a “brain drain”, while simultaneously exhausting the local healthcare system by creating parallel structures that, despite being well-funded, do not integrate with the native system.
According to Gilbert, these efforts divert critical resources away from the urgent task of rebuilding and restoring Palestinian hospitals and providing fair wages for the dedicated healthcare workers — doctors, nurses, paramedics and midwives — who are integral to the local medical infrastructure.
It must be frustrating for Palestinian medics, hundreds of whom have been killed in the Israeli genocide on Gaza, to watch others have a conversation about helping Gaza without acknowledging the vital role of the Palestinian Ministry of Health and local hospitals and clinics. They fail to recognise the unmatched experience — let alone the resilience — of the Gaza medical community, which has proven to be one of the most durable and resourceful anywhere in the world.
This is but a manifestation of a much larger issue.
The West, whether “evil-doers” or “do-gooders”, insists on seeing the Palestinian as an outsider to be removed from Gaza altogether or treated as a person with no relevant input, no worthy experience and no agency. Many often engage in this thinking, while assuming that they are indeed helping the Palestinians.
However, the genocide should serve as the watershed moment for these conversations to escape the academic realm and enter the public sphere, where the centrality of the truly representative Palestinian experience becomes the litmus test for any outside “proposals”, “plans”, “solutions” or even solidarity. As for the latter, decolonising solidarity is now an urgent task. There is no time to waste when the very existence of Palestinians in their historic land is at stake.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that the army will remain in Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank for the next year to prevent Palestinian residents from returning, Anadolu reports.
The Israeli army deployed tanks in the northern West Bank early Sunday, marking the first time since 2002 amid military escalation in the occupied territory.
“The Israeli army is expanding its operations in the northern West Bank, and starting tonight, it will also operate in the town of Qabatiya,” Katz said in a statement.
The defense minister said 40,000 Palestinians have been evacuated from Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps.
“UNRWA activity in the camps has also been stopped,” he said. “I instructed the IDF (army) to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared, for the coming year, and not allow residents to return.”
The army has been conducting military operations in the northern West Bank since last month, killing at least 60 people and displacing thousands.
The raids were the latest in Israel’s ongoing military escalation in the West Bank where at least 923 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers since the start of the onslaught against the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The International Court of Justice declared in July that Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal, demanding the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Recently, an image that captured global attention revealed an Israeli prisoner of war kissing the forehead of Hamas members during a prisoner exchange in Gaza. This gesture, filled with humanity and tenderness, is an example of how even in the most extreme circumstances of war, special moments can break the barriers of hatred and dehumanization. The symbolic act reflects a broader phenomenon experienced by several Israeli prisoners, including women, who, after being freed, expressed their gratitude for the respectful and humane treatment they received from the Palestinians while in captivity.
These prisoners, after spending time in the hands of Hamas, contrast with the narrative of dehumanization imposed by years of conflict. In a region where historical tensions have shaped relations violently, the humane treatment that many Israeli prisoners received seems to contradict the image of “cruel” enemies often associated with Palestinian fighters by Zionist media. The act of affection witnessed in this recent case and in the testimonies of other freed individuals not only subverts these expectations but also challenges the narratives that, since childhood, shape the perception of the people in Occupied Palestine.
In Israel, the indoctrination and education of a large part of the population is focused on seeing Palestinians as a constant threat, devoid of humanity. This aligns with the racist foundations of Zionist ideology, which guides all decisions of the Israeli state. However, the humanitarian treatment given to these prisoners, which included medical care and respect for their physical and emotional integrity, revealed a facet of the conflict that is often ignored. The behavior of the prisoners upon being released, with gestures of affection and even expressions of joy for the experience they went through, also shows that it is possible, even in the most adverse scenario, to dismantle stereotypes and find humanity in those once seen as the “enemy.”
In fact, it must have been extremely shocking for Israelis to discover that the people they have been taught to hate since childhood can, in fact, treat them with a level of dignity and humanity never seen in Zionist prisons. The comparison between the treatment given to prisoners by each side clearly shows how each actor in this conflict views the enemy. While Palestinians care for their prisoners and return them in perfect physical and mental conditions, in Israel, public discussions legitimize the rape of captured Palestinians. In practice, Palestinians see ordinary Israelis, outside of hostilities, as human beings worthy of fair treatment. But Zionists see Palestinians as less than animals.
This brainwashing of hatred and misanthropy has created a phenomenon of true collective sociopathy among many Israelis. In the IDF, the torture and killing of Palestinian civilians is almost a rule to be followed. Besides ideological and pseudo-religious fanaticism, official propaganda plays its role, always describing Palestinians as inhuman enemies, exaggerating the actions of Hamas on October 7, and sometimes even lying blatantly, as when portraying Operation Al Aqsa Flood as a “massacre” or “collective rape.”
What is destroying Zionist propaganda and changing public opinion in Israeli society itself – and across the entire West – is the practical experience of Israeli citizens who were held captive by Hamas. The good treatment and humanitarian dignity, admitted by the freed prisoners themselves, is showing the world that Palestinians do not act like Zionists. The Israelis are simply returning to their homes aware that there is more respect for human life among Palestinians than among ordinary Israeli soldiers.
In practice, Palestinian resistance is neutralizing Zionist propaganda with truth and respect for human life. By acting as benevolently as possible with the weak and defenseless, Palestinians are curing Zionist brainwashing and showing the world that it is possible to overcome barbarism.
The Israeli authorities are preventing the wife of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, Nael Barghouti, and the family of prisoner Khalil Abu Al-Rub from travelling to Egypt to welcome their relatives, who are scheduled to be released on Saturday, according to reports by the Prisoners’ Media Office on Friday.
The office revealed in a statement: “The occupation intelligence is preventing the wife of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, Nael Barghouti (Abu Al-Nour), from travelling, as she was heading to Egypt to greet her husband who will be released tomorrow in the Al-Aqsa Flood deal.”
The statement added: “The occupation intelligence is preventing the family of prisoner Ashraf Khalil Hussein Abu Al-Rub from travelling to greet their son who is being deported to Egypt.”
Prisoners Barghouti and Abu Al-Rub are among the prisoners who are being deported and exiled from Palestine while their families reside in the occupied West Bank. They are scheduled to be released on Saturday as part of the seventh batch released as part of the prisoner exchange deal.
Earlier on Friday, the Prisoners’ Information Office in the Gaza Strip announced that Israel would release 602 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday, including 50 sentenced to life and 60 serving long sentences.
The Canada Files spoke to Canadian lawyer and journalist Dimitri Lascaris, about the Montreal police’s persecution of author Yves Engler, in retaliation for Engler repeatedly criticizing Canadian Zionist fanatic Dahlia Kurtz.
Police in Canada have arrested a Canadian activist and author for criticizing Israel and its genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Yves Engler, a vocal critic of Israel and the Canadian military complex, was arrested on Thursday after Dahlia Kurtz, a Zionist influencer, accused him of harassment.
“Tomorrow the Montreal police will arrest me for posting to social media against Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” Engler said in an article on Wednesday after Montreal Police reached out to him about their plans to arrest him because of Kurtz’s complaint.
Pointing out that he had “responded to Kurtz’s racist, violent, anti-Palestinian posts on X”, Engler said he had not harassed the influencer, who “supports killing Palestinian children” and “openly calls for state violence against those challenging Canadian complicity in genocide.”
“I’ve never met Kurtz. Nor have I messaged or emailed her. Nor have I threatened her. I don’t even follow her on X (Twitter’s algorithm puts her posts in my feed).”
The father of two was taken into custody on Thursday morning and appeared before a judge later in the day. He spent the night in jail, and a bail hearing has been set for Friday.
After he publicized his scheduled arrest, police pledged new charges of “harassing” police and “obstructing” their work against Engler… Full article
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 28, 2016
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Sixth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
In his chapter on “Left Gatekeepers” and the “Shame of Noam Chomsky,” Barrie Zwicker refers to the the “New World Order” as the “diaboligarchy’s” directing agency. Less compelling is Zwicker’s reference to the “New World Order” as the “diaboligarchy’s” directing agency. To me this unfortunate choice of words is much too closely associated with the often crude and chauvinistic populism of Alex Jones and his Infowars media network. Many have come to see Jones’ lucrative media operation as a limited hangout set in place by handlers trying to hold the activities of the 9/11 Truth Movement within manageable constraints.
Due to the important findings over fifteen years of the citizens’ investigation into 9/11, the culprits most deeply implicated in the crime can be identified with much more specificity than an entity vaguely described as a “New World Order.” As Kevin Barrett and many others insist, the time has come to name the names of the probable culprits, Noam Chomsky prominent among them.
While Alex Jones ultimately serves the same masters as Chomsky, the former’s media product is often much closer to the mark of what is really going on than the content of Noam Chomsky’s more magisterial pronouncements. Jones goes at least part of the way into realities of the deep state politics of the twenty-first century. Chomsky, however, sacrificed his capacity to contribute cogently to sensible discourse on contemporary geopolitics by making himself a primary instrument of the most consequential deep state deception of recent times. As a leading agent of disinformation in the psychological trenches of the ongoing Global War of False Flag Terrorism, Chomsky has reduced himself to the level of skeptic pretender Michael Shermer. In the style of Shermer, the elder Chomsky has become an establishment TV professor readily available on Netflix. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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