For the United States, as we have seen on the ground, the goal of its war on the Palestinian people, and all those who stand by them, is not to impose a new “American order,” but rather to continue the state of war, conflicts, and instability…
With the genocidal war continuing for over a year, with no prospect of stopping the daily massacres committed against the people of the Gaza Strip, and with the expansion of the attack on Lebanon in unhindered brutality, it seems that these tragedies have become the “normal state” of our region. It is natural for us to be in a state of panic, and to feel helpless and paralysed, in the face of the brutality of the massacres and destruction, which are unprecedented even in the history of the conflict filled with killing and disasters over more than a hundred years.
Still, in my opinion, one of the reasons for the helplessness, paralysis and anger at ourselves is the difficulties we encounter in analysing the events, and the inability to grasp the context of the current stage of the historical confrontation, due to the abundance of painful details.
Regional and Global War
This is the first time since 1973 that the war between Israel and its Arab surroundings has included several fronts simultaneously. Over the last year, some supporters of Palestine complained that Hezbollah is “satisfied with the role of a support front” in the face of the tragedies in Gaza. Now Israel has taken the initiative to turn Lebanon into another arena for mass bloodshed and a display of its destructive capabilities. Farther, Israeli provocations against Iran accumulate, trying to drag it into deepening and expanding confrontation. On the other hand, the United States, Britain, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand have all volunteered to bomb poor Yemen, as punishment for its solidarity with the Palestinian people.
This is the longest war in the history of the conflict, since the Great Arab Revolt in Palestine, which lasted four years (1936-1939). Although the war began with the largest military blow to the Zionist state by the Palestinian resistance in the attack of October 7, 2023, Hamas has set specific tactical goals for the war, such as blocking the normalization deals that were planned at the expense of ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people, lifting the siege of the Gaza Strip, exchanging prisoners, and preserving the Islamic character of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
As for Israel, as it denies the legitimacy of the Palestinian presence on “its land,” it refuses to even define political goals for its war, and refuses to consider any vision for the day after the war. Hence, it adopted the doctrine of “military resolution” of the conflict by the erasure of any resistance, along with the human environment that supports it. It leads to genocide and the destruction of all the necessities of human life. Now it is applying the same criminal doctrine in its war on Lebanon.
The Palestinians, the Lebanese and other peoples of the region are being bombed by American fighter jets using US-made bombs. The genocide is being carried out by soldiers whose salaries are paid from the US budget, and this superpower provides them with impunity in all international forums. While the United States had presented itself, in the early stages, as a mediator seeking to stop the war, it has finally revealed its true face, and did not even bother to propose the “last chance for a ceasefire in Gaza” that it promised in the media, just as it refuses today any serious talks about a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Who determines the course of the war?
The mainstream media tend to paint a semi-caricature of the political axes that control the course of this confrontation. They talk, time and again, about American attempts to calm the situation or to conclude a ceasefire and a prisoners’ exchange deal; then we hear Ben-Gvir and Smotrich screaming and shouting and threatening to bring down the government; next, Netanyahu’s denies any promises he made previously and announces more violent steps to expand the aggression; finally, the United States provides more weapons, money, and political and military cover for any new adventure. We are required to believe that it is a strange extreme case of the popular expression that says “the tail wags the dog,” or even “the tick on the dog’s tail is what wags it,” or that Ben-Gvir is dictating his policies to poor and weak America.
We might have believed this ridiculous play if it had been about the senile true-believer Zionist Joe Biden. But let us not forget that the United States is a state of institutions. This policy is strongly and stubbornly supported by all branches of its government, its two political parties, and the overwhelming majority in the Senate and House of Representatives. It is promoted and justified by its conservative and liberal newspapers alike, and its army, its transnational corporations, and its European allies are all mobilized to implement it… Is Ben-Gvir really capable of manipulating them all? Isn’t it time to take the US seriously, and consider it capable of identifying its interests, and to judge it by its actions, not by its deceit misleading PR facade?
In all global political forums, the USA and its allies reiterate the need to preserve the “world order,” a system that denies the possibility of a safe place on earth for the Palestinian people. This system, within its most important pillars, guarantees Israel’s “strategic superiority” in the face of any possible alliance between the countries and peoples of the region, and thus the necessity of keeping the peoples of the region in a state of oppression, backwardness, and strife.
In their attempt to glorify and justify the imperialist world order, in contrast to the alternatives on offer, its supporters boast that it is a “value-based system.” The imperialist-Zionist genocidal war against the Palestinian people has exposed the true essence of these “values.” Its holy grail is the superiority of the “white race,” and the cheapness of the blood of oppressed peoples, or even a free license to kill them.
Why does the USA seek to spread wars?
After the end of the cold war, we became accustomed to looking at the USA as the sole superpower that controls the fate of humanity. However, things have evolved, and by economic criteria, China is challenging the USA, and even surpassed it in many ways. According to the latest information, China was responsible for 31.6% of the world’s industrial output, compared to 15.9% for the United States. China is the number one exporter by a large margin, which means that it produces the goods that others want to buy. China is also the leading trading partner for most countries in the world.
But even as the US productive power declines, the US maintains its military supremacy. In 2023, the US spent $916 billion on building its military, compared to $296 billion for China. The US military is still deployed around the world, a remnant of its status as the “world’s policeman.” The US (According to the IBON Foundation report) has bilateral military agreements with 179 countries, 742 military bases in 82 countries and regions, 171,736 military personnel deployed in 177 countries and regions, and 1.2 million soldiers stationed in the US itself. Although it produces few useful products, the US remains by far the world’s largest arms exporter, with more than 40% of the global lethal weapons market.
Even as China is the preferred economic partner for most countries in the world, US’s politicians and analysts boast that it is the preferred and strongest “security partner.” However, most of humanity tends to care about its vital needs, construction, development, health, and education, and do not like to spend huge sums on “security.” Except, of course, when feeling threatened and insecure.
To strengthen its position as the world’s policeman, and as the necessary and most important partner, the United States is working hard to nurture instability, sow discord, and spread wars. Thanks to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the United States has succeeded in eliminating the Europeans’ dreams of independence and making the “great” European powers subservient to it. It is also currently working hard to build a network of military alliances in East and South Asia, in preparation for a possible comprehensive war against China.
For the United States, as we have seen on the ground, the goal of its war on the Palestinian people and all those who stand by them is not to impose a new “American order,” but rather to continue the state of war, conflict, and instability, and to prove the superiority of its weapons and technologies for slaughtering and oppressing. They want to frighten their “friends” so that they will line up to seek its protection and buy its weapons. Its project is not different from the projects of other criminal gangs, except in its world-wide scope and its unlimited capabilities for killing.
(The following report was published on August 4, 2024, in Mondoweiss.)
Since Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza began in October 2023, an all-out attack against Palestinians under Israel’s control elsewhere has been underway as well. In the West Bank, which, together with Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel occupied in 1967, there are daily and nightly raids by the occupation army and the settlers. Hundreds have been killed, and almost 10,000 new political prisoners have been taken with many being tortured. Whole communities have been systematically terrorized and driven from their lands.
In the 78% of Palestine that has been occupied since 1948-49, and where those Palestinians that survived the ethnic cleansing are formally citizens of Israel, all democratic rights were suspended as of October 2023 and a terror campaign started against Palestinians. Hundreds were arrested and tortured for showing the slightest expressions of sympathy with the plight of their sisters and brothers in Gaza. Much of the Israeli Jewish public suddenly became an enthusiastic lynch mob, as Jewish student organizations spied on their Arab counterparts, reporting them to the universities’ leadership, who began expelling them from their studies and turning many of them over to the police for detention and torture. The same scenes repeated themselves in many workplaces, including hospitals where Arabs constitute a large proportion of the medical teams.
Prisoner’s Square on October 18, 2023. The demonstration was dispersed before it even started.
As we reported in Mondoweiss, early attempts to publicly demonstrate against the war were forcefully repressed, including a demonstration that was called for by Herak Haifa on October 18, but was dispersed before it even started. The next day there was an anti-war demonstration in Umm al-Fahm, the only one by 1948 Palestinians in the first months of the war. Two activists who were accused by the police of leading this demonstration were indicted with “supporting terrorist organization” and “inciting terror activities,” spent a long time in prison, and are still awaiting trial under house arrest with electronic leg cuffs, in rented apartments that they had to pay for outside their city. What followed was many months of political paralysis, as people witnessed helplessly the unfolding genocide.
Gradual attempts to resume political protest
On the national level, in 48 Palestine, The High Follow Up Committee, the united leadership of the Palestinian population, and the Israeli Communist Party, both tried consistently to press the police to license anti-war demonstrations. Over several months all requests were refused, and the occupation’s highest court, the so-called Bagatz (Hebrew for “High Court for Justice”), failed to refute the police’s stubborn denial of the right to protest. Almost five months after the start of the war, suddenly the police granted a license for a demonstration in Kafr Kanna (most links are to news items in Arabic, but, even if you don’t read Arabic, you can see pictures there) in the Galilee, for March 2, 2024. People still hardly believed that they would be allowed to demonstrate, and the participants were mostly the cadres of Palestinian political parties and movements.
Land Day demo in Deir Hanna, March 30, 2024
This was followed by another anti-war demonstration on March 23 in Majd al-Kurum, farther to the north. On Land Day, which Palestinians commemorate every year on March 30, since their historic general strike in 1976, the central demonstration and mass event were held in Deir Hanna, in the center of the Galilee. It was the first real mass Palestinian protest in 48 since October. Families were participating with their kids, buying Palestinian flags for them. The blocks of youth militants were chanting for freedom and liberation. For a few hours you could imagine that the terror regime was suspended. The same atmosphere continued on a wider scale in “The March of Return,” on May 14. In the last 25 years, the march of return became the central yearly political event in 48 Palestine. It is held on the day that Israel celebrates its “independence” (according to the Jewish calendar), which the Palestinians define as their Nakba.
After claiming for months that they could not allow Palestinian demonstrations as they “do not have enough forces to keep public order,” the Israeli police rediscovered the best way to prevent any disturbances in Palestinian demonstrations: their complete absence from the area.
Meanwhile in Haifa
As the war dragged on, there were several attempts to organize protests.
Women in Black vigil is held on the Baha’i circle every Friday for decades. On October it was dispersed by the police.
At the beginning of the war, as the police tried to prevent any protest, they even dispersed a “Women in Black” vigil, a quiet weekly vigil by mostly elder Jewish women, that is already held for decades every Friday on the Baha’i Circle. During the next weeks, they were afraid to raise any banners that might provoke a violent response from the police or from the Zionist public. After holding their ground, “Women in Black” gradually re-introduced slogans against the killing in Gaza and against the occupation.
A coalition of “peace movements,” led by Hadash (Hebrew acronym for “The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality,” led by the Israeli Communist Party), succeeded, after a long effort, to receive a license for an anti-war demonstration in Haifa. The conditions for the demonstration were harsh: It was limited to 700 people, not much for a country-wide event, and it was set at mid-day Saturday, January 20, at Paris Square, a deserted area in downtown Haifa. The whole event was “tilted” in a futile attempt to build Jewish public opinion against the war, alienating the limited Arab Palestinian audience. One of the speakers was representing mothers of Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza who called for the war to end. The police, after being forced by the “High Court” to license the event, expressed their frustration by intruding between the protesters and confiscating banners that they did not like. Mostly they tried to hunt down any banner that mentioned the word “genocide.” One demonstrator was detained.
Since a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in 2011, the most famous center of Palestinian protest in Haifa has been in the middle of the tourist area of The German Colony, in a place that was named by the local activists, and is now known to everyone as “Prisoner’s Square.” The absence of Palestinian protest was a distressing reality for many, and a group of local Palestinian feminists tried to change that by gathering quietly in Prisoner’s Square. When the police would come, they simply dispersed without resistance.
Smol Haifa (Haifa Left) demonstration in Emil Habibi Circle – March 14, 2024
A local Hebrew WhatsApp group, “Smol Haifa” (Hebrew for “Haifa Left”), used to be a technical platform for spreading different invitations to activities, including Palestinian protests. With the absence of a Palestinian initiative, a small group of activists, mostly of Jewish origin, used this and other chat groups to organize. It was important for us to show that we oppose the massacre in Gaza not from the point of view of “what is good for Israel” but from a principled, humanitarian position. The first two small anti-war pickets, in November and December, were quickly dispersed with some of the participants detained for a few hours.
Smol Haifa invitation to demonstration in Hebrew and Arabic
As this group continued to call for anti-war demonstrations, the police attitude gradually “softened.” On March 14, we stood, a few dozen of us, in Emil Habibi Circle, at the entrance of Wadi Nisnas, the center of Arab Haifa. It was the first clearly anti-war demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza that was not dispersed. Still, the police surrounded us provocatively, forcibly confiscated banners, this time concentrating on the word “murder,” and detained one demonstrator. More similar demonstrations followed on March 27, April 7, April 18, May 2, and May 19. Gradually the police stopped confiscating banners and harassing the demonstrators. Only the occasional raising of the Palestinian flag still inevitably caused police attacks and detentions, just like in the “democratic” era before the war. The question that was on everybody’s mind was what would happen when the Palestinian demonstrations were back?
Palestinian demonstrations back in Haifa
The first Palestinian call for a demonstration in Haifa in solidarity with the people of Gaza (after the October 18th demo) came on Monday, May 27. It read:
Invitation by “Herakat al-Dakhel al-Falestini” to the May 27 demo in Prisoner’s Square
“Gaza is being annihilated and the blood and destruction are everywhere. We will not be quiet anymore!! We invite you, the free people of our nation, to take part in the protest against the genocide, the ethnic cleansing and the starvation, all of them are still continuing against our families in the Gaza Strip, the last of it in the massacre in the tents in Rafah.”
The invitation was signed by “Herakat al-Dakhel al-Falestini” – the movements in the Palestinian interior (meaning 1948 Palestine).
As the invitation was published in social media, right-wing Israeli media was quick to report it, claiming that the police, ho almighty god, allowed the Palestinians to demonstrate in support of Hamas in Haifa. Different fascist agitators called for a counter-demonstration to prevent the Palestinian protest. The police hurried to issue a denial and promised that no Palestinian protest would take place. It promised in advance to use blatant force to oppress any such attempt.
At the designated time some 250 Palestinian demonstrators gathered in Prisoner’s Square – much more than was expected according to local standards. On the other side of the road, there was a small crowd waving the Israeli flag, but they were dwarfed by the Palestinian mobilization. The police were clearly present all along the German Colony, but initially, they stood in the middle of the street between the two camps.
Demonstrators gathering in Prisoner’s Square on May 27. Ironically, the municipality named the square after the Armenian Genocide.
After a few minutes, when we were already raising banners and shouting slogans, they came and quickly snatched three of us from the first line of the demonstrators. I happened to be one of these first three detainees. We were held in the fortified back seat of a police car parked just in front of the demonstration. It took almost an hour until the police commander declared that the demonstration was illegal, demanded that it disperse, and soon ordered his troops to attack. Some of our protesters thought it was a sign of lenience, allowing the demonstration to take place for almost an hour. While sitting handcuffed in the back of the police car we could hear the local commander shouting orders in their internal communication system, though we had a different “inside” picture. Apparently, the police were not prepared for the relatively high number of demonstrators and felt that his forces were not enough to attack all along the front. He was calling desperately for reinforcements from nearby towns and for special anti-riot squads. As most of the expected reinforcements arrived, he gave the order to attack. Mounted officers charged at the crowd, inspiring panic. Many demonstrators were beaten and, by the end of the day, there were nine of us detained.
The early “low profile” detention of the first three of us, just as the demonstration began and without declaring the demonstration illegal, seemed to be the commander’s “plan B.” In case the demonstration will disperse before he would have the forces to attack it, he could at least report to his superiors and to the Israeli press that he detained “some prominent inciters.”
Between Prisoner’s Square and Bassel al-Araj Junction
After Bassel al-Araj, the main ideologue of the Palestinian youth resistance, was killed by the occupation army in 2017, Herak Haifa decided to name a major junction in the German Colony after him. It is about a hundred meters up the mountain from Prisoner’s Square. (Bassel’s real surname is al-A’araj, but to make life easier to English speakers the heavy “’a”, the Arabic “ع”, is ignored.)
Just three days after the first demonstration, there was another call for a Palestinian demonstration in Prisoner’s Square in solidarity with Gaza, for Thursday, May 30. This time the police prepared large forces in advance and occupied Prisoner’s Square long before the demonstrators even started to arrive. We gathered in Bassel al-Araj junction instead, gaining some time to raise banners and shout slogans before the police organized to attack.
The demonstration on Bassel al-Araj junction was soon attacked by mounted police. May 30, 2024. Photo by Rashad Omari.
The geography of Bassel al-Araj junction allowed the demonstrators to disperse in different directions, and the attacking forces lost their focus. Some demonstrators regrouped in the adjacent streets, so that instead of standing and shouting at the side of the junction they were marching in the middle of the street, and even raising the Palestinian flag. The police were chasing demonstrators, beating them, and detaining violently some. The chase and regrouping around the neighborhood continued for two hours. At the end of it, some of the demonstrators even succeeded regrouping in the Bassel junction again, singing “Mawteni” (“My Homeland”) and finishing the demonstration in an orderly way.
The Electronic Intifada published a triumphant report by Mati Yanikov about these two first Haifa Palestinian demonstrations under the title “Haifa protests crack the wall of fear.” And here are some short videos I compiled presenting different stages in the second demonstration.
After these experiences, as it was clear that the police were ready to do whatever it took to prevent us from demonstrating, the next invitation for a demonstration, again signed by “Herakat al-Dakhel al-Falestini,” called to gather on Tuesday, June 4, at 19:30. It promised to announce the exact location an hour and a half before the designated time. As promised, an updated invitation was published on time calling for the demonstration at the Bassel al-Araj junction. And, at 19:30, as the police were gathering in the junction, the demonstrators gathered in Prisoner’s Square.
The unannounced last-minute shift gave us the opportunity to demonstrate for about half an hour before the police readied itself to disperse us. When the attack was imminent, the organizers decided to avoid confrontation and ordered the protesters to disperse. When we were already walking away without banners or slogans, the police commander issued his orders for us to disperse. This was the only one of six Palestinian demonstrations in the last two months that ended without anybody being detained.
June 4, Prisoner’s Square. Photo by Rashad Omari.
The next invitation called for a demonstration on Saturday, June 8, in Prisoners Square. As the police were waiting there, we gathered in Bassel Junction, but now the police were determined not to miss the opportunity to disperse us violently. As if it was not a new event but the missing end of the previous half-demonstration, within less than five minutes mounted police charged at the protesters, and “detectives” in civil dress started hunting for demonstrations, throwing them on the ground, violently handcuffing them, dragging them, and twisting their limbs all the way to the police cars. Even a (female) journalist from a mainstream media outlet was blatantly beaten as she tried to picture the attack on a wretched (female) demonstrator.
This time the attackers continued to follow and harass any suspected demonstrators (we were not as many as in previous encounters) along the adjacent streets, preventing us from any possibility of regrouping. An hour later, when five of us were quietly sitting in a nearby park, waiting to see what was going on, we were almost run over by the heavy horses of mounted police that were still looking for people to disperse.
Still trying
For some time, there were no new calls from the Palestinian Herakat for demonstrations in Haifa. During this time protests were taking place repeatedly in many other towns in the Galilee and the Triangle, most of them uninterrupted. Meanwhile, the “Haifa Left” activists called for another demonstration in Emil Habibi Circle in Wadi Nisnas on Thursday, June 27. It was not clear to us whether, after dispersing the Palestinian protest, the Haifa police would allow this demonstration to really take place.
Apparently, it was not clear to the Haifa police either. One difference is that the “Haifa Left” demonstrations are happening under the radar of the fascists, and the determination of the Haifa police to prevent Palestinian demonstrations stems to some extent from their servitude to fascist Zionist public opinion. Two dozen protesters gathered in Emil Habibi Circle and were not initially prevented from demonstrating. Only after about half an hour, a random Zionist passed by and decided to complain to the police that was standing nearby. The police duly jumped into action, declared the small demonstration illegal, and detained three of the protesters.
The prevalence of local (Arab) criminal gangs, that kill Arab citizens with impunity, is another issue that is deviling the 48 Palestinian society. After a spate of back-to-back grueling execution-like killings, “Herakat al-Dakhel” decided to connect the local “social” menace with the war in Gaza, and called for another demonstration in Prisoner’s Square on Thursday, July 4. The invitation declared: “Against the war, against criminality. Our blood is spilled in Gaza, the West Bank, and the interior. The weapon of criminality is one!”
We were just a few dozen gathering in Prisoner’s Square that day. Even as we were gathering quietly without even carrying banners, the police declared loudly that this was an illegal demonstration and that we would be dispersed. A small group of noisy fascists on the other side of the street went on with cursing and threatening us without interruption. Just standing there for twenty minutes, waiting for more people to join, felt like a small achievement. When we finally raised the banners and started chanting the police immediately attacked, detaining violently five of us.
The latest call for demonstration so far came last Thursday, July 25, under the title “We Continue.” With the experience of not being able to stand our ground in front of police attacks, even fewer people came this time. In Prisoner’s Square itself, half of those present apparently were threatening-looking police detectives in plainclothes. Anybody who is not a battle-hardened demonstrator and thought about joining the protest would naturally distance himself from their view.
After the banner “Stop the Genocide” was snatched by the police, we were left only with pictures of wounded children. Prisoner’s Square, July 25, 2024. Photo by Arab 48.
As it happened, only three of us held any signs of protest: two pictures of wounded children in Gaza and a small banner in English demanding “Stop the Genocide.” All the others stood quietly by to see what would happen. Very early a detective in civil declared that this was an illegal demonstration and demanded that we disperse. We did not. Then the (newly appointed) uniformed commander of the Haifa police ordered his heroes to snatch the banner against the genocide. They attacked the carrier of the banner and tore it, but did not detain anybody. We stayed standing with the pictures of the wounded children, surrounded by policemen, while the fascists on the other side of the street loudly demanded our demise.
I thought that if we just stood there for an hour, holding those pictures that so much annoyed the police and the fascists, and disperse at our own initiative without any detentions, it might be considered a sort of small victory in this asymmetric warfare. Apparently, the police felt the same. When the time was over, and we were already dispersing, they attacked a car in which three of the demonstrators were on their way home. They violently dragged out the two guys who were in the back of the car, threw them forcefully to the ground, handcuffed them, and detained them. Then they fined the driver for playing loud music in Arabic. Several more demonstrators who protested the violence or tried to film it were beaten and thrown to the ground. Two of them were also arrested, claiming that they disrupted police at carrying their duties. The girl who initially carried the “Stop the Genocide” banner was especially badly beaten.
The nights and days after
As I described above, detentions are a regular part of our protests against the genocide in Gaza. You might wonder what happens with all the activists who are detained. In fact, the demonstrations do not really end with their dispersal and the detentions. If anybody is detained, we continue to spend the evening in front of the police station. Human rights lawyers, most of them from Adalah, but also from Kaza and private volunteers, come to give legal advice to the detainees. In most cases the detainees, or most of them, are released on the same night. Sometimes we wait for them to be released till one or two o’clock after midnight.
Families, friends and activists gather in front of the police headquarter to wait for the release of the detainees from the demonstrations.
If somebody is badly beaten, it is a common police practice to accuse them of assaulting police officers. Then we start a frantic search for videos that prove who initiated the violence. According to the law, a police officer can order a detainee to be held in custody over the night. The next day, the police may request remand in the court. In most cases, the judges in Haifa would release the demonstrators without conditions or with a five-day house arrest. They would typically say that there are justified suspicions of illegal behavior, but that the suspicions are at a low level and do not deserve prolonged detention. They would never respond to our lawyers’ persistent claims that the police did not have legal authority to disperse the demonstration in the first place, and that the detention was illegal.
Gatherings outside the police headquarters and in the court hearings are important political activities in themselves. They allow the activists to forge connections of solidarity and trust with the friends and family of their detained comrades.
Luckily, nobody spent more than a few days in detention during the current wave of demonstrations in Haifa, and no legal action has been taken against demonstrators following their detentions.
The One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC) stands in solidarity with you, the courageous and principled students and faculty at dozens of universities throughout the United States, demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, divestment of your universities from companies profiting from Israeli wars on the Palestinians, and for Palestinian national rights.
We recognize the genuine jeopardy to which you are subject due to your protests over the ongoing genocide in Gaza and, more broadly, the need to liberate Palestinians from the yoke of Israeli colonization, apartheid, violent repression, and displacement. As students, you are vulnerable to smear attacks and punitive actions taken by the university authorities at the most critical time in your lives, when you are about to embark on your professional life and futures. As faculty, you are putting your careers on the line. We are all aware of the dozens of lecturers, mainly but not solely of Palestinian origin, who have lost their jobs for speaking out for Palestinian rights or teaching and writing critically about the causes of Palestinian suffering.
Zionism is not simply a slogan or an accusation. It is a self-proclaimed project by nationalist Jews to dispossess the Palestinian people from their land and replace them with Jews, to transform an Arab country into a Jewish one. Palestinian resistance to their violent displacement is not anti-Jewish; Jews lived peacefully in Palestine and the wider Arab world for millennia. It is anti-colonial. Palestinians are fighting their colonial oppressors, who in this case happen to be Jews, just as all colonized and oppressed peoples have fought against their oppressors, whoever they may be. Jews could have lived in Palestine, their Land of Israel, peacefully and in security, had they come to integrate into Palestinian society rather than to destroy it. The genocide that is happening before our eyes in Gaza, together with the violent campaign of ethnic cleansing now taking place in the West Bank, are only the latest and most visible manifestations of a prolonged process of genocide against the Palestinian people that must be halted. Palestinian rights must be restored in a process that sees the return of the refugees and all exiled Palestinians.
The ODSC also salutes all those from other communities that have come out in support Palestinian rights. You recognize, as we do, that the Palestinian struggle is only one front in a global struggle for justice, economic and social equality, freedom from racism and gender inequities. As Palestinians and anti-colonial Israeli Jews, we stand with you as comrades in struggle. Know that you are making history and building a more just world. Fighting for Palestinian rights is fighting for everyone’s rights!
Ever since the 1948 Nakba, the Palestinian people are a captive nation. They did not only lose their homes, lands, and dreams of freedom, but are subject to constant restrictions on their daily lives and endless humiliations and torture at the hands of the racist Israeli Apartheid state. Since 1967 Israel expanded its occupation and settler colonialism to the whole of Palestine, from the river to the sea, bringing humiliation and torture to the life of millions more Palestinians. Almost every Palestinian man, and many thousands of women, spent time in Israeli prisons, for any or no reason. Imprisonment became central part of the Palestinian experience. No wonder that the fate of the Palestinian prisoners is at the heart of the painful and bloody conflict.
Hamas’ attack on Israeli army bases and settlements around the Gaza strip, and Israel’s genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza, provide another stark demonstration of the centrality of the prisoners’ issue. Hamas never thought that their attack could defeat Israel militarily, but they clearly hoped to relieve the siege of Gaza, the big “open air prison” where over two million Palestinians are trapped. Moreover, as they concentrated their effort on capturing as many Israeli hostages as possible, they clearly aimed at what is the biggest prize that might be available for Palestinians at this stage of a completely asymmetric confrontation – the release of thousands of prisoners from Israeli prisons.
On the other side, the Israeli state also proved again that it prioritizes its vengeance against the Palestinian prisoners even over the lives of its own citizens. Throughout the bloody events of October 7, and later in its bombing and invasion of Gaza, the Israeli army implemented its “Hannibal Doctrine,” killing Israeli soldiers and civilians to avoid the need for massive prisoner’s exchange.
Gazans in Israeli forced disappearance face torture and death
Some of the first victims of Israel’s indiscriminate vengeance against the people of Gaza were thousands of Gazan workers who had permits to work “in Israel”, following strict screening by Israel’s Shabak (the GSS – General Security Service). Since crossing the siege walls was tough, they used to stay out of the strip for weeks or months. On October 7, all their work permits were abruptly annulled, and the army and police started a manhunt, badly beating anyone who was caught. Thousands of workers were thrown into provisional detention centers, without any legal status or the very rudimentary rights that other detainees might have. In these over-crowded pens, they were systematically tortured for no reason at all, and at least two of them died as a result. After months of suffering, those hapless workers were gradually thrown back into the killing grounds in Gaza.
Today, April 17, is Palestinian POW’s Day, and the situation has never been more dire. Since Israeli forces invaded Gaza, in addition to the mass indiscriminate killing of civilians, they have also implemented a policy of mass detention. In many areas that the army invaded, the entire male population was ordered at gunpoint to strip and carried away, sometimes on open trucks, while Israeli journalists and soldiers were taking photos and publishing them to celebrate their purported “victory” and Palestinian humiliation. After this public exposure, Palestinian abductees were forcefully disappeared from the public eye for an unlimited period, without any legal process.
After their capture, Gazan detainees are held in military bases, the most famous of them being “Sde Teiman.” The abducted are denied any communication with the outside world, and the army does not even disclose the names of the people it is holding. Gradually, as some of the abductees were cleared of any suspicion and thrown back to Gaza, evidence began to appear about the harsh conditions and systematic abuse and torture in these camps. The abuse has many different faces: Detainees are chained by the wrists and ankles all the time; they are blindfolded and held for entire days in stress positions. Basic provisions like food and hygiene are systematically prevented. Soldiers in the camps are encouraged to satisfy their sadistic fantasies towards the helpless detainees. And, of course, there are torturous interrogations by different army and other “security services.”
According to Khaled a-Nabris, a resident of Khan Yunis, “When they depopulated the city, we left on the road close to the sea, and when we reached the Israeli army checkpoint, they abducted me along with other people and took us to the corrals, where they tortured us with beatings and also let us sleep with wet blankets and did not let us drink… There are young boys who have reached severe states of anxiety from so much torture, and they send dogs to attack them when they are asleep”.
A special place in this multi-facetted hell is kept to the “infirmary” department at Sde Teiman. It was established after regular Israeli hospitals refused to treat wounded or sick Palestinian abductees. Badly sick or wounded prisoners are held chained from all directions and blindfolded. The medical treatment is rudimentary and not by proper specialists. Conditions there are so shocking that even one of the doctors wrote to the Health Ministry to complain. . He mentioned that many detainees lost hands or feet as a result of wounds caused by excessive chaining. Apparently, the Israeli authorities are aware that this butchery is a war crime, so they have ordered that the names of the staff and the patients should not appear in any written report.
On March 7, Haaretz reported that 27 Gazan detainees died in the custody of the Israeli military. Currently, the number appears closer to 40.
After the abductees goes through the stage of military hell, some of them are transferred to the occupation’s “civilian” prison authority, under the authority of the thuggish ultra-right “state security minister” Ben Gvir. For that purpose, the Knesset enacted a special law against “illegal combatant,” that allows detention without trial for unlimited period. On December 2023 this draconian law was amended to make it even more inhumane, depriving the detainees of even the most rudimentary rights. According to an investigation by Al Mezan, a Human Rights organization based in Gaza, at least 1650 Palestinians from Gaza are held under this law.
Israeli onslaught on Palestinians everywhere
While Gaza is the main stage of the ongoing Israeli genocidal onslaught, it is not restricted to it. Since October, the occupation army and Jewish settlers hold daily terror campaigns against the Palestinian population throughout the West Bank. These campaigns aim not only to prevent any expression of solidarity with the suffering of the people in Gaza or resistance to the occupation, but also to drive whole Palestinian communities from their land in order to build new illegal Jewish settlements in their place. As part of these terror campaigns, there is no night without the occupation army, Shabak and police attacking Palestinian neighborhoods, shooting whoever stand in their way, invading homes and waking families in the middle of the night, and arresting dozens of people.
On March 22, Al-Jazeera reported that more than 7350 Palestinians were already arrested in the West Bank since October. Ad-Dameer, a Human Rights organization from Ramallah, specializing in defense of Palestinian political prisoners, publish daily statistics about these prisoners. As of today, April 16, it reports 9500 prisoners, not including unknown thousands of Gazan detainees. Ad-Dameer reports an unprecedented number of administrative detainees, 3660 of them, more than two hundred children and eighty women.
Even less reported are political detentions from the Palestinian community that is under Israeli occupation since 1948. Since October, hundreds of what is called “48 Palestinians,” from all walks of life, were detained, most of them for minor expressions on social media that Israel regarded as “incitement”. Many of them are still in prison, and are being sentenced. On this “internal front,” Israel’s “Democracy” is proud of itself for crashing any expression of protest against its genocide in Gaza.
When I go to the Haifa court to cover political detentions, I inevitably encounter the daily detentions of West Bank workers that cross the green line in search for work to bring bread for their families. On October all work permits were abolished, and to this day there is almost no way to get one. More than seven thousand workers were detained just for the crime of working without permit, and they are not even included in the count of political prisoners. As I reported on November, the occupation courts and prosecution agreed on a minimum punishment of two months behind bars for these workers.
Behind all this harsh statistic, lies a hell of reality, which devastated the lives of many thousands of Palestinians. Since the Israeli state apparatus and general public devoted themselves to “revenge” and threw away all legal and cultural prohibitions on violent cruelty, the whole prison system was converted from “law enforcement” (as distorted and racist as its laws have always been) to a mode of operation of all-out lynch mob. Soldiers, prison guards, prosecutors and judges, all work in tandem to smash the human dignity of their Palestinian victims. It has nothing to do with “harsh interrogation” and all to do with sadistic treatment to force “Jewish supremacy” by humiliating and degrading your victims. I heard many Palestinians that spent years in jail before and months in prison during the last half-year saying that a month now is much harder to bear than a year before.
Israel, as a colonialist project, is based on its ability to hold most of the population of Palestine without basic human rights for eternity. The fact that they resort to the most extreme levels of violence proves that this distorted inhumane system is unsustainable.
The daily atrocities against the Palestinian people in Gaza are a harsh test for humanity. Unlike the war between Russia and Ukraine, what happens in Gaza is not even a war, as it is not waged between two armies. The death and suffering of civilians is not “collateral damage” but the main goal of the mighty Israeli war machine, massively armed and politically-supported by all the Western powers headed by the United States. More than two million people in Gaza are imprisoned in a small concentration camp, most of them stuck there since they were uprooted by the 1948 Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of 80% of Palestine. They were already isolated from the world for decades, deprived of the basic necessities for building normal lives, and now they are systematically bombed and starved. There is no force that can limit the Israeli genocide and war crimes, other than what “the world can accept,” without actively pressing for an end to the ongoing massacres. Till now, all believers in humanity are shocked to discover how no state-actor (except for the half-state Houthis in Yemen) applies any real pressure toward ending this nightmare.
The cannons roar and the muses remain silent. In our case, they are violently silenced. Writing from Haifa, where the Zionist courts are sending people daily to long periods of detention for mild political expressions, I must ask myself what can one write when one cannot write the truth? A snippet of truth can bring down upon you a “disproportionate response,” as both the Israeli authorities and the Zionist public (united in their pursuit for an impossible victory) like to describe their revenge these days.
Since reality in Palestine is too terrible to look at directly, I will try to distance my gaze to see the global historical context.
Gunboat Diplomacy
The suffering of many is not at all comforting, but it is worth remembering that “the West”— the colonialist and imperialist powers— ruled the world through their military advantage until recently. However, what is somewhat comforting, and may inspire hope, is knowing that this system of dominance has already become obsolete. The colonizers were forced to give up direct military control and retreat from most Third World countries. The overwhelming support of the imperialist countries (U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) for Israel, its apartheid regime, and its genocidal campaign against Gaza’s residents, mainly stems from nostalgia for their days of glory as reflected in Wild West movies.
Gunboat Diplomacy in the nineteenth century
The colonial-imperialist world order was based on Europe’s technological advantage derived from the Industrial Revolution. This advantage allowed European countries, for hundreds of years, to subjugate, plunder, and oppress other peoples around the world, while using the fruits of looting and exploitation to develop themselves, thus further widening economic and technological gaps. One symbol of this military-technological advantage was the “gunboat diplomacy,” which Britain used extensively in the nineteenth century. The battleships that the U.S. sent to our region in October are a modern incarnation of the British fleet that spread death and fear to impose its hegemony worldwide.
In the twentieth century, Germany attempted to implement methods that were widely employed by Europe around the world against peoples within Europe itself, causing unprecedented moral shockwaves. The two World Wars weakened the imperialist powers and eased the way for the development of struggles for liberation among oppressed peoples. The bloody struggle between European powers also left the U.S. as the dominant imperialist power.
Rearguard Wars
Since World War II, the United States, with the support of other imperialist powers, has waged wars to deprive 90% of humanity from real independence and economic development. They aim to keep all Third World countries subject to a global “neo-colonialist” and “neo-liberal” exploitative regime, though without direct military occupation. We may have forgotten the Korean War, but everyone remembers Vietnam, in which the U.S. swore to return the country to the Stone Age in order to “save it from the red danger.” Today, Vietnam, led by the same Communist Party that won the struggle against U.S. occupation, is one of Asia’s economic miracles and is being courted by the U.S. as a counterweight against China.
A more recent example can be found in the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, launched under the promising name “Operation Enduring Freedom.” In between, there were dozens of U.S. military interventions; assassinations of leaders, elected or not, who were unwilling to bend their country’s interests to those of the U.S.; forcing murderous dictatorships upon many countries (for example: Congo 1960, Chile 1973, Argentina 1976, Greece 1967, Indonesia 1965, and many more), as well as systematic genocide such as in Guatemala between 1981 and 1983.
The U.S. is dedicating enormous resources and efforts to build its military superiority and to attempt to enforce an imperialist “world order” through forceful means. Meanwhile, it lags in the race for the most important source of power— economics. Until a few years ago, economists agreed that the best measure for a country’s production capacity was its GDP measured according to purchasing power parity (PPP). According to this measure, the Chinese economy surpassed that of the U.S. about a decade ago. Since then, mainstream economists, striving to preserve the pretense of imperialist omnipotence, simply changed their measurement methods, considering GDP almost exclusively based on nominal values (according to currencies’ exchange rates). According to this measure, the high inflation in the U.S. is presented as fast economic development, while the deflation in China, due to productive over-capacity, is presented as economic retreat.
Nurturing Conflicts to Preserve Domination
The dangers to world peace due to the conflict between a declining hegemonic power and a rising power, eager to assert its presence on the world stage, is obvious and much has been written about it. There are some factors that make the current transition between U.S. hegemony and the coming “Asian Century” even more dangerous. It is the first time in modern history that the coming superpowers are not competing imperialist powers but coming from the exploited third world, and the Western response is doused with racism and contempt. Second, as capitalism became the official religion of the Western culture, China’s Communist regime is perceived as profoundly illegitimate.
Relying on sophisticated arms and massive destructive capabilities to preserve its hegemonic position in the world, the U.S. tries to shift the competition to where it has the advantage by initiating or nurturing armed conflicts.
The most prominent example recently was the war in Ukraine. By reviving Cold War mentalities, the U.S. managed to restore and tighten its dominance over all of Europe through “the struggle against Russian aggression.” However, destructive militarization of international relations is not limited to one or two fronts; it is present almost everywhere: attempts at forming military alliances against China in East and Southeast Asia, “the war on terror” in Africa and Western Asia, “the war on drugs” in Latin America. The point everywhere is that there should be justification for exerting destructive force as the main tool of “preserving order.” People and institutions in the countries “on the receiving end,” instead of working towards economic and social development, are subjected to the dominant power and forced to serve its interests.
In the Middle East specifically, the U.S. strives to maintain and foster two major conflicts: the Israeli-Arab conflict, which allows it to constantly exert pressure on Arab countries, and the Sunni-Shia conflict within Islam. Following the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the U.S. encouraged Iraq to attack Iran, which led to an eight-year-long war from 1980 to 1988. The result was over a million soldiers killed, along with hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, as well as extensive destruction inflicted upon both countries. During this war, the U.S. provided weapons to Iraq, including mustard gas that was used against soldiers and civilians. Additionally, the U.S. and Israel ensured the supply of weapons to Iran, in order to escalate the bloodshed in both nations.
The U.S. continues to cultivate fear of “the Iranian threat” to preserve its hegemony over the Arab world. The main goal of this fearmongering is to preserve U.S. geopolitical control over the Arabian Peninsula’s kingdoms and emirates as “client states” in need of protection. In return for this “protection,” hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues are paid to U.S. arms producers or stream into the U.S. financial system. This funds the endless deficit of the U.S. government instead of being invested in social and economic development in the region.
In a rare positive development in our region, it seems that the Sunni-Shia conflict has begun to go out of fashion. In Spring 2023, through Chinese mediation, Iran and Saudi Arabia announced an end to their conflict, and renewal of diplomatic relations. The thawing of relations between the two regional powers came in tandem with the failure of the ten-year-long war, led by a coalition headed by Saudi Arabia and supported by the U.S., against the Yemeni people, a war. This severely harmed the civilian population, and caused the U.N. to define the situation in Yemen (before the war on Gaza) as the most severe contemporary humanitarian disaster.
Israel’s Role in the U.S. Regional Hegemonic System
This attempt to clarify the context and background of the current moment through a comprehensive view of regional and global reality does not arise solely from the desire to escape the noise of explosions, children’s screams, and the smell of death. “The Conflict” has never been a local matter between Zionist settlers and the native Palestinian population. Britain, followed by the United States and Germany, did not invest their best money in nurturing Zionist settlements, and later in building the State of Israel, with the sole aim of suppressing and exploiting a small Arab public, in a remote corner, that had never threatened their rule. Their goal was, and still is, to use Israel as a spearhead for enforcing imperialist hegemony in the Middle East as a whole— a resource-rich region with central geopolitical importance between Europe, Asia, and Africa. From their perspective, Palestinians have always been merely “collateral damage.” They are residents who happened to be on land designated for establishing an imperialist military base; they are an unnecessary disturbance that needs to be eliminated or suppressed to oblivion within the framework of this grand plan.
There were days when things were different. In its heyday, the imperialist-Zionist alliance achieved wonders. Israel struck Arab countries, forcing them to turn to its patron, begging that it would restrain its aggressive hit man in exchange for their submission to strategic dictates. Thus, Israel’s victory in the 1967 war served as a turning point for the geopolitical balance of the entire region. At that time the U.S., with foreign policy designed by Kissinger, knew how to reap political fruits from Israel’s military victory, even if it required imposing military pressure on Israel during the 1973 war or, subsequently, forcing territorial concessions on Israel in the Camp David Accords. In return, the U.S. succeeded in extracting Egypt from “the socialist bloc” and “the Non-aligned Movement,” and converting it into a U.S. neo-colony.
Similarly, the Left-wing of the Ba’ath Party, which controlled Syria in the 1960s, was removed from power. During the “Black September” of 1970, when Palestinians were massacred in the tens of thousands in Jordan, the Syrian army tried to intervene to defend them. Hafez al-Assad, former commander of the air force and Syria’s then Defence Minister, prevented aerial support to the army. He soon took advantage of the army’s defeat, and of his status as a “responsible leader” in face of the Israeli threats, to lead a right-wing military coup.
The regime led by the al-Assad family was more willing to cooperate with the U.S.. For example, in 1976, the invading Syrian army crushed the revolution in Lebanon (remember the Tel al-Za’atar massacre). In 1991, Syria joined the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq during the First Gulf War. After providing those services, Syria sought reward in the form of a peace agreement with Israel that would include returning all Syrian territories occupied by Israel in 1967. It discovered that Israel was not willing to pay this price. In repeated rounds of negotiations, it became clear that, after the threat from the Soviet Union was removed, the U.S. did not see any need to pressure Israel into concessions.
The Tail Wags The Dog
Since then, the magical mechanism that used Israeli power as leverage to enforce U.S. dictates on people in the region has begun to break down. This was evident during Israel’s first major war on Lebanon, which lasted from “Operation Peace for Galilee” in 1982, until Israel’s unconditional withdrawal in 2000, under pressure from the resistance. Although Israel initially managed to occupy large swaths of Lebanon, including its capital Beirut, it failed to impose its political will. The difference was that in Egypt and Syria, Israel fought against institutionalized state apparatuses, which were ready to turn their political skin inside out to preserve their privileged positions. In Lebanon, the state’s apparatus was weak even before Israel’s invasion. The occupation led to the emergence of a popular resistance movement. Like they say, the same fire that melts the butter, hardens the egg. After eighteen years of occupation and war, Israel had to withdraw its forces and Hezbollah, the main party that fought against the occupation, became the central force within Lebanon.
The effectiveness of Israel as a tool for hegemony has continued to deteriorate in a broader regional context. It was already noticeable in the first Gulf War in 1991, when the U.S. attacked Iraq to regain control of Kuwait’s oil fields. Not only was Israel not invited to participate in the U.S.-led coalition, but when Iraq attacked Israel with missiles in a desperate attempt to mobilize support in Arab public opinion, Israel was required not to respond, so as not to embarrass the coalition. The strategic asset was already beginning to turn into a burden.
In the second Iraq war, which began in 2003 and has not yet ended, things were reversed completely. Instead of Israel’s fighting so that the U.S. could reap the fruits of victory, the U.S. was forced to send its own troops to battle in a war justified by (false) claims that Iraqi weapons posed a threat to Israel. It is worth remembering that the U.S. was not an “innocent victim,” solely driven by its desire to protect Israel, but was also enticed by its greed for Iraqi oil. The price paid by the U.S. for this adventure was enormous, although it pales in comparison to the damage and suffering inflicted on Iraqi civilians. The trillion plus dollars that the U.S. invested in this war were sorely missed during the crises that hit its economy in 2007. The main political outcome of this war was that it pushed Iraq into Iran’s sphere of influence.
Why Can’t This War Be Stopped?
The distorted dynamics between Israel and the United States, which now make it so difficult to stop the carnage in Gaza, were already evident during Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006. Instead of playing the “responsible adult” that restrained the “wild” Israeli war machine, the U.S. became a cheerleader for widening the aggression.
The Second Israeli-Lebanese War was triggered by a cross-border raid by Hezbollah on July 12, 2006, aiming to release Lebanese POWs from Israeli prisons, in which it captured two Israeli soldiers. The Israeli PM at the time, Ehud Olmert, consulted the army about the possible response, and the macho army chief, Dan Halutz, proposed a full-scale war. Apparently, General Halutz was surprised to learn that Olmert was taking him seriously. When his irresponsibly hawkish suggestions were adopted by the government, he first hurried to instruct his banker to sell his entire Israeli stock portfolio, then went on to give the orders to the army to bomb and shell Lebanon.
This game of chicken, with everyone trying to appear more militant and nobody brave enough to stop the senseless escalation, continued. Israel’s intense bombardment caused widespread damage in Lebanon, but could not defend the Israeli civilian population from Hezbollah’s retaliatory missiles. The army delayed its expected “ground operation” for 10 days, expecting the U.S. to broker a ceasefire but Condoleezza Rice, then U.S. Secretary of State, was enthusiastic about continuing the war. As reported in Al-Jazeera at the time, she “has described the plight of Lebanon as a part of the ‘birth pangs of a new Middle East’ and said that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire.”
We saw a very similar delay of the ground invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army in October 2023. The invasion was delayed for 20 days, long after the army completed its mobilization of reserves and operational preparations. Once again, there were no “responsible adults” at hand. Instead of mediation to halt the carnage, we witnessed an unprecedented, wide-ranging pilgrimage of Western leaders coming to encourage Israel to carry on and expand its attacks.
Another major similarity between 2006 and the current assault on Gaza is that, faced with the difficulties of waging “asymmetric war” against an entrenched guerilla organization, the Israeli army adopted a strategy where the suffering of the civilian population and massive damage to civilian infrastructure are the main goals of its war machine. This is not only a “de facto” conclusion from Israel’s actions and their results. After 2006, Israel officially adopted “the Dahiya Doctrine” as a military strategy. It was named after the Dahiya neighborhood in Southern Beirut, which was carpet-bombed to rubble in 2006. Israel’s civilian and military leaders endlessly boasted that the damage they caused there in 2006 was “deterring Hezbollah” from any further confrontation. They also repeatedly threatened to use this doctrine in future wars, which might be seen as evidence that the genocide in Gaza is not an exaggerated response to Hamas’ attacks on October 7, but a pre-planned strategy. It is also clear evidence that Israel’s supporters in the West were aware of its genocidal intentions in advance.
However, there are also major differences between the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese War and the current carnage in Gaza. In South Lebanon’s mountain villages, the guerillas succeeded in causing significant losses to the advancing heavily-armored Israeli columns. The geographic conditions were hostile to the conventional army and the political stakes for Israel were not too high. After 34 days of fighting, the Israeli army decided to cut its losses and withdraw.
In Gaza, conditions are very different. It is a small, flat, strip of land, and Israel has no inhibition with regard to the destruction of entire neighborhoods to create open spaces for its tanks to maneuver freely. Gaza is surrounded from all sides, from the land, the sea, and the air. It is completely dependent on supply from the outside for its food, water, fuel, electricity, medicine, communication— just everything.
Biden hugs Bibi and urges Israel to continue the genocide in Gaza
Israel cannot defeat the Palestinian resistance, as resistance is the natural response of the local population to decades of occupation, siege, and brutal repression. But for Israel, the stakes are high. Subjugating the Palestinian people is the foundation of its Apartheid regime, based on land-grab, colonization, and Jewish supremacy.
Add to this Israel’s internal politics. Jewish Israelis are deeply divided between themselves along several ethnic, religious, and cultural fault lines. Recently, all these divisions crystalized around the divisive figure of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is subject to trial over several overdue corruption indictments, and might be sent to jail when the war is over. Meanwhile, senior members of the most powerful elites in militarist Israel, the commanders of the Army and the Shabak, are likely to lose their jobs when there will be a reckoning for their failure to defend the Gaza border on October 7.
The only thing that unites all Israelis (and I do not regard Palestinians with Israeli citizenship as Israelis) is the fight against the Palestinians. It is no wonder that the main slogan in Israel now, mobilizing the whole society for the current assault on Gaza, is “Together We Will Win.” No wonder many Israeli leaders, and above all Netanyahu and his military commanders, are wishing this “graceful moment” of unity to last forever.
The Two-State Illusion as a Justification of Genocide
As the conflict erupted, Western hypocrisy entered overdrive. The gap between what the U.S. is doing and what it is talking about is wider than the ocean. On the practical side it arms Israel and encourages it to perform more massacres. It refuses any calls for ending the carnage, even after more than 30,000 Palestinians were killed, most of them children and women. It jeopardizes the U.N. security council to keep the bloodshed uninterrupted. The U.S., U.K., and other old and wannabe imperialist powers even hurried to take part in the military action— bombing Yemen, trying to prevent their symbolic maritime blockade of Israel, while Israel tightens the siege of Gaza to the level of mass hunger and prevents essential medical care.
As camouflage for all of these deadly activities, they keep rehearsing meaningless talk about “calling on Israel” to abide by the law of war, paying lip service by denouncing “excessive killing” of civilians, or pleading for more humanitarian supplies. No pressure is applied to promote any of these lofty, altruistic goals. It would be a laughing matter, were it not so outrageous, how the U.S. and Britain publicize their deep care for the Palestinian people’s wellbeing by “sanctioning” four (!) extremely violent settlers. As if the settlers could terrorize the Palestinian population without the active daily support of the occupation army, directed by the military command and the government!
While they actively support, arm, and bankroll all the crimes of the occupation, the U.S. and its allies continue their meaningless ritual of speaking about their commitment to the idea of establishing a “pet” Palestinian state alongside Israel. Now this lie has been revealed. Instead of using it to justify perpetual occupation and gradual ethnic cleansing, they now use it as the ultimate justification for the ongoing genocide against two million Palestinians in Gaza.
Demonstration in Sana’a Supporting Gaza and Palestinian Liberation
Israel and the Israelis did not essentially change from the days of the massive ethnic cleansing of 1948. But, back then, they could effectively deceive themselves and deceive much of the world, calling themselves democrats or even socialists. Now all the masks are off, and Israel is an openly fascist state, the proud flag-bearer of reactionary forces world-wide. The U.S. and its allies know very well that there is no partner in Israel for any political settlement other than the perpetuation of Apartheid.
As we see a new generation of activists around the world demonstrating in support for Palestinian liberation, we have new hope that future generations of political leaders will understand that supporting Apartheid and occupation is not doing any good to the people of this country and this region— Arab and Jews alike. They will also have to learn somehow that, by inciting deadly conflicts, they do not even serve their own best interests. When the “civilized” West will stop upholding Apartheid, the people of Palestine will be able to dismantle the oppressive apparatus and establish the foundation for a human-oriented system that will begin the work of repairing the damage.
(Editor’s Note: While we struggle to stop the ongoing genocide in Gaza, I published in Modoweiss and in Free Haifa an analysis of the relations between Western imperialism and Israel, and how it is changing in the framework of their common effort to keep hegemony over the middle east. It explained how these dynamics push toward endless war against the Palestinian people. For readers that want to view the whole subject from a wider historical and geopolitical perspective, I wrote the above, much expanded, article about the same subject. It was published on Match 8, 2024, in Cosmonaut.)
The massacre of the hungry Palestinians should be understood as a harbinger of Israel’s “day after” plan for Gaza and all of Palestine – permanent military occupation.
(The following article appeared on March 4, 2024, in Mondoweiss)
The politics of unleashing genocide under the watching eyes of the world are complicated. While Israel has the firepower to kill just everybody in Gaza, they must find a way to “criminalize” their targets. When they suspect that a resistance fighter hides, or just lives, in a building, that serves as a justification to destroy the whole building, and sometimes the buildings around it too. Being “the startup nation,” Israel’s genocide army has even industrialized the process of criminalizing civilian targets using artificial intelligence.
But even with the indiscriminate and bloody way the Israeli onslaught has been conducted, the massacre of the hungry bread-seekers on Al-Rasheed Street in Gaza last Thursday was different. Israel did not even claim that its troops were attacked or that there were resistance fighters anywhere around. This massacre happened as Israel was claiming “to take care” of the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population. And rather than an isolated tragic incident, the “Flour Massacre,” as it has come to be called, can be understood as a harbinger of the new order that Israel is trying to impose on Gaza’s people after its planned, yet so far elusive, elimination of Hamas. It reflected Israel’s “day after” plan for Gaza and all of Palestine – permanent military occupation.
Israeli manufactured hunger and chaos
Israel’s current operation in Gaza is multifaceted and extends way beyond just the daily barrage of deadly bombardments from the sky and destruction being carried out by ground forces. Israel is also manufacturing hunger and chaos throughout Gaza.
First, the hunger. Until now, Israel has intentionally minimized the amount of humanitarian aid that enters Gaza. The main obstacles are obstructive Israeli “inspections” of all the supplies that enter, either from Egypt through the Rafah crossing or directly from Karm Abu-Salem. In addition, the army and the police have intentionally allowed extreme right-wing thugs to obstruct the movement in the inspection sites and the crossings, each arguing that it is the other’s responsibility to keep order there. On February 22, Kan, the official Israeli broadcasting service, reported that, due to the disruption by protesters, no aid trucks could enter Gaza that day. When the very limited aid finally enters Gaza, it faces destroyed roads and might still be shot at by the Israeli army.
The massacre viewed from the Israeli drone: People are viewed as ants
Then the chaos. Israel is waging an attrition war against all humanitarian organizations that try to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza. Many aid workers have been martyred by Israeli attacks. A month ago, OCHA, the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported that 337 health workers and 145 UN staff have been killed – and the killing is continuing uninterrupted.
The case of UNRWA is well known. Israel does not hide its desire to abolish the agency, accusing it of “perpetuating” Palestinians’ existence as a people struggling to return to their land. The Western powers hurried to cut essential financing from UNRWA, preventing life-saving assistance from millions in Gaza at the times of horrible human-made catastrophe, based on unproven Israeli claims against a few of the organizations’ employees. Along with this, on February 25, Amira Hass reported in Haaretz that Israel is systematically blocking work visas from international aid NGO workers in the West Bank and Gaza, forcing them to leave the country. All in an effort to isolate Palestinians and make life truly unliveable in Gaza.
In addition, to further generate chaos, Israel has been attacking Palestinian police whenever they were facilitating the delivery and distribution of aid in Gaza. Kan reported that, due to Israeli attacks, the Palestinian police stopped securing aid convoys and that, as a result, humanitarian organizations announced their suspension of aid distribution activities, fearing for the safety of their workers.
This hunger and the chaos in Gaza are not only being generated by the Israeli leadership to inflict pain but also to create an opportunity.
People gathering around an aid truck: Deliberately causing hunger is part of the Israeli war strategy
In an article in Ynet on February 28, Ronen Bergman reports that the two supposedly “centrist” ministers in Israel’s war cabinet, former generals Gantz and Eisenkot, intended to exploit the hunger and chaos in Gaza to force the release of Israeli captives. As Bergman reports, Gantz and Eisenkot “tried to propose, already about a month ago, to condition the continuation of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip on the release of hostages, but this proposal was rejected.”
Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for the New York Times. But he is also a deeply involved Israeli, with, according to his own testimony, deep connections high up in the Israeli military establishment. In his article, he accuses Netanyahu of “unnecessary gestures” in Gaza, like letting some medicine and fuel in. While the “centrist generals” want to starve Gazans to force Hamas to give up its prisoners without prisoners’ exchange, Netanyahu aims at the perpetuation of the war as the only way to save his government and keep himself at the top job.
Given his ties deep inside the Israeli establishment, it is interesting to take note of Bergman’s observations. He describes how Netanyahu is sabotaging the negotiations for prisoners’ exchange: “… the same unknown parties who spread the false news in the media about the great optimism surrounding the negotiations [among the Israeli team negotiating prisoners’ exchange – YH], and that there are breakthroughs and the situation is good, do so to in order that, when Hamas returns with a negative answer to an offer that it is clear that it will not accept as it is, it can be blamed for blowing up the negotiations.”
Bergman adds that “people who are familiar with what is going on in Netanyahu’s environment believe that he is doing everything to thwart the deal, and is manipulating public opinion with all the means at his disposal so that even if a deal comes along that seems reasonable to negotiators on the part of the security establishment, he will refuse it. And, if this is leaked out, as one of the senior officials swore on his life, he, Netanyahu, will present them, all of them, as losers who are not ready to fight Hamas until complete victory.”
Bergman speaks for parts of the military establishment and paints a very pessimistic picture of Israel’s war situation. “The bottom line,” he summarizes, “is that the IDF is stuck in Gaza. The abductees are gradually perishing. The Israeli public is inundated with distorted or false information. The army voted with its feet and got out of the Strip – five divisions that participated in the war became five brigades that are participating in a limited operation in Khan Younis. Senior military officials say that a ceasefire is necessary, that a deal is necessary, but the army chiefs will not say so explicitly.”
Bodies mounted on an aid truck – Al Rasheed Street Massacre – Thursday, February 29, 2024
But for Netanyahu and the extremist majority of his government, things are looking up. There is no meaningful international pressure to end the war. The Israeli government is not ready to even consider a political solution, so their strategy is a grinding war of attrition, believing that Israel’s military superiority will extinguish the staying power of the Palestinian population, even if it would require years of bloody conflict.
Toward this end, after a long delay, Netanyahu presented the basic components of what is supposed to be his vision of “The Day After” in Gaza, or rather in all of Palestine. It is a vision of full Israel military control between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. No independent Palestinian entity will be allowed.
To thwart international pressure, Israel wants to show that it can care by itself, with some “nonpolitical” local Palestinian proxies, also for the daily management of the population. In his article, Bergman reports that the Israeli war cabinet decided to deliver humanitarian aid to devastated North Gaza after all. This was after it chased away the Palestinian police and jeopardized all humanitarian organizations, as described above. And this brings us to the “Flour Massacre.” The Israeli army decided to secure the convoys by itself, and what better way to secure an aid convoy than by accompanying it with formidable tanks? When hungry Palestinians on Al-Rasheed streets tried “to loot” the supplies, the soldiers in the tanks shot at them with their machine guns.
On a smaller scale, shootings of unarmed Palestinians by soldiers who “felt threatened” by their very presence happen daily in the West Bank. Trying to explain the massacre on Al-Rasheed, the Israeli army claimed that its heavily armed cowardly soldiers felt threatened by the unarmed civilians who came too close to their positions. It is not the Gazans that came too close – it is the Israelis that thrust themselves where they should not be.
Netanyahu’s government wants to keep its military presence in Gaza forever. It does not officially speak of new settlements there yet, but many elements within the coalition are working on it. The massacre of the hungry bread seekers is a stark reminder that to stop the bloodshed, it is not enough to only demand a ceasefire now. It is no less important to demand immediate and complete withdrawal of the bloody occupation army.
The U.S. supports Israel unconditionally because it sees the entire Western project in the Middle East at risk today in Gaza. While these are our darkest days, it is also clear that the U.S. and Israel are bound to fail.
(The following article was published on February 12, 2024, in Mondoweiss.)
These are difficult times. Day after day, a shocking genocide is unfolding before the eyes of the whole world. Israel is nurturing a psychotic seizure as its “functional response” to the trauma of October 7. We have already become accustomed to living in the heart of an apartheid regime, oppression, and wars that have shed rivers of blood, but the death and destruction that Israel is inflicting today upon the residents of the Gaza Strip are much worse than anything we have seen before in the history of “the conflict.”
At the time of this writing, the United States has not only done nothing to stop the massacre of Gaza’s residents but has increased arms shipments to Israel. It has also directly participated in the war and has recruited its allies to do so as well by demonstrating its power against convenient and non-threatening victims such as Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.
Gunboat diplomacy was a main tool for projecting imperialist power in the 19th century
This should not come as a surprise. Much has been written about the danger to world peace when a hegemonic power on a downward trajectory confronts a rising power that seeks to secure its place at the heart of the global order. The situation is even more dangerous because the United States still has a significant advantage in arms production and military deployment worldwide, while in other areas, especially in economic development, it has nothing to offer. Attempting to exploit its military advantage for the preservation of its international hegemony, the U.S. tries to sow conflicts and foster militarization of the international system. Gunship diplomacy, par excellence.
Israel’s role in preserving imperialist hegemony
“The Conflict” in Palestine has never been simply a local matter between Zionist settlers and the native Palestinian population. Britain, followed by the United States and Germany, did not invest their best money in nurturing Zionist settlement and later in building the State of Israel and securing its military supremacy over all countries in the region, with just an aim of suppressing or exploiting a small Arab public in a remote corner that had never threatened their rule or interests. Their goal was, and still is, to use Israel as a spearhead for enforcing imperialist hegemony in the Middle East as a whole – a resource-rich region of central geopolitical importance between Europe, Asia, and Africa. From their perspective, Palestinians have always been “collateral damage,” residents who happened to be on land intended for establishing an imperialist military base; they are an unnecessary disturbance that needs to be eliminated or suppressed to oblivion within the framework of this broader geopolitical grand plan.
And it is that plan that the West sees at risk today in Gaza.
The second Israeli-Lebanese war (2006)
The main reasons, or complications, that make the current war appear endless can be already identified in the Second Israeli-Lebanese War in the summer of 2006. In that attack, Israel attempted to restore its regional deterrence, which had been damaged by its unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon six years earlier, and to regain its military reputation as a feared servant of its Western masters. The result was a triple failure. In asymmetric warfare between a state military force and a popular resistance movement, all that the resistance movement needs in order to to win is to continue fighting, so Hezbollah’s survival meant Israel’s defeat. Second, Israel did not set achievable political goals for its war, and thus could not accomplish them.
But, lastly, there was a crucial failure for the United States as well. Instead of acting as expected and stopping Israel’s aggression in exchange for political gains, U.S. internal politics and a lack of constructive strategy turned America into “cheerleaders” for continuing the war. They celebrated the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”
In the absence of a mechanism to stop the war, Israel continued “sinking into Lebanese mud” until the military cost became unbearable for it. In light of this failure, Israel finally declared that simply causing catastrophic harm to civilians and massive destruction of civilian infrastructure were to be considered the major achievements in this war within what came to be known as “the Dahiya Doctrine.” This strategy still failed to defeat the resistance but was intended to constitute deterrence.
Why Israel is unable to defeat Hamas?
After failing in Lebanon in 2006, the Israeli/U.S. campaign to project regional power initiated its surprise attack on Gaza on Christmas Eve 2008. They hoped that, against a weaker enemy, they could recover from the trauma caused by their repeated failed adventures in Lebanon. Since then, there have been five rounds of major assaults on Gaza – in 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, and now again in 2023 – where each one aimed at recovering from the failure of the previous round. The “military” logic behind all is unchanged – maximum impact on the civilian population to “burn consciousness” into submission to the occupation. The latest round is just “more of the same” – only much worse than everything before it.
Might Israel and the U.S. achieve military victory this time? The simple and firm answer is “no.” The declared goal of Israel’s war, as well as that of the United States and European countries supporting it, is the “elimination of Hamas.” However, Hamas was established and became popular in response to the ongoing Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Hamas is a political party, and “Al-Qassam Brigades” are an armed resistance movement associated with it. It goes without saying that Israel is not interested in who opposes the occupation, whether it be Hamas, another faction, or unorganized residents. Therefore, the goal of “eliminating Hamas” should be understood not as eliminating a specific organization but as eliminating all resistance to the occupation. The Israeli-American strategy, then, is to eliminate any attempt to resist the occupation by making it more brutal and terrifying.
Why the war cannot be stopped?
I assume that many within the Israeli and American establishments and publics understand that achieving the stated goal of “eliminating Hamas” is impossible. Of course, there are messianic and fascist factions within Israel who believe wholeheartedly that they can kill or expel all Palestinian Arabs, complete the ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine, confiscate Palestinians’ property, and settle on their land. The less extreme Zionist factions would be happy (or at least agree) to stop this cycle of destruction if they could justify it through an American dictate. As long as the United States and major European countries oppose ending the war, even those in Israel who are aware of the damage and futility of the continuation of mass massacres and war crimes would not dare to stop it.
In previous wars, the United States limited Israeli aggression and demanded a political price from its Arab rivals. But in this war, the United States is primarily concerned about Israel’s inability to win, and it is pushing it to continue fighting.
In order not to bear full responsibility for Israel’s aggression, the U.S. might issue toothless calls for Israel to limit harm to civilians, abide by the laws of war, and increase humanitarian aid reaching the residents of Gaza. But these are empty words. In practice, the U.S. continues to arm Israel and does not exert any pressure on it except to go on fighting at any price.
With utmost hypocrisy, the U.S. pretends to be a “mediator,” whether on the issue of prisoner exchanges or even on a grand “solution” to “end the conflict.” But in the end, it is always clear that these U.S.-led processes are a cover for maintaining the Zionist occupation of Palestine and, through it, a Western beachhead in the region.
In the current prisoner exchange negotiations, the U.S. is trying to get Hamas to agree to release prisoners without clear assurance of stopping the war or Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. They hope that, after the prisoners are exchanged, Israel will be able to act even more lethally. The blockade organized by Biden’s administration against UNRWA, which provides most of the humanitarian services for Gaza residents during an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, illustrates how fully involved and complicit the U.S. and its allies are in committing genocide.
The “Two State Solution” upgraded to promote genocide
For decades, U.S.-led peace negotiations, with endless talk about the prospect of a Palestinian state in most of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, have been at the forefront of imperialist foreign policy. In practice, nothing has been done to advance such an agreement, and discussions on this topic have served as a convenient cover for continued support for the occupation of all of Palestine by Zionism, for ongoing ethnic cleansing, and for maintaining a racist apartheid regime throughout the territory between the river and the sea.
Every time someone tries to apply even minimal pressure on Israel to reduce its systematic violations of Palestinian human rights, respected Western politicians claim that “it harms the peace process.” Now, this empty talk about the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel has been repurposed to serve as cover for supporting and encouraging genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Many in the West argue that Hamas is an obstacle to peace agreements that, of course, are just waiting around the corner. Therefore, what needs to be done now, according to this distorted logic, is “to eliminate Hamas for the sake of peace.” After successfully completing the genocide on Gaza’s residents, they promise, of course, to “speak forcefully” with Bibi and Ben-Gvir, and everything will fall into place peacefully.
In the real world, we are trapped in Israel’s Catch-22. When resistance to the occupation does not manifest itself violently, it is ignored because “who cares about these Palestinians anyway?” But when resistance erupts again violently, it must be crushed at any cost because “we are against violence and you cannot make peace with terrorists.”
Is it the last war?
While it may seem that we are in our darkest days, and, in many ways, we are, we can also see signs that this is the last American war.
The current war, more than any other war I remember, has united all the peoples of the region, the entire Third World, and all people of conscience in the imperialist countries, in a call for an immediate cessation of hostilities and support for the Palestinian people and their aspirations for justice and freedom.
Meanwhile, a united front of imperialist countries is supporting a continuing genocide against Gaza’s residents by refusing to pressure Israel while defending it from international law. By doing so, they expose the “values” and “rules-based international order” they claim to protect in the clearest possible way.
As America’s hypocrisy becomes clearer with each atrocity broadcast live worldwide, they push on continuing the war “until victory.” And as they lose humanity’s hearts and minds in this conflict, it becomes even more important for them to burn into our consciousness Western weapons’ destructive power and the unbearable price of fighting for freedom.
But battleships can no longer dictate the world order.
Since October 7, at least seven Palestinians have been held in administrative detention in ’48 Palestine, adding another tool to tighten repression of political expression.
(The following report was published in Mondoweiss on December 25, 2023)
In the “Israeli Dictatorship” series, I have been reporting on how the little space that existed for Palestinian political expression in the areas held by Israel since 1948 has been crushed since October 7. One of the most chilling examples of this has been the use of administrative detention.
Administrative detention is an Israeli practice of holding Palestinian detainees without charge or trial. The longest period for a single administrative detention decree is six months, but there is no limit on the number of times that the same person may be detained, in continuity or with some breaks. For this reason, administrative detention is regarded as indefinite detention.
Although more associated with the Israeli occupation’s regime in the West Bank, administrative detention is used in ‘48 Palestine as well, and since October 7, it has been an important way Israel has repressed and terrorized Palestinians.
Administrative detention: a tool of occupation
Administrative detentions have always been part of Israel’s repressive measures against Palestinians. Beginning in 1948, Israel used an administrative detention policy based on the draconian “emergency laws” inherited from the British occupation of Palestine (the so-called “Mandate”). In 1979, Israel’s Knesset approved its own draconian “Emergency Powers (Detentions) Law” governing the use of administrative detention. The law only applies during a “state of emergency,” which is meant to be temporary. But, since 1948, the Knesset has always renewed what became a permanent “state of emergency.”
Administrative detentions were always subject to criticism and protest
According to this law, administrative detention of Israeli citizens should be presented for approval by the president of the District Court within 48 hours. In the West Bank an administrative detention has to be reviewed within eight days by a military judge. In the West Bank, there have always been hundreds of Palestinians held under administrative detention, but last year the numbers surged. According to Wikipedia (in Hebrew) there were 967 Palestinian administrative detainees in March 2023, and as of September 2023, before the events of October 7, that number had already grown to 1,264, more than during the tensest period of the Second Intifada. According to a report by Baker Zoabi (in Siha Mekomit), out of some 4,600 Palestinians who were detained in the West Bank since October 7, about 2,800 are administrative detainees – an unprecedented number.
In 48 Palestine, as Israel tried to keep some democratic façade, the usage of administrative detention has historically been more restrained. The biggest wave of administrative detentions in 48 Palestine that I remember happened during the First Intifada. The intifada started on December 9, 1987, and after hundreds of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators were shot dead by the occupation army, the leadership of the 48 Palestinians called for a general strike on December 21, in what they called “the day of peace.” They requested the public not to demonstrate on that day to avoid any provocation from the police. Abna al-Balad, a radical leftist Palestinian grassroots movement, challenged the community’s traditional leadership, named the general strike “Palestine Day” and called on people to demonstrate in every town and village. In many places, people chose to actively express their anger at the ongoing massacres, and clashes erupted in several areas. Following those events, some ten of the leaders of Abna al-Balad were imprisoned under administrative decrees in the first half of 1988.
Later, administrative detention was used mostly for individual cases, some of which I reported in my Free Haifa blog (for example, here and here). After the mass uprising of May 2021, what we call “Hebat al-Karameh,” Israel issued several administrative detention orders in 1948 Palestine. One of them, Zafer Jabarin, a devoted Muslim who prays too much (for the Shabak’s taste) in Al-Aqsa, was in administrative detention again this year for four months but was released before the war began.
Administrative detention since October 7: The case of Majd Zgheir
Since October 7, no serious attempts to protest the war or show active solidarity with the people of Gaza have taken place since the initial attempts were squashed. The only consolation is that everybody is now acutely aware that we live under one occupation dictatorship, from the river to the sea. People do not dare to share their views on social networks, but Al-Jazeera and Al-Mayadeen are broadcasting live from Gaza into almost every home. People everywhere are discussing the situation, and most agree that Israel’s murderous onslaught is a sign of weakness, not strength.
One thing that has not changed since October 7 is the fact that the Shabak is the ultimate ruler over 1948 Palestinians. Everybody has “a file,” and the Shabak regularly invites people from all walks of life for “conversations.” Political activists, and not only them, sometimes find themselves subject to intense interrogations.
Being subject to Shabak interrogation means you can find yourself, without prior notice, in the dreadful filthy underground dungeons in Jelemeh detention center southeast of Haifa (or in some compatible institution in Al-Quds or Petah Tikva), devoid of any connection to the outside world, including no legal advice, and interrogated over endless hours without sleep or rest. Such “special interrogation” typically lasts about three weeks.
Most Palestinian protests in Haifa over the past eleven years were organized by Herak Haifa. Through these years, about a dozen Herak Haifa activists were subjected to intensive Shabak interrogations. All came out after this horrible experience without any charges. But it is a very powerful deterrent against deciding to be an activist in the first place.
So, it was not a big surprise when I learned that Majd Zgheir, a 25-year-old activist from Majd al-Krum (in the Galilee), was taken to Shabak interrogation on November 18. I have known Majd since 2016 when we held a poetry night in solidarity with detained poet Dareen Tatour. The shy Majd, then a high school student, came forward and offered to read from his own poems.
Majd Zgheir – from his Facebook page
A year or two later, Majd had already endured a Shabak interrogation. Somebody broke the window of a parking police car in Majd al-Krum. The Shabak wanted revenge and arrested two local activists. But the Shabak is not supposed to interrogate people for a broken window, so they interrogated them about a terrorist plot and possession of arms. As there was no plot and no arms, they were released at the end of the interrogation without any charges.
The remand hearings for Majd, then and now, while under Shabak interrogation, were held in the Nazareth court. Since October 7, due to a special government decree, “security prisoners” are not brought to court, but are presented by a video chat instead. But, as Majd was prevented from meeting his lawyer, the choreography of the hearing was somewhat complicated. Before Majd appeared on the video screen, his lawyer, Hussein Mana’a, had to exit the courtroom so they would not even see each other. When the Shabak presented “secret evidence” to the judge, the lawyer had to exit the courtroom again. Even when the lawyer was allowed in, the hearing was still held behind closed doors, and even Majd’s parents were not allowed in. The Shabak claimed that there were serious “security” accusations against Majd, but I was sure that his new interrogation would end with his prompt release.
Majd’s lawyer Hussein Mana’a – he had to exit the courtroom before the evidence was presented…
On December 7, we were in the Nazareth court, waiting for another remand hearing for Majd. Time went by, and the hearing was delayed. Suddenly, lawyer Mana’a told us that there was not going to be any hearing. He was informed that Israel’s war minister, Yoav Gallant, issued an administrative detention decree against Majd Zgheir, ordering his detention without indictment and without trial for six months.
Learning of unknown cases
A review of Majd Zgheir’s administrative detention was scheduled for Sunday morning, December 10, before Judge Ron Shapira, the president of the Haifa District Court. On Sunday morning, we held a small vigil in front of the Haifa court, protesting administrative detentions. Maybe because there were just seven of us, maybe because it was not about the war in Gaza, the police did not prevent the vigil.
A vigil against administrative detentions before the Haifa court building – December 10, 2023
The hearing itself was behind closed doors, as is the practice for all administrative detentions. I noticed that the hearing procedures were streamlined. In most courts, the prosecutor brings the evidence first so that the defense can object and try to contradict them later. In this hearing, as the defense lawyer is not allowed to see the state’s evidence anyway, the judge heard lawyer Mana’a first and then held his intimate closed session with the Shabak people. He let us go home early, saying he would announce his decision on Tuesday. We did not hold our breath.
When we came to hear the judge’s decision on Majd’s administrative detention, or, rather, waited behind closed doors as the lawyer heard the decision, we were surprised to learn that there was a second administrative detention order being considered that same day. Jaber Mahajnah, from Umm al-Fahm, was detained on December 5 by the Shabak. After a relatively short interrogation spanning less than a week, he was transferred to administrative detention for a period of three months.
We were allowed into the courtroom before Judge Shapira came in and were lucky to see Jaber Mahajnah appearing on video from the Jelemeh detention center. As the judge came in, I stayed seated in the courtroom. Before the judge noticed me and ordered me to leave, I had the opportunity to hear Jaber’s lawyer, Raslan Mahajnah, asking where the Shabak representative was. The judge pretended that he did not know what the lawyer was talking about. The lawyer explained that in the hearings for approval of administrative detention in Jerusalem, Shabak representatives appear in the courtroom behind a screen, so that the defense lawyer could at least ask them some questions about the justification for the decree. The judge in Haifa had nothing of it.
We waited outside the courtroom for the lawyer to try to understand the story behind Mr. Mahajnah’s detention. We later learned that he dedicates much of his time to studying Islamic holy scriptures and used to publish his interpretations of them on Instagram. He did not write anything about current affairs, so he could not be charged for his posts. Instead of using distorted translations and out-of-context interpretations, the type of tactics the police regularly use to land many other Palestinians in prison for social media posts, the Shabak simply preferred to hand him administrative detention. When I talked about Mahajnah’s case with another lawyer who defends administrative detainees, she said it was clear that they had nothing against him. Otherwise, they would not be satisfied with his detention for “only” three months.
Administrative detention as a tool to terrorize the public
I started investigating how many Palestinians in ’48 are currently subject to administrative detention and under what circumstances. It was hard to find an answer. Based on conversations with more than ten lawyers and human rights organizations, I arrived at a list of six detainees. Three of them, two from Arraba and one from Sakhnin were arrested by the Shabak on October 29. On November 11, all three were transferred to administrative detention for six months. They are represented by Human Rights lawyer Sawsan Zaher.
Human Rights lawyer Sawsan Zaher – defending administrative detainees.
On November 19, Judge Shapira issued a censored version, that is allowed to be published, of his decision to approve the detention of one of lawyer Zaher’s clients. The name of the detainee himself is still secret, but the arguments justifying the detention are revealing. They state that:
“Administrative detention is fundamentally preventive and not punitive. It is intended to prevent anticipated activity prohibited by law, and it is not intended to punish acts that have already been committed… The reference to ‘state security’ in the emergency powers law is wide enough to include situations in which the danger to the security of the state and/or the public is not due to the detainee himself, but to the action of others, which may be influenced by that person’s arrest… As far as the dangerousness is concerned (Editor’s note: The purported “Dangerousness” of a detainee is used as a justification for detention, mostly in “security” cases)– it should be made clear that it is not solely focused on the individual person, but also depends on the surrounding reality… The state of emergency and the violent outbreaks that have recently occurred are a background to examining this dangerousness.”
A sixth recent administrative detainee whom I could identify is Omar Odeh from Qalansawe (in the Southern Triangle). All I could learn about his case is that he is another devoted Muslim who, apparently, provoked Israeli authorities by simply insisting on praying in the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
On December 20, Baker Zoabi published a report about the new wave of administrative detentions in 48 Palestine in Siha Mekomit (“Local Call” in Hebrew). He found another detainee in addition to those I found, the seventh in the current count, also from Umm al-Fahm. Coming from a poor family, he was represented by the state’s public defender, and I could not find more details about the background for his detention.
The issuance of seven different administrative detention decrees for 48 Palestinians since October 7 is unprecedented in recent history and clearly a political decision.
The oppressive apparatus regards administrative detention as an important and potent tool in its arsenal. They like it because it is easy to use, as there is no need to collect evidence, and the technical procedures are simple and straightforward. But they mostly rely on it, and are ready to take the public relations damage connected to using it, because by breaking established legal standards it creates a sense of vulnerability and terrorizes the public.
The threat of administrative detention works in several ways. First, it is used against activists who are under interrogation who know that if they don’t confess to what they are being told to confess to, they can be thrown into prison for an unlimited period anyway. On a wider scale, administrative detention is used to terrorize everyone. Even if you do nothing illegal, the Shabak can always claim that they know what you are dreaming about doing, the war minister would sign any decree put in front of him by the Shabak, and the courts would rubber stamp it. As Judge Shapira made clear, administrative detention is intended to prevent “anticipated activity.” And ‘48 Palestinians, like Palestinians everywhere, are always considered anticipated dangers.
In a new escalation, the homes of two Palestinians currently detained for protesting in Umm al-Fahm were attacked by a drive-by shooting. Activists suspect the Israeli government was involved.
Umm al-Fahm is probably the most Palestinian town in ‘48 Palestine. It is the undeclared capital of “the Northern Triangle,” and a stronghold of all Palestinian patriotic movements. It was the birthplace of Abna al-Balad in 1969, and the center of the “northern” Islamic Movement, which was outlawed by Israel in 2015. (This movement represents the majority of the Islamic movement that preferred popular struggle over Knesset politics.)
Umm al-Fahm was also one of the towns that has suffered most from the rise of criminal gangs, and the prevalence of murder and other social ills that have spread as the Israeli police and security services have looked the other way. No wonder that, in recent years, Umm al-Fahm witnessed the rise of the strongest popular “Herak” — a new type of protest movement that stresses grassroots activity and unity of all sections of society. They have mobilized large parts of the local population in Umm al-Fahm to demonstrations, which have accused the police of responsibility for the surge of crime and bloodshed in the streets. For some time, it seemed that social pressure even significantly reduced crime.
The Umm al-Fahm anti-war demonstration and the detention of its leaders
So, it is no wonder that Umm al-Fahm has been the only town in ‘48 Palestine to see a proper demonstration in solidarity with the people of Gaza since the beginning of the current Israeli onslaught. It is not that others do not want to demonstrate, but the police and the Shabak act forcefully to prevent any attempt to demonstrate even before it starts.
Detention of Muhammad Taher Jabarin at the Umm al-Fahm Gaza solidarity demonstration, October 19, 2023
I have described here before the demonstration on October 19, two days after the bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. It was organized almost secretly, and as a result, only a few hundred people could take part. They marched through the inner streets of Umm al-Fahm. As the demonstrators started to disperse peacefully, they were violently attacked without warning by the police and border guard.
Eleven of the demonstrators and one journalist were detained and badly beaten during this attack. The journalist was released the next day, and nine of the demonstrators were released the day after. But two activists, Muhammad Taher Jabarin and lawyer Ahmad Khalifa, whom the police accused of leading the demonstration, are still being held in harsh conditions in the Megiddo security prison. They will have spent two months and ten days in prison by the time their next remand hearing takes place on December 28. The police have requested to remand their detention until the end of their trial, which could take more than a year.
Lawyer Ahmad Khalifa was contesting the election for the Umm al-Fahm municipality
To everybody’s surprise, Jabarin and Khalifa were not accused of taking part in or organizing the demonstration itself. On December 6, both were indicted in the Haifa Magistrate Court for “identification with a terrorist organization” and “incitement to terrorism.” The indictment is based on a completely out-of-context interpretation of the very cautious slogans that were chanted in the demonstration. These slogans did not mention (by name or even by hint) any Palestinian organization and did not call for any violent act. But, by the prosecution’s racist interpretation, any call to Palestinians to struggle in defense of their rights, or for resistance to the occupation, could only mean support for terrorism.
Drive-by shooting
On November 6, the night before the indictment, Ahmad Khalifa’s wife, Lina, was sleeping at their home with their children. Suddenly, they woke up to the sound of intense shooting that was directed at the house. Windows were broken, and furniture was damaged. Their car that was parked in front of the house was so badly hit that it is not repairable. It was sheer luck that nobody was wounded or worse.
If somebody did not get the message or thought the shooting at the Khalifas’ house was by mistake, all doubts were erased on Friday, December 1, when a very similar drive-by shooting was carried out against the house of Khalifa’s partner to the indictment, Muhammad Taher Jabarin. The Jabarin family lives in a family compound, with Muhammad’s parents and brothers and their families. The intense fire was clearly directed at Muhammad’s apartment on the third floor, but some bullets also hit his brother’s home.
Who exactly carried the attacks? It could be elements of the police or the Shabak themselves. Or it could be some right-wing Zionist gangs. An extremist Telegram channel named “The Nazi Hunters 2023” published their personal details and declared them “Nazis” and “Hamas supporters,” clearly inciting their followers to attack them. It could also be some criminal elements from Umm al-Fahm whose business interests were damaged by the Herak’s anti-violence activities and who now received a green light or even encouragement from the police to take revenge.
Both Abna al-Balad and “The Umm al-Fahm Youth Herak” published separate declarations condemning the police and the Shabak for the attacks. In its declaration following the two shootings, the Herak declared that they were:
“A means of pressure and a new method used by the police and the Shabak to intimidate and oppress anyone who stands up to injustice, and a dangerous escalation in the persecution of political activists.
We might not know the identity of the person who pulled the trigger, but the identity of those who opened fire is known: the terrorist police and the Shabak that sent their criminal agents to execute this attack.”
Activists from Haifa organized solidarity visit on December 11. Here meeting local activists in Ahmad Khalifa’s home.
On Monday, December 11, a group of leftist activists from Haifa, Jews and Arabs, visited the families of the Umm al-Fahm two to express solidarity and hear about the details of the attacks. We heard how the police came after the shooting, collected the bullets that were found on the scene, and filed a report. They did not come back and apparently do not see any urgent need to solve this political crime, just as they leave 80% of the murder cases where the victims are Arab Palestinians unresolved. For them, this is not a dangerous event. Nothing like the “dangerous” demonstration that they came to disperse with a big show of force. Of course, nothing like the “danger” that, according to the prosecution’s claims in court, Jabarin and Khalifa constitute to public security. This is the “dangerousness” that is supposed to justify their demand that the two remain in prison indefinitely.
The war on Gaza has provided an opportunity for the police, under ultra-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to launch an all-out repression campaign against the Arab population, and any opposition to the slaughter of Palestinians.
(The following report appeared in Mondoweiss on December 9, 2023.)
Even within its pre-1967 borders, Israel was never a democracy. Palestinian political expression was always persecuted. The first Palestinian political movement within the areas that were occupied by Israel in 1948, the Al-Ard (“The Land”) movement, was outlawed in 1964, and its leaders were arrested and exiled. Abna al-Bald, a leftist grassroots movement, succeeded in existing stubbornly on the margins, with its activists and leaders going in and out of prison. The most prominent Palestinian intellectual and political leader, Azmi Bishara, was forced into exile by trumped-up accusations of espionage. The most popular political movement over the last three decades, the “northern” Islamic movement, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, was outlawed in November 2015, and its activists were arrested for such actions as organizing travel to pray in al-Aqsa Mosque.
With all this repression, Israel tried to keep a semblance of democracy, mostly for international public relations. For this purpose, they allowed the participation of some Arab or Arab-Jewish parties in the Knesset under the election law, which obliges every party willing to take part to support the nature of Israel as a Jewish state. With the strengthening of overtly fascist parties and their prominent role in Israeli-Jewish politics, public opinion, and the state apparatus, many ask how thin margins for “tolerated” Palestinian political activity may survive.
We are now finding out. The latest war on Gaza has provided an opportunity for the police, under ultra-rightist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to launch an all-out repressive campaign against the Arab population and against any expression of opposition to the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza. While ten days ago, I reported on how there is some disagreement within the regime concerning how far to go with this oppression, the last week showed that the push to destroy the small democratic margins that remain is still in full swing.
‘McCarthyite persecution’ of Hadash
There is nothing new with the Israeli police using gangster methods to prevent freedom of expression when they do not have legal grounds to act. I remember the 2018 inauguration of a book by Palestinian prisoner and writer Walid Daqqa, from Baqa al-Gharbiyye (in the Triangle). At the time, the police threatened the owners of all wedding halls in the area that if they would rent their place for the book’s inauguration, their hall would be closed. In the end, Daqqa’s family held the event in their private home. Now years later, and using similar threats against a hall’s owners, the police succeeded in preventing an Arab-Jewish public meeting against the war in Gaza, which had to take place on October 26 in Haifa at the invitation of the High Follow Up Committee, the united leadership of ‘48 Palestinians.
On December 6, Hadash (an Arab-Jewish front around the Israeli Communist Party) announced that the police were trying to prevent them from holding an emergency conference to discuss the political situation that was set for December 16. It was not so surprising that the police threatened the owners of the hall in Shefa’amer (a Palestinian town in the Galilee, just east of Haifa) that their hall would be closed. But using this tactic against a “private event” of Hadash can be seen as an escalation in the repression, as Hadash is the oldest, most established, and most cautious political party active within the ‘48 Palestinian population.
The police claimed that they knew in advance that there would be speeches against the war and against government policy that would constitute incitement and danger to public safety at the conference.
On December 6, Hadash published the following announcement on its Facebook page:
“An emergency session of the leadership of the Communist Party and the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality convened this Wednesday evening to discuss our response to the intimidating steps taken by the Ben-Gvir police today, to thwart the holding of the National Council of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality…
The Front Council would be held on time, with the location to be decided later. We call on all cadres to mobilize against the targeting of the party and the front for their role in the political battle.
We call on all Arab, Jewish and international anti-fascist movements and cadres to protest the McCarthyite persecution. The Israeli establishment suppress any voice opposing the aggressive war and acts to establish an obscurantist fascist regime. The right-wing government began with this oppressive scheme before the outbreak of war and uses it to accelerate its aggression against the already fragile democracy.”
Even a small vigil is not allowed
Another step toward complete dictatorship was taken this week by the Bagatz, Israel’s self-proclaimed “High Court of Justice.” Since October 7, the High Follow Up Committee has been trying to find a legal way to express the solidarity of ‘48 Palestinians with their suffering sisters and brothers in Gaza. They called for a vigil in Al-Ein (the spring) square in Nazareth on November 9 and promised the police in advance that there would not be more than 50 participants, yet the police prevented them from demonstrating by detaining 6 of the organizers before the vigil even began. They tried again to hold a vigil in the same place on November 23 but called off the vigil as police forces flooded the square, and it was clear that any attempt to demonstrate would be suppressed.
Previous attempts to ask for a license for anti-war demonstrations in Arab towns were refused by the police on the grounds that they did not have enough personnel to keep public order in such events. But small vigils, according to the law, do not require a license and never involve any “disturbance” of public order. The Follow Up Committee and Adalah turned to the state’s Attorney General office and requested her to instruct the police to enable, at least, the holding of a small vigil. The answer was that the police were responsible for keeping public order, and the attorney general (or her staff) did not find it necessary to intervene with their considerations.
On November 30, Mohammad Barakeh, the secretary of the High Follow Up Committee, together with Adalah, appealed to the Bagatz against the systematic prevention of the right to hold anti-war vigils. It happened that in the Bagatz, out of the three judges that heard the case, two (David Mintz and Noam Sohlberg) were themselves settlers from illegal settlements in the West Bank. They rejected all the claims in the appeal, declared that the Follow Up Committee did not do enough to prove to the police that, in their intended vigil, they would not perform any offense, and added that there was no urgency for the organizers to demonstrate, as their demonstration could always be postponed. In some of their arguments, the judges even undermined (though not clearly negated) the basic right to protest about issues concerning the state’s foreign and security policy.
Tel Aviv police say no to Human Rights Day commemoration
Several Human Rights NGOs plan to hold a vigil in Tel Aviv to commemorate International Human Rights Day tomorrow, December 10.
A similar coalition of NGOs tried to hold a similar vigil in Tel Aviv on International Children’s Day (November 20) with a call to protect children on all sides at the time of war. At the time, as we reported here, the police demanded that they apply for a license, even though such a vigil does not require licensing. After they obliged, the police refused to grant the license and prevented the vigil from happening.
Faced again with a police demand to apply for a license, the organizers of tomorrow’s vigil refused and applied for the Bagatz to instruct the police not to prevent the vigil. The hearing was set for tomorrow morning (Sunday, December 10). They still hope to be able to hold the vigil in the afternoon.
Fascist march is allowed (and turns into a riot)
Well, not all requests for demonstrations are refused. The same police allowed a far-right group, led by Barukh Marzel, to organize a provocative march through Arab East Jerusalem on Thursday, December 7. As stated above, the police have justified preventing Palestinian protests, however muted, by saying they do not have the necessary resources to keep public order. However, when it came to this clearly provocative march, in the most sensitive and explosion-prone area, they were happy to find and mobilize their forces.
The demonstration was specially designed to march the most provocative path, through Damascus Gate (popularly known as Bab Al-Amud), the main entrance to the old city that is the center of Palestinian social and commercial life, continuing through the market and the “Muslim Quarter” of the city. The police did not even wait for the fascists to come, but started terrorizing the local population in advance, ordering shops to close, and threatening against any expression of local protest.
In the end, the mob did not wait until it reached the old city and started rioting while participants were still gathering for the march. Some of them accused Ben-Gvir, the ultra-right “National Security” minister who controls the police, of “giving up to Hamas” and not being forceful enough in repressing Palestinians. The police dispersed them on the spot.
Free Haifa 