After a year of committing genocide in Gaza, more and more Israeli soldiers are quietly refusing orders to return to the strip to fight, saying they are depressed, worn out, psychologically damaged, and unmotivated, according to a report by Ha-Makom magazine published on 20 October.
The ultra-Orthodox-oriented magazine interviewed multiple soldiers and parents of soldiers who refuse to return to Gaza. When a platoon of 30 soldiers of the Nahal Brigade was recently ordered to enter Gaza for the latest of several tours, only six reported for duty.
“I call it refusal and rebellion,” says Inbal, the mother of one of the soldiers in the platoon.
“They return to the same buildings that they cleaned, each time trapping them anew. They have been to Al-Zaytoun neighborhood three times already. They understand that it is futile and pointless.”
Although they had only a fifth of their personnel, the commander still insisted they enter Gaza.
“Because they were a small team, they couldn’t go out on missions. They just stayed there and waited for the time to pass. It was even more unnecessary.”
In addition to battling Hamas fighters, Israeli soldiers have been demolishing residential buildings with explosives, sniping children, shelling hospitals and schools housing displaced people, and destroying Gaza’s water and electrical infrastructure.
One parent of a soldier in Nahal said that according to her son, “The wards are empty. Everyone who is not dead or injured is mentally damaged. There are very few left who returned to fight. And they’re not quite right either.”
After Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, in which many soldiers have already been killed and injured, her son told her, “I don’t know what army they’re thinking of entering Lebanon with, but I’m not going back to the battalion.”
According to those interviewed by Ha-Makom, there is no movement among the soldiers to refuse to serve.
Instead, one goes quietly to his commander and says he is unable to fight. He is then removed and placed in a non-combat position elsewhere.
“Things are resolved within the unit. It happens all the time. There is an incessant covert drop from fighting,” one parent explained.
Among mothers, the phenomenon is called “silent refusal” or “gray refusal.”
Soldiers feel demoralized having to return to places in Gaza where they fought months ago and supposedly defeated Hamas.
“When the return to the places we were in, such as Jabalia, Al-Zaytoun, and Shujaiya, began, it broke the soldiers,” a parent named Eidit explains.
“These are the same places where they lost their friends. The area was already clean. It had to be preserved. It frustrated them a lot. What kills them is the conditions and the duration of the fighting, which has no end in sight. You never know when you will get out, and it’s been like this for a year. Not to mention the loss and the difficult sights they see in Gaza.”
Yael, the mother of a fighter in a commando brigade, said that her son told her, “We are like sitting ducks at the range. We don’t understand what we’re doing here. The abductees don’t come back a second and third time, and you see it’s endless, and soldiers get injured and die on the way.”
In March, four fighters of the unit were killed, and dozens more were injured in three different attacks.
After returning from Gaza, the soldier’s unit was converted to a reserve unit and sent right back to fight in the enclave.
“He told his commander that he wanted to remain a fighter in the reserves but that, at the moment, he is unable to because of his parents, whom he does not trust and does not think there is any point in continuing. He was released but did not receive an order 8,” which is an order call up to fight in the reserves.
Their commanders shame them for abandoning their fellow soldiers and try to convince them to fight, but ultimately take no action against the soldiers.
“Two months before him, two fighters from his team refused and that is what gave him the courage. At the moment, most of them have not been put in prison, and the phenomenon is just kept quiet.”
Ha-Makom added, “After 12 consecutive months of a war that goes nowhere, the soldiers are ‘black.’ In military slang, this means that they are depressed, worn out and unmotivated.”
“In the beginning, he was very determined,” says Ofer, the father of a sniper in one of the infantry units. “He said: ‘Our job is to return the kidnapped, our job is to take revenge,’ and he went there.”
And who is Trent Horn? Dr. E. Michael Jones, arguably America’s leading Catholic intellectual, explains:
Trent Horn is a guy who works for something called Catholic Answers. Catholic Answers got started in the 90s by a guy named Carl Keating, who basically was going to defend the Catholic Church against fundamentalists who would say that the church was the whore of Babylon—fever swamp stuff like that. And it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He made a lot of money. He retired. He got replaced by Chris Check, a guy I knew from the Rockford Institute and Chronicles Magazine, a guy I always liked.
And now the world has changed. And so Trent Horn (took over Catholic Answers)… Some people said he was trying to apply for a job with the Daily Wire. He wanted to get Candace Owens’ slot.
So he’s going to be the Catholic guy who’s going to take up the Jewish cause. Well, it didn’t work. This guy singlehandedly resurrected an idea that really needs to be taken up, which is basically: What exactly is the status of the Jews and the Catholics? What is exactly the Catholic position?
And he took it to the extreme where he said basically it’s a sin to deny the Holocaust. And then he’s got “quotes” from people like Pope Benedict, which don’t say what he said they said. The Pope would never say (that Holocaust denial is a sin). The Pope, responding to the Williamson affair when Bishop Williamson got attacked across the world, said that basically “this is not decent. Decent people don’t do this.” Well, no one ever said Catholicism was just reserved for people who are fit for polite company.
So Trent Horn’s trying to up the ante by saying Catholics commit a sin if they contest Jewish fables. Well, it’s not going to work. And it bombed. There were hundreds of people who wrote in after this “Holocaust Denial Is a Sin” video, including people who noticed, as I did, there was fraud, academic fraud, going on here.
He flashes this image for two seconds, supposedly a letter from Himmler talking about the extermination of the Jews. Wait a minute. I have a pause button, Trent. And I put it on there. It turns out the beginning of this is Latin. It’s the Lorem Ipsum text generator. And then plopped in the middle is some statement—I guess he doesn’t think that anybody can read German because he apparently can’t—that says “the extermination of the Jewish people.”
But the real quote that follows is in a completely different typeset. The real quote is “die Evakuierung des deutschen Volkes,” which means the evacuation of the German people.
So I can’t tell you how angry I was. It’s been a long time since I got that angry. And I said that my friend Chris should either take the video down or stop claiming that he’ speaking for Catholics, because this is not Catholic theology. And you’re putting burdens on Catholics that they do not need to bear.
Catholic Holocaust Denial: A Confession
If crypto-Jew Trent Horn gets his way, Catholics the world over will be filing into confessionals every Sunday to whisper to their priests:
“Forgive me father for I have sinned. I have doubted the existence of the gas chambers.”
“Why would you do that, my son?”
“It has been six months since my last confession, and during that time I have been studying the issue.”
“ّWhy would you ‘study’ such rubbish, my son?”
“I was curious, father.”
“Have you not heard the old saying, my son, that ‘curiosity killed the catamite’”?
“No, I never heard that one, father. (Pause.) What’s a catamite?”
“That, my son, is another of those things you shouldn’t be curious about.”
“But why shouldn’t I ask questions about the Holocaust, father?”
“Because it is an article of faith, my son. If a Catholic denies OR doubts any article of faith determined by the Catholic Church, they are a sinful heretic. To be a Catholic is to be believe everything that the Catholic Church teaches. To doubt or deny ANY dogma is to proclaim oneself a Protestant – even if one continues to attend Mass and, God forbid, receive Holy Communion.”
“But father, is the Holocaust really an article of faith?”
“Of course it is, my son. There is no convincing evidence that it ever happened. That means we must accept it on faith. As Tertullian writes in his De Carne Christi: ‘I believe it because it is absurd.’ That certainly applies to the Holocaust.”
“I’m confused, father. What must I believe about the Holocaust?”
“It’s quite simple, son. Holocaustianity is the new Christianity. Instead of Jesus, we worship the Jewish people and their sacred six million. Instead of the Crucifixion, we have the gas chambers. And instead of the Resurrection, we have the state of Israel. That is the new Holy Trinity.”
“Is there a creed I should recite?”
“Indeed there is, my son. It goes like this:
‘I believe in the Holy Jewish People, the only chosen sons of Yahweh, masters of all things visible and invisible.
‘I believe in the sacred six million.
‘I believe in the gas chambers.
‘I support the holy state of Israel.
‘I will bow down to Antichrist, the Jewish messiah, when he comes.
‘And above all, I condemn Hamas.’
“But father, what you’re saying doesn’t sound like what I learned in Sunday school.”
“That was the old church, son. Today’s church is different. It’s new and fresh and irreverent about everything except the Holocaust and above all it’s no longer antisemitic. By the way, have you considered having a sex change?”
The parishioner hastily leaves the confessional, exits the church, and finds himself in the middle of a Hollywood studio lot. The church he just left, he discovers, was a paper maché mock-up, and the priest and parishioners were actors. (Was that Trent Horn playing the priest?) Discombobulated, he tries to find an exit from the studio lot, but it just seems to go on and on forever…
Genocide Denial IS a Sin
The notion of denial involves willful refusal to face an obvious truth. It does not apply to those who ask questions about matters that are far from obvious, including: Were six million Jews really murdered in German concentration camps? How many, if any, died in gas chambers? Were the deaths of German concentration camp inmates part of a preconceived bureaucratic plan to kill all Jews within reach of the German government?
The Jewish father of Holocaust Studies, Raul Hilberg, denied that six million Jews died. The more plausible number, he said, was 5.1 million. Was he “in denial”? Should he have been imprisoned along with others who offer even lower figures? What number is the cutoff, below which one goes to jail or commits a sin?
Mainstream historians have all sorts of different views about the alleged gas chambers and who may have died in them. Should those who hold less than maximalist views be imprisoned, or condemned for sinfulness, alongside those who see no convincing evidence for gas chambers at all?
Mainstream historians also hold widely varying views on whether there was a preconceived bureaucratic plan to kill all Jews within reach of the German government. Should those who argue for a more ad hoc Holocaust be incarcerated (or deemed guilty of mortal sin) alongside those who think that most of the roughly half-million Jews who died in the camps were victims of starvation and deprivation, not gas or bullets?
There is a plausible case that the German government committed genocide against Jews and gypsies during World War II. But all sorts of reasonable positions on the details of that genocide, if indeed it was one, have been criminalized. Though it is a crime in several European countries to discuss those details, calling it a sin seems a bit of a stretch.
Is Denying the Palestinian Genocide a Sin?
The genocide that is currently taking place in Occupied Palestine is one of the most fully-documented events in human history. It is being broadcast on social media and independent media (despite Israel’s relentless slaughter of journalists) 24/7/365. No reasonable person can doubt that the state of Israel is deliberately slaughtering Palestinian civilians en masse in order to facilitate its theft of their land and resources.
According to official body counts, Israel has killed about 42,000 people in Gaza during the past year. More than two-thirds of the dead are women and children, and most of the rest are noncombatants.
But the official body count is unrealistically low. It only includes identified bodies killed directly by the Israeli military. Thousands of other bodies remain buried in rubble, while others are excavated but not identified. And then there tens of thousands more whom Israel kills through starvation or deprivation. The Lancet, a leading medical journal, has estimated the real number of deaths in Gaza as over 186,000. Dr. Gideon Polya, an expert on avoidable mortality, thinks the total is even higher:
On 5 September 2024 Professor Devi Sridhar (chair, global health, University of Edinburgh) reported: “Total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total” or 30,500 per month and 366,000 per year. Of these “first year” deaths about 55,000 were violent (from “bullets and bombs”) and 311,000 from horrific imposed deprivation.
By “horrific deprivation” Professor Sridhar is referring to Israel’s deliberate starvation of Gazans, its destruction of water and sewage infrastructure, and its obliteration of almost all of Gaza’s hospitals, clinics, and other medical facilities.
The USA and the West are indeed mired in what might be accurately called “genocide denial.” Most Americans and Westerners prefer to look the other way, deliberately averting their gaze from the sniper-murdered babies and whole families dying slowly beneath rubble created by American tax dollars.
That genocide denial is indeed a sin that puts them not only outside of all faith, but outside of all humanity.
The British Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has announced a £7 million procurement process for anti-semitism training in schools, colleges and universities, where she claims there’s been a huge increase in anti-semitic incidents.
However, the statistics on which she’s relying have been provided by the Community Security Trust (CST), which has links to Israel’s overseas spy agency, Mossad.
The British government has announced that its response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine is that it will spend £7 million on tackling anti-semitism in education.
Meanwhile, the government has failed to earmark any money at all to tackle the epidemic of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic racism whipped up by the Zionist movement.
َ£500,000 of the £7 million funding has been awarded to the University Jewish Chaplaincy, or UJC, for ‘welfare support’ for Jewish students in universities.
But what is the UJC, a kindly Jewish religious organization devoted to the welfare and spiritual needs of their students?
Unfortunately not, in fact, it’s a fully signed up Zionist organization with direct links to illegal settlements and to the genocidal occupation forces.
The UJC is a charity that is also a member of the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, JLC.
One of the directors of the UJC, Yuri Goldberg, was appointed a director of the JLC in August 2024.
Both groups are advocates of the genocidal ideology of Zionism, but perhaps the UJC is best known for its chaplain at Leeds University who was involved in the genocide in Gaza as a member of the occupation forces.
In October 2023 it emerged that he had been circulating videos of himself to Jewish students in Israeli occupation forces uniform, claiming: “No one could deny that Israel is dealing with this war with the utmost morality and good ethics”.
“What Israel is trying to do is destroy the evil, which is the most moral thing possible.”
It seems unlikely that this was conducive to the welfare of Jewish students at Leeds or elsewhere.
Zechariah Deutsch and his wife, Nava, the chaplaincy couple, had both trained for two years at Ohr Torah Stone’s Straus-Amiel Institute.
The Institute is located in Migdal Oz in the Gush Etzion settlement block in the West Bank. Ohr Torah Stone is an educational Zionist venture founded by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin in New York. He later became a settler colonist.
In November 2023, the president of Ohr Torah Stone, Riskin’s successor, Rabbi Kenneth Brander, visited the Zionist Northern Front. He was asked by the company commander to write a message to our enemies on one of the rockets used to retaliate to their attacks. In indelible black marker Brander wrote “To fulfill the mitzvah and mission of obliterating Amalek”.
Ohr Torah Stone is, in other words, a genocidal propaganda and indoctrination operation.
How the government imagines it will increase the welfare of Jewish students by giving money to genocidal Zionist extremists is unclear.
University Jewish Chaplaincy, links to illegal settlements and Israeli Occupation Forces
Leeds University is again the subject of outrage as the new chaplaincy couple are withdrawn from campus after shocking anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic posts were found on social media. The posts, mostly made by Sonia Pariente, included her view that Israeli lives were more valuable than those of Palestinians, referred to Palestinian women wearing black bags and to the Arabs of darkness.
“After October 7th I don’t differentiate between Hamas and so called Palestinians”, she wrote going on to say that “for the next 10 to 20 years, the Palestinian people will pay the bill that Hamas set today, and this bill will be paid in blood.”
Under pressure from pro-Palestine groups, the University Jewish Chaplaincy sacked them and removed their internet profile page.
The University Jewish Chaplaincy operates as a charity in the UK. It provides Jewish chaplains to universities up and down the country. Our investigations reveal that many have direct connections to illegal settlement and the occupation forces.
There are currently 17 individuals appointed in the UK, six couples and five individuals.
At Bristol, Asaf and Atara Forges are said to come from Israel, though both trained in the Straus Emil Institute of Ohr Torah Stone. This is the Gush Etzion settlement block run by an openly genocidal organization.
The Glasgow and Edinburgh chaplain, Eliran, trained at a yeshiva that is also run by Torah stone and included service in the occupation forces. His wife, Ayala Shabo, is from the illegal settlement of Efrat and attended Shalem College, in the occupied territory.
The chaplain at Nottingham, Uriya Dvir, attended two Yeshivas for a total of six years. Both were in illegal settlements. The Yeshivas combined Torah study and service in the occupation forces.
Rabbi Fishel Cohen at Birmingham is part of the genocidal Chabad cult, which believes it is justified to kill Palestinian children.
Unsurprisingly, the UJC is funded by a slew of hardline genocidal Zionists such as the convicted fraudster and founder of the Community Security Trust, Gerald Ronson, property developer David Dangoor, whose money is channeled via the Exilarch’s Foundation.
It also donates to the Islamophobic Henry Jackson society as does the Wolfson family, which owns the retailer ‘NEXT’.
The family has donated to Islamophobic think tanks, including Policy Exchange, and the Jerusalem Foundation which is directly involved in ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
The University Jewish Chaplaincy is a charity so these connections must raise questions about its ability to provide public benefit as required by law.
GAZA – For the fifteenth consecutive day on Saturday, northern Gaza, particularly Jabalia refugee camp, is enduring an Israeli siege and starvation amidst intense aerial and artillery bombardment, along with a complete isolation of the healthcare system and internet.
In a new massacre in Jabalia, the occupation army carried out an attack after cutting off communications and internet in northern Gaza.
Eyewitnesses reported that a large massacre occurred after homes belonging to the Al-Hawajri and other families near the Nasar junction in Tal Al-Zaatar to the northeast of Jabalia camp were bombed. Several homes were targeted, but the Al-Hawajri house was occupied by many residents, including a significant number of displaced relatives.
They confirmed that this house and the neighboring homes were directly targeted, resulting in 30 martyrs and more than 70 injured arriving at Al-Awda Hospital, with many missing.
The Gaza Government Media Office (GMO) said that 21 women and children were among the martyrs. It pointed out that the massacre committed by the occupation due to the bombing of Tal Al-Zaatar coincides with the collapse of the healthcare situation in northern Gaza.
Additionally, 4 citizens were martyred, and more than 15 others were injured due to Israeli shelling that targeted a home in the Al-Touba area of Jabalia camp.
With this toll, the number of martyrs resulting from Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza since dawn on Friday has risen to 49, while the total number of martyrs since the siege was imposed on the northern sector has reached 450.
Moreover, the occupation’s artillery shelled the Indonesian hospital with several shells and imposed a siege on it, while the upper floors of Al-Awda Hospital in Tal Al-Zaatar were also targeted, with reports of injuries resulting from the attacks.
Since dawn on Saturday, Israeli occupation forces have besieged the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya, targeting anyone moving in its vicinity. Artillery fired two shells towards it, and the electricity was cut off.
Dr. Marwan Sultan, the hospital director, issued an urgent distress call as Israeli military vehicles are surrounding the hospital and four shelters nearby, posing severe risks to medical staff and patients. He noted that Israeli tanks fired three direct shells at the hospital, and military bulldozers began demolishing parts of the hospital after cutting off its electricity.
He emphasized that 15 medical staff members and 30 injured patients in the hospital face real dangers due to the direct targeting of the hospital and the risk of suffocation from gases emitted by explosive shells nearby, pointing out that the lives of patients needing special care are threatened due to lack of oxygen.
He clarified that artillery shells targeted the second and third floors of the hospital, indicating that the occupation aims to destroy what remains of the healthcare system to force residents to leave.
The director of the Indonesian hospital, Dr. Marwan Sultan, called on the international community to intervene to save what remains of the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip.
The hospital had previously been subjected to a similar siege in November 2023, during which it was directly targeted by the occupying forces, leading to the death and arrest of several injured patients.
Meanwhile, the director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Saleh, described the healthcare situation as catastrophic due to the shortage of medical supplies, noting that the situation in northern Gaza is “indescribable.” He expected the number of martyrs to rise in the coming hours due to the lack of medical resources.
A medical source reported that the medical teams at Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda hospitals are unable to cope with the numerous injuries resulting from the bombardment by the occupying forces.
In the meantime, the director of health in Gaza, Munir Al-Bursh, described the condition of hospitals in northern Gaza as catastrophic. In statements to Al Jazeera, he mentioned that the bodies of over 450 martyrs have arrived at hospitals, and “our estimates indicate 500 martyrs,” confirming that the Israeli occupation is committing massacre after massacre in northern Gaza.
He added that the Israeli occupation is deliberately displacing the population from northern Gaza through bombardment and siege, rendering the healthcare system in northern Gaza non-functional.
A health ministry official in Gaza said that several civilians have died of hunger and thirst in their homes in Jabalia due to the ongoing siege, and the bodies of dozens of martyrs are scattered in the streets of Jabalia as a result of the continuous bombardment.
GMO condemned the moral decline of countries around the world that silently watch and monitor the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people, especially what is currently happening in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza.
In a press statement, the GMO held the Israeli occupation, the US administration, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the countries participating in the genocide fully responsible for the continuation of this crime.
The Israeli genocide against the Gaza Strip continues for the 379th consecutive day, with the pace of bombardment escalating in all areas of the Strip, particularly intensifying in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, on a night described as the most difficult since the beginning of the genocide, which has resulted in over 142,000 martyrs and injured, mostly women and children, since October 7, 2023.
The level of calmness of the Palestinians has cast doubt on what once seemed like the predestined fate of the Palestinian struggle.
A year has passed since Netanyahu, who considered himself the dictator of the entire Middle East, began to destroy its peoples first in Gaza and then in Lebanon, engaging periodic murderous operations against Syria, Yemen and Iran. No one expected that one year would be sufficient in returning to the Palestinian cause its priority on the world stage and that millions of people globally would unite again in the struggle for Palestinian freedom.
The past year has seen the Israeli genocide in Gaza and unprecedented violence in the West Bank, as well as legendary displays of Palestinian ‘sumud’ (Arabic for ‘resilience’). It is not the scale of the Israeli bloodbath, but the degree of Palestinian resilience that has called into question what once seemed the predestined fate of the Palestinian struggle. However, it turned out that the last chapter on Palestine was not yet ready to be written and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not be its author.
The ongoing war has exposed the limits of Israeli military capabilities. The typical policy of Israel’s relations with the occupied Palestinians was based on unhindered Israeli violence, unconditional Western assistance and the ’deafening silence’ of the international community. To a large extent, only Netanyahu determined the timing and objectives of the war. Until recently, his opponents seemed to have no say in the matter. This is, though, not the case anymore. Israel’s war crimes are now being met by Palestinian unity, Arab, Muslim and international solidarity and the first – and quite serious –signs of legal responsibility.
This is not likely what Netanyahu had hoped for. Just a few days before the aggression against Lebanon began, he stood in the UN General Assembly hall with a map of the ‘New Middle East’, a map on which Palestine and Palestinians were completely erased. “We should not give the Palestinians the right to veto new peace agreements with Arab states”, he said, “since Palestinians make up only 2% of the Arab world”. His arrogance was not long-lasting, as this ‘triumphant’ moment was brief.
Battered by numerous troubles inside and outside Israel and being unsuccessful in the war against the Arab world, Netanyahu is now most concerned about his own political survival. He is waging war to avoid humiliating his army in Gaza, and he is terrified by the prospect of an arrest warrant being issued by the International Criminal Court. While the International Court of Justice continues to examine the ever-growing dossier accusing Israel of deliberate genocide in the Gaza Strip, the UN General Assembly has decided that Israel must end its illegal occupation of Palestine within a year.
Netanyahu, who has worked tirelessly to normalise the Israeli occupation of Palestine, must be extremely disappointed that he has faced complete and deafening international rejection of his plans. The advisory opinion of the UN International Court of Justice, issued in July, stating that the Israeli occupation is illegal, was another blow to Tel Aviv, which, despite the unlimited support of the United States, could not change the international consensus on the illegality of the occupation.
What awaits the Palestinians?
In addition to relentless Israeli violence, the Palestinian people have also found themselves on the side-lines of political life. Since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, their fate has largely been entrusted to the generally unelected Palestinian leadership, which has over time monopolised the Palestinian cause for its own financial and political gain. The resilience of Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured a year of mass killings, deliberate starvation and the total destruction of all aspects of life, helps in confirming the political significance of the long-marginalised nation. This shift is fundamental, as it contradicts everything Netanyahu has tried to achieve. In the years leading up to the war, Israel seemed to be writing the final chapter of its colonial project on Palestine. It subdued or co-opted the Palestinian leadership, tightened the blockade of Gaza, and was ready to annex most of the West Bank.
Gaza was the least of Israel’s problems; any discussions about it were limited to the hermetic Israeli blockade and the humanitarian – but not political – crisis caused by it.
While the Palestinians in Gaza relentlessly called on the world to pressure Israel into ending the protracted siege that began in 2007, in the Gaza Strip Tel Aviv continued to pursue a policy in accordance with the infamous logic of former senior Israeli official Dov Waisglass, who explained the purpose of the blockade as putting the Palestinians on a diet, but not letting them starve to death.
But a year after the start of the war, the Palestinians, thanks to their resilience, have become the centre of any serious discussion about the peaceful future of the Middle East. The collective courage and strength of the Palestinians have neutralised the ability of the Israeli military to achieve political results through violence. However, the number of dead, missing or wounded in Gaza has likely already exceeded 150,000 people. The Gaza Strip, which was already poor and dilapidated, lies in ruins. All mosques, churches and hospitals have been destroyed or severely damaged. Most of the educational infrastructure has been destroyed. However, Israel has not achieved any of its strategic objectives, which ultimately fall under one goal: to permanently silence the Palestinians in their quest for freedom.
Despite the incredible pain and loss, there is now a powerful force uniting the Palestinians around achieving their freedom, also uniting Arabs and the whole world around Palestine. The consequences of this will last for many years, even after Netanyahu and like-minded extremists have left. Here a difficult question arises: in the future, how will the Israelis be able to peacefully coexist with the Palestinians, when, previously, the essence of the Israeli leadership’s policy was aimed at seizing the entirety of Palestine, killing or at least expelling the Palestinian people from their homeland?
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said on Friday that the war in the Gaza Strip must end with the establishment of a “full-fledged” Palestinian State, urging the Middle East Quartet to be reactivated in order to resume mediation efforts in the region, Anadolu Agency reports.
“The primary solution to the Palestinian problem is the establishment of a fully-fledged Palestinian State. The Russian side has upheld this position since the Soviet era,” he remarked during a meeting with BRICS media managers in Moscow.
Putin stressed reactivating the Middle East Quartet, a group of international organisations that includes the UN, US, UN and Russia, to resume efforts to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and initiate a peace process.
“It was a mistake by the US to disrupt the work of the Quartet […] It would have been easier to coordinate all the positions. The US took over, monopolised the peace efforts, assuming full responsibility and, in the end, it failed,” Putin said.
He stressed that Palestinians “will not leave” the Gaza Strip, warning that the region’s humanitarian crisis will only increase the number of those determined to “defend their interests”.
The upcoming BRICS summit in Kazan, from 22-24 October, will include discussions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as it remains a significant global issue, he added.
Israel dramatically escalated its massive bombing campaign across Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since 23 September, killing at least 1,437 people, injuring over 4,123 others, and displacing more than 1.34 million people.
The aerial campaign is an escalation from a year of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah since the start of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. More than 42,400 people, most of them women and children, have been killed since the war began in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October, 2023 cross-border attack on Israel.
Israel further expanded the escalation, invading Lebanon on 1 October.
Israeli sharpshooters shot and critically injured Al-Jazeera cameraman, Fadi Al-Wahidi, and injured another journalist, while two others were killed while they were covering occupation forces’ assault in and around the Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip on October 9, 2024.
The occupation army snipers targeted a group of journalists in the Jabalia refugee camp while they were performing their duties, shooting Al-Wahidi in the neck with live ammunition, causing permanent paralysis.
Al-Jazeera journalist, Anas al-Sharif posted on his X account that “Israeli forces shot at the Al Jazeera crew, and the network’s photographer, our beloved colleague Fadi al-Wahidi, was injured by a sniper’s bullet in the neck during our coverage.”
On the same day, Israeli forces killed the photojournalist, Mohammad Al-Tanani and the journalist, Omar al-Balawi after targeting a group of journalists documenting the occupation’s massacres in Jabalia.
Tamer Labad, Al-Aqsa TV journalist was also shot by Israeli fire during the same incident, while covering the bombardment and ground invasion of the Jabalia refugee camp.
Al-Jazeera, in a statement affirmed that the targeting of journalists is a violation of international laws protecting the press and humanitarian workers in war zones.
The UK government and police – the British state – made clear today they are waging a war of intimidation against the country’s independent journalists in a desperate attempt to silence them.
Ten Metropolitan police officers made a dawn raid on the home of investigative journalist Asa Winstanley and seized his electronic devices under the UK’s draconian Terrorism Act. A letter from the Met indicates that the associate editor of the Electronic Intifada is being investigated by the force for “encouraging terrorism”.
The raid isn’t about terrorism – except the UK government’s. It’s about scaring us into staying silent on Britain’s collusion in Israel’s genocide.
Winstanley is the latest – and most high profile – independent journalist to be targeted by counter-terrorism police in recent weeks. Earlier, Richard Medhurst was arrested at Heathrow airport on returning to the UK from a trip abroad. Then Sarah Wilkinson was arrested and her home ransacked.
Winstanley has repeatedly embarrassed the British establishment by exposing its covert and deep ties to Israel and its collusion with the Israeli lobby.
In his book Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn, Winstanley exposed in shocking detail how antisemitism was weaponised against the former Labour leader.
The book would have made uncomfortable reading for his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, now Britain’s prime minister, because it documents his role in the smear campaign.
While in opposition, Starmer’s Labour party threatened to expel Winstanley as a member – he resigned in protest instead – and have made legal threats against him.
As the Electronic Intifada website notes: “Now that Labour is the UK’s ruling party, it has the potential to use the apparatus of the state against those it views as its own – or Israel’s – political enemies.”
There is precisely no reason for police to raid Winstanley’s home or seize his electronic devices. The preposterous accusation of “encouraging terrorism” clearly relates to his online work, which is fully in the public domain.
The British state wants to insinuate through the dawn raid and confiscation of his devices that he is somehow harbouring secret or classified information, or in illicit contact with terror groups, and that incriminating evidence will be forthcoming from searches of those devices.
It won’t. If there were any real suspicion that Winstanley had such information, the police would have arrested him rather than making a public show of a 6am raid and search they knew beforehand would turn up nothing.
This isn’t about terrorism at all. It is about frightening those opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the West’s collusion in it, into silence. If the British state is going after someone like Winstanley, you are supposed to conclude, they will surely soon come for me too.
Even the name of the “counter-terrorism” raid is performative: “Operation Incessantness”. The message the state wants to send is that it will not rest till it has us all behind bars.
Don’t believe this nonsense. The police have nothing on Winstanley. Exposing information about Israel and its genocide, and the British government’s culpability, is not a crime. At least not yet.
They want you to think it is, of course. They want you scared and mute. Because every time you go out and protest, you remind the world that the British government, and their bully-boys in blue, are the real criminals – for enabling genocide.
Dockworkers in Greece have blocked the shipment of an ammunition-filled container destined for Israel, refusing to load the cargo onto a vessel at the Port of Piraeus, Anadolu Agency reports.
The container, reportedly transported to Greece via North Macedonia, was meant to be shipped to Israel’s Haifa Port.
However, in response to calls from local labour unions, dockworkers at the Piraeus Port gathered and took a firm stance, preventing the shipment from proceeding.
According to Greek State Television, ERT, the workers had written “Murderers, get out of the port” on the container and voiced their solidarity with the Palestinian people, chanting slogans such as “Freedom for Palestine”.
Markos Bekris, the president of the Piraeus Port Trade Union, released a statement condemning the shipment of ammunition intended for the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
“We have decided not to allow the shipment of war ammunition from the Port of Piraeus that will continue the genocide of the Palestinian people,” Bekris said, emphasizing that the workers would not stain their hands “with the blood of the Palestinian people”.
Bekris also urged Greece to halt any involvement in the conflict, calling for an immediate cessation of the country’s participation. “We demand that our country immediately stop engaging in the war,” he added.
Israel has continued a brutal offensive on Gaza following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas, on 7 October last year, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.
More than 42,400 people have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 99,100 injured, according to local health authorities.
The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the Gaza Strip amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
Israeli settlers today attacked vehicles belonging to Palestinian residents of Yatma village, south of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank.
According to the Wafa news agency, the settlers attempted to assault passengers, escalating tensions in the area. Although no injuries have been confirmed, the atmosphere remains tense as residents fear further violence from Israeli settlers.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident in Al-Khader, near Bethlehem, an Israeli settler assaulted a local Palestinian family while they were harvesting olives. The settler forced the family to leave their land threatening them with a weapon, warning they would be arrested if they returned.
This olive harvesting season in the West Bank has seen repeated settler attacks, including violence against farmers, restricted land access and damage or theft of olive trees and crops.
According to UN OCHA figures released this week, since the beginning of October 2024, 51 settler-related attacks on Palestinians and their properties have been recorded, including 32 that led to casualties, property damage or both, which took place in 57 communities across the occupied West Bank. The majority of the incidents were related to the olive harvest season whereby Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians or prevented them from gaining access to their lands and damaged trees, stole crops and harvesting tools.
It added that since 1 October 2024, 54 Palestinians were injured within the context of settler attacks against Palestinians, including 44 by Israeli settlers and ten by Israeli occupation forces. Furthermore, about 600 (mainly olive) trees and saplings were burnt, sawed off, had their crops stolen, or otherwise vandalised, affecting Palestinian farmers in about 15 communities across the West Bank.
Hamas today confirmed that its chief, Yahya Sinwar, was killed in fighting in Gaza, a statement issued on the group’s social media channels said.
“Hamas leader Khalil Al-Hayya announces the martyrdom of the great leader, President of the Hamas Political Bureau, the hero of Al-Aqsa Flood, Yahya Sinwar, who sought martyrdom and attained it after clashing with a zionist force alongside other fighters in the #Gaza Strip,” the movement said.
“Hamas will remain until a Palestinian state is established on all historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital,” Al-Hayya continued, adding that Sinwar’s martyrdom, like that of his predecessors including Hamas founders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi, will only “empower the resistance” and “will be a curse on the occupiers”.
Israel’s prisoners, he continued, “will not be returned without a complete ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal from the Strip and the release of Palestinian prisoners from the occupation’s prisons.”
Israel announced yesterday that Sinwar was killed after a firefight with occupation forces in the southern Rafah governorate on Wednesday. It later released drone footage of his last moments showing him fighting against the occupation until the end. He was wearing a keffiyeh to conceal his face and army fatigues.
Sinwar was appointed leader of Hamas’ political bureau in August, a week after the assassination of his predecessor Ismail Haniyeh in a “Zionist raid” while he was on an official visit to Iran.
Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, addressed parliament yesterday and justified Israel’s targeting of civilians in Gaza.
‘Self-defence means not only attacking terrorists but destroying them. When Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools… civilian places lose their protected status because terrorists abuse it.’
This, however, is not true, according to human rights lawyer, Craig Mokhiber. The former senior UN human rights official told MEMO claims that Israel has a right to ‘self-defence’ in Gaza don’t have a standing in international law.
The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, strongly condemned the statements made by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Wednesday, in which she claimed that “Israel” can target civilians in Gaza for “self-defense.”
In a statement, Hamas said the “German government is unashamed of the targeting of civilians and hospitals as long as it provides security for Israel, and this is part of its commitments.”
In honour of Michael Parenti (1933–2026), who passed away on 24 January 2026 at the age of 92. He spent his life naming what power prefers to leave unnamed.
In 1837, Abraham Lincoln remarked: “These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people.”
Today, he would be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.
That dismissal—reflexive, automatic, requiring no engagement with evidence—is not a mark of sophistication. It is a tell. The question worth asking is not whether conspiracies exist (they are a matter of public record and a recognised concept in law) but why acknowledging their existence provokes such reliable hostility. What work does the label “conspiracy theorist” actually do?
The late political scientist Michael Parenti spent decades answering that question. His conclusion was blunt: “’Conspiracy’ refers to something more than just illegal acts. It serves as a dismissive label applied to any acknowledgment of ruling-class power, both its legal and illegal operations.” The term functions not as a descriptor but as a weapon—a thought-terminating cliché that protects the powerful from scrutiny by pathologising those who scrutinise them.
Conspiracy denial, in Parenti’s analysis, is not skepticism. It is the opposite of skepticism. It is credulity toward power dressed up as critical thinking. As he wrote in Dirty Truths: “Just because some people have fantasies of conspiracies does not mean all conspiracies are imaginary.” … continue
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Al Mayadeen | October 16, 2024
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