08.01.25

Editorial Note

Last September, a group of members of the Modern Language Association (MLA), an international association of scholars, submitted a BDS resolution against Israel titled “Resolution to Endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS Call.” They included supporting documentation to the Resolution. Among the supporters of the BDS resolution was Prof. Mona Baker, who, in 2002, dismissed from her publications two scholars because they were Israelis.

The authors of the Resolution come from a number of American universities. Anthony Alessandrini, Professor of English and Middle Eastern Studies at the City University of New York; Raj Chetty, Associate Professor of English at St. John’s University; Cynthia Franklin, Professor of English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa; Hannah Manshel, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa; David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University; Neelofer Qadir, Assistant Professor of English at Georgia State University; S. Shankar is Professor of English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

As a rule, the MLA’s Delegate Assembly (DA), representing all members, debates a resolution at the annual convention and votes for or against it.  The MLA’s Executive Council (EC), an elected governing body, reviews all resolutions for any legal, financial, or similar issues.

This year, however, upon receiving advice from MLA counsel, the EC decided not to forward the BDS Resolution to the DA for the likelihood of damages to the MLA and its partners from anti-BDS legislation in various states.

Blocking the debate on the Resolution spurred anger among members. The authors of the Resolution protested the decision by writing “A Call to the Modern Language Association to Let Members Decide About BDS.” They declared, “We are seven of the dozens of Modern Language Association members who came together to write a resolution in support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. Some of us have been involved in organizing around that call since it was issued by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005; others have come to Palestine solidarity work more recently. All of us feel the urgency imposed by the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, funded and supported in every way by the U.S. government. It’s crucial for the Modern Language Association, the world’s largest association for humanities students, teachers, and researchers, to take a clear and meaningful stance against this genocide. We were heartened by the fact that an increasing number of academic and professional organizations have voted to stand with the Palestinian BDS call.”

The authors gave examples of the various professional associations that endorsed BDS. They then explained how they created the resolution, “we spoke with Palestinian scholars who have faced forms of repression those of us in North America can only imagine, and were continually inspired by their courage, resourcefulness, and steadfastness. Recognizing that we came to this work as educators, we compiled extensive documentation in support of the resolution. This meant poring over expert sources enumerating the horrors of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It meant engaging with the work of Palestinian, Israeli, and international scholars who have documented the decades-long Israeli campaign of scholasticide—the systematic attempt to destroy the Palestinian education system—that has most recently involved destroying every university in Gaza. And it meant coming to terms with the workings of the apartheid system that affects every Palestinian, as documented by the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem.” 

The authors argued that the right to boycott is based on the MLA’s mission statement, which states that the MLA “supports and encourages… justice throughout the humanities ecosystem.” 

The authors accused the MLA leadership of succumbing to the fear that the penalty for passing the Resolution would result in a loss of revenue. “Instead of repressing a resolution against genocide—and setting a precedent by which any democratic deliberation over ‘unpopular’ political issues can be suppressed in the name of maintaining the profit margin—perhaps we need to re-think the priorities of the MLA, and of our academic institutions more generally. Perhaps the MLA doesn’t need a slew of upper-level administrators earning six-figure salaries while the majority of those teaching in the humanities—our adjunct and graduate student worker colleagues—don’t even earn a living wage. Perhaps we don’t need lavish conferences with massive carbon footprints, or shiny data-driven reports that tell us that the humanities are in crisis. Perhaps this is exactly why the humanities are in crisis. The MLA can choose a different path…. the MLA is today actively silencing those who wish to take a stand against genocide and scholasticide in Palestine.” 

They ended by stressing, “Nevertheless, the organizers of this resolution will continue to push for what it represents: taking a stand with our Palestinian colleagues against genocide and scholasticide, and ending the institutional complicity that enables them. The results of the recent U.S. elections will make the organizing environment for MLA members, and for our students and colleagues everywhere, much more difficult. That’s all the more reason for our professional organizations to show some backbone, rather than responding with anticipatory obedience. Most important, at the upcoming convention and beyond, we will center the voices of Palestinian scholars and students who continue to resist their erasure.”

The authors concluded, “Some of us became teachers of literature because we believe it helps keep us human, even in a world of genocide, of schoolchildren targeted by snipers and poets murdered by missiles, of unjust laws and profit motives and complicity where there should be courage. It’s not too late for the world’s largest organization of professional humanists to find its voice, stand against genocide alongside our Palestinian colleagues, and recall what it means to be human.”

The MLA annual convention is taking place on January 9-12, 2025, in New Orleans. The framers of the Resolution already announced their plans to “protest the anti-democratic practices of Krebs and the MLA, and will highlight over 40 panels at the convention devoted to Palestine.” The authors of the Resolution also disclosed that “over 100 MLA members have signed a pledge to quit the association to protest the repression of the BDS resolution, and some members have taken to social media to announce they are boycotting the convention.” The framers of the Resolution urged, “Supporters of the resolution who plan to attend are being asked to read a solidarity statement expressing their support.” 

Interestingly, these scholars who feel so passionately about the Palestinians, fail to understand the hypocrisy that they practice when dealing with Israel. First, they neglect to mention that the current war in Gaza started because of the horrific attack on October 7, 2023, with the atrocities perpetuated by Hamas on innocent civilians, including murder, rape, and kidnapping.  More so, since the Israeli military left Gaza in 2005, Hamas shelled Israeli communities with an ever-improving arsenal of rockets and missiles supplied by its patron, Iran. Second, accusations of genocide are false. After the Holocaust, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer, defined genocide as “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.” His work was key in creating the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.  What has happened in Gaza is not the destruction of all Palestinians.  Rather, it is an outcome of Hamas’s decision to radically embed themselves among the civilian population, notably in hospitals, schools, mosques, and other public venues, effectively turning civilians into human shields to make it harder for the IDF to operate.  Characteristically, both Hezbollah and Hamas have refused to release separate death counts for terrorists and noncombatants.  According to the IDF, about half of the more than 40.000 killed in Gaza were terrorists.  While the death of the human shields is tragic, it does not amount to genocide based on the Geneva Convention. 

Also, in a BBC interview in April 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) then-president Joan Donoghue said that the purpose of the ICJ genocide ruling was to declare that South Africa had a right to bring its case against Israel and that Palestinians had “plausible rights to protection from genocide.” She said the judges did not need to say for now whether a genocide had occurred.

Third, the MLA scholars, as well as other professional associations in humanities and social sciences who push for BDS, have never criticized any of the brutal dictatorships that commit horrific abuses against their populations.  Judging Jews by a different standard is the quintessential characteristic of antisemitism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which has been widely accepted in Europe and the United States.  The countries and organizations that follow the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism explain that it is their moral obligation to correct the historical wrong against the Jews.  

As IAM stated before, pro-Palestinian activists hijack professional academic associations to promote their agenda at the expense of members.

REFERENCES:

https://www.mla.org/About-Us/Governance/Delegate-Assembly/Agenda-for-the-2025-Delegate-Assembly-Meeting/Report-to-the-MLA-Delegate-Assembly-from-the-Executive-Council-on-Resolution-2025-1

Report to the MLA Delegate Assembly from the Executive Council on Resolution 2025-1

16 December 2024

The MLA’s Executive Council, like many of its members, is appalled by the continued attack on Gaza. The council hopes that this document will help members understand its recent inability to forward a resolution on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement to the Delegate Assembly (DA) for a vote and help members to consider other methods of responding to Israel’s destruction in Palestine.

The MLA’s Executive Council met twice this fall to consider the proposed Resolution 2025-1 endorsing the 2005 Palestinian BDS call. After serious deliberation, the council acknowledged that for legal and fiduciary reasons, supporting a BDS resolution was not a possible way forward for the association to address the crisis in Gaza, and that therefore it could not forward Resolution 2025-1 to the Delegate Assembly for a vote in January. A number of our members, including a group of former MLA presidents, have expressed their puzzlement and distress over this decision, both on substantive and procedural grounds. They ask, is the council bowing to political pressure, overly concerned with possible financial harms? Are we retreating from a commitment to advocacy on pressing public issues affecting scholars and scholarship, keeping our members from taking a collective stand against the destruction, including that of academic institutions, in Gaza? Procedurally, in acting on this resolution prior to the Delegate Assembly’s January meeting, has the council gone against prior practice and stifled debate by the assembly? Regardless of the timing of the council’s review, should the council have consulted with the resolution’s proposers before reaching a negative decision?

In what follows, we hope to address these questions. Importantly, too, we propose some concrete steps that our members, and the MLA itself, can take to further debate and advocacy on matters of great concern to all of us.

Look for these four main points in the explanation below:

1. The MLA Constitution was changed in 2019, after a full membership vote, so that all resolutions must now pass a legal and fiduciary review before they can be voted on in the DA. This was not the case the last time the DA debated BDS. At that time, the council’s legal and fiduciary review happened after the DA discussion and vote.
2. The laws in many states have changed in recent years, and these laws directly affect the MLA’s ability to do business in those states, business that enables us to serve members by carrying out the mission of the organization.
3. The MLA Constitution is clear that a resolution is an official statement from the organization, not simply a statement by its members. A BDS resolution would put the organization into conflict with state laws. 
4. A vote on a resolution supporting BDS is not the only way to discuss the tragedies in Palestine; not having a vote is not the same as forbidding discussion. The convention, including the Delegate Assembly meeting, and the association offer many spaces for discussing Palestine, Israel, the situation in Gaza, and the content of this resolution, and the governance process offers options for motions calling for statements, as happened with Emergency Motion 2024-1, about pro-Palestinian protests on campuses.

The council met in person on 25 October to consider the resolution and all the documentation surrounding it and decided at that point that the council couldn’t move the resolution forward for a vote. After receiving feedback on this decision, we met again, over Zoom, on 25 November for further discussion. We reluctantly concluded once again that we couldn’t advance this resolution, and we made this decision even though individually the council’s members are horrified by the level of violence employed by the Israeli government in Gaza during the conflict, including the destruction of the education infrastructure and the severe restriction or outright denial of basic services like food, medical attention, electricity, and water. The council encourages a robust discussion about this topic both during the Delegate Assembly meeting and across multiple planned sessions at the convention, and we remain as concerned as ever with promoting academic freedom in difficult times. As those who attended the MLA’s Delegate Assembly in 2024 in Philadelphia will recall, the DA voted to change the agenda of its meeting to allow more time for discussion of the motions on the floor. The extended discussion of Emergency Motion 2024-1 focused on protecting the rights of students, faculty, and staff to express their academic freedom and individual rights to free speech to protest, teach, and inform about the Israeli attacks on Gaza and the region’s history. The DA debated, refined, and passed Emergency Motion 2024-1, and the Executive Council issued a response and commissioned an issue of Profession to address the topic of campus protest and academic freedom. The council’s response affirmed the following:

As an organization, our support of academic freedom is unwavering. We also support our members’ right to protest and their right to feel safe on their own campuses. The current political climate in the United States has resulted in restrictions on free speech and on the right to protest on campus, especially restrictions directed at opponents of the actions of Israel against civilians in Gaza. Many MLA members have reported suffering harassment, doxing, and threats related to their teaching, writing, and speech on issues related to Palestine. US campuses must defend all faculty members, staff members, and students, particularly those who have been targeted for speaking out against the actions of Israel in Gaza, from these threats, which often originate outside the university.

This statement continues to reflect our views. Resolution 2025-1, on the other hand, is a specific call for the MLA to support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement aimed at Israel. This focus on BDS makes it substantively different from Emergency Motion 2024-1. Moreover, the wider legal landscape in the US has changed considerably since 2017, when the Delegate Assembly voted against a BDS resolution. Since then, many states have instituted laws and regulations forbidding any state-funded entity from entering into commercial relationships with companies or organizations that support BDS. If the MLA, or its collective membership, issued a statement in support of a boycott, that statement would breach existing contracts for services that are central to our mission and would prevent us from signing future contracts with colleges and universities and their libraries in those states.

The amount of revenue loss that would be caused by the passage of Resolution 2025-1, and thus loss of ability to operate, is substantial. As of now, the MLA has contracts for the current year that include clauses in which we have affirmed that our association is not supporting BDS. If the membership were to pass a resolution to the contrary, we would be unable to renew these contracts. This would deny faculty members and students access to things like the MLA Bibliography and scholarship we all value, and endanger our ability to serve our members and users of our services. The services provided by the MLA, most of which are not provided by any other humanities organization, include the publication of twenty books by members per year, focusing on pedagogy; the publication of the MLA International Bibliography; summer seminars, online institutes, and year-round resources for department chairs and program leaders; the publication of the MLA Job List; grants and fellowships for graduate students and contingent faculty members as well as for departments working on recruitment, retention, or career readiness, especially for students of color, first-generation students, and Pell Grant recipients; MLA style resources for teachers and students; and many more professional development offerings such as Public Humanities Incubators, Sit and Write sessions, and one-on one job counseling. It would also directly impact our advocacy efforts to help campuses sustain academic programs in literature, languages, and culture, which are under continued attack. The known direct cost to the MLA would already be considerable.

The board members of any nonprofit corporation are by law, among their other duties, required to act as fiduciaries for the organization, charged with reviewing policies and procedures, motions and resolutions, to ensure that they do not either violate laws or endanger the ability of the association to meet its mission or maintain its 501(c)3 status. As fiduciaries, they are responsible for carefully stewarding the resources that allow the association to meet the needs of its members and other users of its services, now and in the future. The council is elected by the membership to fulfill the role of fiduciary in the governance process and cannot cede that role to the members of the Delegate Assembly or the membership at large.

Some Governance History and Context

Traditionally, the Executive Council only conducted a legal and fiduciary review of a resolution once it had actually been passed by the Delegate Assembly. Members who recall this process have seen the council’s action this fall as a breach of our established process. The present procedure, however, was put in place in 2019 by vote of the membership, on the grounds that it would be better to first determine a proposal’s viability before debating and voting on it. So this is a change since the Delegate Assembly voted on the BDS resolution in 2017. The process in effect in 2017 meant that resolutions went to the Delegate Assembly straight from the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee, only proceeding to the Executive Council for its legal and fiduciary review if they passed a vote in the Delegate Assembly. Because the BDS resolution didn’t pass the DA vote in 2017, it wasn’t subject to council review.

After the 2017 Delegate Assembly meeting, an Ad Hoc Committee on Advocacy Policies and Procedures was commissioned. The new resolutions process designed by that committee was voted on and approved by the membership in 2019. It situates the Executive Council’s legal and fiduciary review of a resolution before the Delegate Assembly meeting, to ensure that no resolution can go for a vote to the DA if passing that resolution would cause the association to be in violation of the law or would endanger the association’s ability to carry out its work. In deciding not to forward Resolution 2025-1 for a vote, the Executive Council fulfilled its constitutional role as the body charged with legal and fiduciary responsibility for the association and ensured that the governance processes of the MLA were followed in relation to this resolution.

Under current rules, once a resolution is submitted it can’t be modified, and so we didn’t see any basis for further consultation at that point, particularly as the proposal was clearly and carefully worded, and seemed fully ready for our legal and fiduciary review. The resolution’s proposers had discussed the resolution with MLA staff and revised its wording prior to submitting it for consideration by the Executive Council. When communicating with the proposer of the resolution, MLA staff members were unaware of the legal and fiduciary effects of the resolution and advised the proposer in good faith. The MLA staff did not learn about the laws’ direct applicability to the operations of the MLA until the legal opinions came in, just before the council meeting. We address below the question of whether the current process could be improved for the future; doing so will take further discussion and then a vote by our membership. When Resolution 2025-1 was originally submitted, with supporting materials that did not contain information about the anti-boycott legislation, we anticipated that it would go to the DA for a vote until we received the review from the association’s attorneys. However, the day before the council meeting, the attorneys warned us that contracts we had already signed, which affirmed that the MLA did not participate in or support boycotts, were in danger of cancellation if Resolution 2025-1 were to pass. Further, no future contracts in states with anti-boycott laws could be signed in good faith.

Legal Considerations

As noted above, a fundamental difference between the situation in 2017 and the situation now is that the legal landscape has significantly changed during the past eight years. No fewer than twenty-seven states now have laws or regulations forbidding any state entity from purchasing goods or services from any company that engages in or that merely supports boycotts around the world. These include blue as well as red states.

These laws and regulations are in the process of being challenged by the ACLU and other organizations, and several federal courts have struck down some of them, while others have been upheld. Appeals are currently making their way through the system. In the only case that has yet reached the Supreme Court, in February 2023, the court declined to review a ruling by the Eighth Circuit that upheld a law in Arkansas. It is possible that the Supreme Court will revisit the issue in the event that a different appeals court upholds a lower-court ruling striking down such a law, but as of now, these laws are widely in force, and there is no reason to expect that a further decision by the Supreme Court will differ in effect from their (non)action in the Arkansas case.

In any event, the Executive Council is guided by our lawyers’ assessment, which is that these statutes have been carefully crafted to withstand any challenges that assert that they restrict free speech. These laws focus not on speech but instead on a state’s right to contract only with the vendors of their choice for the purchase of goods and services. The laws thus don’t openly restrict anyone’s speech; any organization can choose to support boycotts against Israel or any other country. However, no company has a constitutional right to a contract with a state-funded entity. If a state has forbidden dealings with boycott-supporting companies, then a state agency, including a university or a library, must not contract with such a company. In addition to these state laws, some private institutions and major library consortia have prohibitions against doing business with organizations that have enacted BDS resolutions.

Fiduciary Considerations

The MLA has a very different financial profile than most of the other humanities member organizations. While we, like they, collect dues and conference registrations, these funds are only a small portion of the revenues on which the MLA relies to pursue its mission in publishing, convening, professional development, and advocacy for humanities teaching and research. Fully two-thirds of the operating budget of the MLA comes from sales of resources to universities and libraries, including the MLA International Bibliography. States with anti-BDS laws have already begun requiring their contractors to affirm in writing that they do not participate in or support boycotts, and the MLA has signed such contracts. Universities, colleges, libraries, and consortia purchase MLA books and subscription resources. In addition, the MLA does business with states in other ways, including the annual convention, on-site summer seminars, and MLA memberships, which are often funded by institutional resources. Losing the ability to engage with members in those ways or to distribute our resources in those states would also mean that students and teachers in those states would lose access to these resources. If we lose subscription income, our very ability to produce these resources for anyone would be in jeopardy.

The proposed Resolution 2025-1 sought to mitigate these dangers by phrasing the resolution such that it focused on the members of the MLA as distinct from the organization. However, in conducting its review the council noted that the MLA Constitution itself, in section 9.C.10, indicates that “It is understood that resolutions are not intended to limit the conduct of MLA members acting in their individual capacities but are statements that reflect the views of the organization, as voted on by the membership.” The MLA Constitution is clear that a resolution is a statement from the organization.

Paths Forward for Advocacy and Debate

The Executive Council wrote last year in support of our members’ academic freedom, their right to protest, and their right to feel safe on their own campuses. We have shown and continue to show that members can debate, challenge, and speak out against difficult topics. The council commits to creating spaces through events and publications for scholars, teachers, and students to discuss these and other important issues, as we have in the past. We will continue to advocate for the important perspectives from our constituents who bring deep historical and cultural knowledge to timely and necessary topics.

At the 2025 convention, two dozen convention sessions are focusing on Palestine, including The Writing of the Disaster: How Literature Faces the Ongoing Catastrophe in Palestine; (In)Visible Borders in Israel and Palestine and in North and South Korea; Just in Time: Literatures and Cultures of Jewish-Arab Solidarity in Palestine; Multilingual Solidarities in and against Settler Colonial Regimes: Algeria, Palestine, and Beyond; Missing Palestine in Postcolonial Theory; From Palestine to South Texas: Violence, Repression, and Curtailing Academic Freedom, and many more.

There are ways in which the MLA membership might wish to express its sentiments about the events in Gaza that would not endanger the association’s ability to provide publications and services. Could not a motion calling for a statement protesting scholasticide in Gaza, while not focusing on BDS, be a powerful expression of solidarity? In addition, if members would like to move Executive Council legal and fiduciary review to take place after DA discussion of resolutions, so that resolutions can be debated whether or not they meet legal or fiduciary standards, they can propose a constitutional amendment to that effect. If members would like to propose any other changes in the consideration process for resolutions, such as a pre-submission legal and fiduciary conversation with members of council while the wording on resolutions can still be changed, they can do so as well.

We acknowledge that phrases such as “fiduciary review” and conversations about revenue can sound callous in the face of atrocity, especially when framed as though our aim is to protect revenue alone. But as the Executive Council, we witness daily the work of the MLA on behalf of vulnerable programs and scholars, supporting graduate students, advancing research and supporting teachers, and creating opportunities for scholars, teachers, and students to learn from and teach one another on topics of crucial importance. Although we cannot engage in boycott, we invite you to explore the many ways that we can daily engage in advocacy together.

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Click to access Proposed-Resolution-2025-1.pdf

Resolution to Endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS Call

Whereas, international law experts, including UN officials, describe the Israeli war on Gaza as a genocide;

Whereas, human rights organizations and the International Court of Justice have determined that Israel is maintaining a system of apartheid;

Whereas, in April 2024 the United Nations documented that Israel’s campaign of scholasticide has destroyed every university in Gaza and killed at least 5,479 students and 356 educators;

Whereas, the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in denying Palestinian human rights has been comprehensively documented;

Whereas, in 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations called for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel;

Whereas, that call is to boycott institutions, not individual Israeli academics, and to support academic freedom;

Whereas the American Association of University Professors declared academic boycotts “legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education”;

Whereas, the MLA’s commitment to “justice throughout the humanities ecosystem” requires ending institutional complicity with genocide and supporting Palestinian colleagues; therefore

Be it resolved that we, the members of the MLA, endorse the 2005 BDS call.

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Click to access Resolution%202025-1%20supporting%20materials.pdf

Resolution to Endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS Call: Supporting Documentation

1.                   Whereas, international law experts, including UN officials, describe the Israeli war on Gaza as a genocide;

From United Nation’s Human Rights Council, Anatomy of a Genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967 (March 25, 2024), p. 24.

“93. The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group. This report finds that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the following acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to groups’ members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. Genocidal acts were approved and given effect following statements of genocidal intent issued by senior military and government officials. 

“94. Israel has sought to conceal its eliminationist conduct of hostilities sanctioning the commission of international crimes as IHL-abiding. Distorting IHL customary rules, including distinction, proportionality and precautions, Israel has de facto treated an entire protected group and its life-sustaining infrastructure as ‘terrorist’ or ‘terrorist-supporting’, thus transforming everything and everyone into either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable. In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by definition. This has had devastating, intentional effects, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroying the fabric of life in Gaza and causing irreparable harm to its entire population. 

“95. Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure. For over seven decades this process has suffocated the Palestinian people as a group – demographically, culturally, economically and politically – seeking to displace it and expropriate and control its land and resources. The ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is an imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy, and to future generations in that land. 

“96. The Special Rapporteur urges member states to enforce the prohibition of genocide in accordance with their non-derogable obligations. Israel and those states that have been complicit in what can be reasonably concluded to constitute genocide must be held accountable and deliver reparations commensurate with the destruction, death and harm inflicted on the Palestinian people.”

From University Network for Human Rights, Genocide in Gaza: Analysis of International Law and its Application to Israel’s Military Actions since October 7, 2023 (May 15, 2024), p. 105 

[co-signed by International Human Rights Clinic, Boston University School of Law; International

Human Rights Clinic, Cornell Law School; Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria;

Lowenstein Human Rights Project, Yale Law School]

“263. This report has demonstrated that actions—past and continuing—taken by Israel’s government and military in and regarding Gaza following the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, constitute breaches of the international legal prohibitions on the commission of genocide, incitement to genocide, and failure to prevent and punish genocide.

“264. This report has shown that Israel has committed the genocidal acts of killing, causing serious harm to, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian people. These genocidal acts have been motivated by the requisite genocidal intent, as evidenced in this report by the statements of Israeli leaders, the character of the State and its forces’ conduct against and relating to Palestinians in Gaza, and the direct nexus between them.

“265. Israel’s violations of the international legal prohibition of genocide and other related crimes amount to grave breaches of peremptory norms of international law that must be ceased immediately. Furthermore, these violations give rise to obligations by all other States: to refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity in these breaches; and to take positive steps to suppress, prevent, and punish the commission by Israel of further genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

From Amnesty International, “Israel Defying ICJ Ruling to Prevent Genocide by Failing to Allow Adequate Humanitarian Aid to Reach Gaza” (February 26, 2024): 

“One month after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered ‘immediate and effective measures’ to protect Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip from the risk of genocide by ensuring sufficient humanitarian assistance and enabling basic services, Israel has failed to take even the bare minimum steps to comply, Amnesty International said today.  

“The order to provide aid was one of six provisional measures ordered by the Court on 26 January and Israel was given one month to report back on its compliance with the measures. Over that period Israel has continued to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met.  

“Israeli authorities have failed to ensure sufficient life-saving goods and services are reaching a population at risk of genocide and on the brink of famine due to Israel’s relentless bombardment and the tightening of its 16-year-long illegal blockade. They have also failed to lift restrictions on the entry of life-saving goods, or open additional aid access points and crossings or put in place an effective system to protect humanitarians from attack.  

From Center for Constitutional Rights, “U.S. Court Concludes Israel’s Assault on Gaza Is Plausible Case of Genocide” (January 31, 2024): 

“After a federal court heard arguments and testimony in the case Defense for Children International – Palestine v. Biden on Friday, January 26, charging the Biden administration with failing in its duty to prevent, and otherwise aiding and abetting, the unfolding genocide in Gaza, a federal judge found that Israel is plausibly engaging in genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and that the United States is providing ‘unflagging support’ for the massive attacks on Palestinian civilians in contravention of international law. The court’s decision follows a historic ruling by the International Court of Justice last Friday, which also found the Israeli government was plausibly engaged in a genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and which issued a series of emergency measures Israel must take to end its genocidal campaign….   

“Delivering a historic rebuke of Israel and the United States for its flouting of the Genocide Convention, the court wrote:   

Both the uncontroverted testimony of the Plaintiffs and the expert opinion proffered at the hearing on these motions as well as statements made by various officers of the Israeli government indicate that the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people and therefore plausibly falls within the international prohibition against genocide.   

The court recognized the substantial role of the United States in furthering the genocide and noted that ‘as the ICJ has found, it is plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide’ and, therefore, the ‘Court implores Defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.’”

We note also that scholars of international law warned about the commission of genocide by Israeli forces against Palestinians in Gaza as early as October 2023:

From “Public Statement: Scholars Warn of Potential Genocide in Gaza” (October 17, 2023), signed by more than 800 scholars of genocide studies, international law, and international studies:

“As scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies, we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. We do not do so lightly, recognizing the weight of this crime, but the gravity of the current situation demands it….

“Statements of Israeli officials since 7 October 2023 suggest that beyond the killings and restriction of basic conditions for life perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, there are also indications that the ongoing and imminent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are being conducted with potentially genocidal intent. Language used by Israeli political and military figures appears to reproduce rhetoric and tropes associated with genocide and incitement to genocide. Dehumanizing descriptions of Palestinians have been prevalent. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October that ‘we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.’ He subsequently announced that Israel was moving to ‘a fullscale response’ and that he had ‘removed every restriction’ on Israeli forces, as well as stating: ‘Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything.’ On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: ‘Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.’ The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of

Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: ‘The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.’[…]

“The Palestinian people constitute a national group for the purposes of the Convention on the

Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip constitute a substantial proportion of the Palestinian nation, and are being targeted by Israel because they are Palestinian. The Palestinian population of Gaza appears to be presently subjected by the Israeli forces and authorities to widespread killing, bodily and mental harm, and unviable conditions of life – against a backdrop of Israeli statements which evidence signs of intent to physically destroy the population….   

“Palestinian human rights organizations, Jewish civil society groups, Holocaust and genocide studies scholars and others have by now warned of an imminent genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza. We emphasize the existence of a serious risk of genocide being committed in the Gaza Strip.”

Raz Segal, Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Stockton University [From “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” Jewish Currents (October 13, 2023)]:

“…the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes. I say this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians….  

“The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under its definition. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: ‘1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.’ The Israeli Air Force, by its own account, has so far dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated areas in the world—almost as many bombs as the US dropped on all of Afghanistan during record-breaking years of its war there. Human Rights Watch has confirmed that the weapons used included phosphorous bombs, which set fire to bodies and buildings, creating flames that aren’t extinguished on contact with water. This demonstrates clearly what Gallant means by ‘act accordingly’: not targeting individual Hamas militants, as Israel claims, but unleashing deadly violence against Palestinians in Gaza ‘as such,’ in the language of the UN Genocide Convention. Israel has also intensified its 16-year siege of Gaza—the longest in modern history, in clear violation of international humanitarian law—to a ‘complete siege,’ in Gallant’s words. This turn of phrase that explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza, by killing them, starving them, cutting off their water supplies, and bombing their hospitals….  

“Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed. Perpetrators of genocide usually do not express their intentions so clearly…Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza. And those of us watching around the world are derelict in our responsibility to prevent them from doing so.”

In a November 2023 guest editorial for the New York Times, “What I Believe as a Historian of

Genocide,” Israeli-American scholar Omer Bartov, the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, warned of an impending genocide: “while we cannot say that the military is explicitly targeting civilians, functionally and rhetorically we may be watching an ethnic cleansing operation that could quickly devolve into genocide.” In August 2024, after further study, he asserted that Israeli forces are in fact committing genocide in Gaza:

From Omer Bartov, “As a Former IDF Soldier and Historian of Genocide, I Was Deeply Disturbed by My Recent Visit to Israel,” The Guardian (August 13, 2024):

“On 10 November 2023, I wrote in the New York Times: ‘As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is now taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening. […] We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has taken place. I think we still have that time.’  

“I no longer believe that. By the time I travelled to Israel, I had become convinced that at least since the attack by the IDF on Rafah on 6 May 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions. It was not just that this attack against the last concentration of Gazans – most of them displaced already several times by the IDF, which now once again pushed them to a so-called safe zone – demonstrated a total disregard of any humanitarian standards. It also clearly indicated that the ultimate goal of this entire undertaking from the very beginning had been to make the entire Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and to debilitate its population to such a degree that it would either die out or seek all possible options to flee the territory. In other words, the rhetoric spouted by Israeli leaders since 7 October was now being translated into reality – namely, as the 1948 UN Genocide Convention puts it, that Israel was acting ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,’ the Palestinian population in Gaza, ‘as such, by killing, causing serious harm, or inflicting conditions of life meant to bring about the group’s destruction.’”

ADDITIONAL SOURCES: 

•       John Quigley, “The Lancet and Genocide By ‘Slow Death’ in Gaza,” Arab Center Report (July 12, 2024) 

•       “UN Experts Declare Famine Has Spread Throughout Gaza Strip,” UN Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council Report (July 9, 2024) 

•       Emma Farge, “UN Expert Says Israel Has Committed Genocide in Gaza, Calls for Arms Embargo,” Reuters (March 26, 2024)

•       MESA Board Joint Statement with CAF Regarding the Ongoing Genocidal Violence against the Palestinian People and Their Cultural Heritage in Gaza (March 11, 2024) 

•       International Court of Justice, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (January 26, 2024)  

•       Defense for Children International – Palestine v. Biden (November 13, 2023)

2.                   Whereas, human rights organizations and the International Court of Justice have determined that Israel is maintaining a system of apartheid;

From International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem (July 19, 2024):

“223. For the reasons above, the Court concludes that a broad array of legislation adopted and measures taken by Israel in its capacity as an occupying Power treat Palestinians differently on grounds specified by international law. As the Court has noted, this differentiation of treatment cannot be justified with reference to reasonable and objective criteria nor to a legitimate public aim (see paragraphs 196, 205, 213 and 222). Accordingly, the Court is of the view that the régime of comprehensive restrictions imposed by Israel on Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory constitutes systemic discrimination based on, inter alia, race, religion or ethnic origin, in violation of Articles 2, paragraph 1, and 26 of the ICCPR, Article 2, paragraph 2, of the ICESCR, and Article 2 of CERD. 

“224. A number of participants have argued that Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amount to segregation or apartheid, in breach of Article 3 of CERD. 

“225. Article 3 of CERD provides as follows: ‘States Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction.’ This provision refers to two particularly severe forms of racial discrimination: racial segregation and apartheid. 

“226. The Court observes that Israel’s policies and practices in the West Bank and East Jerusalem implement a separation between the Palestinian population and the settlers transferred by Israel to the territory. 

“227. This separation is first and foremost physical: Israel’s settlement policy furthers the fragmentation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the encirclement of Palestinian communities into enclaves. As a result of discriminatory policies and practices such as the imposition of a residence permit system and the use of distinct road networks, which the Court has discussed above, Palestinian communities remain physically isolated from each other and separated from the communities of settlers (see, for example, paragraphs 200 and 219). 

“228. The separation between the settler and Palestinian communities is also juridical. As a result of the partial extension of Israeli law to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, settlers and Palestinians are subject to distinct legal systems in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (see paragraphs 135-137 above). To the extent that Israeli law applies to Palestinians, it imposes on them restrictions, such as the requirement for a permit to reside in East Jerusalem, from which settlers are exempt. In addition, Israel’s legislation and measures that have been applicable for decades treat Palestinians differently from settlers in a wide range of fields of individual and social activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (see paragraphs 192-222 above). 

“229. The Court observes that Israel’s legislation and measures impose and serve to maintain a nearcomplete separation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between the settler and Palestinian communities. For this reason, the Court considers that Israel’s legislation and measures constitute a breach of Article 3 of CERD. […]

“279. Moreover, the Court considers that, in view of the character and importance of the rights and obligations involved, all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It is for all States, while respecting the Charter of the United Nations and international law, to ensure that any impediment resulting from the illegal presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the exercise of the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end. In addition, all the States parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention have the obligation, while respecting the Charter of the United Nations and international law, to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention.” (p. 64-65, 73-74, 74-76)

From Amnesty International, Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity (February 1, 2022), p. 266-67, 271

“The totality of the regime of laws, policies and practices described in this report demonstrates that Israel has established and maintained an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis – a system of apartheid – wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948. The report concludes that the State of Israel considers and treats Palestinians as an inferior non-Jewish racial group. The segregation is conducted in a systematic and highly institutionalized manner through laws, policies and practices, all of which are intended to prevent Palestinians from claiming and enjoying equal rights with Jewish Israelis within the territory of Israel and within the OPT, and thus are intended to oppress and dominate the Palestinian people. This has been complemented by a legal regime that controls (by negating) the rights of Palestinian refugees residing outside Israel and the OPT to return to their homes. 

“Israel has ensured that the Palestinian people are segmented into different geographical areas and treated differently with the intention and effect of dividing the population while consistently preventing its members from exercising their fundamental human rights. Thus, the legal fragmentation of the Palestinian population between Israel, East Jerusalem, the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the refugee communities serves as a foundational element of the regime of oppression and domination of Palestinians. This legal fragmentation denies Palestinians the possibility of realizing equality within Israel and the OPT….The outcome of these legal regimes has been the prolonged and cruel violation of the human rights of individual Palestinians wherever Israel exercises control over their enjoyment of these rights. 

“Israel’s system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination against Palestinians, as a racial group, in all areas under its control amounts to a system of apartheid, and a serious violation of Israel’s human rights obligations. Almost all of Israel’s civilian administration and military authorities, as well as governmental and quasi-governmental institutions, are involved in the enforcement of a system of apartheid against Palestinians across Israel and the OPT and against Palestinian refugees and their descendants outside the territory. The intention to maintain this system has been explicitly declared by successive Israeli political leaders, emphasizing the overarching objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli domination by excluding, segregating and expelling Palestinians. The intention was clearly crystallized in the 2018 nation state law, which constitutionally enshrined racial discrimination against non-Jewish people in Israel and the OPT. Senior civilian and military officials have also issued numerous public statements and directives over the years that reveal, maintain and enforce the institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination of Palestinians, being fully aware of, and therefore fully responsible for, the atrocious consequences the regime has for the lives of the Palestinian population….  “Amnesty International has examined specifically the inhumane acts of forcible transfer, administrative detention and torture, unlawful killings and serious injuries, and the denial of basic freedoms or persecution committed against the Palestinian population in Israel and the OPT. The organization has concluded that the patterns of proscribed acts perpetrated by Israel form part of a systematic as well as widespread attack directed against the Palestinian population, and that the inhuman or inhumane acts committed within the context of this attack have been committed with the intention to maintain this system and amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid under both the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute….

“Without taking any meaningful action to hold Israel to account for its systematic and widespread violations and crimes under international law against the Palestinian population, the international community has contributed to undermining the international legal order and has emboldened Israel to continue perpetrating crimes with impunity. In fact, some states have actively supported Israel’s violations by supplying it with arms, equipment and other tools to perpetrate crimes under international law and by providing diplomatic cover, including at the UN Security Council, to shield it from

accountability. By doing so, they have completely failed the Palestinian people and have only exacerbated Palestinians’ lived experience as people with lesser rights and inferior status to Jewish Israelis.” 

From Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution (April 27, 2021), p. 203-04

“Israeli authorities have deprived millions of people of their basic rights by virtue of their identity as Palestinians. These longstanding policies and systematic practices box in, dispossess, forcibly separate, marginalize, and otherwise inflict suffering on Palestinians. 

“In the OPT, movement restrictions, land expropriation, forcible transfer, denial of residency and nationality, and the mass suspension of civil rights constitute ‘inhuman[e] acts’ set out under the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute. Under both legal standards, inhumane acts when carried out amid systematic oppression and with the intent to maintain domination make up the crime against humanity of apartheid. Collectively, these policies and practices in the OPT severely deprive Palestinians of fundamental human rights, including to residency, private property, and access to land, services, and resources, on a widespread and systematic basis. When committed with discriminatory intent, on the basis of the victims’ identity as part of a group or collectivity, they amount to the crime against humanity of persecution under the Rome Statute and customary international law. 

“Separately from the inhumane acts carried out in the OPT, the Israeli government violates the rights of Palestinians inside Israel on account of their identity, including measures that have made it virtually impossible for tens of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins living in the Negev to live lawfully in the communities; the denial to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of the ability to access or use land confiscated from them historically; the effective bar on citizens and residents obtaining long-term legal status to and thereby living permanently together in Israel with spouses from the West Bank and Gaza, which deprives them of the ability to live together permanently in Israel; and the denial of residency rights to Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in the events around the establishment of the state. 

“These abuses continue and there is no indication that authorities have investigated, much less held accountable, anyone involved in their commission.”

From B’Tselem, A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea:

This Is Apartheid (January 12, 2021), p. 7

“The Israeli regime, which controls all the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, seeks to advance and cement Jewish supremacy throughout the entire area. To that end, it has divided the area into several units, each with a different set of rights for Palestinians – always inferior to the rights of Jews. As part of this policy, Palestinians are denied many rights, including the right to self-determination. 

“This policy is advanced in several ways. Israel demographically engineers the space through laws and orders that allow any Jew in the world or their relatives to obtain Israeli citizenship, but almost completely deny Palestinians this possibility. It has physically engineered the entire area by taking over of millions of dunams of land and establishing Jewish-only communities, while driving Palestinians into small enclaves. Movement is engineered through restrictions on Palestinian subjects, and political engineering excludes millions of Palestinians from participating in the processes that determine their lives and futures while holding them under military occupation. 

“A regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another is an apartheid regime. Israeli apartheid, which promotes the supremacy of Jews over Palestinians, was not born in one day or of a single speech. It is a process that has gradually grown more institutionalized and explicit, with mechanisms introduced over time in law and practice to promote Jewish supremacy. These accumulated measures, their pervasiveness in legislation and political practice, and the public and judicial support they receive – all form the basis for our conclusion that the bar for labeling the Israeli regime as apartheid has been met.”

From Yesh Din, The Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion (Septemember 7, 2020), p. 57-58

“It is a difficult statement to make, but the conclusion of this opinion is that the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank. The perpetrators are Israelis, and the victims are Palestinians. 

“The crime is committed because the Israeli occupation is no ‘ordinary’ occupation regime (or a regime of domination and oppression), but one that comes with a gargantuan colonization project that has created a community of citizens of the occupying power in the occupied territory. The crime is committed because, in addition to colonizing the occupied territory, the occupying power has also gone to great lengths to cement its domination over the occupied residents and ensure their inferior status. The crime of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank because, in this context of a regime of domination and oppression of one national group by another, the Israeli authorities implement policies and practices that constitute inhuman acts as the term is defined in international law: Denial of rights from a national group, denial of resources from one group and their transfer to another, physical and legal separation between the two groups and the institution of a different legal system for each of them. This is an inexhaustive list of the inhuman acts. 

“The alibi used by successive Israeli governments that the situation is temporary and there is no desire or intent to maintain the domination and oppression of Palestinians in the area or preserve their inferior status falls apart in the face of the clear evidence that the separate policies and practices Israel applies in the occupied territory are designed to maintain and cement the domination and oppression of Palestinians and the supremacy of the Israelis who migrated to the area. 

“That is not all. As described in this opinion, the government of Israel is carrying out a process of ‘gradual annexation’ in the West Bank. From an administrative perspective, annexation means the revocation of military rule in the annexed area and the territorial extension of powers held by Israeli authorities deep into the West Bank. 

“Continued creeping legal annexation, let alone official annexation of a particular part of the West Bank through legislation that would apply Israeli law and administration there, is an amalgamation of the regimes. This could mean strengthening the argument, which already is being heard, that the crime of Apartheid is not committed only in the West Bank. That the Israeli regime in its entirety is an apartheid regime. That Israel is an Apartheid state. 

“That is distressing and shameful. And even if not all Israelis are guilty of the crime, we are all responsible for it. It is our duty, each and every one of us, to take resolute action to stop the commission of this crime.”

ADDITIONAL SOURCES: 

•       Human Rights Watch, West Bank: New Entry Rules Further Isolate Palestinians (January 23, 2023)

•       Dania Abul Haj and Ilora Choudhury, Fenced Off: Israel’s 2022 Rules of Entry of Foreign Nationals into the West Bank. London: International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, 2023.

•       The Israeli Government’s New Restrictions of Entry for Foreigners into the West Bank. Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem Report (September 2022). 

3.                   Whereas, in April 2024 the United Nations documented that Israel’s campaign of scholasticide has destroyed every university in Gaza and killed at least 5,479 students and 356 educators;

From UN Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, “UN Experts Deeply Concerned Over ‘Scholasticide’ in Gaza” (April 18, 2024):

“UN experts today expressed grave concern over the pattern of attacks on schools, universities, teachers, and students in the Gaza Strip, raising serious alarm over the systemic destruction of the Palestinian education system.

“‘With more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as “scholasticide”,’ the experts said.

“The term refers to the systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure.

“After six months of military assault, more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured – with numbers growing each day. At least 60 per cent of educational facilities, including 13 public libraries, have been damaged or destroyed and at least 625,000 students have no access to education. Another 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques and three churches have also been damaged or destroyed, including the Central Archives of Gaza, containing 150 years of history. Israa University, the last remaining university in Gaza was demolished by the Israeli military on 17 January 2024….

“Even UN schools sheltering forcibly displaced civilians are being bombed, including in Israeli military-designated ‘safe zones.’

“‘These attacks are not isolated incidents. They present a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society,’ the experts said….

 “‘Attacks on education cannot be tolerated. The international community must send a clear message that those who target schools and universities will be held responsible,’ the experts said, adding that accountability for these violations includes an obligation to finance and rebuild the education system.”

From Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza, “Unified Emergency Statement by Palestinian

Academics and Administrators of Gaza Universities” (May 29, 2024)

“We have come together as Palestinian academics and staff of Gaza universities to affirm our existence, the existence of our colleagues and our students, and the insistence on our future, in the face of all current attempts to erase us. The Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings but our universities live on. We reaffirm our collective determination to remain on our land and to resume teaching, study, and research in Gaza, at our own Palestinian universities, at the earliest opportunity. 

“We call upon our friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine, to work alongside us in rebuilding our demolished universities, and to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions. The future of our young people in Gaza depends upon us, and our ability to remain on our land in order to continue to serve the coming generations of our people. 

“We issue this call from beneath the bombs of the occupation forces across Occupied Gaza, in the refugee camps of Rafah, and from the sites of temporary new exile in Egypt and other host countries. We are disseminating it as the Israeli occupation continues to wage its genocidal campaign against our people daily, in its attempt to eliminate every aspect of our collective and individual life. Our families, colleagues, and students are being assassinated, while we have once again been rendered homeless, reliving the experiences of our parents and grandparents during the massacres and mass expulsions by Zionist armed forces in 1947 and 1948. Our civic infrastructure – universities, schools, hospitals, libraries, museums and cultural centres – built by generations of our people, lies in ruins from this deliberate continuous Nakba. The deliberate targeting of our educational infrastructure is a blatant attempt to render Gaza uninhabitable and erode the intellectual and cultural fabric of our society. However, we refuse to allow such acts to extinguish the flame of knowledge and resilience that burns within us…. 

“We emphasize the urgent need to re-operate Gaza’s education institutions, not merely to support current students, but to ensure the long-term resilience and sustainability of our higher education system. Education is not just a means of imparting knowledge; it is a vital pillar of our existence and a beacon of hope for the Palestinian people. 

“The fate of higher education in Gaza belongs to the universities in Gaza, their faculty, staff, and students and to the Palestinian people as a whole. We appreciate the efforts of peoples and citizens around the world to bring an end to this ongoing genocide. We call upon our colleagues in the homeland and internationally to support our steadfast attempts to defend and preserve our universities for the sake of the future of our people, and our ability to remain on our Palestinian land in Gaza. We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again.” 

From Birzeit University Right to Education Campaign, “Statement to the American Federation of Teachers” (July 22, 2024) 

“Today, in what the International Court of Justice has ruled is plausibly genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, depriving Palestinians of their rights to exist and live, the Israeli assault on Palestinian education persists. The entire higher education system in Gaza has been disrupted or destroyed. Universities have been bombed, resulting in the deaths of over 100 professors and thousands of university students. More than 88,000 students have been deprived of their education since the beginning of this aggression. In the West Bank, escalating violations and fear of Israeli settler attacks have forced all 34 higher education institutions to switch to distance learning for months, impacting over 138,800 students.  

“The Israeli occupation imposes severe restrictions on movement, with 645 permanent blockades across the West Bank, hindering accessibility and fragmenting Palestinian society. These blockades force students and faculty to navigate dangerous and obstructed routes daily, threatening their lives and educational pursuits. Moreover, the criminalization of Palestinian education extends to the harassment and arrest of students and faculty members. Additionally, the isolation of Palestinian universities through directives restricts academic freedom and undermines the autonomy of our educational institutions and the Palestinian intellectuals who shape them….

“In this dire context, we call upon the AFT to support the resolution to divest from Israel State bonds. This act of divestment is not only a financial decision but a moral imperative. It aligns with the legacy of solidarity shown by US teachers and unions during the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Ending the funding for Israel’s crimes against Palestinians is an essential form of solidarity that we urgently need.  

“We hope you will heed our call and act with the urgency and moral clarity that this situation demands. Stand with us, stand with our Palestinian colleagues, and help put an end to these egregious violations of human rights. Together, as workers and educators, we can make a difference.”

From Palestinian Feminist Collective, “A Feminist Praxis for Academic Freedom in the Context of Genocide in Gaza” (April 11, 2024)

“As members of the Palestinian Feminist Collective and scholars at North American universities, we are steadfast in our commitment to the intellectual pursuit of knowledge, truth, and justice in environments free from systemic oppression….escalated genocide in Gaza has meant the annihilation of intellectual and cultural sources of wisdom, or sophicide.

“Sophicide refers to the…deliberate annihilation of Indigenous knowledge traditions inspired by the land itself, as well as the carriers of that knowledge, including elders and women. It involves the crushing of Palestinian life and learning through the systematic murder of Palestinian students, mentors, teachers, researchers, scholars, academics, writers, librarians, archivists, spiritual leaders,

historiographers, creatives, poets, interns, lecturers, professors, staff, and lab technicians. Such attacks on these Indigenous knowledge carriers impacts entire generations of learners, crushing their aspirations and dreams.   

“Sophicide also includes scholasticide, a Palestinian concept that refers to the physical destruction of centers of knowledge, educational resources, infrastructures, and archives as well as the silencing, censorship, and repression of Palestinian history, epistemology, scholarship, and subjectivity….

“The obliteration of Palestine’s schools, universities, and libraries furthers the settler-colonial project of erasure because these are spaces that nurtured the creation and transmission of knowledge. Since October 2023, the IOF have destroyed over 378 schools, public libraries, laboratories, classrooms, and research facilities, depriving Palestinians of the histories and knowledges housed in these institutions. Understanding this form of genocide as sophicide elucidates how schools, universities, and learning spaces are not just physical structures; they are ‘the fabric of life.’ These were places of realizing the aspirations of Palestinian youth who had been under siege in Gaza their entire lives….

“The IOF’s calculated killings of knowledge producers and destruction of spaces of teaching and learning deprives Palestinians in Gaza, one million of whom are children under eighteen, of their ‘past, present, and future,’ by attacking their education and their dreams, hopes, and ambitions. One clear example is the martyrdom of Dr. Refaat Alareer, a prominent Palestinian writer and teacher of medieval literature, whose lyrical genius was expressed through his poetry as well as his non-profit ‘We Are Not Numbers,’ which aimed to bring dignity to the people of Gaza and Palestine. Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza on December 7, 2023, alongside his brother, sister, nephew, and three nieces. We mourn the profound loss and honor the martyrdom of Dr. Alareer as a valuable mentor and knowledge producer whose final poem ‘If I Should Die’ has come to mark the precarity of Gazan life….

“Similarly, in the West Bank, the IOF are systematically attacking Palestinian universities and other educational spaces. On November 8, 2023, they stormed Birzeit University in Ramallah with six military vehicles, raiding the Student Council and shooting a young Palestinian. Also in November, settlers set fire to two classrooms in Khirbet Zanuta, depriving dozens of Palestinian children of their schooling. These assaults on academic infrastructure extend beyond physical buildings, affecting the foundations that support learning and intellectual growth throughout Palestine

“In the occupied West Bank, the systematic murder of teachers, mentors, and students, as well as the deliberate destruction of learning infrastructure is also upheld by the silencing, censorship, harassment, desecrating, devaluing, intimidation, sabotage, and repression of educators and learners. In these ways, sophicide functions to destroy and erase Palestinian histories, intellectual memory, and wisdom.” We note that Israel’s campaign of scholasticide did not begin in 2023; it has been ongoing for decades.

From Riham Barghouti, “The Struggle for an Equal Right to Academic Freedom,” International Institute of  Social Studies (June 7, 2011)

“The term ‘scholasticide’ has been coined to describe the systematic destruction by Israeli forces of centers of education…. These attacks on civilians and buildings, including educational institutions, should not be seen as isolated occurrences. Rather, the attacks reflect a systematic policy by Israel to target the Palestinian education system, persisting throughout the history of the occupation.… Attacks against education have come in the form of closure of institutions, denial of access to education, the killing and injuring of students and teachers, arrests and deportations, and the destruction of academic institutions.  

“Starting in 1967, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip resulted in severe travel restrictions. This denied Palestinians the right to travel to pursue higher education in neighboring Arab countries or further abroad. These restrictions spurred the emergence of a number of universities in the Occupied Territories, including Hebron (1971), Bethlehem (1973), Birzeit (1973), Al Najah (1977) and the Islamic University (1978).  

“However, almost immediately after their establishment, these Palestinian institutions of higher education came under attack by the Israeli occupation. For example, in 1973, just as Birzeit was nearing completion as a fully-fledged university, the Israeli authorities closed down the campus by military order, a measure that was repeated on several other occasions. A year later, in 1974, the president of Birzeit University, Dr. Hanna Nasir, was arrested by the Israeli authorities and deported to Lebanon…. 

“Within weeks of the start of the first Intifada in December 1987, Israel closed down all six Palestinian universities, 13 colleges and five training centers. On 2 February 1988, the Israeli Army ordered the closure of all 1,194 schools in the West Bank until further notice. Less than a year later, the kindergartens were also closed down by military order. Despite these disturbances, the effort to maintain continuity in the education system persisted. For example, Palestinian education went underground with classes being held in churches, mosques and living rooms. However, the Israeli army frequently raided these makeshift classes, arresting those in attendance….

“All six universities mentioned earlier remained closed under military order for four years. As always, the Israeli justification was ‘security.’ The authorities argued that schools and universities were sites of student demonstrations and unrest, so therefore all educational institutions had to be closed down. This security rationale was invoked time and again by Israel, despite its illegal use as a form of collective punishment, and more so, its wholesale violation of the human right to education provided under international law. In fact, Israeli military and security officials defended the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza on 29 December 2009 by stating that ‘universities historically have been breeding grounds for radical thought, free speech and protest.’”  

“In addition to the attacks and closures of academic institutions, Israel continuously violates Palestinian academic freedom by impeding access to academic institutions and isolating the entire Palestinian academic community. First, Palestinian students from Gaza have been denied permission to travel abroad to continue their education, even when awarded international scholarships. Second, Gaza students have been denied permission to travel to the West Bank to study since 2005. Due to the existence of several hundred checkpoints and closures and the Israeli separation wall, it has become increasingly difficult for Palestinian students living in one area of the West Bank to travel to another area of the West Bank to attend university. Furthermore, Palestinian citizens and residents of Israel are threatened with withdrawal of their residence rights in Israel if they are found in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, prohibiting them from studying at Palestinian universities. At the same time, Palestinian citizens of Israel who choose to study at Israeli universities face numerous discriminatory practices including being denied scholarships, housing opportunities or admission to certain programs based on failure to serve in the military.

“Beyond aspiring students, Palestinian academics are also regularly denied the right to travel abroad to attend conferences or to carry out joint projects with international institutions. International academics are routinely denied visas and, as such, are unable to travel to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to attend conferences, give lectures, or teach at these institutions. Foreign passport holders of Palestinian and non-Palestinian origin living in Palestinian territories and working at Palestinian universities are often denied re-entry visas or threatened with deportation.”

ADDITIONAL SOURCES: 

•       Samar Saeed, “Scholasticide in Gaza: Israel’s Continued Colonial Policy of Eradicating Palestinian Knowledge,” Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Newsletter (Spring 2024)

•       Ashley Smith, “Resisting Israeli Scholasticide and Academic Apartheid: Interview with Maya Wind,” Spectre Journal (July 9, 2024) 

•       Marcy Newman, “Academic Institutions in the West Can No Longer Remain Silent on Gaza.” Truthout (3 March 2024). 

•       Chandni Desai, “The War in Gaza Is Wiping Out Palestine’s Education and Knowledge Systems” (The Conversation, February 8, 2024) 

•       Patrick Jack, “Academia in Gaza ‘Has Been Destroyed’ by Israeli ‘Educide,’” Times Higher Education Supplement (January 29, 2024) 

•       Chris Havergal, “Gaza University President Killed in Israeli Air Strike,” Times Higher Education Supplement (December 4, 2023) 

•       Pula Lem, “Palestinian Campuses Head into Abyss as Israeli Retaliation Grows.” Times Higher Education Supplement (26 October 2023).

•       Joint Statement against the Military Targeting of Cultural Sites: Targeting Cultural Sites Is a War Crime (2020) [Endorsed by MLA Executive Council]

•       Ameera Ahmad and Ed Vulliamy, “In Gaza, the Schools Are Dying Too” (Guardian, January 10, 2009) 

•       Karma Nabulsi, “The Role of Palestinian Intellectuals,” in Waiting for the Barbarians: A Tribute to  Edward W. Said, ed. Basak Ertür and Müge Gürsoy Sökmen (New York: Verso, 2008)  

4.                   Whereas, the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in denying Palestinian human rights has been comprehensively documented;

In this document, we can only begin to hint at the enormous body of work documenting the active complicity of Israeli academic institutions in denying Palestinian human rights, including the rights to life, liberty, security of person, and freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention; the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; the right to hold opinions without interference; the right to freedom of expression; the right to participate in public affairs; the right to equal protection and effective protection against discrimination; the right to freedom of association; the right to peaceful assembly; the right to work; the right to participate in cultural life; the right to education; and the rights to liberty of movement and freedom to choose one’s residence. We note that Palestinian scholars, academic organizations, and human rights groups have been documenting this complicity for decades. Detailed reports can be found on the websites of the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University; Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; Al-Haq; and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Most recently, we note the publication of Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny

Palestinian Freedom (2024), by the Israeli-American scholar Maya Wind. It is impossible to summarize Wind’s almost 200 pages of evidence, or her wealth of sources, many of them in Arabic or Hebrew, and we recommend those interested in the basis of this resolution read her book, along with the many other sources we provide below. What follows is a fraction of the evidence of complicity by Israeli universities.

From Maya Wind, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom (New York: Verso, 2024)

“Tel Aviv University announced in July 2023 that it is embarking on another partnership with the Israeli military. The university had won the Ministry of Defense bid to house the prestigious ‘Erez’ BA program for officers in combat military units….In the Erez program, the military explains, ‘military and academic training are intertwined,’ wherein the cadets are transformed ‘from civilians to elite fighters.’” (p. 3) 

“In the lead-up to the 1948 war, these three institutions [Hebrew University, the Technion, and the Weizmann Institute] were directly recruited to support the violent dispossession required for Zionist territorial expansion. The leading Zionist militia, the Haganah, established a Science Corps, which opened bases on all three campuses to research and refine military capabilities. Throughout the 1948 war, the universities helped sustain the Haganah and other militias in their mass expulsion of Palestinians… Faculty and students developed and manufactured weapons, as their campuses, equipment, and expertise were put to the service of Zionist militias. With the establishment of Israel, the Technion and the

Weizmann Institute came to anchor the state’s scientific-military capabilities.” (p. 13-14)

“Israeli archaeological theft and appropriation through occupation is a longstanding practice. It is also often publicly conducted, and Israel openly displays stolen artifacts in its own museums…. The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Israeli sources estimate that between 1967 and 1992 approximately 200,000 artifacts were removed annually from the OPT.” (p. 28, 216-17n4)

“Israeli universities run programs that conceptualize academic and military training as one and the same. All public universities offer their facilities, faculty, and expertise for Israeli military training, advancing the career development of soldiers and security state personnel through specialized degreegranting programs. Atuda (academic reserve) is a specialized academic program for soldiers—run by the Israeli military and Ministry of Defense, in collaboration with weapons manufacturers and the

Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure—that is administered through the Israeli university system. The Atuda program was developed to offer the Israeli military a cadre of highly educated and specialized soldiers, amid a national draft of high school seniors.… 

“The boundaries are blurred between military training bases and Israeli university campuses. In some elite programs, soldiers complete specialized degree programs throughout their active military service, such as with Ben-Gurion University’s accelerated BA for fighter pilots designed to complement their professional training. In others, military and academic training are intertwined and carried out across both university campuses and military bases, such as with Hebrew University’s Talpiot combined BSc in physics, computer science, and math. Under the auspices of the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure and the Israeli Air Force, the program fosters leadership in ‘technological research’ for the maintenance and development of weapon systems for the Israeli military and the security establishment. Most of the training takes place at the Air Force Command and Leadership School at Hebrew University’s Giv’at Ram Campus, but soldiers are also trained in military bases and security state facilities.” (p. 99-101)

“All Israeli universities work closely with the Israeli government to develop the state’s military industries and technologies for the military. Israel’s Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure (MAFAT), the R&D directorate of Israel’s Ministry of Defense, maintains close ties with university administrations. MAFAT’s stated aim is to ‘ensure Israel’s ability to develop weapons to build its strength and to continue to maintain its qualitative advantage.’ MAFAT is therefore responsible for weapons and technology infrastructure, cultivating technological research personnel, soliciting and funding research from Israeli universities, and collaborating with academic institutions and military industries on development for the Israeli military.” (p. 107)

“The Technion not only facilitated the birth of the Israeli military industry but also continues to support the international sales of its weapons, even going so far as to explicitly offer courses on arms and security marketing and export.” (p. 110)

“Palestinian citizens of Israel across Israeli universities face attacks on their critical research and writing. This is particularly the case for those who wish to explore the history and present conditions of Palestinians under Israeli rule, both within the Israeli state and in the OPT. Israeli universities have long constrained the right of Palestinian faculty and scholars to investigate the subjects and events most central to the Palestinian experience: the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 and, with it, the mass expulsion, dispossession, and fragmentation of the Palestinian people, thereafter divided into refugees living in the diaspora, those living under Israeli military rule in the OPT, and those living as citizens within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.” (p. 117)

“A senior university administrator [at Ben Gurion University in 2010] assured the press that the university was ‘Zionist,’ reminding the public that the Department of Politics and Government trains active-duty Israeli Air Force personnel. Meanwhile, the university senate passed a directive that faculty must refrain from mentioning their university by name if expressing their own ‘political opinions.’ The institutional message was clear: critical analyses of the Israeli occupation could in no way be associated with the university. Faculty at Ben-Gurion University and at other institutions took notice and began taking new precautions. They reported excluding critical scholarship on their syllabi, making explicit requests not to record their classes, and censoring their own commentary in the classroom. The Israeli consensus on the boundaries of acceptable critique was becoming more strictly enforced.” (p. 127)

“On March 28, 2022, two Palestinian students of Hebrew University sat on the Mt. Scopus campus lawn and sang in Arabic. They were approached by Jewish-Israeli students who demanded to know what they were singing. The Israeli students—who were also off-duty police officers—accused the Palestinian students of singing ‘nationalist’ songs, forcefully escorted them to the campus gates, and summoned active-duty officers to arrest them…. Across Israeli campuses, university administrations marginalize and criminalize Palestinian students by scrutinizing them for signs of national, religious, or political expression.” (p. 150)

“Permits for Palestinian events are commonly refused or rescinded across Israeli university campuses. The Hebrew University administration canceled an academic conference about Palestinian political prisoners in 2017. At Ben-Gurion University that same year, a Palestinian student group organized an exhibit on Israeli demolitions of Bedouin Palestinian homes in the Naqab. Following complaints from the student union, the university reversed its earlier decision to authorize the exhibit, citing ‘security constraints.’ The administration demanded that students present the content of the exhibit in advance and ultimately authorized the display for only one day. In 2018, the Tel Aviv University administration canceled a previously authorized series of meetings, tabling, and events scheduled as part of a ‘Week to End the Occupation’ organized by a joint Palestinian-Jewish student group shortly before the week commenced.” (p. 165)

“Israeli universities serve as part of the state apparatus to quell Palestinian student dissent. Defying the Israeli security state comes at a heavy cost in Palestinian universities, but so does challenging it on Israeli campuses. Universities in the OPT have been physically isolated, financially suffocated, raided by the military, and bombarded with heavy fire. In the face of this repression by the Israeli state, not only have Israeli universities continued to willingly collaborate with the Israeli military and security apparatuses, on their own campuses their administrations actively repress Palestinian student mobilization to protest these injustices.” (p. 187)

“Built on indigenous Palestinian land and designed as vehicles of Jewish settlement expansion and Palestinian dispossession, Israeli institutions of higher education were founded in the tradition of land-grab universities. Like other settler institutions, Israeli universities were established to uphold the colonial infrastructure of the Israeli state. Where they stand apart, however, is in their explicit and ongoing role in sustaining a regime now overwhelmingly recognized by the international community as apartheid. Israeli universities continue not only to actively participate in the violence of the Israeli state against Palestinians but also to contribute their resources, research, and scholarship to maintain, defend, and justify this oppression.” (p. 195)

From Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, The Persecution of Palestinian

Students in Israeli Universities and Colleges during the War on Gaza (March 25, 2024), p. 1-4  

“Since the beginning of the War on 7 October 2023, dozens of Israeli universities and colleges initiated disciplinary actions mainly and overwhelmingly against Palestinian students both citizens of Israel and residents of East Jerusalem, based on their social media posts….these proceedings have created a hostile, inciting, and unsafe academic environment for many Palestinian students and faculty…. Surveys conducted among Palestinian students indicate that they feel unsafe on campus and a high percentage consider dropping out…. 

“Sometimes, students were held accountable for content they did not share themselves but for content that had been created by a user they had shared content from in the past. Additionally, even the posting of basic national symbols, such as the Palestinian flag, at times served as basis for disciplinary action. This strictness was also evident in cases opened against students solely for their expression of views that might challenge the Israeli consensus….For instance, articles criticizing the actions of the Israeli military or casting doubt on the accuracy of some descriptions of the events in the Gaza envelope were often the basis for some complaints, even if the source was Israeli media in Hebrew. Effectively, the use of terms like ‘ethnic cleansing,’ ‘massacre,’ or ‘genocide’ to describe the events in Gaza was banned.

“According to Adalah Center’s review of these posts and the proceedings, there is a clear pattern of racist viewpoints which attribute charges of support for terrorism solely based on the identity of the publishers. Effectively, they have assumed that every Arab student is a terrorist unless they prove themselves otherwise.”

From Anthony Alessandrini, “The Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel as a Defense of Academic Freedom,” Academe Blog (August 20, 2024)   

“Today, [Israeli] universities closely collaborate with Israeli weapons manufacturers to develop technology for the Israeli military and security state. To give only a few examples: Bar Ilan University works closely with Israel’s security services, condemned by the UN Committee against Torture for their use of illegal interrogation tactics; Ben Gurion University hosts the Homeland Security Institute whose partnerships include Israeli weapons companies and the Israeli Ministry of Defense; Technion has numerous joint academic programs with the Israeli military and developed technology for the Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer used to demolish Palestinian homes (one killed Rachel Corrie in Gaza in 2003); Tel Aviv University runs joint centers with the Israeli military and arms industry; the University of Haifa hosts the Israeli Military Academic Complex that trains senior military staff; and Ariel University is located in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.”

From Alternative Information Center, Academic Boycott of Israel and the Complicity of Israeli

Academic Institutions in Occupation of Palestinian Territories (Jerusalem: AIC, 2009)

“The Technion, the Israeli institution most renowned for applied sciences such as engineering and computer science, has all but enlisted itself in the military. The Technion, like most other Israeli universities, takes pride in projects of research and development conducted for the Israeli security forces. Examples of the more brutal of these are the development of a remote-controlled ‘D9’ bulldozer used by the Israeli army to demolish Palestinian houses and the development of a method for detecting underground tunnels, specifically developed in order to assist the Israeli army in its continued siege on the Gaza Strip. The extent of cooperation between the Technion and Israeli military was demonstrated when the Technion opened a center for the development of electro-optics in complete partnership with Elbit, one of the biggest Israeli private weapons’ research companies which is also heavily involved in development for the Israeli military.

“Though the Technion is the most notorious and prestigious academic institution that cooperates with the Israeli military in developing military technologies, it is not the only Israeli university to do so…Tel-Aviv University has participated in no less than 55 joint technological projects with the Israeli army, particularly in the field of electro-optics….Bar-Ilan University has also participated in joint research with the army, specifically in developing artificial intelligence for unmanned combat vehicles. 

“Other academic institutes such as the Weizman Institute have also been involved in development in service of the Israeli army. Academic institutions such as the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya or Holon College take pride in the fact that their students later work in weapons manufacturing companies such as Elbit and RAFAEL. The Wingate Institute also has joint research projects with the Israeli security forces, although more related to physical fitness rather than to weapon development.” (p. 9-10)

“Being an important part of a militarized war-like society in which army service is a fundamental mainstream consensus, Israeli universities and academic institutes tend to provide preferential treatment to current soldiers, ex-soldiers and reserve-soldier students. 

“Israeli law itself stipulates that universities give special treatment to reservist students and none of the universities themselves have ever expressed even symbolic opposition to this political interference in the academic sphere; on the contrary, almost all of them have come up with their own original ways of supporting soldiers and the Israeli war-like agenda (way beyond what they are required to by law). The most common method for this is the granting of scholarships and academic benefits based, sometimes solely, on past, present or future military service. Many scholarships, including some university sponsored ones, grant credit to applicants who have served in the army, and it is also easy to find scholarships granted solely to soldiers…. 

“Conscription to the Israeli army is mandatory, but there are numerous Israeli youth exempt from service because of religious beliefs and health reasons. There are also a small but important number of conscientious objectors who are sometimes imprisoned because of their refusal to enlist. Any favorable or preferential treatment to soldiers is discrimination against both these groups, but the starkest discrimination is against Palestinian citizens of Israel who, unlike most other ethnic populations, are not conscripted to the Israeli army. In the past this fact has been used in numerous cases to discriminate against Palestinian citizens, especially in matters of employment. Since any preferential treatment of soldiers and ex-soldiers must necessarily be seen as practical discrimination against Palestinians, the Israeli system of higher education is rife with such mistreatment.” (p. 12, 15)

“Several universities have taken a step further and have become directly involved with the Israeli occupation. The starkest example of this is the Judea and Samaria College, founded by Bar Ilan University in Ariel, an Israeli settlement on Palestinian territory….

Jerusalem’s Hebrew University has also become an accomplice in building in settlements on Palestinian lands. Its Mount Scopus campus is situated inside the Green Line, but bordering on

Palestinian land in virtually all directions. Since the 1970s, the university has attempted to oust nine Palestinian families who live in nearby lands in order to expand its campus. Hebrew University has already built on lands belonging to the Palestinian villages of Lifta, al-Issawiya, and Wadi al-Joz. In 2004 the university began expansion onto another area that belongs to Palestinians, in order to build parking lots, offices and student housing.” (p. 18-19)

ADDITIONAL SOURCES: 

•       Ilan Pappé, “Israeli Universities Are Complicit,” Guardian (June 1, 2024) 

•       Maya Wind, “The Settler University: Israeli Academic Has Always Been Part of Israel’s Territorial Objectives in Palestine,” Mail & Guardian (April 27, 2024) 

•       Pola Lem, “Palestinian Students Suspended by Israeli Universities,” Times Higher Education Supplement (October 31, 2023) 

•       Or Kashti, “In About-face, Israeli University Heads Decide to Admit Settlement University to Joint Body.” Haaretz (10 April 2021). 

•       MLA Letter to Israeli Authorities about Restrictions on International Academics Working in Palestinian Universities (2019) 

•       United Nations Committee against Torture, Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Concluding Observations on the Fifth Periodic Report of Israel (June 3, 2016)

•       Riham Barghouti, “The Struggle for an Equal Right to Academic Freedom,” International Institute of Social Studies (7 June 2011).

•       Gabi Baramki, Peaceful Resistance: Building a Palestinian University Under Occupation. New York: Pluto Press, 2010.

•       Marcy Jane Knopf-Newman, “The Fallacy of Academic Freedom and the Academic Boycott of Israel.” CR: The New Centennial  Review 8.2 (2008).

•       Keith Hammond, “Palestinian Universities and the Israeli Occupation,” Policy Futures in Education 5.2 (2007). 

•       Tanya Reinhart, “Academic Boycott: In Support of Paris VI.” ZNet (4 February 2003).

•       Anthony Sullivan, Palestinian Universities Under Occupation. Cairo: Cairo Papers in Social Science, 1988.

5.                   Whereas, in 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations called for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel;

Due to frequent misrepresentations of the 2005 BDS call, we reproduce the full document here:

Palestinian Civil Society Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights (July 9, 2005)

“One year after the historic Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which found Israel’s Wall built on occupied Palestinian territory to be illegal, Israel continues its construction of the colonial Wall with total disregard to the Court’s decision. Thirty-eight years into Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel continues to expand Jewish colonies. It has unilaterally annexed occupied East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and is now de facto annexing large parts of the West Bank by means of the Wall. Israel is also preparing—in the shadow of its planned redeployment from the Gaza Strip—to build and expand colonies in the West Bank. Fifty-seven years after the state of Israel was built mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners, a majority of Palestinians are refugees, most of whom are stateless. Moreover, Israel’s entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Arab-Palestinian citizens remains intact.

“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law; and

“Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies; and

“Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine; and

“In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions; and 

“Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression;

“We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

“These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1.                   Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall

2.                   Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and 3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

[A full list of the 170 Palestinian civil society organizations endorsing the call can be found here.] 

ADDITIONAL SOURCES: 

•       Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS 

•       Call for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel 

•       Implementing the Academic Boycott: Individuals vs. Institutions 

•       PACBI Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel  

•       Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions, “Frequently Asked Questions”

•       American Studies Association, “What Does the Boycott Mean?” 

•       Maya Wind, “What Are Academic Boycotts For?” Africa Is a Country (April 18, 2024) 

•       Paul Di Stefano and Mostafa Henaway, “Boycotting Apartheid: From South Africa to Palestine,” Peace Review 26.1 (2014).

•       David Lloyd and Malini Johar Schueller, “The Israeli State of Exception and the Case for Academic Boycott,” AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom 4 (2013)

•       Tanya Reinhart, “Academic Boycott: In Support of Paris VI.” ZNet (4 February 2003).

6.                   Whereas, that call is to boycott institutions, not individual Israeli academics, and to support academic freedom;

Due to frequent misrepresentations of the 2004 Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, we reproduce the full document here:

Call for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (July 6, 2004)

“Whereas Israel’s colonial oppression of the Palestinian people, which is based on Zionist ideology, comprises the following:

•       Denial of its responsibility for the Nakba—in particular the waves of ethnic cleansing and dispossession that created the Palestinian refugee problem—and therefore refusal to accept the inalienable rights of the refugees and displaced stipulated in and protected by international law;

•       Military occupation and colonization of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza since 1967, in violation of international law and UN resolutions;

•       The entrenched system of racial discrimination and segregation against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, which resembles the defunct apartheid system in South Africa;

“Since Israeli academic institutions (mostly state controlled) and the vast majority of Israeli intellectuals and academics have either contributed directly to maintaining, defending or otherwise justifying the above forms of oppression, or have been complicit in them through their silence,

“Given that all forms of international intervention have until now failed to force Israel to comply with international law or to end its repression of the Palestinians, which has manifested itself in many forms, including siege, indiscriminate killing, wanton destruction and the racist colonial wall,

“In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community of scholars and intellectuals have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in their struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott,

“Recognizing that the growing international boycott movement against Israel has expressed the need for a Palestinian frame of reference outlining guiding principles,

“In the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression,

“We, Palestinian academics and intellectuals, call upon our colleagues in the international community to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid, by applying the following:

1.      Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions; 

2.      Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions;

3.      Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by international academic institutions; 

4.      Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations;

5.      Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an explicit or implicit condition for such support.

“Endorsed byPalestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees; Palestinian

General Federation of Trade Unions; Palestinian NGO Network, West Bank; Teachers’ Federation;

Palestinian Writers’ Federation; Palestinian League of Artists; Palestinian Journalists’ Federation; General Union of Palestinian Women; Palestinian Lawyers’ Association; and tens of other Palestinian federations, associations, and civil society organizations.”

From “PACBI Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel” (2014): 

“Given that the BNC [Palestinian BDS National Committee], through the PACBI guidelines presented below, rejects censorship and upholds the universal right to freedom of expression, the institutional boycott called for by Palestinian civil society does not conflict with such freedom. PACBI subscribes to the internationally-accepted definition of freedom of expression as stipulated in the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).  

“Anchored in precepts of international law and universal human rights, the BDS movement, including PACBI, rejects on principle boycotts of individuals based on their identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion) or opinion. Mere affiliation of Israeli cultural workers to an Israeli cultural institution is therefore not grounds for applying the boycott.”

ADDITIONAL SOURCES: 

•       Implementing the Academic Boycott: Individuals vs. Institutions 

•       Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions, “But, What About…”

•       American Studies Association, “What Does the Boycott Mean?” 

•       Anthony Alessandrini, “The Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel as a Defense of Academic Freedom,” Academe Blog (August 20, 2024) 

•       Joan W. Scott, “Changing My Mind About the Boycott.” AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom 4 (2013)

•       Tanya Reinhart, “Academic Boycott: In Support of Paris VI.” ZNet (4 February 2003).

7.                   Whereas the AAUP declared academic boycotts “legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education”;

From American Association of University Professors, “Statement on Academic Boycotts”     (August 2024) 

“Committee A recognizes that when faculty members choose to support academic boycotts, they can legitimately seek to protect and advance the academic freedom and fundamental rights of colleagues and students who are living and working under circumstances that violate that freedom and one or more of those rights. In such contexts, academic boycotts are not in themselves violations of academic freedom; rather, they can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education. The freedom to produce and exchange knowledge depends upon the guarantee of other basic freedoms, including the rights to life, liberty, security of person, and freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention; the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; the right to hold opinions without interference; the right to freedom of expression; the right to participate in public affairs; the right to equal protection and effective protection against discrimination; the right to freedom of association; the right to peaceful assembly; the right to work; the right to participate in cultural life; the right to education; and the rights to liberty of movement and freedom to choose one’s residence. Not all of our academic colleagues and students in the United States and around the world are afforded these fundamental rights.  

“Committee A therefore holds that individual faculty members and students should be free to weigh, assess, and debate the specific circumstances giving rise to calls for systematic academic boycotts and to make their own choices regarding their participation in them. To do otherwise contravenes academic freedom.”

ADDITIONAL SOURCES:

•       Rana Jaleel and Todd Wolfson, “The AAUP Has Always Defended Academic Freedom. We Still Do,” Chronicle of Higher Education (August 21, 2024) 

•       Joan W. Scott, “The AAUP Is Right. Supporting Boycotts Is Academic Freedom,” Chronicle of Higher Education (August 20, 2024) 

•       Ryan Quinn, “AAUP Ends Two-Decade Opposition to Academic Boycotts,” Inside Higher Ed (August 12, 2024) 

•       Anthony Alessandrini, “The Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel as a Defense of Academic Freedom,” Academe Blog (August 20, 2024) 

•       David Lloyd and Malini Johar Schueller, “The Israeli State of Exception and the Case for Academic Boycott,” AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom 4 (2013)

8.                   Whereas, the MLA’s commitment to “justice throughout the humanities ecosystem” requires ending institutional complicity with genocide and supporting Palestinian colleagues; therefore

From MLA Mission and Strategic Priorities: 

“This is an especially important time for the MLA to define its values. The values on which the MLA bases its decision-making are

Equity: The MLA supports and encourages impartiality, fairness, and justice throughout the humanities ecosystem.

Inclusion: The MLA recognizes that all members should feel a sense of belonging within the association—that they are accepted, supported, and valued in word and in actions and that the association’s resources are accessible to them.

Advocacy: The MLA champions intellectual freedom; fair working conditions; and the value of scholarship in, pedagogy of, and public engagement with the humanities.”

[See https://www.mla.org/About-Us/About-the-MLA/Mission-and-Strategic-Priorities] 

As the preceding evidence indicates, the values of equity, inclusion, and advocacy have not been extended in any form to our Palestinian colleagues. In 1997, Nelson Mandela famously declared: “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” So too, in 2024, the MLA’s commitment to “justice throughout the humanities ecosystem” remains incomplete without justice for Palestinian scholars and students subjected to scholasticide. We believe that this resolution is absolutely consistent with the MLA’s stated values.

What follows is a sample of additional MLA statements related to justice throughout the humanities ecosystem, both domestically and on an international basis, over the past decade, which are consistent with the intent of the current Resolution to Endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS Call:

•       MLA Statement Endorsing the AAUP’s Statement “Legislative Threats to Academic Freedom: Redefinitions of Antisemitism and Racism” (2022)

•       Letter of Appeal for Colleagues in Afghanistan (2021)

•       Updated MLA Statement on Continuing Threats to Academic Freedom and Higher Education in Turkey (2021)

•       Joint Statement Opposing New Policy on Virtual Scholarly Exchanges in India (2021)

•       MLA Statement Deploring Systemic Racism (2020)

•       Statement Opposing Xenophobic Visa Regulations Imposed on International Students and Scholars (2020)

•       Joint Statement against the Military Targeting of Cultural Sites: Targeting Cultural Sites Is a War Crime (2020)

•       Statement on Violence against Students and Teachers in India (2020)

•       Statement on the Violent Repression of Political Protest (2019)

•       Letter to Israeli Authorities about Restrictions on International Academics Working in Palestinian Universities (2019)

•       Statement on Continuing Threats to Academic Freedom and Higher Education in Turkey (2019)

•       MLA Statement on the Closing of the Central European University (2018)

•       MLA Statement of Support for Turkish Academics (2016)

•       MLA Statement on Islamophobia (2015)

•       MLA Statement on Exclusion of Refugees (2015)

•       MLA Condemns Violence against Teachers and Students in Mexico (2015)

Be it resolved that we, the members of the MLA, endorse the 2005 BDS call.

Below are some of the scholarly organizations, including MLA Allied Organizations, which have endorsed the PACBI call for an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions and/or the 2005 Palestinian BDS call:

•       African Literature Association Resolution: The ALA Supports the Academic Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (2014)

•       American Anthropological Association Resolution to Boycott Israeli Academic Institutions (2023)

•       American Comparative Literature Association, Endorsement of the 2005 Call of Palestinian Civil Society for BDS (2024)

•       American Studies Association Resolution: Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (2013)

•       Association for Asian American Studies Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (2013)

•       Association for Humanist Sociology Statement in Support of the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (2013)

•       Critical Ethnic Studies Association Resolution on Academic Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (2014)

•       Middle East Studies Association Resolution Regarding BDS (2022)

•       Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Declaration in Support of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (2013)

•       National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (2015)

•       National Women’s Studies Association Resolution in Support of BDS (2015)

•       Peace and Justice Studies Association Endorsement of BDS (2014)

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https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/creative-writing/forum/topic/press-release-modern-language-association-leadership-refuses-to-allow-bds-resol

4 November 2024 at 2:10 pm#1038999

Michael Leong

Participant

@michaelleong

Contact Information:

Anthony Alessandrini: tonyalessandrini@gmail.com

David Palumbo-Liu: djpl.2008@gmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Modern Language Association Leadership Refuses to Allow BDS Resolution

The leadership of the Modern Language Association, a scholarly organization representing scholars of languages and literatures, has, arbitrarily and without explanation, refused to forward a member’s motion to the Delegate Assembly for discussion. This motion called upon the MLA to endorse the call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel that was made in 2005 by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations.

The member who submitted the motion, Anthony Alessandrini of Kingsborough Community College and the CUNY Graduate Center, went through a lengthy vetting process with MLA Executive Director Paula Krebs and other staff in order to ensure that the motion was appropriately worded and that it did not target individual scholars. Dr. Alessandrini was given written assurances that the motion was proper and would be forwarded to the delegates, who represent the broader MLA membership, through the usual channels. The motion was well supported: 39 members co-signed the initial submission, and over 100 members subsequently signed to indicate their support, meaning that it had cleared all hurdles for discussion at the upcoming January convention. Nevertheless, in an act that may be unprecedented in the history of the organization, it was quashed by MLA’s Executive Council. Dr. Krebs, in a three-sentence email sent on Tuesday, October 29th, cited vague “financial and legal effects” as the reason that it could not be discussed. The MLA leadership has subsequently censored attempts by elected delegates to discuss the resolution on an official email list.

The refusal even to allow discussion of BDS is highly unusual for a scholarly organization. MLA is well behind its peers: numerous other organizations, including the American Studies Association, the American Anthropological Association, and the Middle East Studies Association, have endorsed BDS; some did so a decade ago. In 2017, the MLA’s Executive Council permitted a similar resolution to be considered by the Delegate Assembly, although it did not pass.

The MLA’s refusal to allow discussion of BDS at its 2025 convention is indicative of the climate of increasing political repression and censorship within North American academia today. It starkly demonstrates the insidiousness of the “Palestine exception” wherein considerations of free speech and academic freedom are suspended when the topic of Palestine arises. It indicates a shameful abandonment of Palestinian scholars, especially those who are members of the MLA and are scheduled to present at the upcoming convention, at a time when Israel’s campaign of scholasticide has destroyed every university in Gaza, killed at least 11,000 students and 529 educators in the West Bank and Gaza (as of September 2024), and prevented at least 718,000 Palestinian students from attending their schools and universities since October 2023.

At the annual convention in New Orleans, framers of the resolution plan to protest the anti-democratic practices of Krebs and the MLA, and will highlight over 40 panels at the convention devoted to Palestine.

The full text of the resolution follows below; it can also be found online, along with extensive documentation submitted in support of the resolution, at the following links: http://tiny.cc/MLA2025Resolution / http://tiny.cc/MLA2025Documentation

Proposed Resolution 2025-1

Submitted by Anthony Alessandrini (Kingsborough Community Coll., NY)

Whereas, international law experts, including UN officials, describe the Israeli war on Gaza as a genocide;

Whereas, human rights organizations and the International Court of Justice have determined that Israel is maintaining a system of apartheid;

Whereas, in April 2024 the United Nations documented that Israel’s campaign of scholasticide has destroyed every university in Gaza and killed at least 5,479 students and 356 educators;

Whereas, the complicity of Israeli academic institutions in denying Palestinian human rights has been comprehensively documented;

Whereas, in 2005, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations called for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel;

Whereas, that call is to boycott institutions, not individual Israeli academics, and to support academic freedom;

Whereas the American Association of University Professors declared academic boycotts “legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education”;

Whereas, the MLA’s commitment to “justice throughout the humanities ecosystem” requires ending institutional complicity with genocide and supporting Palestinian colleagues; therefore

Be it resolved that we, the members of the MLA, endorse the 2005 BDS call.

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https://utotherescue.blogspot.com/2024/12/mla-and-bds-resolution-blocked-debate.html

Thursday, December 19, 2024

MLA and BDS 1: The Resolution, the Blocked Debate, Some Responses, Two Resignations

Austin, Texas MLA Convention on January 8, 2016

Chris here with the Story Thus Far.  

A  group of members of the Modern Language Association (MLA) submitted a “Resolution to Endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS Call” to the Association.  The normal process would be for the MLA’s Delegate Assembly (DA), which represents the membership, to debate the Resolution at the annual convention in January 2025 and vote it up or down.  The Association’s Executive Council (EC), an elected governing body, is charged with reviewing resolutions for legal, financial and related problems before forwarding it to the DA. 

Upon advice from MLA counsel and after debate, the EC decided not to forward the Resolution to the DA for debate and vote, citing likely damage to the Association and its partners resulting from anti-BDS legislation in a number of states.

Blocking the debate on the resolution generated some strong responses.  The resolution’s authors wrote “A Call to the Modern Language Association to Let Members Decide About BDS” (posted at LitHub).  The EC elaborated on its thinking in “Report to the MLA Delegate Assembly from the Executive Council on Resolution 2025-1.”  Jewish Voices for Peace wrote a declaration that states, “The MLA stands apart from  peer organizations and sets a dangerous and shameful precedent for censorship.”  

I am part of a group of MLA ex-presidents who objected to blocking the resolution debate. Our letter to the MLA president and Executive Council is also posted at Lit Hub.

Two members of the Executive Council resigned over the decision.  Rebecca Colesworthy and Esther Allen have allowed me to post their resignation letters below. 

***

December 6, 2024

Dear Officers and Members of the MLA Executive Council,

Yesterday, I submitted the co-authored introduction to the special issue of Profession born of Emergency Motion 2024-1. The essays we selected are at once informed and impassioned. That we had so many submissions from which to choose is indicative of how much MLA members are struggling under—and mobilizing their skills as humanists to work against—current threats to academic freedom and the spread of hatred and hostility on campus and off.

On Wednesday, in my role as the EC adviser to the Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Humanities, I participated in a pre-convention Zoom meeting for graduate students along with Paula and staff. The meeting was a welcome reminder of how much the organization and “the profession” have changed since I first attended the convention nearly 20 years ago while serving as the grad student representative on a search committee. While the endless withering of the tenure-track job market is decidedly bad, the organization’s efforts to further engage and support scholars at all  stages and to focus more intently on labor issues are undoubtedly good.

The special issue and the warm, welcoming Zoom are exemplary of the many, many things MLA does spectacularly well. I am genuinely honored to have been a part of them, as I have so many committees, activities, and actions during my time on the EC.

I write now, regrettably but necessarily, to resign from my role as a member of the Executive Council. I hasten to add: I remain as committed as ever to the organization and to members.

Nevertheless, I cannot remain on the Executive Council.

Needless to say, I, along with the rest of the voting members present at October’s meeting, voted not to advance Resolution 2025-1 to the Delegate Assembly for debate and a vote. I do not stand by my vote in the meeting and remain troubled by the—indeed, by our—lack of communication and transparency with the proposers and members, as if the supporters of the resolution were not fellow humanities workers with precisely the kind of commitment, conviction, and coordination our fields desperately need right now. These should be our partners—not people we shun.

I try to be proactive. I thought about looking for a procedural path forward. But the problem is that I don’t stand by my vote and cannot defend our decision. It may be the “right” decision based on a narrow construal of the EC’s fiduciary duty. But members are also right to ask: What does this say or, indeed, not say about the organization’s values and principles? Where will the organization draw the line? It’s a slippery slope. I wonder: Will we aim to carry on business as usual in states that, in the near future, may adopt anti-DEI or anti-gender laws that allow institutions not to do business with vendors such as the MLA that are openly committed to equity and inclusion? Will we sign contracts that say, “We do not support DEI”? What happens if MLA’s own publications on social justice become a target?

If I had one, two, or three years left on the EC, I would stay on to try to push and work within established channels. I resign now knowing it’s essentially a symbolic gesture. I don’t think I’m special or unique in feeling torn about this or having “personal” views that deviate from the EC’s decision. I worry that all of you will think I’m a coward if not traitorous for not standing by my initial vote. As I said to Dana [Williams, MLA President] under separate cover recently: relationships—and I really mean relationships, not  “connections”—are everything to me. I remain committed to the organization. But I cannot defend our decision.

Above all, this is my way of standing in solidarity with members who have been working with admirable devotion and diligence to mobilize the MLA’s not insubstantial machinery to take collective stands. I cannot bracket my horror at the scholasticide and genocide in Gaza. And I think members committed not only to this particular cause but also to the broader principles of academic freedom and democracy deserve better representation, more open engagement and communication, and more transparency than we’ve given them.

The penultimate sentence of the introduction to the special issue of Profession reads: “it has never been more important for all of us, as MLA members, to come together, support each other, and draw strength from our solidarity.” I can’t take full credit for the words, but I stand by every one of them.

Respectfully,

Rebecca Colesworthy

***

December 6 2024

Dear Executive Council colleagues,

Many people, and many MLA members, see democracy under attack right now, along with academic freedom and campus free speech, and want to work towards a future where genocide ends, democracy, justice, free speech, & academic freedom are powerfully defended, and strong communities and institutions act with collective moral authority to reject and defeat authoritarianism.

As part of that work, some scholarly organizations in the humanities afford their members ways of taking collective action—with regard to US complicity in the annihilation of academic institutions, fellow scholars, students, historic monuments and so much else in Gaza, and with regard to the ongoing attacks on academic, intellectual and personal freedom in this country: the book bannings, anti-LGBTQ, anti-CRT, anti-BDS, anti-trans, anti-abortion and other kinds of harmful laws, abuses, and outrages that are only going to intensify under the incoming administration.

The decision not to allow the Delegate Assembly to vote on 2025-1 risks being perceived by MLA members and others as a declaration that the MLA is not the place for such collective action. Indeed, the decision may seem intended to effect a permanent, definitive squelching of any activism members might think of engaging in via the MLA. 

If the fiduciary responsibility of the Executive Council consists exclusively in protecting the MLA’s corporate revenue—the only rationale the EC has offered for this decision—then the MLA is a for-profit corporation, like any other. 

The decision not to allow the DA to vote on this may, I fear, do more damage to the MLA than any drop-off in revenue could. I can’t defend it, and hereby resign from the Executive Council. 

Sincerely,

Esther Allen

Posted by Chris Newfield

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https://twitter.com/MonaBaker11/status/1834645609564786917

Mona Baker @monabaker11.bsky.social

@MonaBaker11MLA Resolution to Endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS Call: Please Sign if MLA member or consider joining if not There is a dedicated signature page up on the MLA site which makes it relatively simple https://mla.org/About-Us/Governance/Delegate-Assembly/Motions-and-Resolutions/Support-for-Proposed-Resolution-2025-1…

@tachtco

@estherlallen

@Jodi7768

@BDSmovement

@abedtakriti

8:29 PM · Sep 13, 2024

·

1,366 Views

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tv94Mnc3xl7y6931l_99kw9C12Kw9b7X5ynHuvQ0Uyg/edit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MLA Members to Protest Suppression of BDS Resolution at Convention

At the annual convention in New Orleans on January 9-12, MLA members will engage in multiple actions to protest MLA leadership’s censorship of a resolution endorsing BDS

January 3, 2025 – In an unprecedented move, the leadership of the Modern Language Association, one of the largest humanities organizations in the United States, is refusing to allow members to vote on a resolution endorsing the 2005 Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. In response, supporters of the resolution are planning protests at the MLA’s annual convention in New Orleans, culminating in an action at the Delegate Assembly meeting on Saturday, January 11 at 12:30pm at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside.

Thirty-nine MLA members introduced the resolution in September. It was on track for a vote by the MLA’s Delegate Assembly at the convention, after more than 100 additional members signed on in support. But on October 29, MLA Executive Director Paula Krebs emailed Anthony Alessandrini, who submitted the resolution, stating that the Executive Council had refused to approve it.

“I was shocked,” Alessandrini, an elected MLA delegate, said. “We followed all the rules and crafted a resolution modeled on those passed by other academic organizations, but after weeks of consultation with MLA leadership, it was rejected with no explanation.”

MLA leadership eventually issued a statement defending the decision, emphasizing the hypothetical fallout from anti-BDS laws in several states. The Executive Council claimed that the resolution could adversely affect “sales of products to universities and libraries” and the MLA’s larger “financial profile.” In 2023, the MLA reported $17 million in revenue and $38.9 million in total assets.

But Zoha Khalili, a Senior Staff Attorney at Palestine Legal, called this a “flawed legal analysis.” “A purely expressive resolution like this one is protected speech that is beyond the reach of any anti-BDS law, even under the most repressive interpretation of our constitutional rights,” Khalili said.

“The MLA Executive Council’s decision to prevent the Delegate Assembly from voting on the BDS resolution is a cowardly, anti-democratic move,” Khalili added. “It is also a misguided one: Even if the MLA chooses to prioritize mercenary interests over Palestinian lives, its flawed legal analysis fails to acknowledge that the resolution is simply an endorsement of the Palestinian call for BDS and does not bind the MLA itself to engage in a boycott.”

The outcry from MLA members has been widespread. Two members of the Executive Council, which voted to suppress the resolution, resigned in protest. A statement from eight former MLA Presidents called on the Executive Council to reverse its decision, joined by more than a dozen former Executive Council members, as well as current and former members of the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities. Supporters of the resolution have published a detailed rebuttal of MLA leadership’s claims.

In addition, over 100 MLA members have signed a pledge to quit the association to protest the repression of the BDS resolution, and some members have taken to social media to announce they are boycotting the convention. Supporters of the resolution who plan to attend are being asked to read a solidarity statement expressing their support.

“I cannot, in good conscience, continue to be a dues paying member of an organization that both suppresses the free speech of its members and prioritizes its own financial interests over the lives of Palestinians,” said Hannah Manshel, one of the submitters of the resolution and a member of the Executive Committee for the MLA Forum on Indigenous Literatures of the United States and Canada. “It is hypocritical, at best, for the MLA to claim to have an investment in Indigenous literatures while suppressing actions in support of the Indigenous people of Palestine.”

Krebs and the Executive Council have failed to respond, except to state that the resolution will be “discussed”—but not voted on—at the convention in New Orleans.

“The MLA’s Report on the Current State of Academic Freedom, approved by the Executive Council in May of last year, singles out administrative usurpation of shared governance as a principal area of tension,” said Esther Allen, one of the two Council members who resigned in protest. “It defines shared governance as meaningful participation in decisions, that is: voting. So the MLA purports to advocate for its members’ participation in decision-making at their universities, and then turns around and prevents members from taking a vote in their own organization?”

Supporters have called for protests at the convention in New Orleans next week, with a major action at the Delegate Assembly meeting where the resolution would have been voted upon. Other actions, including a pop up poetry reading, will highlight the ongoing genocide and scholasticide being carried out by Israel and supported by the United States. Many of the resolution’s supporters are also taking part in conference sessions dedicated to Palestine.

“The MLA leadership has been advertising the presence of Palestine panels, and we want to make clear that we see this as a calculated effort to cover over the suppression of our BDS resolution,” noted Cynthia Franklin, who also organized for the MLA academic boycott resolution in 2017. “We denounce this shameful attempt at cooptation. And these sessions, many of which have been organized by and feature Palestinian scholars, will include attention to the MLA’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”

More information about upcoming actions at the MLA convention in New Orleans from January 9-12 can be found at https://linktr.ee/mla4pal or by following @mlamjp2025 on Instagram.

Press Contact: Anthony Alessandrini tonyalessandrini@gmail.com @TAlessandrini (X) @mlamjp2025 (IG)  https://linktr.ee/mla4pal

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Former Modern Language Association Presidents Call for BDS Vote

Former Modern Language Association Presidents Call for BDS Vote

“Now is surely the time to stand up to unjustifiable censorship and retaliation.”

By Literary Hub

December 18, 2024

In late October, the leadership of the Modern Language Association (MLA)—one of the largest and wealthiest US scholarly organizations in the humanities—refused to allow the organization’s Delegate Assembly to vote on a resolution stating that members support the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement, on the grounds that this would potentially lead to a drop-off in revenue in states with anti-BDS laws. On December 12, in response to this refusal, seven of the MLA members who proposed the resolution released this statement, calling for the organization to let members decide about BDS. Below is a letter from eight former presidents of the MLA (introduced by former president Judith Butler) calling for a vote on the resolution.

_____________________________

Some of the former presidents of the MLA object to the current Executive Council decision not to forward a resolution on the boycott for discussion. We believe that a topic as important as this should be openly debated. Open debate is one of the tasks of the Delegate Assembly as stipulated in the bylaws of the organization. In refusing to forward the motion, the MLA undermines its own structure of shared governance and the value of free and open discussion.  We have various views on the boycott but collectively refuse the unsubstantiated claims made by the Director and the Executive Council that fiduciary concerns prohibit open debate about this topic by the Delegate Assembly.”

–Judith Butler, MLA President 2021-22.

*

Dear Paula, Dear Members of the Executive Council,

As former presidents and Executive Council members of the MLA who were highly concerned with the fiduciary obligations of officers during our tenure at the association, we strongly oppose the decision to refuse Delegate Assembly debate on proposed Resolution 2025-1. We request that the Executive Council re-convene to reconsider its decision in the light of widespread and legitimate public criticism. Having studied the reasons given in the EC’s message and its FAQ’s, and having reviewed the Executive Council’s exhaustive report to the Delegate Assembly issued on December 16, 2024, we urge, once again, that members of the Delegate Assembly be permitted to discuss and exercise their right to vote on Resolution 2025:1.

While we respect the work and thoughtfulness that went into the Council’s recently released documents, we do not see the rationale provided as strong or persuasive enough to merit the action taken. We do not, in particular, judge the financial risks mentioned as having been fully explained or, as currently described, worthy of taking precedence over the MLA’s commitment to open debate on urgent issues presented by its members. Indeed, we note that the MLA has itself recommended that administrators of universities and colleges defend dissenting or “unpopular” speech and confront courageously those who would quell speech–which would include deliberative procedures. These principles can be found in our Association’s published statements on Academic Freedom and in the well-formulated letter that the Executive Council released last March about Emergency Motion 2024-1. That letter emphasized the Association’s “unwavering” support for academic freedom and for the right of faculty, student, and staff members to “speak out against Israel’s violence in Gaza.”

The EC makes several claims without supplying substantiation:

1. The EC writes that “fully two-thirds of the operating budget of the MLA comes from sales of products to universities and libraries. If states with anti-BDS laws began refusing to allow their universities, colleges, and libraries to purchase MLA subscription products, the MLA could lose two-thirds of what enables it to carry out its mission, and students and teachers would lose access to these resources.”

We note the apparent assumption that states would be able to invalidate contracts or refuse renewal on the basis of the membership resolution. Some states might attempt this. On the other hand, cancellation would pose a case of viewpoint discrimination that would involve legal and even constitutional questions that could be challenged. We note, as well, the lack of evidence of your core claim that passage of the resolution could put 2/3rds of the MLA’s revenues at risk. You are not procedurally obligated to withhold the financial data that might make your argument more convincing. We are concerned that the lawyers and financial team have been given a de facto veto prior to any discussion of the issues with the DA as representatives of the membership. This is indeed neither democratic nor respectful of the position of the membership as the substance of the Association.

We urge you, once again, to reconsider your decision, and to present at the Delegate Assembly meeting a projection of possible costs based on the evidence we have asked you to supply.

It would be most helpful to have a list of colleges, universities, and libraries to whom MLA sells its products, and what percentage of MLA total revenue would be at risk. Without evidence to assess the scope and validity of the claim, the representation of danger to the MLA appears to amplify fears that are already quelling discussion in the academy. We caution against capitulating to censorship before it happens.

2. The EC states that “The proposed Resolution 2025-1 sought to mitigate this danger by phrasing the resolution such that it focused on the members of the MLA as distinct from the organization. But we cannot count on legislators and their constituents to make that distinction or recognize it as a meaningful one. News articles proclaiming that ‘MLA supports BDS’ wouldn’t likely highlight the distinction between a resolution expressing a majority of members’ individual views and a policy being supported and adopted by the MLA itself. Moreover, in various of these laws and policies, the language in the resolution on ‘support’ for BDS is sufficiently general that a vote by the Delegate Assembly could be taken by many legislatures as prima facie running afoul of the statute by advancing the BDS movement.”

These arguments are fully conjectural, again imagining scenarios in which the MLA has no power to stand up to those who might misconstrue its proceedings. They forebode an unwillingness to defend any future action that the Delegate Assembly might take as its right and to rebut any possible distortions of the precise language of the resolution. On the contrary, anticipating a misreading, the EC concedes spectral allegations in advance of their actual emergence in the public media.

The Chronicle of Higher Education cites Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, who tracks anti-BDS state initiatives. She does not believe that “a resolution expressing members’ sentiments toward BDS would violate anti-boycott laws, but that ‘doesn’t mean that you won’t see blowback.’ Friedman said these contract laws are weaponized by lawmakers to impose a chilling effect on companies. ‘Folks who are behind these laws, to some extent, are counting on [organizations] not being willing or able to defend their free-speech rights in court,’ she said.”

We urge you, once again, to reconsider your decision, and to present at the Delegate Assembly meeting a projection of possible costs based on the evidence we have asked you to supply. Debating a resolution does not and cannot predict its outcome. An affirmative vote would not alter MLA policy. And the right to open debate is as central to academic freedom as it is to declared MLA principles. We expect the MLA to counter any possible critics and threats with an affirmation of the right to assemble, debate, and decide. These are the basics of deliberative democracy and the guiding mandate of the Delegate Assembly.

Now is surely the time to stand up to unjustifiable censorship and retaliation, given how many faculty have been charged, suspended, or terminated for expressing their extra-mural commitments and how many books are being banned while the attack on the humanities and critical thought continues. At a moment when academic freedom is being seriously undermined in our universities and colleges and a new authoritarianism is taking hold, we look to our professional organizations to act not from the fears that increasingly pervade US academia, but from the courage our members will need to continue our work.

With all best wishes, and with thanks for considering our requests,

Judith Butler • Frieda Ekotto • Margaret Ferguson • Marianne Hirsch • Christopher Newfield • Mary Louise Pratt • Sidonie Smith • Diana Taylor

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https://linktr.ee/mla4pal

MLA for Justice in Palestine

Writers & scholars for Palestinian liberation & BDS mlafriends2024@gmail.com

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Press Release: MLA Members to Protest Suppression of BDS Resolution at Convention

A Call to the Modern Language Association to Let Members Decide About BDS (Lit Hub)

Pledge to Not Renew MLA Membership

Statement of Solidarity to be Read By MLA Participants

Former Modern Language Association Presidents Call for BDS Vote

MLA and BDS: The Resolution, the Blocked Debate, Some Responses, a Resignation

MLA and BDS 2: Letter from former members of the MLA Executive Council to Current Executive Council on Blocking the Debate

MLA and BDS 3: Letter from Members of the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom & Professional Rights & Responsibilities to Executive Director and Executive Council on Blocking the Debate

Solidarity and Resistance in a Time of Genocide: Palestinian Poetry Reveals the Truth Institutions Silence

MLA Resolution to Endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS Call

Supporting Documentation: MLA Resolution to Endorse the 2005 Palestinian BDS Call:

Palestine Panels and Events @ MLA 2025

Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council, “On the Modern Language Association Leadership’s Refusal to Allow Vote on BDS Resolution”

Press Release: MLA Leadership Refuses to Allow BDS Resolution

MLA leaders won’t let members vote on pro-boycott resolution (Inside Higher Ed article)

‘A Lot of Anguish’: Why the MLA Put an Anti-Israel Resolution on Ice (Chronicle of Higher Education article)

MLA Boycott Website (resources from 2016-2017 BDS campaign)

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A Call to the Modern Language Association to Let Members Decide About BDS

A Call to the Modern Language Association to Let Members Decide About BDS

“Some of us became teachers of literature because we believe it helps keep us human, even in a world of genocide.”

By Literary Hub

December 12, 2024

In late October, the leadership of the Modern Language Association (MLA)—one of the largest and wealthiest US scholarly organizations in the humanities—refused to allow the organization’s Delegate Assembly to vote on a resolution stating that members support the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement, on the grounds that this would potentially lead to a drop-off in revenue in states with anti-BDS laws. In response to this refusal, seven of the MLA members who proposed the resolution have written the following.

*

We are seven of the dozens of Modern Language Association members who came together to write a resolution in support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.

Some of us have been involved in organizing around that call since it was issued by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in 2005; others have come to Palestine solidarity work more recently. All of us feel the urgency imposed by the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, funded and supported in every way by the U.S. government. It’s crucial for the Modern Language Association, the world’s largest association for humanities students, teachers, and researchers, to take a clear and meaningful stance against this genocide.

We were heartened by the fact that an increasing number of academic and professional organizations have voted to stand with the Palestinian BDS call. Some, like the American Studies Association, National Women’s Studies Association, African Literature Association, Association for Asian American Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and Critical Ethnic Studies Association, endorsed BDS a decade ago; more recently, in just the past two years, the American Anthropological Association, the Middle East Studies Association, and the American Comparative Literature Association have all endorsed the call from our Palestinian colleagues. We were also strengthened by the surge of campus organizing—mostly by the incredible courage of student organizers, but also by the founding in 2023 of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which has grown to 125 affiliate groups across the country.

Many of us have watched our students and colleagues being arrested for exercising their right to non-violently protest institutional complicity with genocide.

Another important consideration was the American Association of University Professors’ new Statement on Academic Boycotts issued this past August. The AAUP statement affirms that academic boycotts like the 2005 Palestinian BDS call “can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education.” Humanities associations like the MLA should be emboldened by such a statement, particularly because the MLA’s own mission statement declares that our organization “supports and encourages . . . justice throughout the humanities ecosystem.”

Of course we knew this wouldn’t be an easy step to take. We were aware that this resolution comes amidst unprecedented repression. Many of us have watched our students and colleagues being arrested for exercising their right to non-violently protest institutional complicity with genocide.

So we studied the web of local, state, and federal laws designed to repress pro-Palestine organizing, specifically organizing around the Palestinian BDS call. Thanks to the work of legal scholars at organizations like Palestine Legal, the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and the ACLU, we know that the majority of these laws do not apply to universities or professional organizations like the MLA.

In fact, most of these laws are designed to stop short of actually suppressing civil liberties, since the U.S. Supreme Court has long held that boycotts to bring about political, economic, and social change are protected by the First Amendment. The goal of these laws is to give the impression that they “outlaw” support for BDS, in order to trick us into self-censorship. As a Palestine Legal briefing points out, the most common response when such laws have faced constitutional challenges is just to narrow the wording so that they do not apply to whatever entity has brought the lawsuit. For all their roar, they are mostly paper tigers.

The sole purpose of our resolution is to give MLA members the opportunity to support the 2005 Palestinian BDS call.

Nevertheless, we worked hard to craft our resolution responsibly. We consulted with legal scholars, and with colleagues in leadership positions at professional associations that have endorsed BDS, to weigh how to best address potential legal challenges. Most of all, we spoke with Palestinian scholars who have faced forms of repression those of us in North America can only imagine, and were continually inspired by their courage, resourcefulness, and steadfastness.

Recognizing that we came to this work as educators, we compiled extensive documentation in support of the resolution. This meant poring over expert sources enumerating the horrors of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It meant engaging with the work of Palestinian, Israeli, and international scholars who have documented the decades-long Israeli campaign of scholasticide—the systematic attempt to destroy the Palestinian education system—that has most recently involved destroying every university in Gaza. And it meant coming to terms with the workings of the apartheid system that affects every Palestinian, as documented by the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem. We have made both the resolution and the documentation publicly available and invite our colleagues to use them widely in teaching, writing, and organizing.

When the time came to bring our resolution to MLA leadership, we made it clear that we wanted to work with them as the resolution made its way through the organization’s complex governance procedures. We exchanged many, many emails with the organization’s Executive Director, Paula Krebs, as well as the Director of Governance. We heeded their suggestions for rewording the resolution to better protect the organization from legal challenges. What’s more, we believed them when they said that legal concerns were irrelevant to the resolution, since MLA resolutions are expressions of members’ sentiment, and thus non-binding to the organization. The sole purpose of our resolution is to give MLA members the opportunity to support the 2005 Palestinian BDS call.

Shocking as MLA leadership’s initial decision was, we are much more taken aback by the cowardice and nakedly corporate, unethical, and anti-intellectual nature of their statement.

Finally, we made it clear that we would be happy to meet with the MLA’s Executive Council—a meeting that is in fact mandated by the MLA constitution as part of the approval process for resolutions. Knowing that the Council must review proposed resolutions for their potential financial and legal effects on the association (and not being naïve about the political landscape we inhabit), we offered to consult with them to discuss any concerns they might have. We were told by Dr. Krebs that such a meeting was not possible, thus making the handling of our resolution fundamentally unconstitutional from the beginning—although she assured us that despite our concerns, “the resolution should go through the governance process just like every other resolution.” In retrospect, we believe that if Council members had the opportunity to become more informed about the resolution, they would have reached a different decision.

We were shocked when Dr. Krebs informed us several weeks later that the Council refused to allow the resolution to proceed to the Delegate Assembly—a decision that is unprecedented in the history of the organization. It took another week before MLA leadership finally offered an explanation of this decision—not to us directly, but rather to a journalist at Inside Higher Ed. The Executive Council’s statement on the resolution, along with an FAQ, was eventually posted on the MLA website (although it is only accessible to members), and the rationale was summed up by the Executive Director in two recent articles.

Shocking as MLA leadership’s initial decision was, we are much more taken aback by the cowardice and nakedly corporate, unethical, and anti-intellectual nature of their statement. You would be hard pressed to believe that it was written by teachers and scholars of literature; it seems more like a document drafted by a team of lawyers and signed off by a CEO. It has nothing to say about our mission as professional humanists or about the MLA’s own mission and values, and it doesn’t even pretend to be interested in questions of justice (needless to say, the word “Palestine” does not appear). It has much to say, on the other hand, about the MLA’s “financial profile,” our “operating budget,” and, most important, the sales of MLA “products.”

the leadership of the world’s most powerful association of writers and teachers has decided that words no longer have any meaning when confronted by unjust laws.

The argument against allowing MLA members to consider our resolution boils down to this: there are many anti-BDS laws; some of these laws restrict state contracts (although no specific examples are given); two-thirds of the MLA’s operating budget comes from “sales of products to universities and libraries”; therefore, this resolution cannot even be discussed. Or, rather, MLA leadership will “allow” our elected delegates to discuss the resolution at the upcoming convention, but not vote on it. As a colleague rightly noted, this is not a democratic process—it’s an elementary school civics lesson.

Even by its own logic, the argument put forward by MLA leadership doesn’t hold water. They admit that anti-BDS laws do not prohibit an organization like the MLA from supporting the Palestinian BDS call. Moreover, they note that the phrasing of our resolution—“we, the members of the MLA, endorse the 2005 BDS call”—makes it very clear that this is not an official position being taken by the organization. But they nevertheless fret that this will not be enough, and that the laws somehow are even more powerful than those who made them claim them to be.

In short, the leadership of the world’s most powerful association of writers and teachers has decided that words no longer have any meaning when confronted by unjust laws. MLA leadership has summarily censored members from speaking with the voice of conscience, making it clear that to be a member of MLA is to be silenced on the matter of Palestine.

This is an argument driven by fear rather than logic. But let’s imagine that as many as half of the twenty-seven anti-BDS state laws that MLA leadership cites—again, most of these are not even applicable, but let’s go with it—somehow get enforced, and the MLA loses one-third of its income from the sale of “MLA products.” In 2023, the MLA reported $17 million in revenue ($1.3 million net) and $38.9 million in total assets. We really couldn’t function if those numbers were cut by a third?

To quote from an email sent to MLA leadership by a graduate student colleague in protest of the decision: “What does safeguarding our surplus resources matter, when our peers in Gaza do not even have the resources to stay alive and study in safety?”

There is one point worth taking seriously: if anti-BDS laws were to prevent the MLA from selling its products in certain states, students and teachers there could lose access to these resources. To that, we offer a simple solution: make MLA resources free and open source in those states. An MLA actually committed to justice could do as the New York Public Library system did in 2022 when it offered free nationwide e-access to banned books. Furthermore, many states that have anti-BDS laws also have laws repressing Critical Race Theory and other anti-racist pedagogy, criminalizing access to gender-affirming care, and restricting women’s reproductive rights. In these states, it is particularly important that MLA resources be made available in a manner that is not bound by political or financial restrictions; offering free access to students and teachers in states with such restrictions would be more in keeping with the MLA’s mission than constantly trying to keep the lawmakers happy.

Instead of repressing a resolution against genocide—and setting a precedent by which any democratic deliberation over “unpopular” political issues can be suppressed in the name of maintaining the profit margin—perhaps we need to re-think the priorities of the MLA, and of our academic institutions more generally. Perhaps the MLA doesn’t need a slew of upper-level administrators earning six-figure salaries while the majority of those teaching in the humanities—our adjunct and graduate student worker colleagues—don’t even earn a living wage. Perhaps we don’t need lavish conferences with massive carbon footprints, or shiny data-driven reports that tell us that the humanities are in crisis. Perhaps this is exactly why the humanities are in crisis.

The MLA can choose a different path. We can, for example, recall the legacy of Edward Said, who served as MLA president not long before his untimely death in 2003. In his final essay, after dwelling on the horrors being inflicted upon Gaza—he described it over twenty years ago as “a human nightmare”—Said condemned the cowardly silence of academic organizations that refused to stand against the “profound abrogation of the Palestinian right to knowledge, to learning, to attend school.” Since then, many academic organizations have in fact spoken out, endorsed the call from our Palestinian colleagues, and taken a stand against genocide. Yet, even beyond the silence that Said condemned, the MLA is today actively silencing those who wish to take a stand against genocide and scholasticide in Palestine

Some of us became teachers of literature because we believe it helps keep us human, even in a world of genocide.

The Presidential Address that Said delivered at the MLA convention in 1999 was entitled “Humanism and Heroism.” Today’s MLA leadership lacks both.

Nevertheless, the organizers of this resolution will continue to push for what it represents: taking a stand with our Palestinian colleagues against genocide and scholasticide, and ending the institutional complicity that enables them. The results of the recent U.S. elections will make the organizing environment for MLA members, and for our students and colleagues everywhere, much more difficult. That’s all the more reason for our professional organizations to show some backbone, rather than responding with anticipatory obedience.

Most important, at the upcoming convention and beyond, we will center the voices of Palestinian scholars and students who continue to resist their erasure. We stand with Shahed Abu Omar, a student at Al Azhar University in Gaza until it was destroyed by the Israeli military; you may have seen images of her sitting among the rubble of a destroyed house, risking her life so she can find the secure internet connection that enables her to take online classes on her phone. We guard the memories of our murdered Palestinian colleagues like the Gazan poet, novelist, and teacher Hiba Abu Nada, killed by an Israeli missile at the age of thirty-two, who with her dying words recorded scenes from her neighborhood, where “teachers, despite their grievances, embrace their little pupils.”

Some of us became teachers of literature because we believe it helps keep us human, even in a world of genocide, of schoolchildren targeted by snipers and poets murdered by missiles, of unjust laws and profit motives and complicity where there should be courage. It’s not too late for the world’s largest organization of professional humanists to find its voice, stand against genocide alongside our Palestinian colleagues, and recall what it means to be human.

*

Anthony Alessandrini is Professor of English and Middle Eastern Studies at the City University of New York
Raj Chetty is Associate Professor of English at St. John’s University
Cynthia Franklin is Professor of English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Hannah Manshel is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
David Palumbo-Liu is Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University
Neelofer Qadir is Assistant Professor of English at Georgia State University

S. Shankar is Professor of English at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

 02.01.25

Editorial Note

On September 26, 2024, Harvard Divinity School (HDS) hosted its 209th Convocation ceremony. HDS Dean Marla F. Frederick delivered her address “And, Yet…We Hope” to the HDS and Harvard community, friends, alumni, and distinguished guests.

Dean Frederick began her speech by discussing what the descendants of the African slave trade call the Maafa, which caused great destruction, suffering, and catastrophe, starting in 1441 with the Portuguese and ending in 1867. She then moved on to discuss the catastrophe during World War II, what the descendants call the Holocaust, where 6 million Jews perished in Europe. “Men, women, children, entire families gathered and put to death between 1941 and 1945 in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno in the occupied Poland. It started with mass shootings, gathering Jews from their homes, taking them to places beyond the city, forcing them to dig mass graves, and then executing them. In time, they used gas vans and later built entire extermination camps. For those able to say goodbye, mothers kiss their children, husbands hug their wives knowing they would never see one another again. In those moments, hopelessness,” She stated.

However, she then moved on to discuss the Palestinian’s Nakba, saying, “Descendants of Palestinians who were displaced for the creation of the state of Israel call it the Nakba, catastrophe in Arabic, referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Men, women, children, entire families forcibly removed from their homes in order to help establish a safe haven and fulfill the dream of a religious homeland for Jewish people, many fleeing persecutions. The solemn history of Nakba Day reported by time tells us that of the 1.4 million strong Palestinian population at the time, 800,000 were displaced, suffering the loss of life, and approximately 15,000 killed alongside the loss of communities, including homes, schools, and sacred sites. Again, hopelessness. These are just a few, brief, incomplete examples of monumental historical events that have shaped the lives of so many.”

Unfortunately, Dean Frederick got her history wrong. In short, during the British Mandate right after World War I, the Arabs of Palestine fought the British and the Palestinian Jews. They collaborated with Nazi Germany during the riots of 1936-9. Less than a decade later, in 1947, when the League of Nations partitioned the land, the Jews of Palestine accepted the partition and declared the foundation of the Jewish state of Israel. The Arabs of Palestine joined the Arab states and rejected the partition. They started a war in 1948 and attacked the nascent Jewish state, a war which they had the misfortune to lose. This is what the Nakba was all about.  

Dean Frederick should remember that the Palestinians were displaced as a result of their own bad decisions, while other Arabs stayed after the creation of the state of Israel and later enjoyed equal rights as the Jews of Israel. Had the Palestinians, together with their Arab Allied states, not started the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the descendants of Palestinians could not have called it the Nakba. Bearing the consequences of the belligerents, Palestinian men, women, children, and entire families were, indeed, either forcibly removed from their homes or evacuated as requested by the Arab Allied states because of their bombing. They relocated to refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. The West Bank was occupied by Jordan, and Gaza was occupied by Egypt. Both countries did not grant the Palestinians an independent state between 1948 and 1967. In Syria and Lebanon, Palestinians have lived as refugees without citizenship. 

As Dean Frederick stated, “of the 1.4 million strong Palestinian population at the time, 800,000 were displaced, suffering the loss of life, and approximately 15,000 killed alongside the loss of communities, including homes, schools, and sacred sites.” 

Dean Frederick should be reminded that a similar tragedy had befallen Jews living in Arab lands. Some 800,000 were displaced, dispossessed, and suffered the loss of life. All these tragedies were caused by the Arabs starting a war in Palestine.

It is easy to see why Dean Frederick gets things wrong. As she says, “why emphasize descendants? I do so because descendants generally don’t deny. They want others to hear and appreciate their stories. They write about it. They talk about it. They don’t ban books about it because they want other people to remember it as they are the ones who have to live in the pain of its aftermath.” 

Dean Frederick explains, “As an anthropologist, I know that stories matter. They are, in essence, the foundation of our lives, how we understand who we are. These stories, however, are not value-free. They often represent competing and contested truths. The mission and challenge of the university, especially of one whose motto is Veritas, is to make room for these narratives, to excavate them, to weigh them, to critique them, and to be informed by them.” 

Dean Frederick ends her address by stating, “The Maafa, the Trail of Tears, the Holocaust, the Nakba. It is impossible to compare the real human toll of devastation. And my point is not to engage in endless comparisons or claims of uniqueness of any of these tragedies. Despite differences in scale, historical context, and impact, they all hold one thing in common for their descendants who tell their stories.” 

And that, “even as I mentioned these events, time truly fails to really tell of the traumatic destruction and the devastating losses of life that have taken place throughout history, continuing into our present day. As recorded by the Geneva Academy, today, there are more than 110 armed conflicts happening across the globe… the grief that visions for peace seem as distant as they ever have as wars erupt around the world and acts of violence continue to afflict our nation here at home. In the years ahead, what will we even call October 7 and its aftermath? How will we explain the ongoing violence and destruction to future generations?”

Dean Frederick should be aware that sometimes there are differences between facts and stories.  

In her letter to the community soon after the HDS Convocation, Dean Frederick announced a continuation of dialogues. “As we continue to work together to understand the world events of last year—the storm of violence, grief, and uncertainty stemming from the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the tens of thousands of lives lost and upended in Gaza, and the long history of struggle within the region—I have asked my colleagues at HDS to help launch a new series, ‘People of Faith in Times of Crisis.’ I hope that community members can sit together with the issues posed by the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict and the reverberations felt across college campuses. The series includes a collective read of three books: one providing an Israeli perspective, another from a Palestinian perspective, and the final described as ‘an epic novel rooted in the real-life friendship between two men united by loss.’ We will meet in February and April to discuss these works. The books for this year include Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi; Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine by Raja Shehadeh; and Apeirogon: A Novel by Colum McCann. The Dean’s Office is also planning a symposium to discuss these topics.”

So far, Dean Frederick has had enough time to correct her errors in the history of Israel and the Palestinians, but she has not. Since she announced a series and a symposium on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, she should raise the issue of falsifying history to meet a narrative and insist that the symposium participants should stick to facts. She should include discussions about the failure of the Palestinian leadership before the 1948 war.  Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was an avid supporter of Hitler.  Al Husseini hoped that, after completing the killing of the Jews in Europe, the Nazi regime would replicate the Final Solution in Palestine to murder some 600,000 Jews there.  He even spent time in Berlin, but his hopes for a mini Final Solution were shattered when the British won a decisive battle against the Nazis in El Alamein in November 1942.  Even so, al Husseini continued his ardent anti-Zionist campaign from exile, first in Egypt and later in Lebanon.  He was a leading voice in persuading the Arab countries to reject the UN Partition Plan and attack the newly created State of Israel. 

Dean Frederick should include discussions of the later history of the Palestinians, notably their reaction to the Oslo Peace Accord.  Negotiated by the Israelis and Yasser Arafat in 1993, the agreement was viewed as a severe danger by the theocratic regime in Iran, the self-appointed guardian of the Palestinians.  The Islamist regime also adhered to the eschatological belief that the return of the disappeared twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, would only occur after Jerusalem was liberated.  Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, mounted a campaign to destroy the Oslo Peace Accord through extreme violence including brutal suicide bombings that killed and wounded thousands before it ended in 2004. Equally important, the Hamas Covenant of 1988 committed the organization to destroy Israel through the holy Jihad.  

Such facts are necessary to discuss historical events even if they would damage the narrative of Palestinians as the eternal victims of “Israeli apartheid and genocide.”  This narrative has driven antisemitic campaigns on campuses across the United States. 

However, as an educator, Dean Frederick must be aware that such outlandish narratives have turned liberal arts departments into bubbles protected from reality, degrading the legitimacy of higher education. 

REFERENCES:

https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/09/30/harvard-divinity-school-2024-convocation

Harvard Divinity School 2024 Convocation

September 30, 2024

Harvard Divinity School Dean Marla F. Frederick / Photo: Liesl Clark

At Harvard Divinity School’s 209th Convocation ceremony, HDS Dean Marla F. Frederick delivered the address “And, Yet…We Hope” to the HDS and Harvard community, friends, alumni, and distinguished guests.

The event also featured remarks from David F. Holland, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, and John A. Bartlett Professor of New England Church History, the Rev. Taylon E. Lancaster, MDiv candidate, Jonathan Lee Walton, President, Princeton Theological Seminary, and vocal performances from Teddy Hickman-Maynard, Associate Dean for Ministry Studies, Lecturer on Ministry.

Readings were provided by Khushi Choudhary, MTS candidate, and Eliza Harmon Rockefeller, MDiv candidate.

Convocation took place on September 26, 2024.

Full video and transcript below. 

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Convocation of Harvard Divinity School at the Opening of the 209th Year, September 26, 2024.

DAVID HOLLAND: Welcome to the 209th Convocation of Harvard Divinity School. My name is David Holland, and I currently serve as the Academic Dean and Professor of American Religious History here at HDS. Dean Marla Frederick has asked me to open this evening’s events with a few words of welcome. I want to begin by thanking our marvelous musicians, Yui Jit Kwong, Craig Rusert, Matt Kinnemore, and Chris Hossfeld, who have literally gotten us off on the right note tonight. What a beautiful way to begin a convocation. Thank you so much.

Convocation is, without fail, one of the best things on an astonishingly full and rich calendar of community events at Harvard Divinity School. It is an opportunity at the opening of each new year to convene, to connect, to reflect, and to project a vision for the coming year. One of the best things about academic life is this steady rhythm of beginnings and completions like the reliable beat of waves surging onto the shore and then returning to the sea.

A school like ours receives an annual rush of new students, and new faculty, new energy, and new possibilities, a flow of people, and perspectives that fill these spaces and then return to other places carrying the elements that they’ve acquired here. Both parts of that process are rewarding, the beginnings and the completions. But today is a celebration of one of them. The ingathering, the uptake, the beginning.

And the gathering before me from my perspective, is beautiful tonight. It’s a wondrous sight to behold. And thank you for being here. I see so many different people here who contribute to this school in so many different ways.

Students, and staff, and faculty, and friends, and supporters from across Harvard and friends and supporters from beyond Harvard and graduates and guests. Welcome to all of you. And thank you each for bringing your thread into the weave of this celebration and another new beginning.

Not all new beginnings, of course, are equally auspicious. I’m reminded of a story my colleague and our former dean, David Hempton, told me this very week as we shared a late commuter train out of Cambridge. He mentioned an American tourist in Ireland, who was a bit lost in the countryside. When he stopped to ask for directions to Dublin, the local farmer replied, if you want to get to Dublin, I wouldn’t start from here.

[LAUGHTER]

By contrast, tonight’s gathering strikes me as the perfect place to start for the next chapter of this remarkable community. This celebration is particularly momentous as it marks the first convocation of our new dean, Marla Frederick, whose arrival has already brought its own surge of possibility and optimism. It’s been a true gift to watch her have such a Swift and positive effect on this community.

And I’m so very happy to have this chance to ring in the start of her first full year at the head of our school. It is one of the great privileges of my professional life to serve under her leadership in this current administration. We’ll have the blessing of hearing from her shortly.

But for now, to begin, we will have an acknowledgment of the land and people by Reverend Taylon E. Lancaster, a student in our Master’s of Divinity program. Following the acknowledgment, Reverend Lancaster will also provide our first reading. Reverend Lancaster.

TAYLON E. LANCASTER: Thank you, Dr. Holland, for that heartfelt introduction. The acknowledgment of land and people. Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral land of the Massachusett, the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge.

We pay respect to the people of the Massachusett tribe, past and present, and honor the land itself, which remains sacred to the Massachusett people. My brothers, my sisters, all of us gathered, do not lose hope, nor be sad. You will surely be victorious if you are true in faith: Surah Ali Imran Chapter 3 Verses 139 out of the Quran.

Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure by Rumi. Out of the book of Lamentations cries out these words Chapter 3 verses 21 through verse 29. But this do I call to mind. Therefore, I have hope. The kindness of the Lord has not ended. His mercies are not spent. They are renewed every morning. Ample is your grace.

In declaring this year, the year of 2025, the year of hope, the Pope undergirds his statement using several scriptures from the New Testament. And among them are these two from Romans Chapter 5. Hope does not disappoint because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. Romans 5 verses 2 through 5. We boast in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Thank you.

DAVID HOLLAND: Thank you, Taylon. We’ll now be pleased to have a reading from Khushi Choudhary, an MTS candidate. And Khushi will be followed by Eliza Harmon Rockefeller, an MDiv candidate. Khushi.

KHUSHI CHOUDHARY: A poem by Rabindranath Tagore, a famous twentieth-century Hindu and contemporary of Gandhi from his Nobel Prize volume, Gitanjali that expresses hope for a new and free India in the early 20th-century. Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high. Where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls.

Where words come out from the depth of truth. Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Where the mind is led forward by into ever widening thought and action into that heaven of freedom. My father let my country awake.

ELIZA HARMON ROCKEFELLER: Hello. I’ll be sharing two readings. A reading from A House For Hope, a brief systematic theology written by two leading UU theologians, Rebecca Parker and John Burens.

Hope rises. It rises from the heart of life here and now beating with joy and sorrow. Hope longs. It longs for good to be affirmed, for justice and love to prevail, for suffering to be alleviated, and for life to flourish in peace.

Hope remembers the dreams of those who have gone before and reaches for connection with them across the boundary of death. Hope acts to bless, to protest, and to repair. Hope can be disappointed, especially when it is individual rather than shared, or when even as a shared aspiration, it encounters entrenched opposition.

To thrive, hope requires a home. A sustaining structure of community, meaning, and ritual. A reading from James Baldwin. No name in the street. The hope of the world lies in what one demands not of others, but of oneself.

DAVID HOLLAND: Thank you, Khushi, and thank you, Eliza. We’ll have a slight adjustment to our program. We will now be pleased to hear a vocal performance by Dean Teddy Hickman-Maynard, who will be performing “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” Dean Teddy.

[PIANO PLAYING]

[VOCAL PERFORMANCE]

[APPLAUSE]

What a gift you are, Teddy. Thank you so very much. One of the great benefits of having Marla Frederick as our Dean is that she is a person of irresistible gravitational pull who brings people together and makes friends easily.

Dean Frederick has associates literally all over the globe who admire her and trust her and like her. And HDS gets the benefit of the goodwill she generates everywhere she goes. Tonight, we have the opportunity to hear from one of her many well-placed good friends who also happens to be the president of Princeton Theological Seminary and who also happens to have been an important and influential member of the HDS community not that long ago.

President Jonathan Lee Walton assumed the presidency at PTS in 2023. Princeton Theological Seminary is President Walton’s doctoral alma mater. And his return was a source of much celebration.

Prior to his appointment at PTS, President Walton served as the Dean of Wake Forest University School of Divinity. And prior to that, he was the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. Before and during his time at Memorial Church, Jonathan was also a dedicated teacher and colleague and scholar right here at Harvard Divinity School.

President Walton’s widely read scholarship engages especially pressing questions of social ethics focusing on the intersection of evangelical Christianity, mass media, and political culture. His wide-ranging insight into this side of converging cultural forces is on display in a rich corpus of writings, including Watch This: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism, which was published in 2009, and A Lens Of Love: Reading the Bible in Its World for Our World from 2018.

President Walton is also a sought-after commentator on contemporary events and an effective communicator to diverse audiences who’s been featured in the New York Times and Time Magazine, as well as on CNN, and CBS, and any number of other outlets. I know it means the world to our new dean to have President Walton here to introduce her as our keynote convocation speaker. President Walton.

[APPLAUSE]

JONATHAN LEE WALTON: How are you all doing?

[LAUGHTER]

The historic appointment of Dr. Marla Frederick as dean of this school speaks volumes. It speaks to this community’s confidence and trust in her competence and her capacity. And it would be easy to attribute this appointment solely to the usual markers of academic success and distinction.

Some may argue that her distinguished reputation as a scholar makes her uniquely qualified. Marla Fredrick’s work has been nothing less than groundbreaking. Her first book, for example, Between Sundays: Black Women and Everyday Struggles of Faith. It was the first to engage African-American religious broadcasting as a vehicle through which Black women navigated the challenges of everyday life while finding a powerful, though at times, problematic tool of empowerment.

Today, due to her subsequent books and many essays and articles, an entire generation of social scientists and theologians, regard religion, race, gender, and mass media as co-constitutive categories of analysis. We’re all drinking from her wells. Yet even this remarkable scholarly contribution is only part of the story. Maybe to better understand why Marla Frederick is uniquely situated to lead this institution, we might also look to her intellectual and administrative leadership in the scholarly guild.

Her presidency of the Association of Black Anthropologists and later serving as president of the American Academy of Religion. It marked her as a trailblazing and transformative figure across multiple fields. Yet Marla’s actual distinction lies not in her titles, but I would argue, in her task.

Her fearless commitment to naming and challenging the forces that perpetuate evil, injustice, and inequality. Recall her American Academy of Religion presidential address in 2021. She invoked the powerful words of Baby Suggs from Toni Morrison’s Beloved lamenting the relentless drive of those in power. Baby Suggs declares, “They just don’t know when to stop.”

Dean Frederick appealed to this admonition to illumine unchecked dominance of white supremacy, religious bigotry, and unbridled capitalist greed that defines so much of our world today. With wisdom and warmth, conviction and courage, Dean Frederick called on scholars of religion to pause. She called us to reflect. She called us to recognize how we in higher education are complicit in systems of power that perpetuate exploitation and exclusion.

Her leadership calls us to reconsider our roles defining institutional standards of excellence, not based on the percentages of those we can keep outside of the gates, but rather according to the avenues of opportunity and access that we might establish. But maybe this isn’t it. Maybe we should look to her days at Spelman College to truly understand what shapes Marla Frederick.

It was here that she was surrounded by brilliant, and beautiful, distinguished, and dignified, responsible, and respectable Black women, women who are unashamed and unapologetic in their brilliance under the motto our whole school for Christ. And it was a Spelman that Marla developed her deep appreciation for institutions.

For Dean Frederick, Black churches and historically Black colleges and universities are more than spaces of worship and learning. They are the anchors that sustain Black dignity in the persistent face of dehumanization, degradation, and dismissal of Black humanity. And, therefore, higher education writ large. No matter where we serve, we must support and protect these institutional pillars of productivity and democracy.

But even this deep institutional commitment is only part of the reason she’s so uniquely qualified. I would say today that to truly understand what has prepared Marla Frederick for this moment, we have to remember her roots in Sumter, South Carolina. It is here, Sumter, South Carolina, that shaped Mary McLeod Bethune, the county that shaped the two Black deans of Harvard Divinity School, Preston Williams and Marla Frederick.

This community shaped Marla, including her recently departed parents, L.C. and Carolyn Frederick. Parents who instilled in her the values of love, service, kindness, and tenderness. At First Baptist Missionary Church in Sumter, she witnessed the power of love and grace by people who fertilized her faith and tended to her future.

And I would argue that this is the environment and environment full of affection that gave Marla Frederick her greatest asset as an anthropologist, the ability to see the world through another’s eyes. The ability to empathize with the struggles, hopes, and dreams of others, and the ability to give voice to the often unheard. It’s this empathy that has defined your scholarship. It’s defined your leadership.

Dean Frederick’s gift is her capacity to recognize the humanity of those in whom she encounters as she wrote in between Sundays, to understand the spiritual life of a community, one must first sit with its women, those who know the heartbeats, its rhythms, and its wounds. And only then can one truly begin to grasp the depth of the faith that sustains its people.

So this, my dear friends, is why Marla Frederick is uniquely situated to lead Harvard Divinity School. It’s the foundation of Sumter, Spelman, and Bethel AME Church, a foundation that has taught her that leadership is about seeing, about serving, about standing alongside those whose voices are too often muted.

So please join me in celebrating Elsie and Carolyn Frederick’s daughter, Brenda and Frederica sisters, Erik’s partner, Miles’s parent, Ray and Gloria Hammond’s parishioner, and all of our dear friend. I present to you, Dean Marla Faye Frederick.

[APPLAUSE]

MARLA F. FREDERICK: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank President Walton for that so gracious and kind and wonderful introduction. I don’t know how to repay him.

When you say Jonathan have to say Cecily. So Jonathan and Cecily, dear friends of mine who have loved and supported me throughout my time here at Harvard. And I say I don’t know how to repay him because I still owe him for all the food I ate at their house. So I feel like I still need to pay on that grocery bill.

But I’m just so grateful for the introduction. Thank you so much. And David Holland, thank you so much for the way you have led this program so graciously.

Teddy Hickman Maynard, thank you so much for leading us and “Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing.” That is my favorite hymn. And for me it speaks to this moment, prone to wander. Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.

It’s in times of great distress and hopelessness that we often tend to want to leave. And so thank you for the way you ministered that song to us. And thank you to all of the student readers. And thank you, HDS community, for your love, and support, and for so graciously welcoming me here as your new dean.

And I want to say a word of thanks to my sisters, Brenda and Frederica, my brother-in-law, my nieces that are here, my husband Eric, and my son Miles. I so greatly appreciate your love and support through all the years and through all the ups and all the sad times that we have recently shared.

Convocation. I want to say one more thing. And that is to all of my friends who have traveled near and far to be here. I have special words that I want to share with them a bit later.

But I want to say a word about Convocation. Dean Hempton has iterated in previous ceremonies that Convocation is a time to reflect on the past and imagine a way forward. This year’s Convocation offers us the same opportunity as we imagine what future possibilities lie ahead for the work of Harvard Divinity School.

And given the many events locally, nationally, and internationally that raise questions, cause concern, and bring grief to so many, I thought I might speak on the topic, And yet, we hope.

It is futile to try to compare the human cost of various tragedies. For the families and communities affected, they are singular. And yet the emotions they create can be shared. There is a word for hopelessness. In fact, there are several words and phrases that come to mind when one thinks of historical events that engender utter despair.

Descendants of the African slave trade call it the Maafa, the great destruction, the great suffering, the great catastrophe. It began in 1441 with the Portuguese and ended in 1867 lasting 426 years. The United Nations reports that more than 15 million men, women, and children were the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Estimates suggest that 15 percent died at sea in the middle passage sickened, thrown overboard, often eaten by sharks who followed closely behind ships.

Millions more survived and disembarked, entering a process of mass dehumanization, enslavement alongside the forced destruction of their language, customs, religions, and ways of knowing hopelessness. Descendants of those who were forced from their land by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 call it the Trail of Tears. The Cherokee Historical Association tells us that upwards of 100,000 Indigenous people lost their homes after Congress under President Andrew Jackson passed the act by a slim and controversial margin.

Tribes such as the Cherokee, the Muscogee, the Seminole, the Chickasaw, and the Choctaw were removed mostly from the southeastern United States and relocated to land out west. Thousands died, many succumbing to the ravages of disease and starvation in just this instance. Again, hopelessness.

Descendants of the 6 million Jews who perished in Europe during the World War II call it the Holocaust or the Shoah in Hebrew, catastrophe. Men, women, children, entire families gathered and put to death between 1941 and 1945 in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno in the occupied Poland. It started with mass shootings, gathering Jews from their homes, taking them to places beyond the city, forcing them to dig mass graves, and then executing them.

In time, they used gas vans and later built entire extermination camps. For those able to say goodbye, mothers kiss their children, husbands hug their wives knowing they would never see one another again. In those moments, hopelessness.

Descendants of Palestinians who were displaced for the creation of the state of Israel call it the Nakba, catastrophe in Arabic, referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Men, women, children, entire families forcibly removed from their homes in order to help establish a safe haven and fulfill the dream of a religious homeland for Jewish people, many fleeing persecution.

The solemn history of Nakba Day reported by time tells us that of the 1.4 million strong Palestinian population at the time, 800,000 were displaced, suffering the loss of life, and approximately 15,000 killed alongside the loss of communities, including homes, schools, and sacred sites. Again, hopelessness.

These are just a few, brief, incomplete examples of monumental historical events that have shaped the lives of so many. The Maafa, the Trail of Tears, the Holocaust, the Nakba. It is impossible to compare the real human toll of devastation. And my point is not to engage in endless comparisons or claims of uniqueness of any of these tragedies.

Despite differences in scale, historical context, and impact, they all hold one thing in common for their descendants who tell their stories. Hopelessness. And why emphasize descendants?

I do so because descendants generally don’t deny. They want others to hear and appreciate their stories. They write about it. They talk about it.

They don’t ban books about it because they want other people to remember it as they are the ones who have to live in the pain of its aftermath. As an anthropologist, I know that stories matter. They are, in essence, the foundation of our lives, how we understand who we are.

These stories, however, are not value-free. They often represent competing and contested truths. The mission and challenge of the university, especially of one whose motto is Veritas, is to make room for these narratives, to excavate them, to weigh them, to critique them, and to be informed by them.

And even as I mentioned these events, time truly fails to really tell of the traumatic destruction and the devastating losses of life that have taken place throughout history, continuing into our present day. As recorded by the Geneva Academy, today, there are more than 110 armed conflicts happening across the globe in Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. And those are just the recorded armed conflicts.

We are also grappling with overwhelming crises, including the lingering effects of a global pandemic, the existential threat of climate change, the persistent reality of inequality in both resources and rights, and the grief that visions for peace seem as distant as they ever have as wars erupt around the world and acts of violence continue to afflict our nation here at home.

In the years ahead, what will we even call October 7 and its aftermath? How will we explain the ongoing violence and destruction to future generations? What words will the scholars, journalists, public officials, and religious leaders use to help us make sense of this moment? I don’t know. Only time will tell.

The history is still being written. But what remains clear is that in each of these events, the Maafa, the Trail of Tears, the Holocaust, the Nakba, or the many wars underway in the world. What’s clear is that they each produce cause for hopelessness, cause for dystopian imaginations about the future.

After all, religion has often been front and center in these moments and movements. As anthropologist Talal Asad argues in genealogies of religion, religious discourse depends on practices and discourses that are often not religious at all. Religion, one might argue, is as much about the ethereal concerns of spirit and its afterlife, the so-called intangible world of faith as it is about the very tangible, corporeal conditions that define our everyday lives. Struggles over land, geography, politics, power, and control.

Religion with its hierarchies, its chosenness, its sacred geographies, its blessed and cursed peoples can inspire the worst of human compulsions towards war and exclusion. At the very same time, religion can inspire the best of humanity compelling us towards hope in the midst of great despair.

In preparing for our HDS Community Read, we’re over the course of this year, we will read both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives on the conflict. I was moved by a passage from Yossi Halevi’s letters to my Palestinian neighbor, one of our reads. Halevi, who is Jewish and Israeli, writes of his hope for Israel and Palestine.

His hope, distinct from some other Zionists, he explains, is that Israel will stop the expansion of settlements and the two peoples can live peaceably alongside one another. Yet he writes this while also describing the many failed attempts over the decades at peace. The bombs by Israel, the intifadas by Palestine, the deaths, the destruction.

He writes, quote, “As a religious person, I am forbidden to accept this abyss between us as permanent, forbidden to make peace with despair. As the Qur’an so powerfully notes, despair is equivalent to disbelief in God. To doubt the possibility of reconciliation is to limit God’s power, the possibility of miracle, especially in this land. The Torah commands me, seek peace and pursue it. Even when peace appears impossible. Perhaps, especially then.”

And so in the midst of great tragedy, when people work to build back the ruins of history, they are often compelled to move forward because of the very faith that brought contention. The challenge in doing that work, however, is often the open wounds of discord, the need to reach beyond existential pain to possibility. We are indeed asking grieving people to find solutions. And this indeed is possibly the greatest challenge.

Over the past year, as universities across the nation, including our own, were engulfed in conflict and burdened with the weight of the moment, I’ve had little time to truly process the range of emotions that accompanied my start as dean. As the year began in August of 2023, as many of you know, my father passed away unexpectedly. Then October 7, I wasn’t here yet, but I was processing grief. And grief compounded by the heartbreak of what was unfolding internationally.

When I arrived in January to begin this historic journey as the first woman to lead Harvard Divinity School, I was struck by yet another great and surprising grief. My mother died in her sleep the day after attending my welcome reception. Amid both of what I have called Great Grief. I’m so sorry.

In hindsight, I see that my sisters and I were, in fact, extended great grace. In their deaths, we were allowed space to grieve and remember an opportunity for some form of tenuous closure.

For weeks, people came to my parents’ home bringing food, telling stories, deeply fond memories of my parents. Their funerals were attended by hundreds of people from across the community who celebrated their lives with us and told stories that even at their funerals, made us laugh.

The pastor of our home church offered heartwarming eulogies that spoke to their great humanity. And we all sang praises to God for the gift of their lives. They were somber, yet beautiful experiences, great graces, I call them today.

The people of Israel, whose parents, children, and loved ones were lost or taken captive do not have that grace. Many don’t even know if their loved ones are dead or alive. Though they walk daily with an open wound of the most humankind, the people of Gaza, parents, children, and loved ones who have been lost to war.

Homes and lives destroyed. Their families, too, do not have that grace. The people of war-torn communities around the world do not have that grace.

Many are literally on the run, sitting in grief, unable to process the devastation of family, home, school, and community. How do you mourn with such uncertainty? What happens when grief has no place to go, no place to be honored? Sadly, we have seen that lived out over this past year.

Our great and common humanity, however, calls us to something better to manifest hope in the midst of despair. This is aspirational to be sure. But history has shown us time and time again that humanity has the propensity to persist despite catastrophe.

As we grapple with our modern-day challenges and complexities, especially at a place like Harvard, we must focus on what is within our control to build toward a better future for all. How do we create space in the world for greater dialogue across our differences? How can a respect for difference mitigate violence and ultimately lead us to a world without war?

How do we develop leaders who are attuned to the concerns of others, even as they advocate and work towards the concerns of their own communities? How do we develop leaders who are deeply informed about history, and culture, and cultivate scholars who excel at examining the most intricate details of religious life and meaning? Here at Harvard Divinity School, we have a high calling, a lofty vision, a truly grand idea.

We study and teach the world’s great traditions. We know and seek to understand the great sorrow and bitterness wrought by religion and religious divides. And at the same time, we pursue and celebrate the great joy and connection inspired by faith and faith communities.

I returned to Harvard and to HDS, in particular, in part, because of the hope found here in these hallowed halls. The sense of possibility about what Harvard Divinity School has to offer the world in need. And we know that long before last year, there were already a plethora of issues that could benefit from the promise of our mission and vision.

Here in the United States, religion continues to play a role in our political debates and in society, whether we were debating climate change, or reproductive rights, gun laws, LGBTQIA issues, or the efficacy of public health, health efforts such as masking during a pandemic or the value of vaccinations. Religion too often was wielded as a way to instigate social fracture.

The things we label today as culture wars from the banning of books, to the fierce debates over the border, to the rise of particular forms of nationalism around the globe are often rooted in issues of religious interpretation, religious difference, and ideas of dominance. There is a way in which we as scholars of religion can take for granted the idea that everyone holds dear the values of pluralism and tolerance. These are often bedrock ideals in the humanities, and in the social sciences, in particular.

Indeed, as a form of practice, we scholars of religion intentionally think about the makings of our multifaceted religious worlds. The extensive histories, the sacred texts, the diverse communities, the balances or imbalances of power and resources, the affinities that make for religious devotion and care.

How do we share these insights with a broader public amidst increasing social divisions? Especially given that our hope for a multiracial and multi-religious democracy depends upon our openness to others. There is no shortage of reasoning as to why we need Harvard Divinity School and our many counterparts. Schools, programs and associations that focus on the study of religion.

I’ve said many times as dean in these last months that HDS is a multireligious divinity school where we teach a multitude of traditions Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, African, and Indigenous traditional religions. And we do so within a community that represents dozens of different faiths, including people who ascribe to multiple denominations or none at all. People who are discerning their beliefs and those who practice their faith religiously.

This respect for pluralism within our community is intentional. It is intended to serve as a model for how to lead by example here at Harvard and beyond. People from every background, belief system, family structure, class, creed, and ability are part of our shared humanity, especially here in the US.

Ours is a multiracial and multi-religious democracy. And this is not by accident, but by struggle and sacrifice. And as a government for the people and by the people, the United States offers us a unique model, a representative democracy, where the ideal of democracy is that everyone gets a vote and everyone has a voice.

But with that promise, we must also recognize that democracy is not a guarantee. It is a grand experiment that men and women have struggled to bring into being, and one that we have to struggle to keep. I learned this while conducting ethnographic research in Eastern North Carolina among Black Baptist women and men who advocated daily for the concerns of their community, whether for clean drinking water, justice for Black farmers, or educational parity.

I learned at watching women in Georgia rally to register citizens to vote as civil rights workers had done generations before them trying to bring all of God’s people to the table. And I learned it in reading the works of Mary McLeod Bethune, who having dedicated her life to building Bethune Cookman College, argued that, quote, “Education is the great American adventure. The world’s most colossal Democratic experiment.”

We must participate in the process of democracy to protect and defend this way of life. This includes protecting and defending the foundation of education, which includes academic freedom and open inquiry. The very idea of this monumental institution, the historic Harvard University, incorporated before our nation was even founded, would not be possible without the ideals of democracy to guide us.

Our ability to honor our diversity and background and diversity and beliefs will determine the future of our democracy and the potential for democracies around the globe. If we are to ensure that this multiracial, multireligious democracy that we ascribe to not only survives, but thrives, we need the foresight that is at the heart of Harvard Divinity School’s vision statement, which is to provide an intellectual home where scholars and professionals from around the globe research and teach the varieties of religion in service of just world at peace across religious and cultural divides.

And so as we move into this new year, I hold hope. Thanks to all of the good work HDS has already put into the world by way of our excellent faculty, our dedicated staff, our inspiring students, our remarkable alumni, and our supportive friends. And I hold hope for how HDS will grow into the future.

I hope for HDS continued commitment to intellectual excellence. May we hold a sustained focus on the rigorous and engaged study of religion to delve mindfully into the literature and sacred texts that inform religious communities to excavate the unique and complex histories that explain their development, to wrestle with the anthropological and sociological matters that inform our contemporary realities, to always explore the ethical implications of their practices. And this is only the start of our academic inquiries.

Intellectual excellence is instrumental here at HDS for each degree program and each area of study, as well as throughout the field as scholarly networks are built and strengthened. I hope for HDS continued commitment to character. May we have the foresight to engage in intellectual rigor that makes room for difference and honest debate.

The type of character that holds and honor the humanities of those with whom we differ. The type of humanity that grieves with those who grieve and cares for those in need, regardless of our differences. As I was reading Reverend Warnock’s memoir in preparation for tomorrow’s symposium, I came across a passage where he recounts a similar concern about character as he explains his decision to attend Morehouse College, his alma mater, which he holds in high regard for its commitment to the cultivation of what he calls mind and heart.

As he considered matriculation at Morehouse, he came across a written reflection by a then 18-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. in the school newspaper, where King shared his thoughts on education. King had observed that Eugene Tarmac, the quote “hate-filled segregationist governor of Georgia held a Phi Beta Kappa key.” King reflected, by all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively.

Yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated? We must remember that intelligence is not enough.

Intelligence plus character. That is the true goal of education. Training the head and tuning the heart exemplifies this essential element of teaching and learning.

We will need character now more than ever to get through these dark days of discord. The type of character that insists on seeing and valuing the full humanity, even of those with whom we disagree. And maybe especially. This was, in part, the great genius of the Civil Rights Movement.

Finally, I hope for HDS continued commitment to beloved community. May we have faith in ourselves and each other that we can tend to our scholarly pursuits, our spiritual callings, our dreams for a better future with care. May we work toward the possibility of a better future by creating more light and causing less harm.

May we find solace in our sacred teachings, in our shared humanity, in the many ways that faith may sustain the spirit. And may we protect the privilege and the promise that education provides. Please know that these hopes are ones I carry with me as a leader, as a scholar, as a mother, as a partner, and in each of the relationships I’ve been blessed with in my life.

This emphasis on excellence, and character, and community comes from the values my parents instilled in me. I might say, since I was knee-high to a tadpole.

[LAUGHTER]

In the face of adversity, particularly living through the Jim Crow era in the South, my parents held fast to their faith and the promise of a better future. They taught me the importance of education, the meaning of character, and the necessity of tending to one another with care. My parents may not be here with us today, but they are guiding me in spirit. And I pray that you feel that grace as I lead this extraordinary school.

In closing, I would like to invoke Zora Neale Hurston, a writer and anthropologist who inspired my love of stories with her keen observation. We are all storytellers, weaving the threads of our experiences into the grand tapestry of life. May we listen to and truly hear one another’s stories, and may our commitment to intellectual excellence, character, and beloved community guide us now and always. And yet, we hope. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Thank you so much, Teddy. And this wonderful band. Can we give them a hand?

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you. Thank you all so much for being here with us today. Please join us for a reception downstairs. And please join us tomorrow for our symposium in here on religion and democracy. See you downstairs.

[APPLAUSE]

DAVID HOLLAND: Closing music. Yui Jit Kwong, MTS Candidate, tenor saxophone. Craig Rusert, MDiv candidate, bass. Jay Matthew Kinnemore, DIB Office, drums. Chris Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, piano.

Copyright 2020, the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

See also: Convocation, Faculty and Research, Homepage Feature, News Landing Page.

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https://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/2024/11/19/letter-dean-marla-frederick

Letter from Dean Marla F. Frederick

October 1, 2024

Dean Marla F. Frederick

Dear HDS Community,

At the beginning of my first full year as Dean here at Harvard Divinity School, I write to you with a full heart and a mind awash with thoughts. The fall semester brought the exciting energy of new possibilities and reminders of all we weathered as a community last year. As an anthropologist, I approach my work with an emphasis on the human condition and how storytelling informs how we see the world. With that background, I want to acknowledge the joy of looking forward to a new chapter for the School—one that we will be writing together—while also recognizing the grief of living through ongoing conflicts at home and abroad.

To revel with hope for the future while also reckoning with pain is a profoundly human experience. Time and time again, history has shown us how one dream can become a catalyst for decades of progress, and how one idea can change the world for generations to come. This is our calling as teachers, scholars, and individuals who care deeply about education—to ensure that hopes, dreams, and big ideas have a place where they can be nurtured. This is why I believe so deeply in the mission and the vision of Harvard Divinity School.

The intention for this annual publication is to offer a look back on the previous academic year and a view of what is in store for the future. As I hope you will see throughout this report, the study of religion and the work of ministry continue to flourish. With thanks to our students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends, HDS remains a top-tier divinity school. Our rich multifaith offerings and strong networks of scholars create ripple effects of good work happening across the globe.

Dean Marla F. Frederick delivered her address “And Yet, We Hope . . . ” at Harvard Divinity School’s 209th Convocation in September 2024. Photo: @lieslclarkphotography

Reflections and Profound Appreciation

In the spirit of reflection, I would like to share my gratitude for the heartfelt welcome bestowed upon me in January 2024, including the joyful gathering held in the beautiful James Room. I am grateful to President Alan Garber for his warm words of welcome and his ongoing support. I also have profound appreciation for President Claudine Gay for extending me the invitation to return to Harvard as Dean of HDS and for all that she continues to teach us about leadership.

With leadership in mind, I want to recognize the exceptional deans who have guided the School before me. Harvard Divinity School would not be the fine institution it is today without their thoughtful support and excellent care. I am especially thankful for Dean David Hempton’s emphasis on growing the School’s multifaith offerings. He also extended the reach of HDS internationally, strengthening scholarly networks here in Cambridge and around the world.

This foundation is one I intend to build upon as we continue to expand HDS’s academic depth and breadth. (And I would like to offer David a heartfelt welcome back to the classroom after a well-deserved sabbatical!)

David Holland also deserves a world of thanks. He deftly led the School as Interim Dean in the fall of 2023. For this—and his many accomplishments as a scholar, a teacher, and a religious leader—David was honored with the 2024 Dean’s Distinguished Service Award in May. As of July, David has also taken on the role of associate dean for faculty and academic affairs to help guide us into our next chapter. He will be building on the excellent work of Janet Gyatso, who served in this role with distinction from July 2014 to June 2024. Janet’s unwavering dedication to excellence has profoundly shaped the academic experience here at HDS, particularly with the advancement of Buddhist studies and the establishment of the Buddhist Ministry Initiative.

Some of the many highlights of my first semester include getting to know HDS students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends; getting reacquainted with colleagues from across Harvard; and enjoying a number of lovely events, such as the Dean’s Leadership Forum, Gomes Alumni Honors, and Commencement (to name just a few). It was a joy to have my family here with me at our campus welcome celebration in January and to meet so many of your happy families at our graduation ceremonies in May. Here’s to many more joyous occasions and exuberant reunions.

There was also much work to be done as our community contended with how to address challenges on campus, in the country, and around the globe. As I noted in my message to the community in January and will reaffirm now: I believe in the mission and vision of Harvard Divinity School. I believe we need to nurture and train students to lead in our increasingly multireligious and multiracial world. As a School, we are committed to interreligious dialogue and anti-racism, and together we will continue to cultivate a community that is vibrant and intellectually rigorous, as well as sensitive to the core issues of what it means to be human.

Keeping to our mission of teaching and learning is imperative to our work—particularly during difficult or disruptive times. The “Dialogue Across Difference” discussion led by Jocelyne Cesari, Gloria White-Hammond, and Diana Eck in January set a powerful example for how we can explore and investigate complex topics while also practicing our community values. HDS has a long history of demonstrating how the study of religion can be a force for good. And this is why I am ever grateful for the continuity of Harvard Divinity School’s mission—made possible by the dedication and support of this exceptional community.

HDS Deans past and present: Former Dean William Graham (2002–12), former Acting and Interim Dean David Holland (spring 2021 and fall 2023), Dean Marla F. Frederick, former Acting Dean Preston Williams (1974–75), and former Dean David Hempton (2012–23) at Dean Frederick’s welcome reception in January 2024. Photo: Julia Zhogina Photography

Academic Expertise and Reach

This year’s report highlights academic expertise across disciplines—including the work of scholars who have recently joined the community and those who have been steadfast in their commitments to HDS for decades. Harvard Divinity faculty continue to engage in rigorous research and exceptional teaching through course offerings, public lectures, and leadership throughout the field. The following “Year in Review” content illustrates the range of book publications, awards, and events happening across the School.

During academic year 2023–24, we saw several exciting updates to the HDS Faculty of Divinity. Michelle Sanchez, MDiv ’09, PhD ’14, was promoted to Professor of Theology with tenure, and Teren Sevea was promoted to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Associate Professor of Islamic Studies. Additionally, Swayam Bagaria was appointed as Assistant Professor of Hindu Studies. We also welcomed several new faculty members for academic year 2024–25.

• Nikki Hoskins, MDiv ’12, Assistant Professor of Religion and Ecology
  Joining us from The University of Scranton, Nikki Hoskins focuses her research on Christian histories of colonial, racial, and environmental domination.
   
• Stephanie Sears, Lecturer on Spiritual Care Joining us from Clark Atlanta University
  Stephanie Sears is a practitioner and theorist of decolonial spiritual care whose research centers on the religion of Africana women through the critical lenses of womanist and Black feminist thought.
   
• Raúl E. Zegarra, Assistant Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies
  Joining us from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Raúl Zegarra’s research focuses on the relationship between faith and politics.

Along with our outstanding faculty members, a wide range of visiting scholars bolster the academic offerings at HDS and across the University. I want to recognize the fellows, research associates, and visiting monastics who become integral members of the HDS community by way of the Office of Ministry Studies (OMS), the Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR), Religion and Public Life (RPL), and the Women’s Studies in Religion Program (WSRP). From visiting Hindu monastics, to Buddhist ministry fellows, to the Yang Visiting Scholars in World Christianity, and beyond, support for multireligious education helps strengthen vital connections with leaders and scholars around the world.

I am also grateful for the expertise of the visiting faculty who are joining us for academic year 2024–25:

• The Very Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas joins HDS as Visiting Professor of Theology. Her academic work focuses on womanist theology, racial justice issues, sexuality, and the Black church, and her course offerings at HDS include “Exploring the Moral Imaginary in Black Women’s Fictional Literature.”
   
• Rabbi Shaul Magid is returning to HDS for a second year as the Visiting Professor of Modern Jewish Studies to teach “Jewish Mysticism and Heresy: From Sabbateanism to Hasidism” and “Jewish Religion and Politics in the 20th Century: Europe, America, and Israel.”
   
• Robert Warrior joins HDS as Visiting Professor of Native American Culture and Traditions. Robert Warrior, a Native American scholar and member/citizen of the Osage Nation, is currently teaching two courses: “Religion and Theology in Indigenous Intellectual History” and “Body, Spirit, and Indigenous Expressive Culture.”
   
• Gina A. Zurlo joins HDS as Visiting Lecturer on World Christianity after spending last year as a Yang Visiting Scholar in World Christianity. Her research focuses on the demography of religion, the sociology of religion, and women’s studies, and she is teaching “History of Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity” this fall.

I hope you will extend a warm welcome to our newest community members. Each addition to the faculty and increase in our visiting scholar opportunities at the School is an investment in the future of teaching and learning.

One of the more bittersweet elements of academia is when cherished colleagues transition from their day-to-day work at the School. In May, we celebrated several faculty members who announced their intentions to retire.

• Diana L. Eck, PhD ’76, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society (FAS)
   
• Cheryl A. Giles, MDiv ’79, Francis Greenwood Peabody Senior Lecturer on Pastoral Care and Counseling
   
• Ousmane Oumar Kane, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society, Professor of African and African American Studies (FAS)
   
• Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity
   
• Kevin J. Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Faculty Dean, Eliot House, Harvard College
   
• Stephanie Paulsell, Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies and Faculty Dean, Eliot House, Harvard College (planned for December 2024)

We owe each of our dedicated faculty members a debt of gratitude for expanding and deepening the curriculum here at HDS and for their many contributions to the broader field of religious studies. To each colleague embarking on this next chapter, congratulations and thank you!

I also want to acknowledge Diane L. Moore, MDiv ’80, who has been an exceptional leader here at the School since she was a student. After 24 years of teaching, she has decided to retire in June 2025. We will have ample time to celebrate Professor Moore’s impressive career—including her role in establishing the Religion and Public Life program at HDS—before she says farewell. In the meantime, I am grateful for her guidance and for her willingness to help our future director of the program, Professor Terrence L. Johnson, MDiv ’00, become familiar with his new role.
 

Dean Frederick with HDS faculty celebrating the School’s 209th Convocation in September 2024. Photo: @lieslclarkphotography

 

Campus Updates

As we celebrated one generation of scholars, the HDS admissions team was hard at work preparing to welcome another. The School saw a strong showing of prospective students, with the second highest number of applications since 2008. The incoming class for fall 2024 is composed of 146 students hailing from 114 different undergraduate institutions. Collectively, they speak 47 languages, represent 34 faith traditions (including none and non/interdenominational), and range in age from 21 to 66. Roughly one-quarter of the class is made up of international students, more than half of the MTS candidates intend to pursue careers in education, and nearly two-thirds of MDiv candidates plan to pursue ministry vocations.

Continuing the trend from past years, 90 percent of MTS and MDiv students receive financial aid—making their education at Harvard possible. Thank you to everyone who supports our students through gifts to financial aid and the HDS Fund. Your generosity creates worlds of possibility by eliminating barriers to education and supporting the future of this vital field of study.

HDS students, staff, faculty, visiting scholars, and alumni continue to lead an array of events. In addition to the School’s many community gatherings—such as Tuesday Morning Eucharist, Wednesday Noon Service, and weekly meditation sessions in the Multifaith Space—you can find a lecture, reading group, or musical performance on any given day. The opportunities to learn and connect are seemingly endless.

Last year, the Women’s Studies in Religion Program hosted six exceptional research associates who explored topics ranging from the Spanish Inquisition, Black spiritual performances in the Caribbean, contraception and faith, and feminist connections to sacred texts and traditions. The Center for the Study of World Religions continued to expand the Transcendence and Transformation initiative, which you can read about in more depth in the “Doors in Every Direction” story featured later in this report. Religion and Public Life facilitated a faculty discussion series, “Religion in Times of Earth Crisis,” among many other offerings.

As we continue to work together to understand the world events of last year—the storm of violence, grief, and uncertainty stemming from the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the tens of thousands of lives lost and upended in Gaza, and the long history of struggle within the region—I have asked my colleagues at HDS to help launch a new series, “People of Faith in Times of Crisis.” I hope that community members can sit together with the issues posed by the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict and the reverberations felt across college campuses. The series includes a collective read of three books: one providing an Israeli perspective, another from a Palestinian perspective, and the final described as “an epic novel rooted in the real-life friendship between two men united by loss.” We will meet in February and April to discuss these works.

The books for this year include Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi; Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine by Raja Shehadeh; and Apeirogon: A Novel by Colum McCann. The Dean’s Office is also planning a symposium to discuss these topics (additional details to come). For more information about this series, and the many happenings across HDS, please sign up for the School’s newsletters and follow our social media channels.

A Selection of Spring 2024 Events at HDS

• HDS Common Read Gatherings for All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
• PBS Gospel Special Event
• Black Mental Health Symposium
• “Refuge in the Storm” Buddhist Ministry Series
• South Asian Devotional Music Event
• Chaplaincy Across Fields: Nurturing Resilience and Compassion Alumni Webinar
• Becoming a New Saint: Exploring the Path of Emerging as Warriors from Our Broken Hearts Book Event with Lama RodOwens, MDiv ’17
• “Framing the Light: Quaker Meetinghouses as Space and Spirit” Photography Exhibit by Jean Schnell
• HDS Climate Justice Week

 

Creating Connections Across the University and Across the Globe

There are a number of ways our many community members create connections locally, nationally, and internationally. As I begin my first full year at HDS, I want to highlight three key examples of impact.

In May 2024, Swartz Hall hosted a beautiful celebration for the 50th anniversary of the concentration in the comparative study of religion. This undergraduate program at Harvard has provided five decades of collaboration between the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Divinity School. Moreover, the establishment of this concentration in 1974 strengthened the entire field of study. I encourage you to read more about this work—and the exceptional leaders who made this work possible—in the “Cultivating Generations of Religious Scholars” story found later in this report.

As we grapple with complex issues from the past year, the University has convened several working groups and task forces, which include HDS faculty. David Hempton was named as a representative for the institutional voice working group; Andrew Teeter was named as a representative for the antisemitism task force; and Diana Eck and Khalil Abdur-Rashid were named as representatives for the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias task force. I deeply appreciate each of these leaders for sharing their expertise and for connecting our work at the School to broader efforts across Harvard. Furthermore, I am continually heartened by the many members of our community—students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends—who have engaged with thoughtfulness and nuance during these difficult times. Our ability to disagree civilly while honoring our shared humanity can be a guiding light through the darkness.

Looking forward, I also want to recognize our School’s work related to climate and care for nature. HDS has an abundance of experience and insight to offer—from a focus on justice to chaplaincy for grief to wisdom from sacred traditions. This critical area of study necessitates an understanding of the human condition, an appreciation for the natural world, and a reverence for hope in the face of despair. The Divinity School is poised to make significant contributions, and I welcome ideas for how we can make more of a difference.
 

On Hope and Looking Forward

The HDS community celebrated our 209th Convocation on September 26. During this event, and the “Symposium on Religion and American Democracy” that followed the next day, I was moved by the exceptional leaders in our community—those who are connected to the School by degree, by scholarship, and by a dedication to the belief that the study of religion can be a force for good in the world.

I invite you to read more about our 2024 Convocation and the symposium, which included a powerful conversation with the Honorable Reverend Raphael G. Warnock, PhD, on the crossroads of religion and democracy. I want to extend my deepest thanks to Rev. Warnock, as well as our wonderful panelists who joined us for the symposium. To my fellow past American Academy of Religion presidents, your insights bring a vibrancy to the study of religion that is nothing short of brilliant; and to my colleagues who have worked tirelessly in support of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, you have strengthened and expanded the foundation of education. I appreciate each of you beyond words.

Dean Marla F. Frederick, PhD, and Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, PhD, during their symposium conversation, “Religion and Democracy at the Crossroads,” in September 2024. Photo: @lieslclarkphotography

“Symposium on Religion and American Democracy.”

On September 27, 2024, HDS hosted the “Symposium on Religion and American Democracy.” The day included several remarkable conversations connecting scholars and religious leaders from around the country with the HDS community.

Is a Multireligious Democracy Possible? A Conversation with Past Presidents of the American Academy of Religion (AAR)

Diana L. Eck, PhD ’76, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Emerita; Fredric Wertham Research Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Amir Hussain, Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University

Emilie M. Townes, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Religion and Black Studies, Boston University School of Theology

Moderated by Mayra Rivera, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Religion and Latinx Studies, Harvard Divinity School

The Importance of HBCUs in the Making of American Democracy

Jelani M. Favors, Henry E. Frye Distinguished Professor of History, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

Tony Frazier, Assistant Professor of History, The Pennsylvania State University

Crystal R. Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies, Emory University

John Silvanus Wilson, Jr., MTS ’81, EdM ’82, EdD ’85, Managing Director, Open Leadership Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 11th President of Morehouse College

Moderated by Dean Marla F. Frederick, Harvard Divinity School

Religion and Democracy at the Crossroads: A Conversation with Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, PhD

Marla F. Frederick, Dean of the Faculty of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School

Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, PhD, Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, spiritual home of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; junior United States Senator from Georgia

Read more about Convocation and the symposium in the October 2024 HDS news article “Lessons from the Past, Hope for the Future.” Additional coverage is also available via the HDS social media channels.

I also want to reiterate what I shared at Convocation in my address titled “And Yet, We Hope . . . ” on the vital need to protect our vision for a better future as we grapple with a fractured past. As we move into this new school year, I hold hope thanks to all of the good work HDS has already put into the world by way of our excellent faculty, our dedicated staff, our inspiring students, our remarkable alumni, and our supportive friends. And I hold hope for how HDS will grow into the future.

I hope for HDS . . . the continued commitment to intellectual excellence. May we hold a sustained focus on the rigorous and engaged study of religion: to delve mindfully into the literature and sacred texts that inform religious communities; to excavate the unique and complex histories that explain their development; to wrestle with the anthropological and sociological matters that inform their contemporary realities; to always explore the ethical implication of their practices. And this is only the start of our academic inquiries. Intellectual excellence is critical to the HDS experience for each degree program and area of study, as well as throughout the field as knowledge and ideas are shared across scholarly networks.

I hope for HDS . . . the continued commitment to character. May we have the foresight to engage in intellectual rigor that makes room for difference and honest debate; the type of character that holds in honor the humanity of those with whom we differ. The type of humanity that grieves with those who grieve, and cares for those in need regardless of our differences. . . . In the words of Dr. King, “We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character— that is the goal of true education.”

I hope for HDS . . . the continued commitment to beloved community. May we have faith in ourselves and in each other that we can tend to our scholarly pursuits, our spiritual callings, and our dreams for a better future with care. May we work toward the possibility of a better future by creating more light and causing less harm. May we find solace in our sacred teachings, in our shared humanity, and in the many ways that faith uniquely sustains the spirit. And may we protect the privilege and the promise that education provides.

Please know that these hopes are ones I carry with me as a leader, a scholar, a family member, a friend, and in each of the relationships I’ve been blessed with in my life. This emphasis on excellence, character, and community comes from the values my parents instilled in my sisters and me. In the face of adversity—particularly living through the Jim Crow era in the South—my parents held fast to their faith in the promise of a better future. They taught me the importance of education, the meaning of integrity, and the necessity of tending to one another with care. My parents may not be with us today, but they are guiding me in spirit, and I pray that you feel that grace as I lead this extraordinary School.

In closing, I would like to invoke Zora Neale Hurston, a writer and anthropologist who helped inspire my love of stories. In her 1942 memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston offers a poignant note on education that I believe resonates deeply with our work here at Harvard Divinity School: “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein.”

May we listen to and truly hear one another’s stories. And may our commitments to intellectual excellence, character, and beloved community guide us now and always.

With appreciation for each of you and your support of Harvard Divinity School,

Marla F. Frederick, PhD
Dean of Harvard Divinity School
John Lord O’Brian Professor of Divinity
Professor of Religion and Culture
Professor of African and African American Studies

26.12.24

Editorial Note

The Geneva Graduate Institute has been taken over by pro-Palestinian faculty who push for an anti-Israel agenda without interference. To bolster their unbalanced anti-Israel arguments, they invite radical anti-Israel Israeli activists such as the revisionist Prof. Ilan Pappe and Prof. Hagar Kotef, among others.

Last month, the Geneva Graduate Institute hosted a conference on Zionism. “Confronting And Unpacking The Truth: Conference on Zionism,” a report detailing the event was published on December 3, 2024, by the Graduate Press. The event was organized by the Middle East and North Africa Initiative (MENA) and supported by the Graduate Institute. It “featured eight distinguished speakers across three panels, diving deeply into the historical, theological, and political dimensions of Zionism. Attendees from within and beyond the Institute came together to engage in rigorous discussions on the evolving paradigms and future implications of Zionism as its project commits an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.”

The first panel, “The Power Paradigm of Zionism,” included Hagar Kotef, professor of political theory at SOAS, University of London. She emphasized that “Zionism’s dual identity as a liberation movement for Jews and a settler-colonial project, the foundations of expansionism in the ideology of creating a ‘homeland’ through displacing native populations, and its long history of dependence on tropes of vacant land that can be captured through occupation, demolition and eventually ethnic cleansing – a distinction that was later challenged by other panelists. She voiced the fact that although 7 October 2023 was the worst event for Jewish people since the Holocaust, the last 14 months have been the worst event for Palestinians, probably even worse than the Nakba in 1948. Discussing the operations of the Zionist project, she highlighted that in their effort to establish themselves as indigenous to the land, settlers have systematically displaced existing populations through expulsion or, as witnessed today, acts of genocide.”

The panel was preceded by the screening of a documentary “And There Was Israel” (2018). The documentary “traces the use of force, propaganda, ideology, and financial backing behind the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel.” According to the film storyline, “The film returns to the origins of the creation of the State of Israel and looks at historical facts under the very specific angle of the responsibility of the Western World. Through the analysis of internationally renowned scholars and astonishing cinematographic archives, the film shows that in adopting the zionist project, Great Britain and other Western countries have been guided mainly by their own agenda. Thus the West does not only bears a heavy responsibility in terms of the fate of Jews in Europe at the time, but also in terms of the fate of the Palestinians today.” The top 7 cast are, Ilan Pappe, Eugene Rogan, Shlomo Sand, Henry Laurens, Sahar Huneidi, Susan Akram, and Riccardo Bocco.

The discussants for the second panel, “The History of Zionism (late 1800s – 1948),” were Prof. Cyrus Schayegh, Chair of the Department of International History and Political Science, and Prof. Riccardo Bocco, professor emeritus of Anthropology and Sociology at the Institute. The panel “looked into the intricate entanglement of Zionist history with Western imperialism, framing it as both an ethno-nationalist project and a colonial ideology. Professor Bocco emphasized that Zionism was rooted in Jewish nationalism and reliant on imperial powers of the West for its establishment and survival. He highlighted the role of Western powers in creating Israel as a solution to the ‘Jewish problem’, using Palestine as a colonial site for settlement while failing to define the exact contours of a ‘Jewish state.’ The United States emerged as Israel’s steadfast patron by the end of the 1960s, not only through military and financial support but also as a partner in shaping geopolitical narratives.” Professor Schayegh noted that “historically colonial projects have always needed to work with locals in order to be successful, which is why the simultaneous ‘Europeanness’ of the new Israelis and their critical ‘Otherness’ from their European backers created the perfect combination for Zionism to achieve success in creating Israel.”  

Ilan Pappe was the keynote speaker. He re-emphasized “the origins of Zionism in European colonialism,” describing it as a “solution to a Jewish problem” that was “imposed on Palestine by external powers.” Pappe stated that the events of the 7th of October “happened in a context, even though, as he noted, the use of the word ‘context’ has become associated with terrorism and antisemitism.” He said “Israel is a failed state,” and “we can see the beginning of the collapse of the Zionist project…. This is reflected through the growing cracks in Israeli society, growing distrust in the state institutions, and the rise of fascism.” Pappe continued, “The Zionist project is failing Israelis and killing Palestinians.”  This is not surprising since, according to him, “Zionism has always been a modus operandi that can only be implemented by force.”  Pappe also stated that “without British support, the Zionist project would have failed.” For Pappe, the occupied Palestinian territories are “the two biggest prisons on earth.” 

In the final session, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, spoke virtually. Albanese stated that “Israel is committing not only genocide, but also ecocide, domicide, and scholasticide. She emphasized the systemic nature of colonial erasure perpetrated by the Israeli government.” She “advocated for restorative justice and holding perpetrators accountable, framing Palestinian liberation as integral to global struggles against structural injustice. She expanded on how the system sustains its ‘colonial practises’ and reproduces systemic injustices.” For her, Palestine is “a metaphor to understand the injustices of the system.” Albanese “emphasized the need to reform the international law order to pressurise states to take accountability for the genocide happening in Gaza for the past 14 months.” The panel “took a pragmatic perspective in understanding the real-world implications of Zionism and a potential post-Zionist future. The panel discussion highlighted the urgent need for decolonization and a reimagined framework of justice.” 

The Graduate Press report of the conference concluded that “while the future remains uncertain, yet for the unbreakable people of Palestine, this ability to dream must endure, and the world should do better.”

The Geneva Graduate Institute provides a distorted reality of the Middle East and Israel through its anti-Israel members of staff such Bocco and Schayegh. For example, a 2016 NGO Monitor’s report titled “German Federal Frameworks Involving Civil Society in the Arab-Israeli Conflict” discussed the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) – the primary German federal donor to civil society organizations and activities. It found that “In 2011, BMZ commissioned Riccardo Bocco – a Swiss development expert who has questioned Israel’s status as a democracy, accused Israel of ‘state terrorism’ equating it with Hamas, and has ties with fringe anti-Israel BDS groups – to evaluate projects in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.” According to NGO Monitor, Bocco “recommended the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC), a Palestinian organization involved in violent activities, as a local partner for BMZ.” NGO Monitor revealed that in a 2011 interview for Swissinfo, “Bocco equated the Israeli government with Hamas, accusing it of ‘state terrorism targeting the Palestinian civilian population;’ questioned whether democracy ‘really exists in Israel;’ and argued against boycotting Hamas, claiming that ‘this just sends a message to al-Qaida and other extremist groups that following the path of democracy to achieve power gets you nowhere”.’ In 2014, Bocco claimed that “The killing of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge had a clear economic motive – the Israeli security industries are the ones who prospered from Protective Edge.”

Prof. Bocco is currently pushing for an Israel-Palestinian Federation. Anything that can dismantle Israel is an option. In a recent paper he co-authored, titled “An Israeli/Palestinian Federation An Alternative Approach to Peace,” he advised that a “suggested first step in following up on this paper would be for the Graduate Institute of Geneva and the Arditi Foundation to convene meetings of Israelis and Palestinians already interested in the model to discuss and improve upon these ideas. These meetings could then provide the basis for approaches to policy-makers in the international community and in Israel and Palestine. The essential messages behind the initiative are that the Oslo version of the two-state solution is dead, that avoiding the search for a better solution plays into the hands of extremists and zealots, and that an approach that tackles the twin hydra of settlements and refugees is central to any forward progress.”  

Likewise, Schayegh published an article in March 2023, “It’s the Occupation, Stupid,” where he explored “potential root causes for the far-right leanings of Israel’s current government.” He concluded that “Jewish Israelis who are now for very good reason protesting are still not addressing the Occupation. (Few Palestinian Israelis are joining them.) But without equality for Palestinian Israeli citizens, and without a solution to the century-long drama of Palestinian statelessness, now more remote than ever, Israel will never be a liberal democracy, even though it is a trusted US partner and – let’s not forget – an Associated Member of the European Union.”

The Geneva Graduate Institute plans to host a conference on January 20, 2025, titled “The Cold War in the Middle East and North Africa.” In a panel titled “Islam – Arab-Israeli Conflict,” the speaker who will present the topic of “The Arab-Israeli Conflict” is Prof. Jeremy Pressman, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut. But Pressman is not a neutral researcher. Last month, he responded to a tweet on X by Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization focusing on antisemitism. He wrote to Greenblatt, that it is “Deeply concerning to see Greenblatt pretending that opposing AIPAC is scapegoating Jews. This is part of his continued effort to block criticism of Israel’s military conduct and political policy.” This was a response to Greenblatt’s tweet after the US elections, “Unsurprising, but still deeply concerning to see AOC react to the election by blaming @AIPAC for ‘overly influencing’ Congress and falsely claiming that supporting Israel is ‘wildly unpopular.’ Scapegoating the Jews for one’s failure is unreflective and a truly pathetic and ugly.” 

This upcoming conference, like the other Geneva Graduate Institute activities, is likely to espouse anti-Israel themes. 

The Geneva Graduate Institute is just the latest example of how institutions of higher education in the West have come to confuse teaching and research with full-time pro-Palestinian advocacy. Many engage in political work openly because some of their faculty are of Middle Eastern origin.  Others, like the anti-Israel Israeli academics, have obtained positions in Western universities where they serve as the “fig leaf” for the antisemitic and anti-Zionist agenda in many liberal arts and Middle East departments. Many of the pro-Palestinian advocates, both professors and students, have created a successful infrastructure to bash Israel and support Hamas. Known as the “Red-Green Alliance,” a coalition of radical leftists and Islamists is underpinning this infrastructure. They use the neo-Marxist, critical theory to posit the existence of two groups, the “oppressed” and the “oppressors.” Israel is always considered the oppressor and the Palestinians are the victims, absolved of their actions. In this reality, Hamas, which perpetuated the largest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, is considered a victim, and its acts on October 7, 2023, including murder, rape, torture, and hostage-taking, as legitimate “resistance.”

REFERENCES:

Confronting And Unpacking The Truth: Conference on Zionism

Confronting And Unpacking The Truth: Conference on Zionism

by The Graduate Press Editorial Team and Staff Writers

December 3, 2024

By Sreelakshmi Sajeev, News Editor of The Graduate Press and Nora Sullivan, Advocacy Strategist of MENA 

Last Thursday, Maison de la Paix’s auditorium was abuzz with intellectual energy as hundreds of students, academics, activists, and professionals gathered for the Conference on Zionism. Organized by the Middle East and North Africa Initiative (MENA) and supported by the Graduate Institute, the event featured eight distinguished speakers across three panels, diving deeply into the historical, theological, and political dimensions of Zionism. Attendees from within and beyond the Institute came together to engage in rigorous discussions on the evolving paradigms and future implications of Zionism as its project commits an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.The conference served as a rare space for critical inquiry, which, as Professor Ilan Pappé remarked in his keynote speech, exemplified the type of academic commitment to truth and justice that is glaringly absent in most Western universities today. 

“The power paradigm of zionism and its practices”

The first panel on the Power Paradigm of Zionism featured Hagar Kotef, professor of political theory at SOAS, University of London, Joseph Daher, visiting professor at Lausanne University, and Dr. Raouf Salti, urological surgeon and founder of Children’s Right to Healthcare.

Professor Kotef started her discussion by emphasising Zionism’s dual identity as a liberation movement for Jews and a settler-colonial project, the foundations of expansionism in the ideology of creating a ‘homeland’  through displacing native populations, and its long history of dependence on tropes of vacant land that can be captured through occupation, demolition and eventually ethnic cleansing – a distinction that was later challenged by other panellists. She voiced the fact that although 7 October 2023 was the worst event for Jewish people since the Holocaust, the last 14 months have been the worst event for Palestinians, probably even worse than the Nakba in 1948. Discussing the operations of the Zionist project, she highlighted that in their effort to establish themselves as indigenous to the land, settlers have systematically displaced existing populations through expulsion or, as witnessed today, acts of genocide. Professor Daher’s opening remarks followed Kotef’s and were just as strong. He appreciated the event organisers for defending academic freedom and went on to elaborate on the imperialist colonial objectives of the ideology and extended on how the rise of right-wing populist regimes across the world contributes to or impacts what’s happening in Israel and Gaza. He explained the sort of symbiotic relationship between Israel and the West and how it is sustained through mutual economic and security benefits. According to him, Western imperialism is deeply tied to the oil and gas economy, with Israel’s presence in the region offering a degree of strategic control over it. 

Dr. Raouf Salti shared his insights on the medical challenges Palestinians face both in Gaza and outside. He is the founder of Children’s Right to Healthcare, an NGO that works to bring children who have been injured in Gaza for essential operations in Switzerland. Tragically, the long wait for the Swiss medical visas and the battles with Swiss bureaucracy took too long and most of the children he had hoped to bring did not survive the wait. He continued his efforts, stood firm, and eventually managed to bring eight children to Geneva for treatment. He also narrated evocative stories about Israel’s medical apartheid system that treats Palestinians as second-class citizens. The panel concluded by Dr. Salti underscoring the fundamental choice of humanity over everything, the need to find courage to persevere and not allow humanity to perish at this moment.

“Zionism is not one thing but it’s many things“

The first session drew people in, and the second session gave them necessary context and a historical grounding to fully understand the complexity of the topic. The panel was preceded by a documentary screening of “And There Was Israel” (2018), directed by Romed Wyder. The documentary traces the use of force, propaganda, ideology, and financial backing behind the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel. 

The discussants for the next panel on The History of Zionism (late 1800s – 1948) were Cyrus Schayegh, Chair of the Department of International History and Political Science and Riccardo Bocco, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Sociology. The panel looked into the intricate entanglement of Zionist history with Western imperialism, framing it as both an ethno-nationalist project and a colonial ideology. Professor Bocco emphasized that Zionism was rooted in Jewish nationalism and reliant on imperial powers of the West for its establishment and survival. He highlighted the role of Western powers in creating Israel as a solution to the ‘Jewish problem’, using Palestine as a colonial site for settlement while failing to define the exact contours of a ‘Jewish state’. The United States emerged as Israel’s steadfast patron by the end of the 1960s, not only through military and financial support but also as a partner in shaping geopolitical narratives. Professor Schayegh noted that historically colonial projects have always needed to work with locals in order to be successful, which is why the simultaneous ‘Europeanness’ of the new Israelis and their critical ‘Otherness’ from their European backers created the perfect combination for Zionism to achieve success in creating Israel. The discussion concluded with important questions of identity dilemmas, including the erasure of Arab-Jewish identities and highlighting how Israel continues to ‘give back to the West’.

“Towards alternative solutions and the future of the Zionist Paradigm”

The first two panels had nearly full attendance, but ushers were turning people away at the door for Ilan Pappé’s keynote. Among thunderous applause, Ilan Pappé took the stage. He started his speech by re-emphasizing the origins of Zionism in European colonialism, describing it as a “solution to a Jewish problem” imposed on Palestine by external powers. Pappé did not hesitate to speak truths, including that the events of the 7th of October happened in a context, even though, as he noted, the use of the word ‘context’ has become associated with terrorism and antisemitism.  In his words, “Israel is a failed state” and “we can see the beginning of the collapse of the Zionist project”. This is reflected through the growing cracks in Israeli society, growing distrust in the state institutions, and the rise of fascism. “The Zionist project is failing Israelis and killing Palestinians” Pappé commented. This is, according to him, not a surprise, since Zionism has always been a modus operandi that can only be implemented by force. His speech called back to what other panellists had mentioned, including the Evangelical Christian support of the Zionist project due to their belief that the ‘restoration’ of the Jewish people to Palestine would lead to the second coming of Christ, and the fact that “without British support, the Zionist project would have failed” anyway. Pappé used strong language to label the occupied Palestinian territories as “the two biggest prisons on earth.” 

The panel on the future of Zionism and the role of International Law. Image copyrights reserved for MENA©

In the final session, Ilan Pappé was joined by Nur Masalha, Palestinian historian and Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories (virtually). The panel took a pragmatic perspective in understanding the real-world implications of Zionism and a potential post-Zionist future. The panel discussion highlighted the urgent need for decolonization and a reimagined framework of justice. Professor Masalha reflected on the genocidal policies of the Israeli state and its transformation into a fascist regime, cautioning against its implications for both Palestinians and global stability. He emphasized the expulsion of the Palestinians from their native land, a concept Professor Pappé famously called ethnic cleansing. Much like Dr. Salti earlier, the perspective he brought was not just academic but personal. He stated that the last 14 months have been traumatic for all Palestinians, himself included. Referencing Pappé’s idea of a one-state solution, he states, “It is very difficult for Palestinians to go through Genocide and think about living jointly with their genocider”. However, he urged us to imagine Palestine 7000 years into the future. In response to a question related to his research on Zionism making itself native in the land of Israel, Masalha pointed out that when he says Palestinians are indigenous to the land, he does not just mean Arabs, Muslims and Christians. Palestine, Professor explained, has a history going back more than 4000 years and has always been a multilayered, multicultural, and tolerant society; Gaza has been one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, a city of trade and academia. 

Francesca Albanese started off her opening remarks by powerfully stating that Israel is committing not only genocide, but also ecocide, domicide, and scholasticide. She emphasized the systemic nature of colonial erasure perpetrated by the Israeli government. Replying to a question on the role of international law in determining the conditions for genocide to have been met, she advocated for restorative justice and holding perpetrators accountable, framing Palestinian liberation as integral to global struggles against structural injustice. She expanded on how the system sustains its ‘colonial practises’ and reproduces systemic injustices and that Palestine is, for her, “a metaphor to understand the injustices of the system”. Albanese’s remarks emphasised the need to reform the international law order to pressurise states to take accountability for the genocide happening in Gaza for the past 14 months.

On Thursday night, Ivan Pictet A1 transformed into a powerful space of solidarity as the panel concluded with a call to abandon ‘the two-state solution’ and urging a global shift towards accountability and restorative justice for the Palestinians. Because Prof Masalha invoked poet Mahmoud Darwish in his discussion, we are concluding with his words: “No night is long enough for us to dream twice”, a poignant reminder that while the future remains uncertain, yet for the unbreakable people of Palestine, this ability to dream must endure, and the world should do better.

===================================================

https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/communications/events/conference-zionism-history-ideology-and-its-manifestations

Conference on Zionism: History, Ideology, and its Manifestations

28 November 2024, 12:00 – 21:00

Auditorium Ivan Pictet A1 | Maison de la paix, Geneva

This event, organised by students at the Geneva Graduate Institute, brings together prominent scholars and advocates and creates a space to critically examine the history, power structures, and future of Zionism, focusing on its profound and often devastating impact on the Palestinian people.

The discussion will comprise Israeli, Palestinian, and other scholars with diverse backgrounds bringing a multifaceted approach to the discussion. 

Check out this website for more information and click here to register for the event.

12:15 – Panel I, The Power Paradigm of Zionism
 

• Hagar Kotef, Professor of Political Theory at SOAS, University of London
• Dr. Raouf Salti, Urological surgeon in Geneva, and founder of the Children’s Right to Healthcare
• Joseph Daher, Visiting Professor at the University of Lausanne

This panel will provide insights into the manifestations of Zionism in historic Palestine, highlighting the interplay of soft and hard power within Israeli institutions and their impacts on medical, academic, and social realms. It will explore themes of identity, displacement, and control, linking violence and the human experience. 

Moderator: Reine Radwan, MINT Master’s student at the Geneva Graduate Institute

15:00 – Panel II: The History of Zionism (Late 1800s -1948)
 

• Riccardo Bocco, Former Research Director at the Geneva Graduate Institute and Director of the French Center for Research on the Contemporary Middle East
• Cyrus Schayegh, Professor of International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute

The focus of this panel will be on the history of Zionism from its inception in the late 1800s, its spread and adoption as an ideology, and its culmination in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel. It will begin with a short documentary screening titled: “And There was Israel” (2018). Following this, the panelists will enter into an enlightening discussion where they add vital perspectives to the historical materials revealed in the documentary.

Moderator: Julie Billaud, Associate Professor in the department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute 

17:45 – Panel III:  The Future of Zionism and the role of International law
 

• Ilan Pappé, Professor at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies and Director of the Centre for Palestine Studies at Exeter University (UK)
• Nur Masalha, Member of the Centre of Palestine Studies, SOAS, University of London and former Director of the Centre for Religion and History at St. Mary’s University
• Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967

This final part of the conversation will bring together the insights of the previous two talks linking the history of the Zionist movement to today’s reality. This third panel aims to focus on enriching the audience’s understanding of Zionism, potential pathways towards justice, and the future of the Zionist project. Professor Ilan Pappé and Professor Nur Masalha, both incredibly successful historians, will be complemented by UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese’s profound understanding of international law.

Moderator: Alexa Burk, PhD researcher in International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute

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The History of Zionism (late 1800S -1948)

Geneva Graduate Institute

416 views Dec 9, 2024

• Riccardo Bocco, Former Research Director at the Geneva Graduate Institute and Director of the French Center for Research on the Contemporary Middle East
• Cyrus Schayegh, Professor of International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute

On Thursday, 28 November, students at the Geneva Graduate Institute hosted a MENA Initiative Conference on Zionism: History, Ideology, and Its Manifestations. The focus of this panel is on the history of Zionism from its inception in the late 1800s, its spread and adoption as an ideology, and its culmination in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel. It will begin with a short documentary screening titled: “And There was Israel” (2018). Following this, the panelists will enter into an enlightening discussion where they add vital perspectives to the historical materials revealed in the documentary. Moderator: Julie Billaud, Associate Professor in the department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Geneva Graduate Institute.

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Deeply concerning to see Greenblatt pretending that opposing AIPAC is scapegoating Jews. This is part of his continued effort to block criticism of Israel's military conduct and political policy. https://t.co/j6zuLuBG98

— Jeremy Pressman (@djpressman) November 19, 2024

Jeremy Pressman

@djpressman  Nov 19

Deeply concerning to see Greenblatt pretending that opposing AIPAC is scapegoating Jews. This is part of his continued effort to block criticism of Israel’s military conduct and political policy.

Jonathan Greenblatt

@JGreenblattADL· Nov 18

Unsurprising, but still deeply concerning to see AOC react to the election by blaming @AIPAC for “overly influencing” Congress and falsely claiming that supporting Israel is “wildly unpopular.” Scapegoating the Jews for one’s failure is unreflective and a truly pathetic and ugly x.com/AOC/status/185…

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https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/communications/events/cold-war-middle-east-and-north-africa

Click to access Conference-PDB—Programme_0.pdf

Pierre du Bois Annual Conference 2025

The Cold War in the Middle East and North Africa

20 – 21 January 2025

Geneva Graduate Institute, Maison de la paix,

Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2, 1202 Genève, Auditorium Part B

PANEL V: ISLAM – ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

TIM NUNAN, Universität Regensburg Islam

JEREMY PRESSMAN, University of Connecticut

The Arab-Israeli Conflict

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8053650/

And There Was Israel

Original title: Et Israël fut
TV Movie 2018 52m
Documentary
The film returns to the origins of the creation of the State of Israel (from 1896 to 1948) and highlights the responsibility of the Western World.
Director: Romed Wyder
Writer: Romed Wyder
Top cast 7: Ilan Pappe, Eugene Rogan, Shlomo Sand, Henry Laurens, Sahar Huneidi, Susan Akram, Riccardo Bocco

Storyline: The film returns to the origins of the creation of the State of Israel and looks at historical facts under the very specific angle of the responsibility of the Western World. Through the analysis of internationally renowned scholars and astonishing cinematographic archives, the film shows that in adopting the zionist project, Great Britain and other Western countries have been guided mainly by their own agenda. Thus the West does not only bears a heavy responsibility in terms of the fate of Jews in Europe at the time, but also in terms of the fate of the Palestinians today.

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https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/communications/news/fog-war-israel-early-2024FACULTY & EXPERTS

19 February 2024

In the Fog of War: Israel, Early 2024

Cyrus Schaeygh, Professor of International History and Politics, assesses the situation in Israel as the 7 October attacks and the war on Gaza cause uncertainty and division amongst the Israeli population on matters of military funding, politics and perception.

Cyrus SCHAYEGH

PROFESSOR, INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AND POLITICS

Chair of the Department of International History and Politics

Hamas’ massacre and Israel’s war on Gaza are jolting Israel. Uncertainty reigns; Jews see reality unlike much of the rest of the world; and the country may face considerable long-term problems.

Take military expenses. The war has already increased the budget by US$23 billion. Politically vulnerable at home, the government has borrowed much of this sum abroad. This carries economic risks, doubly as growth and tax prognoses are not good. Moreover, the military wants a permanent budgetary increase and longer mandatory service and reserve duty, partly to better protect towns close to Israel’s borders. This will have economic consequences, too, and socio-political ones to boot, for the ultra-Orthodox are to remain exempt from service. Thus, although Israelis feel acutely insecure, 53% said no to the military’s plans in a February poll.

Politics are complex, too. In late October, a Tel Aviv University (TAU) poll showed a clear Jewish-Israeli majority opposes all key Israeli-Palestinian scenarios, i.e. two states, a binational state, annexation, and status quo: a helpless “no future” view. Moreover, in polls, Benny Gantz’s centre-right National Unity party has tripled its seats to 36 although it is in principle open to two “entities” and although the massacre and war are strengthening a long-term shift further to the right. In fact, the fascist Otzmah Yehudit party is up in polls, too, from 6 to circa 9 seats; the most audible discourse on Gaza has at its worst been genocidal (mot clé:“nukes”); and support for peace negotiations and a two-state solution decreased to c. 25% and 28%, respectively, in the TAU poll. (Palestinian support is minimal as well.)

Last, there is the issue of perceptions. Jewish Israeli trust in the military’s wartime conduct is high, as is support for eradicating Hamas; only a minority believes securing the hostages’ release should be Israel’s primary objective. Hamas’ unjustifiable, horrific war crime of a massacre is accentuating a sense of victimhood vis-à-visboth Arabs and the world. Even fewer people than before 7 October “see” Palestinian suffering, whether figuratively or literally on TV and in social media. Few believe the half-century-long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing Likud Party’s no-negotiation attitude to Palestinians are a relevant background to the massacre. Instead, many draw a direct line to pogroms if not to the Holocaust. But it is the war on Gaza that is genocidal—and Israel is finding itself in court for how officials’ rhetoric matches domicide, mind-boggling casualty figures, and the long-term health catastrophe caused by a deliberately induced severe water, food, electricity, and medication shortage. Consequently, views of Israel abroad are becoming ever more scathing, now also amongst some potentially important segments of US voters. Additionally, disconnect from Israel is growing in some quarters of the Jewish diaspora, as well.

In the fog of war, uncertainty reigns in Israel, and belligerent certainties come at an unbearable price.

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https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/communications/news/its-occupation-stupidGlobe, the Geneva Graduate Institute Review

28 March 2023

“It’s the Occupation, Stupid”

Professor Cyrus Schayegh explores potential root causes for the far-right leanings of Israel’s current government. 

Cyrus SCHAYEGH

PROFESSOR, INTERNATIONAL HISTORY AND POLITICS

Chair of the Department of International History and Politics

Israel’s current, 37th government is the most far-right of its history. Even conservatives like ex-Defence Minister Moshe Ya‘alon think especially one coalition party, Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Strength), is “fascist.” Its platform calls for “total war on Israel’s enemies.” 

The government has been materialising a rightwing drift since the 2000s. This drift has a basic cause. It’s not the Orthodox community’s growth, though its youth like voting for non-Orthodox ultra-nationalist religious parties. Nor is it Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal troubles, since 2019, though these have made him legitimise ultra-nationalism and fascism to remain PM and evade judgment by hook or crook. And while the Israeli centre-left’s disunity matters, and though the illiberal drift of democracies like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and India play a contextual international role, they are not key either. 

What’s key is the 1967 occupation and following settlement of Gaza and the West Bank. Sure, Israel was not a perfect democracy before: in 1948-66 Palestinian Israeli citizens lived under military rule. But since 1967, state-supported settlement has both slowly radicalised and mainstreamed some religious forms of Zionism, a process accentuated by the traumas of the 1990s Oslo Peace Process, the 2000-2005 Second Intifada, and the Gaza settlements’ evacuation in 2005. Hardline settlers have been formidable political organisers too. 

By the later 2010s, their worldview had reshaped the Likud Party, marginalising old-style liberal nationalists like Benny Begin, producing laws like “Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” (2018), and preparing the ground for Naftali Bennett to become Prime Minister in 2021-22.

Now, occupation-cum-settlement has fully boomeranged, taking over Israel. The religious-nationalistic and by now fascist impulses resulting from hundreds of thousands of settlers’ and soldiers’ decades-long daily confrontation with occupied Palestinians are shaping Israel’s government to an unprecedented degree. 

And now, the illiberalism innate to these impulses is threatening the foremost check in Israel, which lacks a constitution and has only one parliamentary chamber, on a majoritarian democracy: the judicial system, in particular the Supreme Court.

Yes, Jewish Israelis who are now for very good reason protesting are still not addressing the Occupation. (Few Palestinian Israelis are joining them.) But without equality for Palestinian Israeli citizens, and without a solution to the century-long drama of Palestinian statelessness, now more remote than ever, Israel will never be a liberal democracy, even though it is a trusted US partner and – let’s not forget – an Associated Member of the European Union.

This article was published in Globe #31, the Institute Review.

18.12.24

Editorial Note

Earlier this month, Tel Aviv University (TAU) hosted a DefenseTech Summit 2025, titled “Shaping the future of defense technologies.” The event’s website stated that the summit draws “Lessons from the frontline: Highlighting complex, real-world scenarios, this summit will go beyond theoretical discussion to provide invaluable lessons from Israel’s cutting-edge technologies and strategies addressing global security challenges and shaping the future of defense technology.”

Academia for Equality (A4E), a group of radical anti-Israel academic activists that IAM reported on before, was quick to respond. In a recent post, it attacked TAU’s DefenseTech Summit, stating, “Ironically, while universities in Israel are pushing back against calls for academic boycott, their collaboration with the military seems to have never been more visible. Last week, for example, Tel Aviv University hosted a conference showcasing ‘Israel’s latest innovations in the field of defense.’ The conference included sessions on AI warfare and drone technology that appear to be directly derived from Israel’s ongoing war of annihilation in Gaza. The university, which is supposed to promote scientific breakthroughs that will improve humanity’s future, now takes pride in designing ‘The Warfare of Tomorrow’ (the title of one session), a war in which ‘innovative,’ robotic and faceless, technologies are used to sow destruction and death at unprecedented levels.” 

In particular, A4E bemoaned that “Alongside the conference, the School of Engineering recently released a video about the ‘Engineering School Operations Center’ where they have been ‘inventing solutions for a year now for the challenges faced by our combat soldiers on the frontline,’ or, in other words, improving the killing apparatus that has already took the lives of tens thousands of children, deemed collateral damage.”

A4E added that the university’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center held a hackathon on “battlefield emergency”, when “groups of students and faculty members competed in developing ‘innovative solutions’ for challenges in combat. Are Palestinian lives a technical problem in need of ‘efficient solution’? Is improving the ‘efficiency and safety’ of carrying out the crime of mass annihilation a worthy intellectual mission for members of Tel Aviv University’s academic community?”

A4E used in their post an image provided by Abir Kopty, a PhD student at the Free University of Berlin, who, in 2010, was a “native of Nazareth, a graduate of Haifa University, a council member in Nazareth, and works as a spokeswoman for the Palestinian government.” She later worked in Haifa and Ramallah as a communication officer/ spokesperson for Palestinian human rights organizations.

In another post from November, A4E wrote, “The war that began with Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7, 2023, has almost immediately turned into a relentless and horrifying assault on the Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Time and again, the Israeli government has shown that its declared war objectives — returning hostages and dismantling Hamas’s rule — are a pretext for erasing Palestinian existence in the Gaza Strip, or at the very least, large parts of it. This is being done by destroying all systems of life, health, education, culture, and religious beliefs; by extensive harm to journalists and media; repeated transfer and displacement of populations between different areas; by denying basic living conditions, starvation, and killing of thousands, including a high number of children and women.”

Arguing that, “As an organization of 900 academics who are citizens of Israel, we promptly sounded an alarm about Israel’s war crimes and the heavy toll they are taking, including the destruction of Gaza’s higher education system. As the criminal offensive has expanded to Lebanon and intensified in Gaza and the West Bank, we are even more committed to raising our voices now. The current attack on the northern Gaza Strip, which began on October 5 this year, aims to clear the area of its Palestinian residents and clearly constitutes a crime against humanity. At this moment, the Israeli military, under orders from the Israeli government, is committing severe and unprecedented crimes against a civilian population. Whether defined as ethnic cleansing, extermination, or genocide, it is the duty of every Israeli citizen to do all they can to stop these crimes. In addition to the immediate victims, these heinous actions are disastrous for people of both nations and the entire region.” 

They continued, “Most of us live in Israel and speak Hebrew. We see how the government, popular media outlets, and large parts of civil society have rallied into a propaganda machine, manufacturing broad public consent in Israel and silencing dissenters and protestors, including survivors of October 7 and families of hostages, both Jewish and Arab. We are confident that our actions serve our loved ones and the long-term interests of everyone living between the river and the sea. As members of the academic community, we urge intellectuals, higher education institutions, and academic associations to join this call. We call on the international community, especially the United States that continues to arm and support Israel’s actions, to change course and do everything possible to stop these horrific crimes.”

As can be seen, the IDF, which protects everybody’s life in Israel, including Arab and Jewish members of A4E, is vilified by them. Evidently, A4E is a pro-Palestinian group inside the Israeli academy that openly proclaims its goals. 

Moreover, their posts are a gross misrepresentation of the IDF’s action in the Gaza Strip and beyond. It is well documented that all of Iran’s proxies have adopted the “radical embedding” doctrine.  This tactic orders terror groups to embed their fighters within the civilian population, notably in public sites like hospitals, mosques, and schools. These civilians are then used as human shields when the IDF responds to terror attacks.  Interestingly, neither Hezbollah nor Hamas, which use radical embedding, allow their medical authorities to provide separate counts for civilian and combatant casualties, thus inflating the numbers of noncombatants killed.  A recent report by a respectable British think tank, the Henry Jackson Society, discusses this issue. 

As expected, A4E ignores these and other findings to present Israel as a country dedicated to indiscriminate killing. 

REFERENCES:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18Natc6sgD/?mibextid=wwXIfr

אקדמיה לשוויון Academia for Equality أكاديميون من أجل ألمساواة

12 December

באופן אירוני בעוד האוניברסיטאות בארץ הודפות את הקריאות לחרם אקדמי, נדמה ששיתוף הפעולה שלהן עם הצבא מעולם לא היה גלוי יותר. בשבוע שעבר, למשל, התקיים באוניברסיטת תל אביב כנס שבו הוצגו לראווה ״הפיתוחים האחרונים של ישראל בתחום ההגנה.” הכנס כלל מושבים על לוחמה באמצעות בינה מלאכותית וחידושים בתחום הכטב”ם שנראה כי הם שאובים מהניסיון שנצבר תוך כדי מלחמת ההשמדה שמנהלת ישראל ברצועת עזה. אמנם, האוניברסיטה, שאמורה לקדם פריצות דרך מדעיות שישפרו את חיי האנושות בעתיד, מתגאה כיום בעיצוב “המלחמה של המחר” (כותרת אחד המושבים), מלחמה שבה טכנולוגיות “חדשניות,” רובוטיות וחסרות פנים, משמשות לזריעת הרס ומוות בשיעורים חסרי תקדים.

לצד הכנס, פרסמה לאחרונה הפקולטה להנדסה סרטון על ה״חמ״ל של הפקולטה להנדסה באונ׳ תל אביב״ בו ״ממציאים כבר שנה פתרונות לאתגרים של לוחמים ולוחמות שלנו בחזית״, או במילים אחרות, שיפור מערכות נשק קטלניות שחיסלו עשרות אלפי ילדים תוך כדי שהם מגדירים אותם ״נזק אגבי״.

כמו כן, מרכז היזמות והאתגרים של האוניברסיטה ערך בשבוע שעבר האקתון בנושא חירום בשדה הקרב שבו קבוצות סטודנטים וחברי סגל התחרו בפיתוח “פתרונות חדשניים” לאתגרים בשדה הקרב, תוך הפיכת חיי אדם פלסטיניים לבעיה טכנית שצריך “לייעל”. האם שיפור “היעילות והבטיחות” של ביצוע פשע של השמדת המונים הוא משימה אינטלקטואלית ראוייה לחברי הקהילה האקדמית באוניברסיטת ת”א?

Tel Aviv University | אוניברסיטת תל-אביב

Ironically, while universities in Israel are pushing back against calls for academic boycott, their collaboration with the military seems to have never been more visible. Last week, for example, Tel Aviv University hosted a conference showcasing “Israel’s latest innovations in the field of defense.” The conference included sessions on AI warfare and drone technology that appear to be directly derived from Israel’s ongoing war of annihilation in Gaza. The university, which is supposed to promote scientific breakthroughs that will improve humanity’s future, now takes pride in designing “The Warfare of Tomorrow” (the title of one session), a war in which “innovative,” robotic and faceless, technologies are used to sow destruction and death at unprecedented levels.

Alongside the conference, the School of Engineering recently released a video about the “Engineering School Operations Center” where they have been “inventing solutions for a year now for the challenges faced by our combat soldiers on the frontline,” or, in other words, improving the killing apparatus that has already took the lives of tens thousands of children, deemed collateral damage

Additionally, the university’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center held a hackathon last week on “battlefield emergency”, where groups of students and faculty members competed in developing “innovative solutions” for challenges in combat. Are Palestinian lives a technical problem in need of “efficient solution”? Is improving the “efficiency and safety” of carrying out the crime of mass annihilation a worthy intellectual mission for members of Tel Aviv University’s academic community?

תמונה 1: Abir Kopty

תמונה 2: הזמנה להאקתון מתוך האתר של ״דיפנס טק סאמיט״

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Tel Aviv University – Global TAU

21 November at 13:55What lessons can Israel’s defense technologies teach the world? 
Explore the latest in defense tech at the DefenseTech Summit, a two-day event with expert discussions, real-world insights, and exclusive networking. Top speakers from Israel and worldwide will showcase how Israeli innovations tackle global challenges.

 When: December 10–11, 2024.
 Where: Tel Aviv University.
 Register now: https://deftech-summit.com/

Don’t miss the chance to shape the future of global security and innovation.

Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science Technology and Security
Cyber Week TLV 

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אקדמיה לשוויון Academia for Equality أكاديميون من أجل ألمساواة

2 November 

The war that began with Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7, 2023, has almost immediately turned into a relentless and horrifying assault on the Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip. Time and again, the Israeli government has shown that its declared war objectives — returning hostages and dismantling Hamas’s rule — are a pretext for erasing Palestinian existence in the Gaza Strip, or at the very least, large parts of it. This is being done by destroying all systems of life, health, education, culture, and religious beliefs; by extensive harm to journalists and media; repeated transfer and displacement of populations between different areas; by denying basic living conditions, starvation, and killing of thousands, including a high number of children and women. As an organization of 900 academics who are citizens of Israel, we promptly sounded an alarm about Israel’s war crimes and the heavy toll they are taking, including the destruction of Gaza’s higher education system. As the criminal offensive has expanded to Lebanon and intensified in Gaza and the West Bank, we are even more committed to raising our voices now.

The current attack on the northern Gaza Strip, which began on October 5 this year, aims to clear the area of its Palestinian residents and clearly constitutes a crime against humanity. At this moment, the Israeli military, under orders from the Israeli government, is committing severe and unprecedented crimes against a civilian population. Whether defined as ethnic cleansing, extermination, or genocide, it is the duty of every Israeli citizen to do all they can to stop these crimes. In addition to the immediate victims, these heinous actions are disastrous for people of both nations and the entire region.

Most of us live in Israel and speak Hebrew. We see how the government, popular media outlets, and large parts of civil society have rallied into a propaganda machine, manufacturing broad public consent in Israel and silencing dissenters and protestors, including survivors of October 7 and families of hostages, both Jewish and Arab. We are confident that our actions serve our loved ones and the long-term interests of everyone living between the river and the sea. As members of the academic community, we urge intellectuals, higher education institutions, and academic associations to join this call. We call on the international community, especially the United States that continues to arm and support Israel’s actions, to change course and do everything possible to stop these horrific crimes.

12.12.24

Editorial Note

Last week, a new document of 124 pages titled “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War” was published by Dr. Lee Mordechai, a Hebrew University historian specializing in Premodern, Byzantine and Environmental History. Most of his recent research deals with environmental history. Mordechai is one of the directors of the CCHRI at Princeton University, a research group that deals with society and the environment in the pre-modern period. His doctoral thesis deals with minorities in the Eastern Roman Empire during the 11th century, before the arrival of the Crusades in the region. His 2023 book is titled Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics and Zombies in American Movies.

The document provides his understanding of the war in Gaza. Mordechai wishes to “bear witness in this document to the situation in Gaza as events are unfolding. The enormous amount of evidence I have seen, much of it referenced later in this document, has been enough for me to believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza. I explain why I chose to use the term below. Israel’s campaign is ostensibly its reaction to the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, in which war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed within the context of the longstanding conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that can be dated back to 1917 or 1948 (or other dates). In all cases, historical grievances and atrocities do not justify additional atrocities in the present. Therefore, I consider Israel’s response to Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7 utterly disproportionate and criminal.” 

He begins his document by stating, “A few words about myself and my expertise. I grew up in Israel and am a member of Israeli civil society. I have been trained as a professional historian with degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (BA) and Princeton University (PhD), and currently have a faculty position at a leading Israeli university. My relevant professional skills include conducting thorough research, evaluating written sources and their reliability, critical thinking, and synthesizing much material into a coherent narrative. My work on this document is very similar in nature to the professional work I conduct daily. Although the present war began as a new topic for me, I have invested in it far more work than I invest in an average scholarly article.”

In his introduction, Mordechai notes: “The following document represents my understanding of the war in Gaza. It was compiled by me alone, except for a subsection on healthcare (marked below) which I wrote together with a colleague, Liat Kozma. I have not received any payment for writing this document and I have written it out of a sense of commitment to human rights, my profession, and my country. The vast majority of this document is written in dry unemotional language to avoid trying to sway readers’ opinion based on emotion, a known bias. I attempted to stick to the facts as I understand them.”

Mordechai argues that “In depth investigations of the Israeli smear campaign against UNRWA and the persistent doubts towards the Palestinian death counts reveal that both are cases of unfounded propaganda. All of the above normalizes Israeli violence and actions by portraying them as legitimate, deflects attention away from the reality in Gaza, and contributes to the de-humanization of Palestinians.”

Mordechai expresses reservations about the ZAKA (humanitarian volunteer organization that provides a response to mass casualty disasters) accounts of the horrors of Oct. 7. That this “was a primary source that drew much attention early in the war. As an NGO, I believed the ZAKA accounts at first, but a few months after the beginning of the war investigative reports revealed that some of the worst atrocities they reported, which also drew the most attention, were fake. Furthermore, ZAKA did not admit that this information was fake. As a result, ZAKA lost its credibility in my eyes.”

Speaking of authentic sources, Mordechai states that “Throughout the war there has been a very large number of videos and images that claim to show the survivors or victims of Israeli attacks. These are often bloodied and sometimes include gory details. They are shared by individuals from Gaza and outside of Gaza, some NGO members and some media outlets such as al-Jazeera. There have been only a few cases in which this kind of material has been claimed to be fake, false or misleading. The massacres and deaths corroborate written and statistical information about the results of Israeli attacks, for example in investigative reports and NGO publications. While one cannot be completely certain that all this material is reliable, there has been enough of it coming from independent sources for me to judge most of it as reliable.”

Yet, contrary to Mordechai’s assertions, The New York Times recently reported that secret internal Hamas documents which the Israeli government shared, reveal that Ahmad al-Khatib, a deputy principal at an elementary school in Gaza – run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees – was a member of Hamas. al-Khatib “held the rank of squad commander, was an expert in ground combat and had been given at least a dozen weapons, including a Kalashnikov and hand grenades.” According to The NYT, “al-Khatib was one of at least 24 people employed by UNRWA — in 24 different schools — who were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, another militant group. Before the war, the agency was responsible for a total of 288 schools, housed in 200 different building compounds, in Gaza. A majority were top administrators at the schools.”

Moreover, in April 2024, the BBC spoke with Joan Donoghue, who has just retired as president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), “about the case brought by South Africa to the ICJ over alleged violations of the Genocide Convention by Israel. Ms Donoghue explained that the court decided the Palestinians had a ‘plausible right’ to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court. She said that, contrary to some reporting, the court did not make a ruling on whether the claim of genocide was plausible, but it did emphasize in its order that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide.”

IAM reported on Mordechai before. In March 2024, he signed the letter to President Biden, titled “Genocide is plausible; stop arms to Israel,” when the “undersigned academics and supporters, call on the US to stop transfer of all offensive arms and related funds to Israel, immediately.”  In October 2024, IAM reported that Mordechai was a signatory in another petition, stating that “Israeli citizens calling for true international pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.”

The Mordechai document is flawed at many levels; it focuses on Israel alone without taking into consideration the Palestinian militants’ actions and accidents, which often killed Palestinian citizens. Equally important, contrary to Mordechai’s claim, he is not “bearing witness” since he has not witnessed anything but has watched videos and read reports written by the UN agencies and international media. In other words, Mordechai is “searching for his keys under the street light.”

IAM noticed this pattern before. By writing documents favorable to the Palestinians, Mordechai seems to be signaling to his pro-Palestinian academic peers in the West that he is ready to find a job in a prestigious university abroad.

REFERENCES:

https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Bearing-witness-to-the-Israel-Gaza-War-v6.5.5-5.12.24.pdf

  1 Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War Lee Mordechai, Historian and Israeli citizen December 5, 2024 (version 6.5.5) 2 Contents Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 4 Professional and ethical statement (including trigger warning)…………………………………………………. 7 Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 9 The war and public support …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9 War crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide………………………………………………………….. 11 Context………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 16 The massacre of Palestinians…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 18 Numbers and ratios……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 18 International responses………………………………………………………………………………………………… 19 Indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks…………………………………………………………………….. 20 Mortality and impacts on groups in Palestinian society………………………………………………………. 22 Massacres, rules of engagement and examples ………………………………………………………………… 24 Causing the deaths of civilian populations…………………………………………………………………………… 29 Famine and starvation ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 31 December to April……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 31 May and June………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 33 Additional findings…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 35 Non-food shortages (electricity, medicine, water) …………………………………………………………….. 36 Gaza’s health system……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 37 Israeli discourse and de-humanization of Palestinians …………………………………………………………… 40 Dehumanization in Israeli institutions and the IDF …………………………………………………………….. 40 De-humanization in the IDF …………………………………………………………………………………………… 41 Dehumanization in Israeli society……………………………………………………………………………………. 46 Effects of de-humanization on detained and arrested Palestinians ………………………………………. 48 Ethnic cleansing………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 53 Hostages ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 60 The West Bank ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 62 Evidence for the killing of Palestinians…………………………………………………………………………….. 63 Abuse, humiliation and detainment of Palestinians……………………………………………………………. 63 The media, propaganda and the war (disclaimer) …………………………………………………………………. 66 Emphasizing the horrors of the Oct. 7 attacks…………………………………………………………………… 68 Discrediting critical voices outside Israel………………………………………………………………………….. 69 Limiting information flow from Gaza……………………………………………………………………………….. 70 Rallying the Israeli public around the war ………………………………………………………………………… 71 Israeli media and discourse……………………………………………………………………………………………. 72 3 Israeli’s media’s uncritical pro-war position ……………………………………………………………………… 74 American media ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 75 The treatment of UNRWA as a case of media misrepresentation …………………………………………. 77 Another case of successful propaganda: doubting the Palestinian death toll………………………….. 79 US involvement in the war………………………………………………………………………………………………… 83 US military aid to Israel…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 83 Active deployment of US military……………………………………………………………………………………. 84 Diplomatic support………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 85 US oversight and Israeli accountability…………………………………………………………………………….. 87 US-Israeli relations……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 90 Dissent in the US administration and society ……………………………………………………………………. 94 Zoom-in 1: The Second Israeli invasion of al-Shifa hospital (18 March-1 April) …………………………… 96 Zoom-in 2: Campus Protests in the US (April 17-May 2024) ……………………………………………………. 99 Coverage and reactions ………………………………………………………………………………………………. 101 Zoom-in 3: The ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza, October-December 2024 …………….. 103 Plans, voices and media coverage…………………………………………………………………………………. 103 Siege and ethnic cleansing…………………………………………………………………………………………… 105 The siege………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 105 The military operation…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 108 The healthcare system………………………………………………………………………………………………… 113 Appendix 1 – The reasons underlying my definition of Israel’s actions in the war as genocide ……. 118 Appendix 2 – Methodology ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 120 4 Summary Last updated:1 November 29, 2024 I, Lee Mordechai, a historian by profession and an Israeli citizen, bear witness in this document to the situation in Gaza as events are unfolding. The enormous amount of evidence I have seen, much of it referenced later in this document, has been enough for me to believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza. I explain why I chose to use the term below. Israel’s campaign is ostensibly its reaction to the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, in which war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed within the context of the longstanding conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that can be dated back to 1917 or 1948 (or other dates). In all cases, historical grievances and atrocities do not justify additional atrocities in the present. Therefore, I consider Israel’s response to Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7 utterly disproportionate and criminal. The paragraphs of this executive summary contain the summary of much longer sections below, a paragraph for each section. Each section below includes dozens to hundreds of references that lead to the supporting evidence upon which I base my assessment. This version of the document greatly expands upon the previous version from June 18, 2024 by adding much content and evidence to existing sections, adding new sections (an appendix on methodology and a focus on the Oct.-Nov. 2024 campaign in northern Gaza) as well as responding to the discussion it initiated. Due to the sheer amount of material and the expansion of the war, I move in this version from updating the entire document at once to a model that updates sections separately, starting from the beginning of the document. Over the past year, Israel has repeatedly massacred Palestinians in Gaza, killing over 44,000 Palestinians – at least 60% of whom are women, children and elderly – as of writing. At least one hundred thousand others have been injured and more than 10,000 are still missing. There is ample evidence for Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks throughout the war, as well as many examples for massacres and other killings. Many international institutions have harshly criticized Israel’s conduct of the war. Israel has actively attempted to cause the death of the civilian population of Gaza. Israel has created famine in Gaza as a de facto policy and used it as a weapon of war, resulting in the confirmed deaths of dozens of civilians (mainly children) from starvation. Israel created shortages of water, medicine and electricity. Israel has also dismantled Gaza’s health system and Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. As a result, more people die from treatable conditions and difficult medical procedures such as amputations and caesareans are conducted without anesthesia. The overall mortality in Gaza is unknown, but is almost certainly much higher than the official death toll. Israeli discourse has de-humanized Palestinians to such an extent that the vast majority of Israeli Jews supports the aforementioned measures. The de-humanization was led by Israel’s highest state officials, and it continues to be supported through the state infrastructure and military. Dehumanization is also widely prevalent in broader civil society. Speaking about Palestinians in genocidal language is legitimate in Israeli discourse. The de-humanization results in widespread abuse of, and violence towards, detained Palestinians and Gazan civilians and their property, all with 1 I thank Hanoch Sheinman for commenting on the November 2024 version of this section. 5 almost no consequences. The vast majority of de-humanizing content is shared by Israelis themselves, and is confirmed by Palestinian testimonials of their experiences. The evidence I have seen and discuss indicates that one of Israel’s very likely objectives is to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, whether in part or in total, by removing as many Palestinians as feasibly possible. Key members in Israel’s government have made statements confirming this intent, and several of Israel’s government ministries have planned or worked to facilitate such an end, sometimes by persuading or pressuring other states. Israel has already cleared significant parts of the Gaza strip by demolition and bulldozing, also attempting to destroy the fabric of Palestinian society by deliberately targeting civilian institutions such as universities, libraries, archives, religious buildings, historical sites, farms, schools, cemeteries, museums and markets. So far more than 60% of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged. One of the purposes of the war, according to the Israeli government, is to release the hostages – some 101 of whom remain in Hamas’ captivity. The evidence demonstrates that compared to the ethnic cleansing this is a low priority for Israel’s government. To date Israel has released seven hostages through military operations, while killing many other hostages directly or indirectly through its actions. Moreover, there is much evidence that Israel has stalled the negotiations for releasing hostages or attempted to obstruct them on many occasions. Members of Israel’s government have also attacked the families of the hostages, and their associates have attempted to prevent them from speaking up politically. The global attention to Gaza, and at times to Lebanon, Iran and Syria, has drawn attention away from the West Bank. There, Israel’s operations through its military or settlers since the beginning of the war have resulted in the killing of over 700 Palestinians, the ethnic cleansing of at least 20 local communities, as well as a sharp increase in levels of violence, abuse and humiliation of Palestinians by both the Israeli state and Jewish settlers. All of the above has been made possible through the strong support of most mainstream media in Israel as well as the West, primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. From the beginning of the war, Israel has waged an information campaign that emphasized the horrors of the Oct. 7 attacks with both reliable and unreliable factual claims, limited information flows from Gaza, discredited critical voices outside Israel, and curtailed domestic discourse to rally the Israeli public around the war. As a result, Israeli media and discourse remain predominantly and uncritically pro-war, with many institutions and individuals self-censoring. Mainstream media outlets in the US share much of this approach. In depth investigations of the Israeli smear campaign against UNRWA and the persistent doubts towards the Palestinian death counts reveal that both are cases of unfounded propaganda. All of the above normalizes Israeli violence and actions by portraying them as legitimate, deflects attention away from the reality in Gaza, and contributes to the de-humanization of Palestinians. America’s almost complete support has been fundamental for Israel’s conduct of the war. This support took the form of military aid, the deployment of US military and other assets, ironclad diplomatic support, especially at the United Nations, and the release of Israel from mechanisms of US oversight and serious accountability. Despite rhetoric that was sometimes critical, de facto the US gave Israel unprecedented support. Dissenters in the US – both government employees and sizable groups in American society – had little to no influence on US policy. I examine more specific events in three zoom-in sections as case studies of many of the themes described above: 6 1. The second raid on the al-Shifa hospital in late March 2024 2. The student protests across the US in April and May 2024 3. The military operation in the northern Gaza Strip in October and November 2024 (ongoing) The evidence I have seen and describe below has been sufficient for me to believe that what Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian population in Gaza is consistent with the definition of genocide as I understand it. In the document’s two appendices, I explain my reasoning for using this term and discuss my methodology. 7 Professional and ethical statement (including trigger warning) Last updated:2 November 29, 2024 The following document represents my understanding of the war in Gaza. It was compiled by me alone, except for a subsection on healthcare (marked below) which I wrote together with a colleague, Liat Kozma. I have not received any payment for writing this document and I have written it out of a sense of commitment to human rights, my profession, and my country. The vast majority of this document is written in dry unemotional language to avoid trying to sway readers’ opinion based on emotion, a known bias. I attempted to stick to the facts as I understand them. I describe my methodology in an appendix. The document includes much difficult material, particularly with regards to violence, cruelty, dehumanization and starvation. This document does not include images. Graphic descriptions are rare and brief. There is far more explicit content in the links available through the footnotes below, many of which are graphic and difficult to watch. Throughout the document I have refrained from using loaded but difficult to define terms such as Zionism, antisemitism, terror/terrorism and brutality.3 These are all boundary objects (a technical term used to describe terms that mean different things to different people, which are still used as shorthands in communication),4 that are often weaponized in discourse by different speakers as a way to legitimize or delegitimize people, institutions or actions. I do not believe the inclusion of these terms would make this document more readable or its analysis better. Antisemitism is the partial exception to this rule, but it is used primarily in discussions others had about it. This is a working document. Although new details and facts will undoubtedly emerge in the future, since I have started compiling information in this format (a year as of writing) much more information has accumulated while any previous mistakes have been minimal. Interested readers can access all previous versions of this document. The document changed its purpose over time. Originally, I used it to state my opinion publicly as a form of bearing witness to events. My motive was my commitment to human rights ideals. After the fourth version of this document in mid-March 2024 went viral on Twitter, the public support I received from readers encouraged me to rethink this goal. I now write for many others worldwide and in Israel who want to understand the circumstances over these difficult days in the present and the future. A secondary purpose is to concentrate and preserve at least some of the evidence I have come across as I have been reading about the war, making it accessible for others interested in these events. I have better organized the document over its successive versions, and I now supply footnotes to further references that could inform or be useful to readers. I hope you, the reader, find this document useful – whether to understand what happened during these days through the document or to reach more information through its footnotes. My position is based on many pieces of evidence that I have collected particularly since late December 2023. In my analysis, which is described in detail in the methodology appendix, I gave precedence to evidence provided by reputable institutions such as the United Nations and its different offices, as well as reports by several humanitarian aid and human rights organizations. These institutions are at least ostensibly independent and therefore less prone to bias. They are also 2 I thank Hanoch Sheinman for commenting on the November 2024 version of this section. 3 https://fair.org/home/brutal-is-a-word-mostly-reserved-for-palestinian-violence/ 4 Baggio, Jacopo A., Katrina Brown, and Denis Hellebrandt. “Boundary Object or Bridging Concept? A Citation Network Analysis of Resilience.” Ecology and Society 20, no. 2 (2015). http://www.jstor.org/stable/26270178. 8 equipped for evidence-based inquiry, which they have employed in many issues unrelated to Israel/Palestine. I have also made use of mainstream media outlets, both in cases of factual reporting (e.g. someone saying something) and in case of investigative reporting. I have complemented these with evidence I have collected from social media from both sides. As the war has continued, policies towards Gaza and conditions within the Gaza Strip change over time. To acknowledge this reality and facilitate a better understanding of the situation, I often note the month and year regarding specific claims and datapoints in relevant sections such as the ones on famine or the US involvement in the war. I estimate that since the beginning of the war, I have read thousands of articles – academic, those written by academics or journalists, and others. In addition, I have watched thousands of videos and images, mostly by Israelis from the Gaza Strip. Many of these include deeply disturbing content – violence, cruelty, de-humanization and their results, and I included them in the document’s footnotes to convey and clarify the scale of this event and the frequency of the horrors that I describe. To the best of my ability, I estimate that the vast majority of the information I have included is reliable. In cases where I encountered information that seemed doubtful I chose not to include it. I include in this document many footnotes to cite the sources I have used, so that the interested reader would be able to evaluate my account themselves. I welcome thoughtful critique and corrections, and thank everyone who read this document and commented on it in private or in public.5 A few words about myself and my expertise. I grew up in Israel and am a member of Israeli civil society. I have been trained as a professional historian with degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (BA) and Princeton University (PhD), and currently have a faculty position at a leading Israeli university. My relevant professional skills include conducting thorough research, evaluating written sources and their reliability, critical thinking, and synthesizing much material into a coherent narrative. My work on this document is very similar in nature to the professional work I conduct daily. Although the present war began as a new topic for me, I have invested in it far more work than I invest in an average scholarly article. My professional publications appear on my academia.edu and Google Scholar pages. The updated version of this document, alongside links to my other Gazarelated publications, can be found on a dedicated website I opened in November 2024, https://witnessing-the-gaza-war.com/. 5 This document updates and expands earlier versions of my understanding of the situation in early January, late January, mid-February, mid-March, mid-April 2024 and mid-June 2024, following ideas and suggestions I have since received, as well as additional information that has been released since. I thank here an anonymous reader who commented on all six drafts, Merle Eisenberg who has commented on the draft of the first version, and Joshua Meyrowitz (Professor Emeritus of Communication, University of New Hampshire) who carefully and thoroughly reviewed the fourth version after its publication in preparation for the fifth version and also supplied several important sources. I thank subsequent contributors for work done after June 2024 in the respective sections. All of them have provided useful feedback and suggestions, which I have incorporated in this version. The final text follows my opinion and not necessarily theirs. Similarly, any mistakes are mine alone. I thank also those readers who disagreed with my conclusions as their critique has helped improve this document. 9 Preface Last updated:6 November 29, 2024 I, Lee Mordechai, a historian and an Israeli citizen, bear witness in this document, as events are unfolding, to the horrible situation in the Gaza Strip. I write my personal opinion out of a sense of double responsibility: as a citizen whose country is committing what I consider as grave crimes, and as an academic, who believes that after having dedicated my career so far to research and teaching others I am obliged to speak up against injustice, especially when it is so close. I write also because of the long disappointing general silence on this issue among many international and Israeli academic institutions, especially those that are well-positioned to comment on it. The relatively few of my colleagues who had bravely spoken out early in the war were an inspiration.7 I do not believe this document will convince many others to change their minds. Rather, I write this publicly to bear witness to the events I observe and testify that during the war there were and remain Israeli voices who strongly dissented from Israel’s actions. I preserve the previous versions of this document to demonstrate how much was known even at early stages of the war. Beginning in November 2024, due to the amount of material I have begun to update this document in parts, starting from its beginning. I have also launched a dedicated website, https://witnessingthe-gaza-war.com/, to house both versions of the document, where readers could access its different parts and versions. The latest version of this document can also be found on my academia.edu, which has both English and Hebrew versions. I use my Twitter page to notify when new sections come out. On 7 October 2023, Hamas and other militants attacked Israel. In the assault about 1,150 people, most of whom were civilians, were killed. The vast majority of these were killed by Hamas and other militants, and the small remainder were killed by Israeli fire in the general chaos. About 250 people, mostly Israeli civilians, were taken hostage to Gaza. These atrocities, fore and foremost the indiscriminate killing and kidnapping of civilians, are war crimes and crimes against humanity (of murder and hostage-taking, among others).8 Many others have already written about these events in the international and Israeli media and I do not have much new to add on this matter for now. The horrible events of 7 October – themselves committed within the historical context of the longstanding conflict between Israel and the Palestinians – served and continue to serve as the justification for the current war that this document examines. The war and public support 6 I thank Hanoch Sheinman for commenting on the November 2024 version of this section, as well as Sonja Brentjes and another anonymous reader who commented on the June 2024 version (the anonymous reader also checked its footnotes). 7 I chose to write this open statement about what is happening in Gaza having been inspired by John Mearsheimer’s similar statement back in December 2023. https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza. Additionally important in composing the first version of this document is the comprehensive and important South African Application instituting proceedings and Request for the indication of provisional measures to the International Court of Justice, from which I have traced some of the sources of information in this document (https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf). Many others have since come to the same position (see below). 8 https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/07/17/october-7-crimes-against-humanity-war-crimes-hamas-led-groups ; https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2024/08/israel_palestine0724web.pdf ; https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/israel-opt-one-year-on-from-7-october-need-to-ensure-a-ceasefire-and-release-ofhostages-more-pressing-than-ever/ ; https://www.un.org/unispal/document/commission-of-inquiry-pr-hrc-19jun24/ 10 Despite Hamas’ aforementioned atrocities, I believe Israel’s response to the events of Oct. 7 over more than a year continues to be wholly disproportionate, immoral and criminal. My position on these matters represents a tiny minority in Israeli society. In polls on this issue only 1.8% (October 2023), 7% (December 2023), 3.2% (January 2024) and 4% (March-April 2024) of Jewish Israelis believed the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) was using too much firepower in Gaza or that Israel’s military response has gone too far.9 In March 2024, 81% of Israelis believed that Israel was doing everything possible to minimize harm towards Gazan civilians (including 19% who thought Israel was doing too much),10 and 80% of Israeli Jews believed that Israel should not consider the suffering of Gazans as it conducted its military operation.11 An April poll found that only a third of Israeli Jews thought that Israel should accept the UN’s Security Council demand for a ceasefire during Ramadan.12 A September 2024 poll found that 83% of Israeli Jews believed that the moral conduct of the IDF during the war was good or excellent, and that 61.5% believed soldiers should not be investigated in cases of abuse against Gazan detainees.13 A different September 2024 poll found that 82% of Israeli Jews were not concerned with the humanitarian conditions in Gaza.14 As of writing, the war continues despite unclarity about its objectives and the immense destruction it has wrought.15 High-placed voices within Israel16 as well as the US17 believe that Israel’s Prime Minister wants to prolong the war for his own political survival, misleading the Israeli public into believing that a complete victory is possible.18 Over time, over half of polled Israelis were willing to reach a ceasefire deal, often associated with releasing the hostages and ending the war with an Israeli retreat from Gaza (56% in July 2024,19 54% in August,20 53% in September,21 75% in October in a question that did not refer to an Israeli retreat,22 and 66% in November23). By October 2024, however, 61% of Israelis believed the Israeli government had no plan to finish the war.24 At the same time, most Israelis came to support increased military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon in a separate front,25 with such operations taking place from September to late November 2024. The 9 https://social-sciences.tau.ac.il/sites/socsci.tau.ac.il/files/media_server/social/2023/Findings-November-2023-EN.pdf; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israelis-say-hamas-must-be-crushed-despite-gaza-casualties-un-rebuke-2023-12-13/ ; https://www.idi.org.il/articles/51742 ; https://en-social-sciences.tau.ac.il/sites/socscienglish.tau.ac.il/files/media_server/social/peaceindex/2024-01-findings.pdf ; https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/30/views-ofthe-israel-hamas-war-may-2024/ . Also on March: https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-06-13/ty-articlemagazine/.highlight/00000190-0677-d667-abf0-66fffad40000 . As most of these polls demonstrate, non-Jewish Israelis held more moderate views. 10 https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001473815 11 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/53443 12 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/world/europe/israel-weapons-sales-genocide.html 13 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/56112 . 60% of Israeli Jews believed convicted IDF soldiers should receive lower punishments in such cases. A different poll from August found that 47% of Israeli Jews did not believe Israel should obey international law and conduct itself morally during the war: https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/august-2024/ 14 https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/survey-september-2024/ (defined as “a little” or “very little” concerned). 15 https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-muddled-strategy-gaza ; see also the lack of clarity in objectives below, for example in Zoom in 3. 16 https://www.mako.co.il/news-politics/2024_q1/Article-7c6a192b2cbfd81026.htm 17 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/us/politics/biden-netanyahu-israel-gaza.html ; https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/02/netanyahu-gaza-palestinians-war-israeli-society/ ; https://time.com/6984968/joe-biden-transcript2024-interview/ 18 https://www.maariv.co.il/news/military/Article-1085677 19 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/55008 20 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/55472 21 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/56112 ; the question here was general about ending the war in Gaza. 22 https://www.figma.com/deck/PebtSWAlx0RYdjaqyhoE6L/%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%94-%D7%9C7.10—%D7%90%D7%92%D7%9D?nodeid=49-1741&node-type=slide&viewport=222%2C16%2C0.5&t=rAWLTUo8lp5sRQp1-1&scaling=min-zoom&content-scaling=fixed&pageid=0%3A1 (p. 23) 23 https://x.com/uriweltmann/status/1861479880975634685 ; see also: https://www.idi.org.il/articles/57041 (56% of Israelis were willing to be more flexible for a hostage deal). 24 https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/survey-october-2024/ 25 71% in June: https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/swords-of-iron-june/; 61% in July: https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/july2024/; 67% in August: https://www.idi.org.il/articles/55472; https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/august-2024/ ; see also https://www.idi.org.il/articles/55806 which reaches 67% but only among Israeli Jews. 11 operations in Lebanon received high levels of support among the Israeli public at first (80% in late September), but that support dwindled over time.26 War crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide The evidence I have seen and describe below has been sufficient for me to believe that what Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian population consists of several crimes against humanity.27 Taken together, Israel’s actions during the war are consistent with the definition of genocide as I understand it.28 The formal aspect of the question of genocide came to be discussed in December 2023, when South Africa accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, filing a complaint with the International Court of Justice. In January 2024, the International Court of Justice adopted provisional measures that required Israel to prevent genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.29 Commentators at the time widely interpreted this as if it was plausible that Israel was committing genocide.30 In October 2024, South Africa filed its claim of genocide (“Memorial”) against Israel in the ICJ. The submission amounted to over 750 pages of text and over 4,000 pages of annexes.31 The question of intent on the Israeli side – crucial for the definition of genocide – has been addressed by a 120-page public dossier of evidence presented to the UN Security Council.32 The court is expected to take years to reach a formal conclusion about the question. Many observers have commented on the question of genocide over the past year. Several institutions within the UN called to prevent genocide in November 2023.33 A UN Special Rapporteur concluded that Israel was committing genocide in her report in March 2024, and repeated that conclusion in another report in October that concluded that Israel aimed to completely remove or eradicate Palestinians.34 A UN Special Committee that issues periodic sub-annual reports on Palestinian matters concluded that Israel’s policies and practices after Oct. 7 “are consistent with the 26 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/56143 ; note that 56% of Israeli Jews in October preferred to try to reach a favorable deal with Lebanon as opposed to 44% who supported continuing the war and risking a regional war. https://www.figma.com/deck/PebtSWAlx0RYdjaqyhoE6L/%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%94-%D7%9C7.10—%D7%90%D7%92%D7%9D?nodeid=49-1741&node-type=slide&viewport=222%2C16%2C0.5&t=rAWLTUo8lp5sRQp1-1&scaling=min-zoom&content-scaling=fixed&pageid=0%3A1 (p. 25). A different poll from early November found that 54% of Israeli Jews preferred to continue fighting in Lebanon, https://www.idi.org.il/articles/57041 . 27 https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition 28 https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition 29 https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf ; https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/01/26/gaza-world-court-orders-israel-prevent-genocide 30 https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227078791/icj-israel-genocide-gaza-palestinians-south-africa ; https://www.newarab.com/news/icjruled-plausible-genocide-israel-gaza-what-next ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/26/world-courts-interim-ruling-ongenocide-in-gaza-key-takeaways-icj-israel ; https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-gaza-genocide-case-at-un-international-court-ofjustice-icj/ ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/key-takeaways-world-court-decision-israei-genocide-case-2024-01-26/ 31 https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/south-africa-delivers-evidence-israel-genocide-icj ; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/28/south-africas-legal-team-says-intent-is-clear-in-israels-gaza-genocide ; the result of almost 100 people working on the case for nine months. It is the first time genocide allegations are presented while the atrocities are unfolding, are benefited by real-time documentation, and implicate a state backed by the West. 32 https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/151/97/pdf/n2415197.pdf 33 https://www.un.org/unispal/document/gaza-is-running-out-of-time-un-experts-warn-demanding-a-ceasefire-to-prevent-genocide/ ; https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent-genocide-against 34 https://unipd-centrodirittiumani.it/en/news/United-Nations-Anatomy-of-a-genocide-Report-of-the-Special-Rapporteur-on-thesituation-of-human-rights-in-the-Palestinian-territories-occupied-since-1967-Francesca-Albanese-2024/6900; https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/279/68/pdf/n2427968.pdf (section 84); see also https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/31/un-should-consider-suspending-israel-over-genocide-against-palestinians-says-specialrapporteur ; https://tribunemag.co.uk/2024/11/if-this-is-not-genocide-what-is-francesca-albanese-palestine 12 characteristics of genocide”.35 Professional analyses of academic centers for Human Rights reached the same conclusion.36 An important Mediterranean human rights organization accepted the conclusion of genocide based on a large amount of evidence.37 A federal judge in California – i.e. a representative of the federal US – ruled in January 2024 that Israel’s actions are “plausibly” genocide.38 Many scholars have framed the situation through the question of genocide, with many accepting that definition. Already a week after the beginning of the war, over 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies warned of the possibility of genocide against Palestinians.39 Experts before40 and after41 the January 2024 Order have pointed out that Israel’s behavior in the war included both action and intent, necessary for the definition of genocide.42 A June 2024 poll of 758 mostly American scholars who work on the Middle East found that 34% defined the situation as genocide, with another 41% defining it as “major war crimes akin to genocide”.43 The Board of Directors of the Middle East Studies Association accused Israel of using “genocidal violence” and engaging in “cultural genocide”.44 A year into the war, several experts who hesitated whether this was a case of genocide early in the war became convinced the legal requirements for genocide have been met.45 Individual scholars spoke or wrote publicly as well.46 A few Israeli academic experts accepted that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.47 As of writing, the question has only recently entered Israeli discourse.48 I discuss my own specific reasoning for using the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions in an appendix to this document. 35 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/11/un-special-committee-finds-israels-warfare-methods-gaza-consistent-genocide ; https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a79363-report-special-committee-investigate-israeli-practices-affecting ; https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/271/19/pdf/n2427119.pdf (#69-70). 36 https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/genocide-in-gaza 37 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6494 38 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/01/genocide-gaza-israel-california-court. The court dismissed the case as the issue was outside its jurisdiction, since the plaintiffs were asking the court to rule on US foreign policy. 39 https://twailr.com/public-statement-scholars-warn-of-potential-genocide-in-gaza/ 40 https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-experts/ ; Segal, Raz, and Luigi Daniele. 2024. “Gaza as Twilight of Israel Exceptionalism: Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Unprecedented Crisis to Unprecedented Change.” Journal of Genocide Resear ch, 1– 10. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2024.2325804 ; https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16/raz_segal_textbook_case_of_genocide ; https://www.ohchr.org/en/pressreleases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent-genocide-against 41 https://www.justsecurity.org/91457/top-experts-views-of-intl-court-of-justice-ruling-on-israel-gaza-operations-south-africa-v-israelgenocide-convention-case/ ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/134005/ ; also https://twitter.com/drtlaleng/status/1784503409665577016 ; https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/06/06/is-israel-committing-genocide-aryeh-neier/ 42 https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition 43 16% defined it as major war crimes but not akin to genocide. Only 4% thought Israel’s actions were justified under its right to selfdefense. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/gloom-about-the-day-after-the-gaza-war-pervasive-among-mideast-scholars/ 44 https://mesana.org/advocacy/letters-from-the-board/2024/03/11/mesa-board-joint-statement-with-caf-regarding-the-ongoinggenocidal-violence-against-the-palestinian-people-and-their-cultural-heritage-in-gaza 45 https://www.vox.com/politics/378913/israel-gaza-genocide-icj 46 E.g. https://x.com/martinshawx/status/1820389008880361676. See more examples in: https://x.com/NimerSultany/status/1857404113794802128 47 Raz Segal: https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide ; Amos Goldberg: https://jacobin.com/2024/07/amos-goldberggenocide-gaza-israel ; Omer Bartov: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/a-holocaust-scholar-meets-with-israeli-reservists ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/138983/. Daniel Baltman: https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-11-09/ty-article-opinion/.premium/00000193-06cf-d3a2-a3d7-4fcf3c7b0000 (“between a murderous ethnic cleansing and a genocide”); Itamar Mann: https://www.facebook.com/itamar.mann/posts/pfbid02oWqNNQzNKccAzy3UfSo7NxMhmkzhDGGA5iW1SJghUmQSHcgUiYwASBEwTewH upQWl ; Adam Raz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBGsDTHaM9k . Others are more reserved but appear to be leaning towards that conclusion: https://www.regthink.org/in-the-region6/ ; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2024.2418670 ; https://www.regthink.org/genocidal-intentions/ ; a few Israelis have attempted to argue against the case of genocide: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-genocide-claim-against-israel-doesnt-add-up . 48 The first opinion piece in mainstream Israeli media I know of that reached a positive answer was published in November 2024: https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-11-12/ty-article-opinion/.premium/00000193-1a46-df19-a3fb-3ece00e40000 ; this was likely also the first time the allegation was made on an Israeli TV channel as part of a comedy show: https://youtu.be/0VacZWeZtE?si=abIgcojF2MdXKcTw&t=1377 13 Some international institutions that have evaluated the situation independently described Israel’s actions as war crimes or crimes against humanity. In May 2024, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has requested arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, and Yoav Gallant, its Defense Minister, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and repeated that request on multiple occasions.49 In November 2024, the ICC finally issued its warrants of arrest against both Netanyahu and Gallant, citing the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.50 An Independent International Committee of the UN Human Rights Council concluded in June 2024 that Israel’s actions consist of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination and ethnic cleansing that were conducted with intent.51 The same group repeated its conclusions in harsher language in October 2024, stating that Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination, as well as other crimes against humanity (including forced disappearance, torture and rape) and war crimes.52 A major human rights NGO examined Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and concluded that it amounted to a crime against humanity.53 In a case that began long before the war, the ICJ declared in July 2024 that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza) is unlawful, noting also that Israel exercised key elements of authority over Gaza even before October 7.54 The court also decided that Israel must bring its unlawful presence to an end as rapidly as possible, cease all settlement activities, and is obliged to make reparation for the damage caused to people in the occupied Palestinian territories.55 This decision drew some attention in Israel, with some rare 49 The Prosecutor also requested arrest warrants for three Hamas officials, at least two of whom were killed subsequently. For the original request: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state . For additional requests, see: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/CourtRecords/0902ebd180949087.pdf and coverage at https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/skmacia3r; https://www.commondreams.org/news/icc-arrest-warrant-israel ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/skdoktlsr. For Israel’s response, see: https://x.com/just_security/status/1843276793912209507 and an analysis at: https://x.com/AdHaque110/status/1843382278371848291 . For other arguments against the arrest warrants see: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/CourtRecords/0902ebd180920f26.pdf . Note also the general repeated and unjustified delays and procrastinations in the ICC’s dealings with Palestine as described in https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6494 (pp. 91-93). The delays have been formally criticized, see: https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-01/18-369 50 https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-rejects-state-israels-challenges . The decision was received with widespread critique by top Israeli officials, who described it as “outrageous… no war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza”, “false and absurd”, “a dark day for justice”, “shameful”. See for examples: https://x.com/yoavgallant/status/1859656508193030496 ; https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1859607527412904186 ; https://x.com/Isaac_Herzog/status/1859578515487592658 ; https://x.com/YairGolan1/status/1859572170419995031 (head of the Labor-Meretz union). US President Joe Biden said the same, see also: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/21/icc-issues-arrest-warrant-for-benjamin-netanyahu-israel 51 https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-06-12/ty-article/.premium/00000190-0a69-d0f9-a1d5-da691e1f0000 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/immense-scale-gaza-killings-amount-crime-against-humanity-un-inquiry-says-2024-06-12/ ; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cl55gzp7vn9o . Note also a contemporary report by the UN Human Rights on specific Israeli operations during the war, which received a rare response by Israel (who rejected it): https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/opt/20240619-ohchr-thematic-report-indiscrim-disprop-attacks-gaza-oct-dec2023.pdf ; https://embassies.gov.il/UnGeneva/NewsAndEvents/MediaStatements/Documents/Israel-Initial-Response-OHCHRBackground-Note-June2024-PUBLIC.pdf 52 https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-israel/index ; report at: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/262/79/pdf/n2426279.pdf (#89, 94, 98, 102, 105, 108, 109, 110; note also the accusation of Hamas at #112); coverage at: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-inquiry-accuses-israel-crime-extermination-destructiongaza-health-system-2024-10-10/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-10/ty-article/.premium/00000192-76c5-d7ad-afd3- 76ef87b70000 53 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/14/israel-accused-of-crimes-against-humanity-over-forced-displacement-in-gaza ; https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/11/14/hopeless-starving-and-besieged/israels-forced-displacement-palestinians-gaza ; https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2024/11/gaza_displacement1124web_0.pdf 54 https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf (#88-94) 55 https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf (#285) 14 acknowledgement that war crimes were committed in the West Bank.56 A year after the beginning of the war, an NGO filed a major complaint with the ICC against 1,000 IDF soldiers (individually identified by name) for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide for their actions in Gaza. The complaint was said to be supported by over 8,000 pieces of verifiable evidence.57 Formal complaints by the NGO led to tangible results.58 Key international officials have used very strong words to describe the effects of the war. The UN Security General stated that “The suffering endured by the Palestinian people in Gaza is beyond imagination”.59 The Prosecutor at the ICC and the Spokesperson for UNICEF have both described Gaza as “hell on earth”.60 Other officials have said similar things.61 Institutions like the UN Development Programme (UNDP) have stated in a report that the impacts of the war have set back development in Gaza by decades.62 Other international institutions have taken action to stop the war because of these and other infractions. Since the situation in the Gaza Strip continued to deteriorate in February and March 2024,63 the UN Security Council has passed a resolution demanding “an immediate ceasefire” in Gaza in late March.64 This was followed by additional ICJ provisional measures three days later, calling upon Israel to ensure aid deliveries, basic services and humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza.65 Another UN Security Council resolution in June 2024 called for a ceasefire as well.66 As of writing, Israel has not changed its policy in a substantive manner since these decisions even if the overall rate of killing has decreased due to the general slowdown of the active fighting in the war.67 The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution to impose sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel in September 2024 (124 in favor, 12 against).68 Several European countries, including those which have had close relations with Israel such as Germany and the United Kingdom, have begun to limit the arms they send to Israel.69 In October 2024, The editorial board of Financial Times urged the US to stop supplying Israel with offensive weapons.70 In November 2024, 52 countries (and two organizations) – including Russia and China – signed a letter calling for an arms 56 https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1814790277053243765 (the passive is purposeful as it is unclear whether the speaker thought the perpetrators are settlers or Israel more broadly, i.e. the military and perhaps also the political class). 57 https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/perpetrators/archives/10-2024; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/2024-10-16/tyarticle/.premium/00000192-947a-d2db-ab97-ddfb40800000 58 https://x.com/HindRFoundation/status/1858485122263093445 ; https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/geopolitics/article/16802240 59 https://press.un.org/en/2024/sgsm22400.doc.htm 60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvEgS8RLOBQ; https://x.com/UNGeneva/status/1847322016975552784 61 United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process called the situation a “nightmare” https://x.com/TWennesland/status/1847950734534254989 ; for quotes by the UN Human Rights, UNICEF, UNOCHA and the UN Rapporteur on Right to Food: https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1850360530730709105 ; head of the Norwegian Refugee Council described families, women and children as enduring “almost unparalleled suffering to anywhere in recent history”: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/nov/08/gaza-unparalleled-suffering-jan-egeland-norwegian-refugee-council-aid-ceasefire-hostages-peace-process 62 https://www.undp.org/press-releases/new-un-report-impacts-war-have-set-back-development-gaza-much-69-years ; https://www.undp.org/arab-states/publications/gaza-war-expected-socio-economic-impacts-state-palestine-october-2024 63 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-israel-defied-icj-provisional-measures ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/11/israeli-human-rights-groups-icj-gaza-aid-ruling 64 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147931 65 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1148096 66 https://www.reuters.com/world/un-security-council-vote-plan-israel-hamas-ceasefire-2024-06-10/ 67 In the first three months of the war (Oct. 7 – Dec. 31, 2023) over 22,000 Palestinians were killed. In the last three months as of writing (Sept.-Nov. 2024) about 3,500 Palestinians were killed. These numbers do not include excess mortality. For mortality, see https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-26-november-2024. 68 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-18/ty-article/.premium/un-demands-israel-end-unlawful-presence-in-palestinian-territories-within-12-months/00000192-05bd-df16-afbe-6dfdee0d0000 69 Germany: https://www.shomrim.news/hebrew/german-embargo ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/s1nfq9vp0 ; the UK: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/03/nx-s1-5098300/uk-suspends-arms-israel ; the Netherlands: https://www.reuters.com/world/dutch-highest-court-advised-uphold-ruling-export-ban-f-35-components-israel-2024-11-29/ 70 https://www.ft.com/content/cbe18019-752f-4770-be40-fe4b2dc5abd7 15 embargo on Israel.71 At the same time, the pope suggested that the international community investigate whether Israel was committing genocide.72 On several key occasions, Israel has obstructed international investigations.73 This has obfuscated the reality on the ground. The fact that over a year into the war Israel has provided almost no investigations or reports of its own, even with regards to high-profile cases, suggests that the absence of precise information is in its interests (on this see also the Media section below).74 Israel has also lashed out against key international officials, going as far as to declare the UN Secretary-General as “persona non grata” and banning him from entering the country.75 Israel’s heavy-handed approach during the war also caused significant harm to human rights within its own borders. An Israeli NGO demonstrated that the Israeli government has undermined the foundations of the country’s democracy, has infringed on right of freedom of speech of its critics, has persecuted its Arab minority, distributed arms to untrained citizens, normalized citizen surveillance, accelerated the occupation in the West Bank and has violated the rights of suspects and prisoners.76 Although these are not the focus of my report, they are an important consequence of this war which I touch upon in several sections below (e.g. Media, Hostages). Israel’s conduct during the war has repeatedly and systematically destroyed existing laws and norms that aimed to regulate “civilized” warfare in recent decades.77 As discussed throughout this document, the UN Security Council has demanded an immediate ceasefire: Israel refused. The ICJ has obligated Israel to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid: Israel refused. International humanitarian law states that it is illegal to use the starvation of civilian populations as a form of warfare: Israel has been doing this for over a year. Indiscriminate bombing is similarly illegal yet practiced by Israel since the beginning of the war. Attacking hospitals is illegitimate – and yet Israel attacked every hospital in Gaza (as well as assassinated patients in a West Bank hospital and attacked Lebanese hospitals). Embassies are supposed to be off-limits, and yet Israel bombed a foreign embassy (Iran) in a different country (Syria).78 The widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure is illegal: Israel continues to do so today. The widespread use of AI is extremely controversial (has not been regulated yet)79: Israel did so matter-of-factly, while almost completely trusting the results of an automatic system for identifying targets. Norms regarding collateral damage were destroyed as Israel was willing to kill hundreds of uninvolved civilians to reach a single 71 https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/11/05/52-countries-led-by-turkiye-urge-the-un-to-call-for-an-arms-embargo-on-israel/ 72 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/world/europe/2024-11-17/ty-article/.premium/00000193-3a08-db66-aff3-7eab22680000 ; https://apnews.com/article/pope-vatican-gaza-israel-genocide-book-62907898cead13dbcfd603592263904c 73 For example: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf (section 2) 74 This is also the case for the events of Oct. 7. On the heated question of rape, for example, the UN’s Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict conducted a preliminary investigation and recommended “fully-fledged investigations into all alleged violations”, https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/report/mission-report-official-visit-of-the-office-of-the-srsg-svc-to-israel-and-the-occupied-west-bank-29-january-14-february-2024/20240304-Israel-oWB-CRSV-report.pdf (e.g. sections 19-20, 88). The UN Special Representative repeated her call on Oct. 7, 2024, describing it as “of vital importance”: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/statement-special-rep-sexual-violence-07oct24/ . Israel has not released an official report regarding this issue. It has, however, bestowed its highest civil prize, the “Israel Prize”, upon an academic who was supposed to release such a report. The said report has not been published as of writing. See https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/skt8j03rt ; this case is described in more detail below. 75 This was done by Israel Katz, then Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs: https://x.com/Israel_katz/status/1841422324890812763 ; https://x.com/jeremyscahill/status/1841486527693459872 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/war-2023/2024-10-02/ty-articlelive/00000192-4a04-d07b-aff3-5fe6f4cd0000?liveBlogItemId=877119090#877119090 76 https://www.acri.org.il/post/_1128 77 Originally based on: https://twitter.com/tparsi/status/1774872023098888465 78 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/world/middleeast/iran-israel-damascus-strike.html 79 https://www.arabnews.com/node/2488606/world ; https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/04/11/israels-use-of-aiin-gaza-is-coming-under-closer-scrutiny ; https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2024/09/04/the-risks-and-inefficacies-of-ai-systems-inmilitary-targeting-support/ 16 high value target. The lack of a forceful response by many countries to the destruction of these norms has normalized this behavior. Context The Gaza Strip is a tiny piece of land, consisting of some 365 square kilometers, less than half the size of New York City and less than a quarter the size of London. Its population is about 2.3 million,80 making it one of the most densely populated polities on the planet (over 6,000 people/square kilometer – slightly less than Hong Kong and Singapore).81 About 70% of the population descend from refugees who fled Mandatory Palestine to Gaza during the 1948 war (“Nakba”).82 Since 2007 Israel had laid siege on the Gaza Strip, severely limiting the movement and trade in/out of the Strip in a move that destroyed its economy and the livelihoods of many of its inhabitants.83 Periodic rounds of violence – with major escalations in 2008/9, 2012, 2014 and 2021 – disrupted any recovery in the Strip.84 In 2022, poverty levels in Gaza reached 65%, while unemployment was 45%.85 Israel has long controlled Gaza’s borders, communications, electricity, water and even population registry.86 Even before the war, it continuously surveilled Gazans’ movements and their communications, including all phone calls and all internet use.87 The United Nations, human rights organizations, government ministries (including in the US and the UK) and legal scholars all saw Gaza as an occupied territory under the control of Israel even before the war.88 These features as well as Gaza’s geography and demography exacerbate the crisis I outline below. Israel, already before the current war, has been described as an apartheid state by leading human rights organizations following serious and well documented reports (Human Rights Watch,89 Amnesty International,90 and B’Tselem91). As a term, apartheid is taken from a South African context and means two parallel systems of political rights. In the case of Israel, the term refers to a system that cements the supremacy or domination of Jews over Palestinians.92 Apartheid has been defined 80 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-87 81 https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/singapore ; https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/hong-kong/ 82 https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/gaza_thematic_6_0.pdf 83 https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022 ; https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/14/gaza-israels-open-air-prison-15 84 https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip 85 https://unctad.org/news/gaza-unprecedented-destruction-will-take-tens-billions-dollars-and-decades-reverse 86 https://features.gisha.org/gaza-up-close/ . Notably, Israel also de facto controls Gaza’s border with Egypt, as it has the right to dispute entrance from Egypt by any person and limit entrance of goods. On this see https://www.gisha.org/userfiles/File/publications/Rafah_Report_Eng.pdf (pp. 143-147); https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/15/rafah-border-crossing-could-egypt-open-it-to-fleeing-palestinians ; https://theconversation.com/egypts-rafah-crossing-is-a-lifeline-to-palestinians-living-in-gaza-but-opening-it-is-still-unresolved-215718 ; https://rsf.org/en/rsf-investigation-how-egypt-complicit-reporting-blockade-gaza 87 https://theintercept.com/2023/10/12/israel-gaza-internet-access/; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/technology/israel-facialrecognition-gaza.html ; https://www.mei.edu/publications/nowhere-hide-impact-israels-digital-surveillance-regime-palestinians ; https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-can-monitor-every-telephone-call-west-bank-and-gaza-intelligence-source ; https://newlinesmag.com/argument/how-changes-in-the-israeli-military-led-to-the-failure-of-october-7/ 88 Long list of references in https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/publications/genocide-in-gaza (paragraph 20). Also: Sanger, Andrew (2011). “The Contemporary Law of Blockade and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla”. In M.N. Schmit, Louise Arimatsu; Tim McCormack (eds.). Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law 2010. Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law. Vol. 13. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 429-431. Also https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/gaza-israel-occupied-international-law/ . And more recently, as determined by the ICJ: https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf (sections 86-94). 89 https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution 90 https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/5141/2022/en/ 91 https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid 92 For a longer discussion of the term, see https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimesapartheid-and-persecution 17 as a crime against humanity in an International Convention in 1973.93 While the West Bank and Gaza have long been declared as areas under apartheid, the aforementioned reports found that apartheid also existed in Israeli sovereign territory (i.e. within the 1967 borders). Israelis tend to agree with this characterization of Israel. Several Israeli leaders, including former Prime Ministers and heads of security organizations, have used the term apartheid, or close descriptions, to refer to the political reality.94 A 2012 poll found that back then 58% of Israelis believed Israel was already practicing apartheid against Palestinians, 69% said that if Israel annexed the West Bank the local Palestinians should be denied the right to vote, 49% thought Jewish citizens should be treated better than Arab (i.e. Palestinian) citizens, and 47% wanted to transfer some of Israel’s Arab population to the Palestinian Authority.95 In the decade before Oct. 7, Israeli analysts and officials have referred to their strategy against Palestinians as “mowing the lawn” (or grass), i.e. periodically degrading their abilities, a de-humanizing term that percolated into the language of high Israeli officials.96 Israel’s justice system was one-sided and biased against Palestinians well before the beginning of the war as well. Between 2017-2021 for example, Israeli security forces killed 614 civilians and injured 76,340 (according to the UN).97 The military justice system received 1,260 complaints regarding Israeli soldiers’ conduct towards Palestinians, including at least 409 cases of Palestinian deaths. Of these only 248 investigations were opened, and only 11 of those investigations resulted in indictments. Only three of the indictments included the killing of Palestinians (out of 409 cases or 614 deaths), and the few soldiers found guilty received minor punishments.98 All of the above has facilitated many of the policies and actions I discuss below. 93 https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity/crimes/Doc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Apa rtheid.pdf 94 https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/15-former-israeli-leaders-call-apartheid 95 https://www.haaretz.com/2012-10-23/ty-article/.premium/israelis-say-no-vote-to-arabs-if-w-bank-annexed/0000017f-f55e-d460-afffff7e683c0000 96 The term appears to have been coined in an academic article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2013.830972. This approach is common in Israeli discourse, see: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Mowing-the-grass-in-Gaza-368516 ; https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hyvnkorgn; https://besacenter.org/the-end-of-mowing-the-grass-if-israel-wants-to-continue-to-exist-it-must-uproot-hamas-from-gaza/ ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/14/israel-gaza-history/ ; https://warontherocks.com/2014/08/israel-and-the-demise-of-mowing-the-grass/ . More examples here: https://x.com/BeckyCNN/status/1832069899780325818 97 https://www.mekomit.co.il/%d7%94%d7%a1%d7%99%d7%9b%d7%95%d7%99-%d7%9c%d7%9b%d7%aa%d7%91- %d7%90%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%9d-%d7%a0%d7%92%d7%93-%d7%97%d7%99%d7%99%d7%9c- %d7%a9%d7%a4%d7%92%d7%a2-%d7%91%d7%a4%d7%9c%d7%a1%d7%98%d7%99/ 98 https://www.mekomit.co.il/%d7%94%d7%a1%d7%99%d7%9b%d7%95%d7%99-%d7%9c%d7%9b%d7%aa%d7%91- %d7%90%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%95%d7%9d-%d7%a0%d7%92%d7%93-%d7%97%d7%99%d7%99%d7%9c- %d7%a9%d7%a4%d7%92%d7%a2-%d7%91%d7%a4%d7%9c%d7%a1%d7%98%d7%99/ 18 The massacre of Palestinians Last updated: June 18, 2024 Numbers and ratios As of June 14, Israel has killed over 37,266 Gazans – over 1.5 percent of the total population of Gaza.99 This death toll is conservative and will almost certainly increase.100 The number is accepted by Israeli officials (see discussion below)101 and media.102 The number does not over ten thousand missing people, many still buried under the rubble.103 It also does not include any individuals whose death was not reported to Gaza’s overwhelmed health ministry.104 According to the available public data some 60% of the deaths in Gaza are of women, children, and the elderly. 105 As of mid May, 7,797 identified children had already been killed.106 85,102 people (over 3 percent of Gaza’s population) have been injured.107 Polls among Palestinians in southern Gaza in late March and late May found that about 60% of respondents lost a member of their family during the war.108 Israeli spokespersons themselves have estimated that two civilians have died for each Hamas militant, and stated that it is a justified ratio.109 In reality, the ratio is likely worse and civilian deaths could reach 75% and even more of the total death count.110 An NGO had estimated in January that some 92% of deaths were of civilians, while a Hamas member in Qatar claimed the organization lost 99 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-179-gaza-strip 100 https://www.mekomit.co.il/%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%99- %D7%94%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%96%D7%94- %D7%9B%D7%A0%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%94-%D7%92%D7%91%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A4%D7%99- %D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%95/ 101 https://www.politico.eu/article/israels-netanyahu-says-he-will-defy-bidens-red-line-and-invade-rafah/ (at least 26,000 Palestinians killed as of early March); https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/us/politics/netanyahu-schumer-israel.html (28,000 Palestinians in late March); https://www.mekomit.co.il/%D7%94%D7%A6%D7%91%D7%90-%D7%91%D7%93%D7%A7-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%90- %D7%A9%D7%93%D7%99%D7%95%D7%95%D7%97%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9D- %D7%91%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%93-%D7%94%D7%91/ ; more confirmations by the IDF in March and April: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-gaza-authorities-lose-count-of-the-dead-779ff694 102 https://www.maariv.co.il/news/world/Article-1095370 103 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024; see also https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/08/the-numbers-that-reveal-the-extent-of-the-destruction-in-gaza ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/08/relatives-anguish-tens-of-thousands-missing-in-gaza-war ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6264 104 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-gaza-authorities-lose-count-of-the-dead-779ff694 105 https://t.me/MOHMediaGaza/5224 ; the Ministry of Health claims 72% of deaths are of women and children. It counts deaths through identifying corpses (17,624 in this report) and because connections with the North are broken, uses “reliable media sources” (unspecified) for the others (14,602 in this report). The 56% number derives from the distribution of actual deaths counted. The Ministry does not explain the discrepancy. For the 56% number see here: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-gaza-authorities-lose-count-of-thedead-779ff694 (I divided the 8% of elderly by 2). The ratio of women and children deaths has decreased over time: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-casualties-toll-65e18f3362674245356c539e4bc0b67a 106 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 ; note the drop from an earlier estimated children mortality of some 14,500 to some 7,797 identified children deaths out of some 24,686 identified dead. 107 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-179-gaza-strip 108 60% in March: http://pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2091%20English%20press%20release%2020%20March%202024.pdf (p. 6); 61% in May: https://pcpsr.org/en/node/980 109 https://cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-military-civilian-ratio-killed-intl-hnk/index.html 110 This article suggests that Israel killed only 1-2,000 Hamas fighters by late November, at a time where mortality in Gaza was reported to be over 14,500. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/26/idf-messaging-suggests-gaza-truce-unlikely-to-last-much-beyondtuesday ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-47 . Also some ~60% of the dead were women, children and the elderly (see above), and it is likely that based on the high mortality among those groups, a significant number of the men who were killed were not militants. This Wall Street Journal article states that Israel estimates that more that a third of the deaths have been militants, but that US intelligence officials seem to believe the actual ratio is considerably less: https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-and-israels-unprecedented-intelligence-sharing-draws-criticism-a85979b4. Anecdotally, the testimony of doctors returning from Gaza further indicates the majority of children among the injured (70-75% elementary school age or younger) as well as the low number of military age males (a handful according to one); both doctors believed none of the people they treated were militants: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/surgeons_in_gaza. The reliability of the Gaza death count is discussed in depth below. 19 some 6,000 militants in February (meaning some 80% of deaths were of civilians), although the group later rejected that claim.111 According to the key investigative report on the subject, Israel knows well the amount of civilians that will be hit by its attacks and proceeds to bomb buildings with little oversight, often through employing an artificial intelligence system (“The Gospel”). The number of acceptable civilians harmed by strikes against military targets (“collateral damage”) increased from dozens of civilians to hundreds of civilians.112 In some cases Israel assassinated a Hamas commander by bombing of a densely populated area that killed over a hundred civilians and wounded hundreds more.113 For comparison, civilian deaths in combat in other 21st century wars were far lower. In Iraq, for example, Coalition (i.e. US and allies) forces were responsible for killing 11,516 civilians over five years (2003-2008; many more were killed in local ethnic warfare, for example through suicide bombings).114 In the first four years in Iraq, the US killed 18,832 militants.115 In Afghanistan, 46,319 civilians and 52,893 Opposition fighters were killed in the war over 20 years (2001-2021).116 Here too a large number of the civilians were killed by opposition forces rather than the US.117 International responses The rate of civilian deaths is shocking, particularly as it continues in real time and visual evidence for it is readily available online. The UN Secretary General has stated that “We are witnessing a killing of civilians that is unparalleled and unprecedented in any conflict [in recent years]”.118 The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated that there is no safe space in Gaza.119 A website documenting cases of civilian harm using open source information has gathered preliminary information about 3,000 incidents (some 650 have already been published), which is more than during the entirety of the war against ISIS, and concluded that “this is a conflict that is far more deadly for civilians than pretty much any other conflict we’ve seen in modern history”.120 Although the International Court of Justice Order that called upon Israel to take “all measures in its power” to prevent the killing of Palestinians on 26 Jan., as of writing Israel has continued to kill an average of some 75 Palestinians a day.121 A panel of UN experts stated in February that arms exports to Israel 111 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6093/On-100th-day-of-Gaza-genocide:-100,000-Palestinians-killed,-missing-or-wounded ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-six-week-drive-hit-hamas-rafah-scale-back-war-2024-02-19/ ; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68387864 112 https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/the-gospel-how-israel-uses-ai-to-select-bombing-targets ; also https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/myth-israels-moral-army ; https://www.jurist.org/features/2024/04/12/from-zionist-dream-to-dissent-an-interview-with-a-former-idf-captain-on-israeli-military-culture-personal-transformation-and-advocacy-for-change-part-3/ ; also https://news.walla.co.il/item/3660634 113 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/jabaliya-gaza-strike-israel.html 114 Hicks et al. “Violent Deaths of Iraqi Civilians, 2003–2008: Analysis by Perpetrator, Weapon, Time, and Location” PLOS Medicine, 2011. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000415. Another study found 14,781 deaths over 8 years, Crawford, “Civilian Death and Injury in the Iraq War, 2003-2013”. Costs of War, 2013. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2013/Civilian%20Death%20and%20Injury%20in%20the%20Iraq%20War%2 C%202003-2013.pdf 115 https://web.archive.org/web/20200727084052/https:/www.stripes.com/news/insurgent-body-count-records-released-1.69423 116 https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022 117 https://unama.unmissions.org/protection-of-civilians-reports ; https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2020/Rising%20Civilian%20Death%20Toll%20in%20Afghanistan_Costs%20 of%20War_Dec%207%202020.pdf 118 https://twitter.com/UN_News_Centre/status/1726609880986083685 119 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-82 120 https://airwars.org/conflict/israel-and-gaza-2023/; https://twitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1776263272800354451 121 On Jan. 26 the death toll was 26,083. As of writing, the death toll was 37,266. https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-103; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-153 20 are illegal and must stop immediately,122 while a Dutch court ordered a halt to export F-35 jet parts to Israel.123 In March, Canada declared it will stop selling arms to Israel because of its conduction of war in Gaza,124 and the UK’s Foreign Office received legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law yet has refrained so far from making this information public to avoid acting upon it.125 In April the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip,126 and backed a call for an arms embargo on Israel.127 Those countries that still sell arms to Israel (especially the US, as well as Germany and the UK) are under pressure to stop sales as well.128 In late April, a leaked US assessment revealed that several bureaus within the US government raised “serious concern over [Israel’s] non-compliance” with international humanitarian law and asserted that Israel’s assurances were “neither credible or reliable”. Among the potential violations were repeatedly striking protected sites and civilian infrastructure and “unconscionably high levels of civilian harm to military advantage”.129 In May, the ICJ ruled that Israel was to halt its military assault on Rafah and re-open the Rafah crossing to facilitate the movement of people and humanitarian aid.130 Israel refused, and in the following 48 hours, conducted more than 60 air raids on Rafah.131 In June, the UN Secretary General decided to include Israel in a blacklist of countries that harm children in conflict areas, alongside ISIS, Russia, Syria and Somalia.132 Indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks Immediately at the beginning of the war, the Minister of Defense told soldiers that he released all restraints in conducting the war,133 while the IDF spokesperson stated that the IDF was “focused on what causes maximum damage” rather than accuracy.134 Already in late October, US officials knew that Israel was regularly bombing buildings without solid intelligence that they were legitimate military targets.135 About 40-45% of the air-to-ground munitions Israel dropped on Gaza by December were unguided.136 These bombs have a wide margin of error of about 100 feet around the target.137 When targeting junior militants marked by the IDF’s AI system, the army preferred to use such “dumb” bombs rather than precision bombs because of their lower cost, despite their more significant collateral damage. One IDF source claimed to have authorized the bombing of “hundreds” of private homes in such a manner. Frequently, the target was not even home when the bombing 122 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/arms-exports-israel-must-stop-immediately-un-experts 123 https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/dutch-court-orders-halt-export-f-35-jet-parts-israel-2024-02-12/ 124 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-19/ty-article/0000018e-584f-d88e-a39e-7dffc4580000 125 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/30/uk-government-lawyers-say-israel-is-breaking-international-law-claims-top-tory-in-leaked-recording 126 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/05/un-human-rights-council-israel-gaza-biden-netanyahu 127 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148261 128 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/world/europe/israel-weapons-sales-genocide.html 129 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/some-us-officials-say-internal-memo-israel-may-be-violating-international-law-2024-04- 27/ 130 https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/24/middleeast/israel-icj-gaza-rafah-south-africa-ruling-intl/index.html 131 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6348/Gaza:-After-ICJ-order-to-halt-attacks-on-Rafah,-Israel-launches-over-60-air-raids-on-the-city-in-48-hours 132 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-06-07/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-f35c-d1a2-a5ef-f35de63f0003 ; https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/095/07/pdf/n2409507.pdf 133 https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-israel-moving-to-full-offense-gaza-will-never-go-back-to-what-it-once-was/ ; https://www.foxnews.com/world/israels-defense-minister-removes-every-restriction-idf-prepares-ground-assault-gaza ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/ryxikl7z6 134 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israels-frontline-with-gaza 135 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/18/biden-israel-gaza-rafah-palestinians/ 136 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/intelligence-assessment-dumb-bombs-israel-gaza/index.html 137 https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf, paragraph 80. 21 happened, so that entire families were killed for no reason.138 In the first week of the war, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza.139 As of December, Israel dropped 29,000 weapons on Gaza. For comparison, the US military dropped 3,678 munitions on Iraq from 2004 to 2010.140 In the first 200 days of the war, it is estimated that Israel dropped more than 70,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip.141 During the first six weeks of the war, Israel used 2,000 pound bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians in at least 208 occasions.142 Especially during the beginning of the war, Israel used irregular shipments of 155mm shells that included shells dating to the 1950s, increasing the risk of missing the target and misfiring.143 In February, Amnesty International closely investigated four attacks that killed at least 95 civilians. All took place in the southern governate that was supposed to be safe at the time, and Amnesty found no indication that the buildings were legitimate military objectives or that people in the buildings were military targets.144 A similar report by Human Rights Watch in April investigated an attack of four aerial munitions over 10 seconds without warning that killed at least 106 civilians, including 54 children (“among the deadliest single incidents for civilians” in the war). The identities of all civilians have been confirmed. The NGO found no evidence for a military target in the vicinity of the building during the attack, and Israeli authorities provided no justification for it.145 In addition, Israel has commonly used drones in Gaza – including drones that launch grenades,146 suicide drones, 147 and drones that attack in swarms.148 Drones have also made the sounds of babies crying, perhaps to lure Gazans.149 These and other quadcopters have fired on civilians, with dozens of documented cases of purposefully killing civilians, as documented by a human rights group and witnessed by doctors, among others. 150 One doctor stated that quadcopters wounded 30 people who tried to reach a hospital in a single night.151 There are some indications that Israel has used thermobaric weapons, which have been internationally banned by several Conventions and international humanitarian law.152 138 https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ ; also https://twitter.com/WarWatchs/status/1783121782557352320 139 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip/card/israeli-air-force-says-it-has-dropped-6-000-bombs-on-gaza-QK1aSnupiGqytMVO86PU 140 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542 141 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6282/200-days-ofmilitary-attack-on-Gaza%3A-A-horrific-death-toll-amid-intl.-failure-to-stopIsrael’s-genocide-of-Palestinians. 142 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-bomb-investigation.html . For an example: https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/02/23/gaza-atrocities-investigation-warehouse-attack-karadsheh-pkg-vpx.cnn 143 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-03-20/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-5677-dc6f-adff-df77a73d0000 144 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/israel-opt-new-evidence-of-unlawful-israeli-attacks-in-gaza-causing-mass-civilian-casualties-amid-real-risk-of-genocide/ 145 https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/04/gaza-israeli-strike-killing-106-civilians-apparent-war-crime 146 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFMz8KYS5rg ; https://x.com/yoavzitun/status/1792840386077171729 147 https://www.calcalist.co.il/internet/articles/0,7340,L-3741063,00.html?AF=3741062 148 https://news.walla.co.il/item/3439695 149 https://twitter.com/KufiyyaPS/status/1780669019659358244 150 https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-israel-systematically-uses-quadcopters-kill-palestinians-close-distanceenar; https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/12/04/how-israel-is-using-drones-in-gaza; https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israeli-quadcopters-hi-tech-weapon-menacing-palestinian-civilians ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war; For general use of quadcopters see: https://www.instagram.com/p/C3mt9tEM2db/; https://www.instagram.com/dr.ahmed.moghrabi/p/C2rPxBJgz-q/ . For a broader survey of quadcopter use in Gaza: https://zeteo.com/p/israel-gaza-quadcopter-drone-warfare ; https://idanlandau.com/2024/05/21/%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%99%d7%9e%d7%93-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%a0%d7%9b%d7%99- %d7%95%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%99%d7%9e%d7%93-%d7%94%d7%90%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%a9%d7%99- %d7%94%d7%a8%d7%97%d7%a4%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%94%d7%99%d7%a9/ ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6357 ; see also the example here: https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1802436588246286588 151 https://x.com/GhassanAbuSitt1/status/1788570484981858793 152 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6290 22 A former UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights stated that the Israeli attack on Gaza has probably the highest kill rate of any military killing anybody since the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.153 Several doctors returning from volunteering in Gaza stated that the situation there is unprecedented, for example, “As humanitarian surgeons we thought we had seen all manner of cruelty in the world, but neither one of us has ever experienced anything like what we found when we arrived in Gaza.”154 Another doctor with 20 years of experience in humanitarian relief including in Iraq said that “I’ve seen combat in war zones… this is nothing like this… the amount of children that I’d seen is unprecedented… I’ve done more amputations and seen more traumatic amputations of children than I’ve seen during my entire career in the last two weeks… this is not like a war, this is just a complete and utter destruction”.155 Israel has used artificial intelligence (AI)-based programs to generate massive kill lists for assassination. The “Lavender” system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets.156 As many as 37,000 Gazans were marked as suspected militants by the automated system at the beginning of the war, including children under the age of 17.157 An IDF source claimed they would devote only “20 seconds” to each target before authorizing a bombing, despite a high rate of errors in the system (~10%). The IDF systematically attacked targets at their homes, often at night with their whole families present, after tracking them with another AI system named “Where’s Daddy?”. In the first weeks of the war, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians (as opposed to 0 in the past) for every junior Hamas operative. When targeting senior officials the killing of more than 100 and up to 300 civilians was authorized.158 Experts in international humanitarian law expressed alarm at these ratios.159 For comparison, the number of permissible civilians deaths to kill Saddam Hussein was 29.160 When the US assassinated Bin Laden the authorized number of civilians was 30 while the number was 0 for most low-level commanders in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.161 This massgeneration of targets was stopped later partly due to American pressure, 162 but subsequent attacks continued to be authorized despite knowing that many uninvolved citizens would be harmed.163 Mortality and impacts on groups in Palestinian society Since the beginning of the operation, Israel has killed dozens of children on average every day. 164 This number is greater than the number of children killed in conflict zones around the world over the 153 https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1760286175699272027 ; https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/14/gaza-war-israel-civiliandeaths-urban-warfare-hamas/ 154 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/surgeons-cruelty-israel-gaza ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEBcDUYtMts ; for a nurse see: https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1790111634930737387 ; https://x.com/tparsi/status/1796984162169086156 ; https://x.com/NourNaim88/status/1798622171125952937 155 https://twitter.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1790403949230784974 156 As a result of the pervasive dehumanization of Palestinians (see below), Israel has treated the results of the AI Lavender system as orders, without any requirement to independently check whether the person was a militant. As IDF sources explained, the software analyzes information about the entire 2.3 million residents of Gaza, giving almost every individual a 1-100 rating based on how likely they are to be militants. In the beginning of the war the IDF chose to follow the machine’s statistical mechanism instead of using human decision-making. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/; https://www.geektime.co.il/idf-fights-hamas-with-ai-anddata-science/ 157 https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ 158 https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-databasehamas-airstrikes 159 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes 160 https://www.businessinsider.com/saddam-husseins-life-was-deemed-worth-29-civilian-lives-as-the-us-invaded-iraq-2015-3 161 https://www.defensedaily.com/pentagon-removed-non-combatant-casualty-cut-off-value-doctrine-2018/pentagon/ 162 https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/ 163 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-06-03/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018f-d796-d5f5-ad8f-f7f797740000 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/world/europe/carnage-and-contradiction-examining-a-deadly-strike-in-rafah.html 164 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 23 past three years combined, and is far greater than the rate of children killed in other 21st century wars.165 In the first month of the war (October) alone, the number of killed Gazan children was over 10 times more than the number of children killed in the entire first year of the Russia-Ukraine war.166 As UNICEF’s Executive Director put it, Gaza is “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child”. 167 UNICEF estimated in early February that at least 17,000 children are unaccompanied or separated from their parents.168 Children deaths are prominent in videos from Gaza, often filmed by their own families.169 In late February, the head of MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) stated in front of the UN Security Council that children as young as five told members of the organization that they would prefer to die than to continue to experience the displacement, fear and witnessing of the killing of their family members.170 A Gazan journalist wrote an open letter to Israeli society in which he narrated a case of a 6 year old boy who lay down to sleep under a truck and turned blue from the cold. When a passer-by woke him up and asked him what was he doing, the boy responded that he wanted the truck to drive over him in the morning because his entire family had been killed. The boy died the same day from hypothermia.171 A doctor returning from volunteering in a Gaza hospital said that 70-75% of the people he operated on were elementary school age or younger.172 150 journalists and media workers have been killed, more than the entirety of journalists killed in World War II, and at a rate higher than any other conflict over the past century.173 The Committee to Protect Journalists stated that there was a pattern of journalists in Gaza receiving threats, and subsequently their family members being killed. One journalist, for example, said that he received multiple calls from IDF officers who demanded that he stop his coverage and leave North Gaza, as well as voice messages that disclosed his location.174 For context, the IDF has killed at least 20 journalists in the 22 years preceding the current war. Despite numerous probes of the IDF into these cases, no one has ever been charged or held responsible for these deaths.175 As of April 15, 273 UN and aid workers have been killed.176 More than 100 university professors, including several leading Palestinian academics, have been killed.177 More than 243 athletes (of which 161 are footballers) have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank.178 498 health workers have 165 https://www.savethechildren.net/news/gaza-3195-children-killed-three-weeks-surpasses-annual-number-children-killed-conflict-zones; 166 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5903/Number-of-Gazan-children-killed-in-under-a-month-is-10-times-higher-than-that-of-Ukrainian-children-killed-in-entire-first-year-of-Russia%E2%80%99s-ongoing-war. 167 https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/statement-by-unicef-executive-director-catherine-russell-on-the-resumption-of-fighting-ingaza/ 168 https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/stories-loss-and-grief-least-17000-children-are-estimated-be-unaccompanied-or 169 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1760724513581584472; https://twitter.com/CensoredNws/status/1761662724331774349 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1762531665958547626 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1779765891745378434 170 https://www.msf.org/msf-briefing-gaza-un-security-council 171 https://twitter.com/AGvaryahu/status/1763102777423659018/photo/1 172 https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/surgeons_in_gaza 173 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024; https://cpj.org/2024/01/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/9/how-deadly-is-the-israel-gaza-war-for-journalists;; see investigative report of the killing of two journalists, casting doubt on the IDF’s explanations here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/19/gaza-journalists-killed-israel-al-jazeera-footage/ ; a somewhat lower count (but with personal details) here: https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/news/detail/category/press-releases/article/palestine-at-least-ninety-nine-journalists-and-media-workers-killed-in-gaza 174 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/21/israel-idf-accused-targeting-journalists-gaza ; https://cpj.org/2024/03/attacksarrests-threats-censorship-the-high-risks-of-reporting-the-israel-hamas-war/ 175 https://cpj.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CPJ-Special-Report-May-2023_Deadly-Pattern.pdf 176 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 177 https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf (#90); https://twitter.com/Timesofgaza/status/1744041205938409756; https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1743662116614070495 ; https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1745135460270096699; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6108/Israel-kills-dozens-ofacademics,-destroys-every-university-in-the-Gaza-Strip ; list with names at https://twitter.com/sawporg/status/1755224105249333643 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1760047560025317563 ; also https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/un-experts-deeplyconcerned-over-scholasticide-gaza 178 https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/may/07/sporting-tragedy-war-in-gaza-israel-palestine 24 been killed.179 By June, 55 specialist doctors (4% of the total in Gaza) were killed.180 Israel’s attacks on hospitals have killed hundreds of Palestinians. More have died by lack of supplies181 or forced evacuations, including four premature babies in intensive care after the IDF forced the nurse taking care of them to leave when IDF soldiers reached the hospital. The babies were left in their beds and later found during the ceasefire in late November in a state of decomposition as nobody cared for them.182 The number of Palestinian deaths has led to digging graves and mass graves everywhere, including in formerly built areas and parks.183 Massacres, rules of engagement and examples Palestinian lives are incredibly cheap. Based on sources inside the IDF, an investigative report has pointed out that dead Palestinians are defined as “[Hamas] terrorists” based not on what they did but on where they were killed.184 Palestinians who were killed in an area near IDF forces, “the combat zone”, were often de facto shot on sight even if unarmed. A considerable number of these people were likely looking for food and other supplies after months of fighting.185 A video reveals how starving Gazans who rushed to collect airdropped aid were shot by IDF soldiers, with at least one of them shot dead.186 There are several filmed cases of Palestinians walking along the coasts and getting shot.187 The UNICEF spokesperson stated that as he was attempting to deliver aid, tanks came and shot up two nearby fishermen, adding that this was not a unique event in Gaza.188 A senior official in Israel’s security apparatus as well as IDF officers pointed out that there were no fixed rules of engagement and that different commanders developed their own rules in the field.189 One IDF reserve officer stated that “parts of Gaza are ex-territory… for some commanders, in junior ranks, the laws of the IDF and international law do not exist… the senior command is unaware of this or simply doesn’t seem to care”.190 There are many examples from Gaza for the results of IDF policy. In one case, a car with six civilians was attacked, killing four. A 15 year old girl called the Palestinian Red Crescent from the car, but was apparently killed during the conversation. When the Palestinian Red Cresent called back, her cousin Hind Rajab, a 6 year old girl, answered and stayed on the line, terrified and surrounded by her dead family members, for 3 hours. The Palestinian Red Crescent sent two paramedics to retrieve her, informing the IDF of their movement and receiving permission to proceed according to an agreed upon route. All connections with Hind and the paramedics were lost, and 12 days later the decomposing corpses of the girls and their family members were found in the car, while the paramedics were killed nearby when an IDF tank destroyed their ambulance about 50 meters away 179 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 ; list with names (up to March 11) at https://twitter.com/HCWWatch/status/1767666330252009517. 180 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/israel-palestinians-gaza-health/ 181 https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report-80-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east-Jerusalem 182 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/03/gaza-premature-babies-dead-nasr/ 183 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1759600702886748387 ; https://twitter.com/omarsuleiman504/status/1769735691808743563 ; https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1783855639006986260 184 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-9035-d9a4-a7bf-dc7d839e0000 185 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-9035-d9a4-a7bf-dc7d839e0000 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-9fa0-dbea-abde-bfe55d9e0000 186 https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1775960365630624249 187 https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1800790290783248589 188 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9nY-niPcD0 189 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-31/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-9035-d9a4-a7bf-dc7d839e0000 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-9fa0-dbea-abde-bfe55d9e0000 190 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-06-07/ty-article/.highlight/0000018f-ef13-de64-a98f-efb768400000 25 from the car that were trying to reach. 191 In another case, IDF troops entered a family home and killed the two parents in sight of their children (aged 11, 9 and 5; the youngest, with cerebral palsy, lost his eye to a grenade the soldiers threw).192 In a different case, the IDF sent a handcuffed prisoner to deliver a message to evacuate a hospital in Khan Younis, then shot him as he tried to walk outside the gate.193 The IDF subsequently bombed the hospital.194 A detained Gazan had his hands zip-tied before driven over by an Israeli tank, potentially while he was still alive. An image of his mutilated corpse was shared on an Israeli telegram channel with a post stating that “You are going to love this!!!”.195 A human rights organization documented other occasions in which Israeli soldiers have deliberately driven over dozens of Palestinian civilians while they were alive.196 In another case, an IDF soldier shot and killed a Palestinian man with special needs in front of his mother in a Gaza hospital after the man shouted in fear and did not keep quiet as the soldier commanded.197 A different soldier killed an unarmed 73-year old Palestinian who signaled to him not to shoot. In response, the soldier’s commander said “He signaled ‘no no [with his hands]’ and you took him down? Excellent”.198 In a different case, a video filmed from an IDF drone shows the IDF killing four clearly unarmed Palestinians from afar as they walked in daylight amidst the rubble in Khan Younis.199 An Israeli soldier shared a video showing the killing of five other Palestinians walking in the rubble in North Gaza.200 A different video showed IDF soldiers shooting two unarmed Palestinian men before burying them in rubble with a bulldozer.201 Many doctors returning from Gaza have asserted that IDF snipers have shot at children, causing “single bullet wounds to the head or chest” that killed some of them.202 When the IDF evacuated a Gazan family by force from their building, forcing them to leave their grandmother, a 94-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer’s and unable to walk or speak, behind. The building was burned. Her charred remains were apparently found on her bed in the burned building.203 There are many similar stories of IDF soldiers purposefully killing civilians.204 191 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/im-so-scared-please-come-hind-rajab-six-found-dead-in-gaza-12-days-after-cry-forhelp; https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/16/gaza_hind_rajab_palestine_red_crescent; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/world/middleeast/hind-rajab-gaza.html; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/10/body-of-6- year-old-killed-in-deliberate-israeli-fire-found-after-12-days ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/hind-rajab-israelgaza-killing-timeline/ 192 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RDXQapOtUg 193 https://theintercept.com/2024/02/14/gaza-nasser-hospital-evacuation-israel-prisoner/ ; https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-nasser-hospital-man-shot-dead-evacuation-warning-rcna139978 194 https://twitter.com/Ahmad_tibi/status/1758038092353503495 195 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1763469843070697726; https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israelpalestinian-ran-over-tank-images-suggest ; the man was later identified: https://twitter.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1783450571250262494 196 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6202; see also driving over Palestinian corpses: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israelsoldier-boasted-running-over-dead-palestinian-man-tank ; https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1771841529868358142 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1776064706639179811 197 https://www.itv.com/news/2024-03-01/he-didnt-understand-disabled-man-shot-dead-in-gaza-hospital-by-idf 198 https://twitter.com/MatanGolanPhoto/status/1766586400558739508 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dp95bN81Ww 199 https://twitter.com/GozukaraFurkan/status/1770919234278740269 200 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1770919159800402148 201 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1773065074162213322 202 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war ; https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-16/rafah-gaza-hospitals-surgery-israel-bombing-ground-offensive-children ; https://www.rsn.org/001/not-a-normal-war-doctors-say-children-have-been-targeted-by-israeli-snipers-in-gaza.html ; https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/surgeons_in_gaza ; https://www.itv.com/news/2024-04-24/i-operated-without-anaestheticbritish-surgeons-harrowing-gaza-account 203 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1770897340364095722 ; https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-israeli-army-forcesfamily-leave-94-year-old-grandmother-behind ; https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1777521805420269651 204 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1761163980947558806 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1771589516920238241 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772925436231598415 ; https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-16/rafah-gazahospitals-surgery-israel-bombing-ground-offensive-children ; https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1779892829231140976 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1790893499115606334 26 Cases in which the IDF kills civilians almost never make the news in Israel and the United States. 205 An exception happened in early April, when the IDF killed 7 workers of the international NGO World Central Kitchen (all foreign citizens) within their clearly marked vehicles operating in full coordination with the IDF.206 A source from the IDF stated that a drone attacked the convoy of three vehicles because a Hamas person was thought to be in it (later investigation stated this was uncertain and the person simply appeared armed).207 After the first vehicle was bombed, some NGO workers left their vehicle and evacuated to a second vehicle, immediately notifying the IDF. Despite this, the second vehicle was bombed as well, and the survivors evacuated it to a third vehicle that was also bombed, killing them all.208 The images of the bombed vehicles were geo-located and the distance between the first and third bombing was 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles).209 This exception (alongside a few others I document here) suggests that in many similar occasions the IDF killed civilians with little oversight or consequences. Later in April, a UNICEF truck bringing humanitarian aid was hit by IDF fire (directed at nearby civilians) while a water truck operated by a Canadian NGO was bombed in a targeted attack. 210 The first international UN worker was killed in May when an Israeli tank attacked his vehicle, which was marked as a UN vehicle.211 A investigative report found that back in January, five Palestinian technicians were on their way to fix a cellular operator unit in Khan Younis, following coordination with the IDF. A tank in the area shot their vehicle, killing two. The investigative report found that the IDF spokesperson’s version of events is likely false.212 In one particularly notable event, the “flour massacre”, at least 115 civilians were killed and over 700 were injured as they attempted to get food from a convoy of lorries bringing in humanitarian aid.213 Palestinians claimed that the IDF shot them,214 while the IDF claimed that most casualties died because of overcrowding and the general mayhem in which the lorries run over the civilians.215 In both cases, the IDF, according to the rules of war as an occupying power, is legally responsible for the deaths of civilians. UN experts and human rights organizations,216 as well as the media,217 largely confirmed the Palestinian version of the story, partially because the IDF did not provide evidence to support their claims (an IDF video supposedly showing the event was clearly edited several times; the IDF refused to publish the full video) and testimonials from Gazans who experienced the massacre. The director of the al-Awda hospital claimed that the vast majority of injuries who came to receive treatment after the event (142 of 176) suffered from gunshot wounds.218 A CNN investigation found inconsistencies with, and cast further doubts on, the IDF’s version and leaned 205 For example: https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1780252222279840036 ; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/4/16/israels-war-on-gaza-live-israel-vows-response-to-iran 206 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-9e1e-d764-adff-9edf9cd00000 207 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-05/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-aca8-d906-a5cf-aebcb1100000 208 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-02/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-9e1e-d764-adff-9edf9cd00000 209 https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1775125251149500706 210 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI3XydVerm8 ; https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/canadian-aid-truck-bombed-watergaza-1.7179849 211 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-69013439 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-23/tyarticle/.premium/0000018f-9c76-d6da-a1cf-ff76832b0000 212 https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/134512/ 213 https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/08/middleeast/gaza-flour-massacre-idf-report-intl/index.html 214 https://twitter.com/NaksBilal/status/1763188564823576868 ; https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1763174751042695313 ; https://twitter.com/kaneez_e_zahrah/status/1763176424012230952 ; 215 https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/08/middleeast/gaza-flour-massacre-idf-report-intl/index.html 216 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/29/dozens-killed-injured-by-israeli-fire-in-gaza-while-collecting-food-aid; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68445973 ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/29/gaza-aid-trucks-death-tollexplainer ; https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/09/gaza-new-accounts-of-the-flour-massacre_6601904_4.html ; https://www.972mag.com/gaza-aid-convoy-massacre-testimonies/ 217 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6200 ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6200/In-press-conference,-Euro-Med-confirmsIsrael%27s-full-involvement-in-Gaza-flour-massacre ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/05/un-experts-condemn-israelimassacre-of-palestinians-collecting-flour 218 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1763221018103996559 ; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68445973 27 towards accepting the Palestinian version.219 A sample of 200 dead and injured victims found that they were hit by bullets of the diameter used by IDF troops.220 A subsequent report by the UN Committee of Human Rights reached the conclusion that the IDF is likely responsible for the deaths of civilians by firing at them.221 According to UN experts as well as online sources and videos, Palestinians seeking food were shot on many occasions on the days before and after the “flour massacre”.222 Israel’s National Security Minister nonetheless praised the IDF soldiers for their conduct during the event.223 International law stipulates that Israel is required to supply food and water in the areas where it is an occupying power.224 Notably in this context, Israel and the United States were the only two countries who voted against declaring food as a human right in the United Nations in 2021.225 A report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that between mid January and late March, Israel killed a total of 563 Palestinians and injured 1,523. All of these were waiting for aid, were in or around distribution centers, or were responsible for organizing, protecting and distributing aid. 226 An NGO documented around 130 random mass graves of Palestinians across the Gaza Strip.227 Other corpses have been interred in improvised burials within built areas,228 with additional decomposed corpses229 and skeletons on the streets.230 Reports have “documented dozens of cases of field executions carried out by the Israeli army”.231 In one such event, on 19 Dec. IDF troops are said to have executed at least 19 unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members.232 In another, over 30 Palestinian corpses were found in black plastic bags, blindfolded and handcuffed.233 Similar events took place in al-Shifa hospital, according to several eyewitness accounts (see also Zoom-In 1 below).234 Few of these cases have even been covered in Israeli media.235 219 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/09/middleeast/gaza-food-aid-convoy-deaths-eyewitness-intl-investigation-cmd 220 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6259/New-Report:-Killing-starving-Palestinians,-targeting-aid-trucks-is-a-deliberate-Israelipolicy-to-reinforce-famine-in-the-Gaza-Strip 221 https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf, paragraphs 240-249. 222 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/03/un-experts-condemn-flour-massacre-urge-israel-end-campaign-starvation-gaza; https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/09/gaza-new-accounts-of-the-flour-massacre_6601904_4.html ; https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1763651267237216587 ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6259/New-Report:- Killing-starving-Palestinians,-targeting-aid-trucks-is-a-deliberate-Israeli-policy-to-reinforce-famine-in-the-Gaza-Strip 223 https://twitter.com/itamarbengvir/status/1763196768458604583 . For the IDF’s own investigation, see: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b1dmqvd6t; for a critique, see: https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/132587/ 224 https://guide-humanitarian-law.org/content/article/3/occupied-territory/ 225 https://press.un.org/en/2021/gashc4336.doc.htm 226 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6259/New-Report:-Killing-starving-Palestinians,-targeting-aid-trucks-is-a-deliberate-Israelipolicy-to-reinforce-famine-in-the-Gaza-Strip 227 https://www.reuters.com/pictures/all-cemeteries-are-full-palestinians-buried-mass-grave-gaza-2023-11-22/ ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6264 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1782115765790867492 ; https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1783855639006986260 228 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1769304583325483266 229 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poydd3EG_-8; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1761369042596647177 ; https://twitter.com/OnlinePalEng/status/1773440806411546953 ; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1799849647059714303 230 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1772664508210655331 ; https://x.com/KufiyyaPS/status/1795870171237646833 (appears reliable) ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1796525578499088829 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1796550174111645766 ; https://x.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1798345071722684760 231 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6058/Euro-Med-Monitor-sends-UN-rapporteurs,-ICC-Prosecutor-primary-report-documentingdozens-of-field-execution-cases-in-Gaza; https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-survivors-recount-harrowing-israeli-fieldexecutions ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1745259688801816854 ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/5944/Israeli-armyexecutes-an-elderly-Palestinian-after-using-him-in-propaganda-campaign-about-its-%E2%80%98safe-corridor%E2%80%99-in-Gaza 232 https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unlawful-killings-in-gaza-city-ohchr-press-release/ ; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/20/palestinians-accuse-israeli-forces-of-executing-19-civilians-in-gaza 233 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/1/palestinians-demand-international-inquiry-after-mass-grave-found-in-gaza 234 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlerY4M9kQc 235 https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra13792905; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/syv8bslop 28 The IDF has refrained from accountability or responsibility in the past. Not only does the Israeli security apparatus attempt to hinder the ability of Palestinians to file claims,236 but the ratio of indictments among those complaints that had been filed even before the war has been negligible. Among 1,260 complaints regarding Israeli soldiers harming Palestinians and their property between 2017 and 2021, less than 1% resulted in an indictment.237 In a January poll, two thirds of Israelis preferred to continue the war in its current form of excessive bombardment and violence.238 In a poll from February, about three quarters of Israeli Jews supported the continuation of the military operation to Rafah.239 A poll from March-April found that only 4% of Israeli Jews believe the military campaign has gone too far.240 236 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html 237 https://www.npr.org/2024/05/15/1250417719/israel-military-idf-investigations-icc 238 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/52071 239 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/53276 240 https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/30/views-of-the-israel-hamas-war-may-2024/ 29 Causing the deaths of civilian populations Last updated: June 18, 2024 Israel has placed a stranglehold on the Palestinian population of Gaza since the beginning of the war.241 The absence of supplies in Gaza – a siege – has been the stated policy of top Israeli officials since the beginning of the war.242 Israel’s military operation have destroyed much of the local infrastructure for food production in Gaza (agricultural lands, greenhouses, fishing boats and food production facilities such as bakeries and manufacturing)243 as well as severely degrading, destroying or putting out of use much of the water infrastructure (wells, reservoirs and desalination plants).244 Throughout the war, only some 100-150 full truckloads have been allowed in daily,245 out of about 300 that are necessary for humanitarian needs (supply of food and water).246 Israel has weaponized humanitarian aid to Gaza, limiting its entrance to Gaza based on political reasoning which is often opaque.247 Trucks that attempt to enter the Strip encounter multiple problems as they try to do so, including attacks by the IDF.248 The list of items that are forbidden in the Gaza strip remains unclear six months into the war, but has included chocolate croissants, animal feed, nail clippers, toys in wooden boxes, and crutches.249 In one case, it took a UN organization three months to get approval to deliver 500 tons of animal feed.250 The UN’s humanitarian coordinator explained in April some of the ways in which Israel was impeding aid. For example, Israel required then that all aid trucks enter Gaza half full, and demanded a complete separation between Egyptian truck drivers (who crossed into Gaza, then unloaded and left) and Palestinian truck drivers (who would wait for the Egyptians to leave, come with trucks, load them, and deliver aid to UN warehouses). Food convoys to the North of the Strip – where the population is undergoing famine – are three times as likely to be denied than other humanitarian convoys with other types of material.251 In late March about 7,000 trucks were waiting on the Egyptian side of the border to bring supplies into the Strip because of Israel’s inefficient process of inspections (the average wait time is 20 241 https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/244-stopping-famine-gaza 242 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/ ; https://twitter.com/KnessetT/status/1716502486331113922 243 E.g. https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/inflicting-unprecedented-suffering-and-destruction-seven-ways-the-government-of621591/, p. 9; https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Feb_July2024_Special_Brief.pdf 244 https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/flash-analysis-report-over-two-months-attacks-food-security-gazadecember-2023; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-167 245 https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiZTVkYmEwNmMtZWYxNy00ODhlLWI2ZjctNjIzMzQ5OGQxNzY5IiwidCI6IjI2MmY2YTQxLTIwZTktND E0MC04ZDNlLWZkZjVlZWNiNDE1NyIsImMiOjl9&pageName=ReportSection3306863add46319dc574 ; the discrepancy with the Israeli numbers is probably the result of the Israeli numbers counting trucks entering, but also demanding that these trucks be only half full. 246 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147342; https://www.wfp.org/news/famine-imminent-northern-gaza-new-report-warns . For comparison, before the war, some 500 trucks entered Gaza daily with various supplies – about 200 truckloads of gas as well as 300 truckloads of commodities and food. In 2022, an average of 73 truckloads with food entered Gaza daily (as well as 24 truckloads with products such as livestock and animal feed). https://www.ochaopt.org/data/crossings 247 For example, under political pressure Israel eased its siege in early April: https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-says-israel-approvedreopening-of-20-bakeries-water-pipeline-in-northern-gaza/ ; https://twitter.com/HossamShabat/status/1779526925980995661 248 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-175 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/remarks-media-secretary-general ; https://edition.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/tug-ofwar/episodes/0e6112dc-ae58-11ee-8bd1-6f9c6607fa1d ; https://jewishcurrents.org/israel-policy-starvation-gaza-aid ; https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/20/world/middleeast/gaza-aid-delivery.html ; https://www.wfp.org/news/famineimminent-northern-gaza-new-report-warns ; https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterraneanmena/israelpalestine/244-stopping-famine-gaza 249 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/11/israel-aid-gaza-banned-blocked/ 250 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148296 251 https://twitter.com/ChronicBabak/status/1778616402280059360 ; https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1x/k1xkc2nwph 30 days). 252 In the first two weeks of March, for example, only half of the planned humanitarian missions to northern Gaza took place. The other half were denied by the IDF or postponed.253 The numbers were similar in May.254 Some of the food on these trucks rots during the long times they wait to enter Gaza.255 Beginning in February, Israel began to weaponize also the distribution of aid. In the first months of the war, Gaza’s civilian police was responsible for the internal distribution of aid, including through tasks such as guarding warehouses, accompanying convoys, and overseeing the actual distribution of aid. Israel’s underlying policy is to not differentiate between Hamas’ armed military wing and Hamas as the non-state actor governing Gaza – both are seen by Israel as the same terrorist organization. As a IDF officer stated “Hamas police is Hamas… and we won’t allow Hamas to control the humanitarian assistance”.256 In February, Israeli attacked several police cars, then dropped flyers that showed a destroyed police car with a message stating that Israel will not allow Hamas’ security apparatus to continue working.257 In response, police withdrew from this role. Ten days later, the UN aid delivery The World Food Program stopped aid delivery because of the collapse of civil order, followed by UNRWA.258 Both the US and the UN asked Israel to stop targeting the police to avoid “a total breakdown of law and order”.259 Israel refused, and tested its own approach – to rule Gaza through prominent local families that could oversee aid. The “flour massacre” in late February (discussed above) was apparently the result of this approach of Israel to coordinate aid delivery with a Gaza City family.260 Hamas reacted by attempting to set up local emergency committees for security and aid distribution, apparently using al-Shifa Hospital for this coordination in the North.261 Israel reduced the number of trucks it let into the Strip to less than a third than what it had committed to facilitating,262 while also attacking Gazan police officers responsible for coordinating aid.263 This was the context for Israel’s second raid on al-Shifa in midMarch (discussed in Zoom-in #1 below), during which it killed several figures closely associated with aid efforts.264 By late March, Israeli strikes on the emergency committees killed more than 70 people waiting for aid, so the committees stopped working. Israel further limited the distribution of aid by 252 https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/inflicting-unprecedented-suffering-and-destruction-seven-ways-the-government-of621591/ ; https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/north-sinai-governor-to-un-chief-7000-gaza-aid-trucks-waiting-israel-holding-upflow/ 253 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-140 254 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 255 https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000009486472/gaza-food-aid-trucks-rafah-egypt.html 256 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/21/gaza-police-aid-hamas/ 257 https://www.ft.com/content/8aa813fc-a87e-4002-9aaf-890c111aec35 ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/22/gazaaid-deliveries-looting-police-hamas/ 258 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/22/gaza-aid-deliveries-looting-police-hamas/ ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C- %D7%94%D7%99%D7%90-%D7%9C%D7%94%D7%A9%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A8-%D7%90%D7%AA- %D7%94%D7%9B%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A1-%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%9B%D7%A0/ ; https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1770422130712146254 259 https://www.axios.com/2024/02/24/gaza-humanitarian-aid-israel-hamas-police-biden ; https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/18/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news 260 https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/244-stopping-famine-gaza 261 https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/244-stopping-famine-gaza (footnote 105). 262 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/22/gaza-aid-deliveries-looting-police-hamas/ 263 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-says-airstrike-in-rafah-killed-3-senior-officers-in-hamass-emergency-committee/ ; https://english.palinfo.com/news/2024/03/20/316217/ ; also this mayor: https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1777681986586325481 264 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/18/israel-hamas-gaza-shifa-issa/ 31 informing the UN that it would not allow further UNRWA convoys to North Gaza.265 Additional police officers associated with the distribution of aid were killed in April.266 An analysis of reported data found at least 80 separate attacks by Israel on aid in Gaza between January and mid May. There were at least 37 attacks on civilians seeking aid.267 Famine and starvation December to April The siege reality has resulted in severe shortages of basic necessities (food, water and energy) as well as a sharply deteriorating humanitarian situation.268 A report by the NGO International Crisis Group noted people in Rafah who queued for flour for ten hours at a time on four consecutive days in December. Some left empty-handed.269 In January, a survey among shop owners revealed a significant shortage of basic food items, with 81% indicating depletion and 19% having only limited supplies.270 The situation has been extreme in North Gaza. In the northern parts of the Gaza Strip in early February, the price of a bag of flour, 30 shekels (~$8) before the war, reached 500-1000 shekels (~$125-250), 15-30 times higher.271 In late February, the price of a plate with some raw meat and rice reached $95 (US) according to social media,272 while a nurse in Al-Shifa hospital claimed he had not eaten bread for 2 months during which he consumed animal feed.273 At the same time, the UN’s leading expert on the right to food described the circumstances as ‘a situation of genocide’, while the World Food Programme stated that “people are already dying from hunger-related causes”.274 In early March, the head of Israel’s Committee for Food Security called for a ceasefire because of the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip.275 In April, the price of a kilogram of sugar reached between $19 and $30.276 As of mid-April, at least 31 people (of which 28 were children) in Gaza died of malnutrition or dehydration.277 In this context, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security 265 https://twitter.com/UNLazzarini/status/1771917857598693549 266 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamass-internal-security-chief-killed-in-northern-gaza-airstrike-idf-shin-bet/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/war-2023/2024-04-16/ty-article-live/0000018e-e3b4-daaf-afafe7f555f60000?liveBlogItemId=1978850928#1978850928 . Also https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra13878899 267 https://gaza-aid-attacks.forensic-architecture.org/ ; https://twitter.com/ForensicArchi/status/1790796901123559572 268 https://www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202404_manufacturing_famine_heb.pdf 269 https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/244-stopping-famine-gaza (footnote 54). 270 https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Feb_July2024_Special_Brief.pdf , p. 9. 271 https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-02-07/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018d-8213-daa1-a9fd-e21b04660000 ; https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231117-give-us-our-daily-bread-gaza-faces-flour-crisis 272 https://twitter.com/HamzaAbuToha/status/1760588426103963720 273 https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1762736475957829852 274 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68349031.amp ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-foodstarvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide 275 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/education/2024-03-03/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-03c5-da4e-adbf-83fdc01f0000 276 https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-04-04/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018e-a379-d315-ab9f-aff98d4b0000 ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/133730/ 277 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-160 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-192. For examples see: https://twitter.com/Sarah_Hassan94/status/1761372883278807170; https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1761322640935940449 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1762518985633890640; https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1762478847277084910 ; https://twitter.com/save_children/status/1762543144061575626; https://twitter.com/alijla2021/status/1762535516774302206 ; https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/two-babies-starve-to-death-in-northern-gaza-hamas-health-ministry/; https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1763466551968035006; https://twitter.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1764689858067358154; https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1764728907578712177 ; https://twitter.com/UNICEF/status/1764296731380920490 ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6212/In-just-24-hours,-two-children-and-an-elderly-man-starve-to-death-amid-risingmalnutrition-rates-in-Gaza ; https://x.com/NourNaim88/status/1796267564953149612 ; https://x.com/AlMezanCenter/status/1801178293023994240 ; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1800824868453089426 32 Policy stated in front of the UN Security Council that “starvation is being used [by Israel] as a war arm”.278 Leading NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Oxfam concluded that “the Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war in Gaza”.279 Israeli accounts have de facto admitted this, 280 and within a broader historical context, Israel has long used food in such a manner in Gaza.281 A report by a global authority on food security and nutrition from mid March stated that famine (their definition here282) was imminent in the northern governorates of the Strip over the next two months.283 Anecdotal evidence confirms this. In late March, the UNICEF spokesperson wrote that he saw a dozen “skeletal” children in a single hospital in Beit Lahia.284 The price of a bag of flour in northern Gaza increased to $275 (normally $8) by mid March, alongside rampant banditry.285 By late March, apparently in the same area, the price of a few dozen kilograms (estimated from video) of vegetables reached some $3,000.286 For context, the average income in Gaza before the war was $13-20/day.287 Humanitarian conditions were somewhat less dire in the south of the Gaza Strip, where a late March poll of Gazans found that only 44% have enough food for a day or two, and only 19% can access a place for assistance of food and water without great risk. 288 Individual accounts confirm these details.289 As a result, the vast majority of Gaza’s population is at risk of famine.290 Already by January virtually all households were skipping meals every day, with 50-80% of households going entire days and nights without eating.291 Some 90% of civilians in Gaza experienced “high levels of acute food insecurity”.292 In late January the World Health Organization’s Director-General noted the food shortages that result in medical staffs and patients receiving only one meal per day.293 Some 40% experience “emergency levels” and over 15% (378,000) experience catastrophic levels, namely “extreme lack of food, starvation and exhaustion of coping capacities”.294 in January, the Chief Economist of the World Food Program has stressed that “In my life, I’ve never seen anything like this in terms of severity, in terms of scale, and then in terms of speed.”295 Despite this situation, IDF officers demanded a further lowering of the humanitarian aid to Gaza.296 A prominent scholar of famine and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation stated that he had never seen the war crime of starvation perpetrated in such scale over the 40 years of his career297 and that “The rigor, 278 https://apnews.com/video/europe-gaza-european-union-war-and-unrest-josep-borrell-63eebfe7f71f4ed881580913c51b7036 279 https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/03/19/israeli-forces-conduct-gaza 280 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra13878899 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/biden-warns-iran-over-gaza-israelforms-emergency-war-cabinet-2023-10-11/ 281 https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/03/30/the-road-to-famine-in-gaza/ 282 Famine is defined as a combination of all three conditions: (1) 20% or more of households suffering an extreme lack of food; (2) 30% or more + of children suffering from acute malnutrition; and (3) at least 2 adults/4 children for every 10,000 people die daily from starvation or from disease linked to malnutrition. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/world/middleeast/gaza-famine-report-starvation.html 283 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/world/middleeast/gaza-famine-report-starvation.html 284 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/22/unicef-official-utter-annihilation-gaza 285 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/22/gaza-aid-deliveries-looting-police-hamas/ 286 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1770911921870446966 287 https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-investment-climate-statements/west-bank-and-gaza/ 288 http://pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2091%20English%20press%20release%2020%20March%202024.pdf (p. 6) 289 https://www.thenation.com/article/world/gaza-starvation-denial-aipac/ 290 For a nuanced view on starvation and a critical take on the meaning of measurements of food and caloric intake see: https://hazmanhazeh.org.il/hunger/ 291 https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Nov2023_Feb2024.pdf ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/01/world/middleeast/gaza-israel-hunger.html; https://www.972mag.com/rafah-children-hunger-aid/ 292 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-113; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-12-21/ty-article/.premium/0000018c-8908-d60e-afdf-ed0e2bb70000 293 https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-on-gaza–the-who-executive-board– trans-fats-and-leprosy 294 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-113 295 https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/gaza-is-starving 296 https://news.walla.co.il/item/3633138 297 https://youtu.be/0pGgFZovlAw?si=mone7I85_SobAivS&t=875 ; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/21/we-areabout-to-witness-the-most-intense-famine-since-world-war-ii-in-gaza ; https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/5/alex_de_waal 33 scale and speed of the destruction of the structures necessary for survival, and enforcement of the siege, surpasses any other case of man-made famine in the last 75 years”.298 In February, an aid organization stated on CNN that Gaza was the fastest decline in nutritional status ever recorded in a human population.299 In late February and early March about half of the missions aimed at delivering aid to areas in the north part of the Gaza Strip were denied access by Israeli authorities.300 On more than one occasion, the IDF attacked a food convoy.301 In mid-March, The UK foreign secretary described a series of obstacles Israel was placing in the delivery of aid, de facto blaming Israel for the humanitarian crisis and Israel’s spokesperson for providing false information.302 In late March, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to allow unimpeded food aid into Gaza.303 In early April, a group of US government humanitarian experts privately warned other officials that the spread of hunger in Gaza is “unprecedented in modern history”.304 At the same time, Oxfam stated that people in northern Gaza have been forced to survive on an average of 245 calories a day since January, less than 12% of average daily calorie needs.305 Despite reports about increased aid deliveries to Gaza in early April, In mid-April a UN official said that Israel turned down more than 40% of the UN’s requests to deliver aid for Palestinians to northern Gaza the previous week, stating “We’re dealing with this dance where we do one step forward, two steps backward, or two steps forward, one step backward, which leaves us basically always at the same point”. 306 In late April a leaked US administration paper written by US experts on food security in the Department of State and USAID stated that famine in Gaza was inevitable, and that the deterioration of food security in Gaza “exponentially” outpaced the long term declines that led to the other 21st century famines in Somalia (2011) and South Sudan (2017).307 A group of aid organizations that include UNICEF stated in late February that over 90% of children under the age of 5 in Gaza were facing “severe food poverty”. A similar percentage was suffering from infectious diseases, with 70% of them having diarrhoea over two weeks in February.308 Images and videos from the strip appear to confirm these findings.309 May and June Although April saw an uptick of aid entering Gaza, partially the result of international pressure after Israel’s bombing of the World Central Kitchen’s convoy, the amount of aid entering Gaza dropped again in May, this time as a result of fighting in the North and in the South, in which Israel took control of the Rafah crossing into Egypt.310 In the rest of May, the amount of food entering Gaza 298 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/health/gaza-israel-hunger-starvation.html ; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/31/israel-gaza-starvation-international-law ; also https://jewishcurrents.org/israel-policy-starvation-gaza-aid 299 https://twitter.com/MedicalAidPal/status/1763172220900151317 300 https://twitter.com/UNRWA/status/1759993361702748380 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flashupdate-140 301 For example: https://palestine.un.org/en/259747-food-convoy-waiting-move-northern-gaza-was-hit-israeli-naval-gunfire . See also the case of the World Central Kitchen. 302 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/21/david-cameron-accuses-israel-of-blocking-key-aid-crossing-in-gaza; https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/44011/documents/217998/default/ 303 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/28/famine-is-setting-in-icj-orders-israel-to-unblock-gaza-food-aid 304 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gaza-collapse-famine_n_660c96aae4b0328a72be47f5 305 https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/people-northern-gaza-forced-survive-245-calories-day-less-can-beans-oxfam 306 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-says-it-still-faces-obstacles-bid-fend-off-famine-gaza-2024-04-16/ 307 https://www.devex.com/news/exclusive-usaid-officials-say-israel-breached-us-directive-on-gaza-aid-107545 308 https://www.nutritioncluster.net/sites/nutritioncluster.com/files/2024-02/GAZA-Nutrition-vulnerability-and-SitAn-v7.pdf ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/20/middle-east-crisis-live-israel-gaza-yemen-houthi-lebanon-hague-courtjustice?page=with:block-65d4650d8f08f68df4ca9a84&filterKeyEvents=false#liveblog-navigation 309 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1750503719806923075 ; https://twitter.com/NABEELRAJAB/status/1750017231197544706; https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/1751580352601309591 310 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/22/gaza-famine-aid-israel-hamas/ 34 dropped by 70%311 (discrepancies with Israeli-supplied numbers derive from the different ways of counting trucks, 312 as well as the entry of commercial food sales).313 Due to the food shortages, known famine-related mortality resumed after a hiatus of several weeks. The World Food Program suspended food distribution in Rafah because of lack of supplies and insecurity.314 The muchheralded US pier, 315 that was supposed to provide additional aid (and cost $320 million), encountered problems from its beginning – including a hiatus in its operation – and was ineffective into early June, before being moved away again in mid June. 316 Israel re-opened commercial food sales in Gaza in late May, but the amount of commercial trucks that entered was far smaller than the amount of humanitarian aid (which, as aforementioned, was far from enough for the needs of the population).317 In late May, a poll of Gazans in the south of the Gaza Strip found that 64% had enough food for a day or two (44% in March) and 26% could access a place to get assistance with food and water without great risk (19% in March).318 Subsequent reports in May and June continued to indicate a serious crisis. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) said that “it is possible, if not likely” that famine was underway in northern Gaza since April, and that it is possible the famine will persist in the area through July. This was the first time an organization stated the possibility that famine was already happening.319 The uncertainty derived from major difficulties since only limited information was available, a situation nonetheless similar to that in other famines. Regardless of whether the reality in northern Gaza fit the technical definition of famine, “acute malnutrition among children is extremely high and this will result in irreversible physiological impacts”.320 The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization said that hunger is worsening, especially in northern Gaza, because of the heavy restrictions on humanitarian access and the collapse of the local food system.321 The UN’s aid chief said that “delivering aid was become almost impossible” in Gaza.322 In late May, head of USAID said that conditions in Gaza are “worse… than ever before”.323 A WHO spokesperson said in May that 85% of children “did not eat for a whole day at least once in the [past] three days” and that “children are starving”.324 A UNICEF spokesperson tried to bring medical and nutritional supplies to North Gaza in mid June. Despite receiving the necessary approvals in advance, on the ground the trucks were refused entry and sent back after a long delay.325 On the other hand, a group of Israeli scholars attempted to argue in a white paper in June that the amount of available food entering Gaza had 311 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/30/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine-rafah/ 312 https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-west-bank-jenin-raid-a3320a77a3a6ccff41db2a4bc63e4aa3 ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/30/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine-rafah/ 313 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-reopens-gaza-food-sales-rafah-raid-chokes-aid-2024-05-30/ 314 https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-west-bank-jenin-raid-a3320a77a3a6ccff41db2a4bc63e4aa3 315 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/27/world/middleeast/gaza-pier-israel-hamas-war.html 316 https://apnews.com/article/us-pier-gaza-famine-israel-1feae14dac670bb4de0467988799c5c6 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/world/middleeast/gaza-aid-pier-food.html ; https://news.usni.org/2024/05/23/u-s-soldiercritically-injured-during-gaza-pier-operation-2-other-service-members-hurt ; https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/PressRelease-View/Article/3787939/high-sea-states-impact-army-vessels/ ; https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/politics/us-gaza-pier-brokenapart/index.html ; https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESS-RELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3808303/us-central-command-movespier-ahead-of-high-seas/ 317 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-reopens-gaza-food-sales-rafah-raid-chokes-aid-2024-05-30/ ; for the scale of supplies between the humanitarian and private sectors see for example: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshotgaza-strip-12-june-2024 318 https://pcpsr.org/en/node/980 319 https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-famine-0056ceecdb4ae3bee5f64c54ab034c7e ; https://fews.net/sites/default/files/2024-06/Gaza-Targeted-Analysis-Update-042024-Final_3.pdf 320 https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-famine-0056ceecdb4ae3bee5f64c54ab034c7e ; https://fews.net/sites/default/files/2024-06/Gaza-Targeted-Analysis-Update-042024-Final_3.pdf 321 https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-hunger-un-07afb7fe4a1654f54b81b944a0dab535 ; https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000159235/download/ 322 https://x.com/UNReliefChief/status/1798118788576989489 323 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/30/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-palestine-rafah/ 324 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/05/1150486 ; https://x.com/UNGeneva/status/1796579174204813488 325 https://x.com/blarn357857/status/1801920586677154113 35 increased between January and April, but their contribution suffers from fundamental methodological issues.326 Additional findings Evidence from the Strip reveals some of the actions that desperate Gazans are forced into because of the lack of food.327 Media coverage refers to people eating horse meat,328 grass and drinking contaminated water or sea water.329 One video shows a group of people swimming in an area flooded with sewage to procure airdropped aid that landed in that area.330 As of late March, about 18 Gazans died from circumstances associated with attempting to get aid (aid falling on Gazans, trampling, and drowning while trying to get to aid that fell in the sea).331 Others fell as a building on which an airdrop of aid landed had collapsed.332 About 60 percent of Israeli Jews oppose humanitarian aid to Gaza, a stable figure over time.333 Jewish activists have completely blocked the entrance of aid to Gaza on several occasions in recent months.334 IDF soldiers recorded themselves destroying and burning food warehouses in Gaza.335 In May, Israeli settlers/protestors blocked336 and sometimes attacked Jordanian convoys of aid to Gaza.337 Such attacks included causing massive damage to the trucks themselves, as well as throwing away the humanitarian aid onto the road.338 Some of these attacks took place near IDF blockades and local eyewitnesses noted that the Israeli soldiers and the police allowed the destruction and looting of aid to take place.339 Other road blocks took place in major cities – including Jerusalem – 326 Besides the key problem of not dealing with three of the four pillars of food security (availability, access, utilization and stability) which the scholars acknowledge, the scholars’ paper is problematic because, among others, it (1) examines the trend from January to April, which was positive because of the influx of food in April after the World Central Kitchen attack, but declined afterwards (see below); (2) does not differentiate between the north of the Gaza Strip, where all evidence suggests food security was far worse in the period of the study, to the rest of the Gaza Strip; (3) overlooks all pre-war local food production in Gaza in its comparison between the pre-war and war conditions; (4) overlooks Palestinians as humans, for example by not including any references to the massive mortality in the Strip, the destruction of infrastructure, the deaths of Palestinians trying to get aid, the deaths of Palestinians from malnutrition and dehydration. Israeli deaths are mentioned; (5) accepts without criticism the numbers by the IDF’s COGAT, which has argued for example that 98.7% of all aid trucks were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip (p. 18) – numbers that are incongruent with the vast majority of evidence coming from the UN, international countries and media outside the Strip; (6) accepts without criticism claims such as the ones associated with the US pier or the New York Times’ Screams Without Words article (the first failed and the second was widely acknowledged as severely flawed, see below for both). For the paper: https://biochem-food-nutrition.agri.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/biochem-food-nutrition/files/preprintnutritional-assessment-of-food-aid-delivered-to-gaza-via-israel-during-the-swords-of-iron-war.pdf ; for the coverage in Israeli media: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bkojsnksa 327 https://twitter.com/amirs74/status/1771198476446998611 328 https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240224-dead-horses-scraps-leaves-gaza-s-hungry-get-desperate; https://twitter.com/KhalilAsslan/status/1773732648847876569 329 https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/middleeast/famine-looms-in-gaza-israel-war-intl/index.html ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-02-07/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018d-8213-daa1-a9fd-e21b04660000; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mN1SRUx0R8 330 https://twitter.com/sarabahaa94/status/1771278625175654815 331 https://twitter.com/arixegal/status/1772657137136619838 ; https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/26/middleeast/palestinians-drown-gazaaid-drop-intl/index.html 332 https://twitter.com/stairwayto3dom/status/1787522270555996657 333 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/52967 334 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-125 ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2024/gaza-aid-truck-sea-airdrop/ ; https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01- 30/ty-article/.premium/a-new-low-the-israelis-advocating-to-starve-the-people-of-gaza/0000018d-5b42-d0fc-a9bd-5f5fc0740000 335 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1757406177883750809 ; also https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/inflicting-unprecedentedsuffering-and-destruction-seven-ways-the-government-of-621591/ (p. 11) 336 https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1789407061555445951 337 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/jordan-says-israeli-settlers-attacked-jordanian-aid-convoys-way-gaza-2024-05-01/ 338 https://twitter.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1787643854155321448 ; https://twitter.com/adinitay/status/1787692297527693802 ; https://politicallycorret.co.il/tlv-jerus/ 339 https://twitter.com/barakravid/status/1790014518828920977 ; https://twitter.com/SuppressedNws/status/1789963866404692320 ; https://twitter.com/jose23317578/status/1790002807312957511 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-13/tyarticle/0000018f-73a1-ddbe-addf-77af249a0000 ; https://twitter.com/Sapir_SLAM/status/1790049348065055039 ; https://twitter.com/ElishaYered/status/1790815866738671858 https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/israeli- 36 with little to no police interference.340 In at least two occasions trucks were burned, 341 and at least in two cases settlers attacked and injured the Palestinian truck drivers who were hospitalized (including once in which the truck was not involved in bringing aid to Gaza). 342 Action against allowing humanitarian aid to Gaza extends beyond fringe groups. According to a Guardian investigation, Israeli soldiers and police tip off the groups that attack the trucks.343 The deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset claimed he blocked aid trucks with his private car.344 In mid June, the Israeli Chief of Police claimed in a letter that the Minister of National Security – a figure closely associated with settler groups – attempted to cancel the police escorts meant to accompany the trucks.345 Non-food shortages (electricity, medicine, water) As of writing, since the beginning of the war there is no electricity supply in Gaza (i.e. full electricity blackout; for comparison, in the years before the war, electricity was available on average for 12-13 hours a day).346 As of December, fuel prices had increased by over 500 percent.347 In April, the price of a liter of gasoline reached 150 shekels (~$40).348 I have not come across subsequent prices for fuel, suggesting that any sales of it are extremely limited. A study revealed that by January nighttime light across Gaza has been reduced by 84% (91% in Gaza City) compared to the pre-war reality.349 This data includes light coming from IDF troops within the Strip, and presumably light from the still functioning Palestinian hospitals that receive petrol for operating their generators. Testimonies from the Strip reveal that university library books were burned as kindling for cooking fires.350 In November, the average water supply per person in Gaza was between 1.5-1.8 liters daily (the minimum average volume of water for drinking and domestic hygiene should be 15 liters),351 but this number decreased to less than one liter on average in February.352 Even basic medical supplies are in short supply. Gauze, for example, is sterilized and reused for the next patient.353 Some have begun to die from treatable diseases such as hepatitis.354 The lack of medical supplies has resulted in the conduction of medical operations, including Csections and amputations, without anesthesia or blood supplies.355 An online video shows a Gazan soldiers-and-police-tipping-off-groups-that-attack-gaza-aid-trucks ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/26/west-bank-aidtrucks-gaza-settlers/ 340 https://x.com/nirhasson/status/1792286756395462866; https://x.com/nirhasson/status/1792293566686884266; https://x.com/nirhasson/status/1792291838310727996 ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sjflyy00x0 ; on police interference: https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-20/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-9268-d212-abcf-d66d978d0000 341 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-13/ty-article/0000018f-73a1-ddbe-addf-77af249a0000 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/war-2023/2024-05-17/ty-article-live/0000018f-833f-dd4f-ab8f97bfba030000?liveBlogItemId=738950520#738950520 ; https://x.com/Mistaclim/status/1791402493173203356 342 https://twitter.com/adinitay/status/1790799451856015791 ; https://twitter.com/JoshBreiner/status/1790802070817091935 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/war-2023/2024-05-17/ty-article-live/0000018f-833f-dd4f-ab8f97bfba030000?liveBlogItemId=738950520#738950520 343 https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/israeli-soldiers-and-police-tipping-off-groups-that-attack-gaza-aid-trucks 344 https://twitter.com/lirishavit/status/1790723920221311015 345 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hj6opjuba 346 https://www.ochaopt.org/page/gaza-strip-electricity-supply 347 https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000154766/download/ 348 https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-04-04/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018e-a379-d315-ab9f-aff98d4b0000 349 https://www.care.org/news-and-stories/press-releases/care-warns-84-of-gazas-lights-extinguished-people-left-sick-and-starving/ 350 https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/gaza-universities-destroyed-israel-military-war/index.html 351 https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/WFP-0000154766/download/ 352 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food-starvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide 353 https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/244-stopping-famine-gaza 354 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1783398458004578791 355 https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-32; https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/nightmarish-gazas-pregnant-women-endure-c-sections-without-anesthesia-15823792; 37 doctor who had to amputate his daughter’s foot on the dining table in their home without anesthesia.356 A medical student at Al-Shifa hospital recounts how he had to stitch the face of a boy who was wounded in an Israeli bombardment for 3 hours in darkness and without anesthesia.357 A British surgeon who visited al-Aqsa hospital recounted in the UN the story of a girl burned so badly that he could see her facial bones. She had no chance of surviving it, so she died in agony because there was no morphine to give her, and because there was no place for her to die in she was simply left on the floor to die. The surgeon stated there were many such cases and recounted several.358 There are many similar stories. These stories have long-term implications. For example, by January there were already over 1,000 Gazan children amputees, each of which will require 8-12 more surgical interventions as they grow up.359 As a result of the lack of supplies, women who face postpartum bleeding as they give birth have undergone hysterotomies for lack of medicine and blood supply, preventing them from giving birth in the future.360 Oxfam’s Middle East Regional Director stated that “Amongst the horror and carnage in Gaza, we are now at the abhorrent stage of babies dying because of diarrhoea and hypothermia. It is shattering that newborns are coming into the world and due to the apocalyptic conditions, stand little chance of survival.” In some cases, mothers had to give birth in classrooms full with 70 other people, which the director described as “simply inhumane”.361 Miscarriages in Gaza have increased by 300% compared to the pre-war situation.362 A doctor from Doctors Without Borders who spent a few weeks in Gaza stated the special vulnerability of breastfeeding women as well, who cannot produce enough milk because of malnutrition, and their infants, who often have neither the milk nor formula because of the lack of clean water in Gaza.363 Women in Gaza also have difficulties finding menstrual pads, with some using alternatives such as the corners of their tents to manage their periods.364 Gaza’s health system Gaza’s health system has all but collapsed. 84% of all health facilities have been damaged or destroyed.365 At times, less than a third of Gaza’s hospitals and a quarter of its primary health centers were even partially operational.366 As of writing, about half of the hospitals in the Strip are https://news.un.org/en/interview/2023/11/1143327; https://healthnews.com/news/c-sections-are-performed-without-anesthesia-ingaza/ ; https://www.juzoor.org/cached_uploads/download/2023/11/11/maternal-health-report-final-1699726911.pdf ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-05-09/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018f-5840-d348-a7bf-fee9cea00000 356 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1746887014337671410 ; a group of strangers volunteered to help her reach the US and fit a prosthetic leg: https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1797909777286090998 357 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1763960723695185934 358 https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1770677587670684039 ; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-anddisease/single-worst-top-oxford-surgeon-horrors-gaza-hospital/ 359 https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-children-who-lost-limbs-in-gaza ; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terrorand-security/gaza-conflict-is-creating-a-generation-of-child-amputees/ 360 https://www.juzoor.org/cached_uploads/download/2023/11/11/maternal-health-report-final-1699726911.pdf 361 https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/babies-dying-preventable-causes-besieged-gaza-oxfam ; also https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gazas-silent-killings-destruction-healthcare-system-rafah 362 https://jezebel.com/miscarriages-in-gaza-have-increased-300-under-israeli-1851168680 363 https://twitter.com/abierkhatib/status/1771451982500229193 364 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/01/11/1224201620/another-layer-of-misery-women-in-gaza-struggle-to-findmenstrual-pads-running-wa 365 https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/14e309cd34e04e40b90eb19afa7b5d15-0280012024/original/Gaza-Interim-DamageAssessment-032924-Final.pdf 366 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-192 ; https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/Sitrep_-_issue_27.pdf 38 partially operational.367 Doctors who visited the Gaza Strip during the war recount horror tales of the conditions within the overcrowded hospitals, the types and quantities of patient cases, and the recurring attacks on hospitals throughout the war.368 There are over a million reported cases of diseases in Gaza so far.369 As of mid June, there have been over 865,000 cases of acute respiratory infections.370 Over 485,000 cases of diarrhea have been reported, over 113,000 of which are among children aged 5 or less.371 In a single week in mid-December, 3,200 cases of diarrhea were reported every day (compared to some 500 per week before the war).372 On average, there is one shower in Gaza for every 4,500 people, and a toilet for every 220.373 Important public voices in Israel – such as a former general and head of Israel’s National Security Council and official wartime advisor to Israel’s Defense Minister374 – have spoken in favor of allowing diseases to decimate the civilian population in Gaza.375 A mid March report found that ~75% of Gaza’s solid waste is dumped into random sites, contaminating water sources, so that 97% of ground water was unfit for human consumption.376 Exposure to high temperatures within refugee tents has also killed Palestinians sheltering inside them.377 Israel has systematically dismantled the health system in Gaza, making it inoperable.378 In late February, the head of MSF stated that “there is no health system to speak of left in Gaza”.379 Israel justified much of this by stating that the medical facilities were used for military purposes, but the head of MSF stated in late February that his organization has “seen zero independently verified evidence of this”.380 In mid March, an Oxfam report stated that Israel continues to block aid response in seven different ways and warned that Gaza “will suffer mass death from disease and starvation far beyond the current 31,000 Palestinian war casualties”.381 A global authority on food security and nutrition released its own report in mid March, highlighting catastrophic levels (the highest level of malnutrition) of food insecurity across the Gaza Strip (55% in the north to 25% in the south).382 An MSF report from April about conditions in Rafah revealed upward trends in the number of cases of acute malnutrition and concluded that the level of exposure of the population to traumatic events “has left the mental health of Gaza’s population in tatters”. The health system in Gaza “stands shattered”, and its long and uncertain road to recovery would take years if not decades.383 367 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 368 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REnN_dLtrLA ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-05-09/ty-articlemagazine/.highlight/0000018f-5840-d348-a7bf-fee9cea00000 369 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 370 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 371 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 372 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-86 373 https://www.who.int/news/item/21-12-2023-lethal-combination-of-hunger-and-disease-to-lead-to-more-deaths-in-gaza; in early January in UNRWA shelters the ratio was 1 toilet for over 486 people. https://www.unrwa.org/resources/reports/unrwa-situation-report59-situation-gaza-strip-and-west-bank-including-east-Jerusalem ; more details and partially updated evidence here: https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Feb_July2024_Special_Brief.pdf (pp. 22-23). 374 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/r1zlcnoga 375 https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001462900 376 https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/inflicting-unprecedented-suffering-and-destruction-seven-ways-the-government-of621591/ 377 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1783397508154052793 378 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/world/middleeast/gaza-israel-hospitals-medical-system.html 379 https://www.msf.org/msf-briefing-gaza-un-security-council 380 https://www.msf.org/msf-briefing-gaza-un-security-council 381 https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/israel-government-continues-block-aid-response-despite-icj-genocide-court-ruling; https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/inflicting-unprecedented-suffering-and-destruction-seven-ways-the-government-of-621591/ 382 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/world/middleeast/gaza-famine-report-starvation.html ; https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Feb_July2024_Special_Brief.pdf 383 https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gazas-silent-killings-destruction-healthcare-system-rafah 39 As a result of the above, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh has stated in December that “the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of Gaza’s 2 million population – close to half a million human beings – dying within a year. These would be largely deaths from preventable health causes and the collapse of the medical system”.384 Other academics reached similar and more detailed conclusions.385 384 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/29/health-organisations-disease-gaza-population-outbreaks-conflict 385 https://gaza-projections.org/gaza_projections_report.pdf 40 Israeli discourse and de-humanization of Palestinians Last updated: June 18, 2024 Dehumanization in Israeli institutions and the IDF Much of the above is made possible through the consistent de-humanization of Palestinians, first and foremost those living in Gaza, discussed in this section, as well as the language and practice that makes them distant, inaccessible or absent to the Jewish Israeli population (on this see the section on the media and propaganda below). 386 This dehumanization has proceeded from the top of the Israeli state. Israel’s Prime Minister has described the conflict as “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle”, 387 stated that “this war is civilization against barbarism” 388 and defined the war as a battle against the Biblical Amalek in both a speech and in a letter he sent to IDF soldiers.389 The Bible directs to annihilate Amalek completely: men, women, children and livestock. 390 Israel’s President has stated that Israel did not distinguish between militants and civilians, “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”.391 He also personally wrote a message on an artillery shell to be shot into Gaza.392 Israel’s Minister of Defense has described the Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals”. At least five other government ministers have made similar statements as late as May. 393 Israel’s National Security minister told Border Police troops they should shoot terrorists even if the terrorists do not threaten them, against procedure.394 The minister of Social Equality and Women’s Advancement asserted that she was proud of the ruins in Gaza and that every baby there, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did.395 In late March, she stated that Israel’s was fighting against the Amalekites “of our times” in explicit context of the religious obligation to exterminate Amalek. 396 A ruling party MP has stated on TV that he was told “it is clear that we need to destroy [or annihilate, depending on translation of להשמיד [all Gazans”.397 Other politicians have done the same.398 Israel’s Ambassador to the UK justified the destruction of Gaza because “every school, every mosque, every second house” was connected to a tunnel Hamas was using and therefore a legitimate target.399 In March, a former general described the people in three areas from which Israel retreated (Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon) as “human animals”.400 As late as mid April, Israel’s Finance Minister stated that “There are 2 million Nazis in Gaza who want to slaughter, rape and murder every Jew”.401 In early May, a Likud official stated that “there are no uninvolved [civilians] there, you have to go in 386 https://humanityjournal.org/blog/discourses-of-palestinian-disappearance/ 387 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/children-post-deleted-netanyahu/ 388 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-to-dutch-leader-this-war-is-civilization-vs-barbarism/ 389 https://www.maariv.co.il/news/politics/Article-1049593; https://www.npr.org/2023/11/07/1211133201/netanyahus-references-toviolent-biblical-passages-raise-alarm-among-critics 390 1 Samuel 15.2-3. 391 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-gaza-isaac-herzog_n_65295ee8e4b03ea0c004e2a8 392 https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-01-03/ty-article/.premium/a-munition-signed-by-israeli-president-could-hit-a-child/0000018ccbc4-d4e1-ad8f-fff5a0c70000 393 https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf, pp. 60-62. ; also https://www.politico.eu/article/ron-prosor-israel-evoy-hamas-animals-must-be-destroyed ; https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1798525376462725150 394 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bkxx1alft 395 https://twitter.com/GolanMay/status/1759675501424042329; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1760354792663142557 396 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1771246005368861008 397 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMxnNkQSfmQ 398 https://twitter.com/AmirHetsroni/status/1743063371551822292 (speaker is Moshe Feiglin); https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/syq0011n006 399 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQtqvSYjMIc 400 https://twitter.com/GLZRadio/status/1773260052683469178 401 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1781995666593456397 ; https://twitter.com/GLZRadio/status/1779764062433284213 41 and kill, and kill, and kill”.402 In mid June, Israel’s Foreign Ministry placed an ad that claimed that “there are no innocent civilians there [in Gaza]”.403 Institutions in Israel’s security apparatus repeatedly dehumanized Palestinians. The IDF ran a Telegram channel (“72 Virgins – Uncensored”) that propagandized Israeli audiences through explicit and uncensored “exclusive” videos and images that depicted killings and corpses in Gaza, using explicit language that also compared Gazans to cockroaches and rats.404 The IDF has published a series of eight poetry volumes that contained poems by civilians, soldiers (including the commander of the IDF Education Corps) and reservists – contained many revenge themes as well poems that treat the war as a religious war.405 Reservists have claimed that the IDF brought rabbis in uniform to speak to soldiers. At least one stated that all Gazans must be destroyed and shot.406 A similar attitude, calling for the extermination of all Gazans, including children, or alternatively ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip, has been voiced by dozens of middle-ranking officers in their social media accounts – sometimes claiming it is the moral thing to do. 407 In January, over 130 reserve generals and colonels serving in Gaza called upon the military to lay siege to the Northern Gaza Strip, block humanitarian aid and stop the operation of any hospital.408 In mid-March Israel’s security apparatus attempted to return to Gaza about 20 Gazan children and adults suffering from debilitating conditions such as cancer and receiving life-saving treatments in hospitals in East Jerusalem and Israel.409 The decision was delayed after a petition by the charity Physicians for Human Rights to Israel’s Supreme Court.410 In April, the IDF scattered fake money bills in the Strip with a portrait of the local Hamas leader depicted as a rat.411 In May, the IDF began an open campaign to blackmail Gazans through airdropped pamphlets and a dedicated website. The campaign targeted Gazans who provided information about their neighbors – including their sexual orientation or extra-marital affairs – to the Hamas security forces. The pamphlets contained the images and IDs of 130 males who were such supposed informants (some were clearly minors). It called upon other informants to reach out to the IDF, and in the meanwhile began publishing the supposed personal information of these Gazan informants. The website provided information to Gazans about whether they were the targets of such surveillance. The information itself was said to be sourced from hundreds of thousands of internal records of Hamas.412 De-humanization in the IDF 402 https://twitter.com/MacaesBruno/status/1787573947690819907 403 https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1801745356289622225 404 The IDF’s involvement was denied at first. https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2023-12-12/ty-article/.premium/0000018c-3918- dc03-a9ec-3d7b95f80000; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-02-04/ty-article/.premium/0000018d-7042-dd6e-a98df462d6a00000 405 https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/literature/2024-03-26/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-7ad9-d96c-af9f-7ed9e9fa0000 406 https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-05-15/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018f-7c03-d808-a9bf-ff1745530000 407 Running list here (34 officers as of mid June): https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1794826941209702699 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1795152167457751511 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796122820683891010 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798073737893511506 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798998289456799978 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801344353375555936 ; also https://zeteo.com/p/gaza-israel-genocide-soldier-rhetoric-instagram ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801316437794963578 408 https://ynet-pic1.yit.co.il/picserver5/wcm_upload_files/2024/01/21/S1mT5hcKp/merged.pdf ; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/globalhealth/terror-and-security/israel-hamas-war-gaza-idf-aid-strike-world-central-kitchen/ 409 https://www.ynet.co.il/health/article/h17117hua6 410 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-20/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-5d54-d27e-a7af-7ffe83dc0000 ; https://twitter.com/PHR_IL/status/1770877688539988234 411 https://twitter.com/N12News/status/1780977153166688378 412 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-21/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-9b46-dce9-a1cf-ffc6dcee0000 ; https://mondoweiss.net/2024/05/israels-extortion-leaflets-and-namecheap-how-to-do-corporate-accountability-during-a-genocide/ 42 The dehumanization of Palestinians is now normative, pervasive and obvious in many hundreds413 of images and videos, almost all of which were uploaded by IDF soldiers to social media. 414 These videos and images present shooting civilians waving white flags,415 abuse of individuals,416 captives and corpses,417 gleefully damaging or destroying houses418, various structures and institutions,419 religious sites420 and looting of personal belongings,421 as well as randomly firing their weapons,422 413 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAT9NQ4WkE0 (hundreds; see below for many others) 414 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/videos-of-israeli-soldiers-acting-maliciously-emerge-amid-international-outcry-against-tacticsin-gaza ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1757920440155242710 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1761868392326148474 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1763708173905506449 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1763563991387746557 ; images at https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1764384165724598533 ; plenty of content at: https://www.wattan.net/ar/news/430229.html?fbclid=IwAR3bg9o99KfZMujG1phBlSJxDhNWlMF6hAaL8nQlaf-3b98IjZVX2BOV4k . Another collection at: https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1769359560131657965 ; another collection at: https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1771890196805517815 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772715497890394325 ; another collection at: https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772964108121313599 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1773452674802806910 ; another collection of dozens of videos and images: https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1773723836254450046 ; https://twitter.com/LensVeritatis/status/1774998396501373207 ; another collection of dozens of videos and images: https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1775998584506167408 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1776588809011970367 (collection) ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1776384065920217472 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1778542167612592554 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1790108960927719626 (collection) ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772964772629111095 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1791770589985640847 (collection) ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1792656511510143472 (collection) ; https://www.mako.co.il/news-n12_magazine/781730bdada5e810/Article-979e397c1ea9f81027.htm ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1795042539084345829/ ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798765503940530377 . More coverage at: https://zeteo.com/p/israel-soldier-gaza-genocide-instagram-facebook 415 https://twitter.com/middleeasteye/status/1744351540435935525 ; https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1750601287102542296; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1749971465422745729 ; see also https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf , paragraphs 208-218. 416 https://www.mistaclim.org/he/post/%D7%94%D7%92%D7%99%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D- %D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%A0%D7%95 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1786440756573680082 417 Long list of videos at: https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1713533460290076817, https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1744296383174025397 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1745427870216851736 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1747994879156793524 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1752258519900766489 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1755891061015064836 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1758617748383453638 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1758914324150538698 ; https://twitter.com/angeloinchina/status/1759769783409738006 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1764778057364042167 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1764759225241129162 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1765447101100785887 ; https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/03/05/social-media-posts-show-offblindfolded-and-bound-palestinian-detainees/ ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1767223231549718862 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1768061335030444144 ; https://twitter.com/Aboujahjah/status/1769867124103598146 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1774197948487725476 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1795048143261724958 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801560741138350491 418 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiC4ApANLwg; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiolU7WwpUQ ; https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240103-israeli-soldiers-invade-damaged-house-in-gaza-and-destroy-it/; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1743665392722059344 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1748137507319939548 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1746581304999542901 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1751618405453422875 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1753158451734220834 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1756458915473105113 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1757155595877032104 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1757163079207358570 ; https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1760434485957390399 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1761849659671085212; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1761723209760608272 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1765297033093538206 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1771330290629157277 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1771541779453546829 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772404140502630573 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1778766344256737443 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1787814577033375768 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1794648644920238114 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1795114456936063484 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796840765189988723 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796999248841453615 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798325368023384423 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798685435356393524 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801743066497212733 419 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1742346460559995063; https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1743626241104543942 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1760038133872095300 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772713480140865594 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1780594979230109978 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1793934222341611526 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1794012735228825939 ; https://x.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1798056593218760839 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1800455049296191612 420 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if_Z2ZeqrN8 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1754458148276990180 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1757054593656103198 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1777799671647191117 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1789978344311648368 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798393141021553018 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1799879016436093021 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1800841913349894346 421 https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/amid-ongoing-genocide-gaza-systematic-israeli-theft-occurring-palestiniancivilian-homes-enar; https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-gaza-singer-helpless-israeli-soldier-filmed-tiktok-hisguitar ; https://twitter.com/BChutzpah19416/status/1750186862579269867; written report that includes a soldier confessing to looting homes before demolishing them: https://medium.com/@dillontelem/gaza-warzone-musings-a-soldiers-reflections-on-demolition-and- 43 shooting local animals,423 destroying private property, 424 burning books within libraries,425 defacing Palestinian426 and Islamic symbols427 (including burning Qurans428 and turning mosques into dining spaces429) and declaring a new Nakba.430 More videos are covered by The New York Times431 and CNN. 432 One video, for example, shows tens of Palestinian captives from Gaza sitting in a bus tied up and with their eyes covered. An Israeli solider then demands that they praise his family and state that they want to become slaves to his family “forever and ever”.433 Another testimony of a Gazan doctor states that the detained director of Al-Shifa medical complex was made to crawl like an animal, had a chain placed around his neck and was told to eat from a bowl like a dog.434 A Gazan detainee said that IDF soldiers placed women detainees from Gaza in the men’s section while being completely naked, and cut the hair of some of the women detainees.435 A detained Gazan woman recounted her story about the abuse and humiliation she suffered during her own detainment, during which she was separated from her little children and IDF soldiers beat her on multiple occasions as well as threatened to bury her alive.436 A Palestinian woman claimed that IDF soldiers carved a Star of David on her husband’s back during his time in detention.437 One soldier filmed a dog eating the corpse of a Gazan, exclaiming that it “took [the corpse of] the terrorist apart”, then moved his camera to discuss the beauty of the view and the sunset.438 Looting has become normalized439 to the extent that one case was featured approvingly in a popular Friday evening news segment,440 while a prominent Israeli journalist’s Telegram channel shared an image of a table full of money with the caption “The [IDF] paratroopers hit the jackpot in Khan humanity-7ddeae313c00 ; https://twitter.com/adinitay/status/1756791144111816917 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1757157210356936804 ; https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1760426342753935765 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1761463006720926062 ; https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1761815084081246331; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1762221066372485260 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772399473018192372 422 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1769705371935912186 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1769359560131657965 ; https://twitter.com/abierkhatib/status/1776475339595628838 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1789265125720920243 ; https://x.com/arixegal/status/1793722854346990066 423 https://twitter.com/Sarah_Hassan94/status/1754620276271149451 424 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1748130778737729911 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1761472312908320798 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1764773062908547579 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1765035342032142672 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772398568621346898 ; https://twitter.com/adinitay/status/1772903912867016869 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1776955769553867178 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1788192609900380361 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1786848576674443715 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1789325679525249441 ; https://x.com/_NicoleNonya/status/1793681516846788943 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796232276818424251 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796239229779062919 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801555895878361567 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801747288328479222 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801740747453940209 425 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1793628894245118205 ; https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/israeli-soldier-burning-books/ 426 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1742273606699106542; https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1743712184725594564 ; https://twitter.com/AlonLeeGreen/status/1787892635186712737 427 https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1769378368431047090 428 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1793032057649512671 ; also https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1793756431881294035 429 https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1801193479470534674 430 https://x.com/YousefMunayyer/status/1791807669797347571 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1793047312115040450 431 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/world/middleeast/israel-idf-soldiers-war-social-media-video.html 432 https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1758204651927744784 433 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1752433175320478060 434 https://twitter.com/adham922/status/1756068057779245412 435 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1756605167946899965 436 https://snd.ps/post/117484/%D9%87%D8%AF%D9%8A%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AF%D8%AD%D8%AF%D9%88%D8%AD- %D8%AD%D8%A7%D9%88%D9%84-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%84- %D8%AF%D9%81%D9%86%D9%87%D8%A7-%D9%88%D8%A3%D8%AE%D8%B6%D8%B9%D9%87%D8%A7- %D9%88%D8%A3%D8%B7%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%87%D8%A7-%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%AD%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%84- %D8%AC%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A ; https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1773318803075531136 437 https://www.instagram.com/landpalestine/p/C4qQ6pltu5N/?img_index=1 438 https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1766132416899420637 439 https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/132092/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-05-15/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018f7c03-d808-a9bf-ff1745530000 440 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1756438313899024862 44 Younis”.441 Soldiers shared an image of themselves with tens of thousands of shekels (thousands of dollars). 442 A military doctor noted disapprovingly that looting had become “almost institutionalized”.443 An IDF soldier attempted to sell online a Gazan passport and other items he had looted while serving in Gaza.444 Another filmed himself sifting what appears to be flour originally delivered to Gaza by humanitarian aid organizations, and cynically thanking them as well as the UN and UNRWA.445 Revenge is a common theme in this content.446 Some IDF soldiers shared social media content that explicitly compared Gazans to the biblical Amalek (see above), 447 as well as stating that they have fulfilled the religious commandment to annihilate the memory of Amalek.448 Other IDF soldiers opened a “Hamas Hunting Club”, complete with a patch and logo, and filmed themselves holding it with Palestinian detainees in the background.449 Other soldiers upload much revenge content and relate it to the destruction of the Gaza Strip, including the destruction they themselves caused.450 A collection of brief interviews with IDF soldiers, uploaded by an IDF soldier, reveals that many of them speak of destroying the Strip and exacting revenge. The creator asserts that “It’s us or them. There is no proportionality and no symmetry”.451 High ranking officers have said similar things.452 In January alone, the IDF burned hundreds of houses and apartments in Gaza which Israeli soldiers temporarily occupied, without legal approval in a procedure that became normative.453 During the Jewish Purim celebration, IDF soldiers filmed themselves reading the Scroll of Esther while indiscriminately firing a mortar found each time the name “Haman” was mentioned (in Jewish tradition, the mentioning of the name “Haman” during reading the Scroll is supposed to be accompanied by loud noise).454 Soldiers preparing to enter Rafah in early May called for “let’s take Rafah apart” as their battle cry.455 Many soldiers release videos that portray their experience and destruction in Gaza as fun and humorous,456 treating their experience like a video game,457 or content that ignores the war, such as 441 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1760599708857237838 442 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772972625532207265 ; also https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796637726835446048 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1802082633679090163 443 https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra13792905 444 https://www.calcalist.co.il/local_news/article/rjytktkra 445 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796133135400210700 446 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1750219568428036237 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1756652152607457781 447 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1762185882994425961 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772965195683336261 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1792891418370781395 448 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1779808804751757387 449 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1765386577855791185 450 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1767900767313182897 451 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772304727457317039 452 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqEj3DzadiM 453 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-01-31/ty-article/.premium/0000018d-5fea-d9df-a9cd-7ffe4e820000 ; https://twitter.com/OmerArvili/status/1753754952155934999 ; see also this undated video of an IDF Major apparently torching a house: https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1769761897358750158 ; also https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772698517145796872 454 https://twitter.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1771197890829898017 455 https://twitter.com/ofercass/status/1787791098095534223 456 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1745063720080793681; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1745491460525375587; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1748075046294163757 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1746696846817325288 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1746685595366125951; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1745973511301026092; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1749272544975229438; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1749593678861984045 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1750782757326795020 ; https://twitter.com/NABEELRAJAB/status/1750228266193969448; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1750627849948532763 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1750540763413287350 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1749795644532035602 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1750197302579343870 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1753422534555427299 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1753536164085010674 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1754091912040968444 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1754553057696784519 ; a long list of additional videos here: https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1755973157515669708 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1757094979460067773 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1760040514915553463 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1759307381169701366 ; https://twitter.com/NaksBilal/status/1761825956950421858; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1761363322182516924 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1761360983174316281 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1762212629576069120 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1762543392997703956; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1766193632661447085 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1766178422361821416 ; 45 conducting a yoga class in an abandoned home in Gaza,458 or a soldier holding up a sign advertising a barber shop in Israel with corpses of dead Palestinians around him.459 A group of armed soldiers in uniform held signs with the message “We, soldiers of the Jewish People’s Army from the [political] Right and Left will not disarm until we erase and annihilate Gaza”.460 One soldier expressed his will to poison the flour on the trucks bringing humanitarian aid to Gazans. 461 Other photos include soldiers posing near election banners for local (Israeli) politicians and restaurant chains “coming soon” to Gaza.462 Recurring types of content include humorously presenting the lingerie of Gazan women463 or posing with items (often toys) from abandoned Gazan houses.464 Ha’aretz, the leftleaning Israel newspaper, covered without irony the good food that IDF soldiers were eating in abandoned homes in Gaza at the same time as their displaced owners were starving.465 N12 has featured a story about the graffiti Israeli soldiers leave in Gazan homes, presenting it positively and even comparing one soldier to the artist Banksy.466 The IDF has even brought influencers to mockingly “review” a “hotel” in Gaza.467 An IDF soldier reflected that other soldiers went into the Gaza Strip as a form of tourism to see the destruction.468 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1766491956090155333 ; more videos and images here: https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1766912143444656544 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1767985211747270834 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1769374467732767049 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1769865723843588124 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1771544787264409759 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1773452109532323868 ; https://twitter.com/LensVeritatis/status/1774471148430111088 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1776049466656579639 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1764936131718635713 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1779619958126784854 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1782212698953990238 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1785074198844453223 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1789942261209325757 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1789587485955072233 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1791167455731048886 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1792923935824048336 ; https://x.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1792940664193470525 ; https://x.com/Partisangirl/status/1793446435935211536 ; https://x.com/_NicoleNonya/status/1793684246512746500 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1794346305571184910 ; https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1794102771026723277 ; https://x.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1795879315155910854 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796228939251343652 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798801765845897336 ; https://x.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1800979476961984982 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801359465419055210 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801379681423245664 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801700803251695684 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801966059886399640 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801973888529678428 ; https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1802266606564675886 457 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1800822593777545634 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1802060863731319253 458 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1749956154975744455 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1753536576791970148 ; https://twitter.com/EmilioMorenatti/status/1759669676810904020 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1766582097404137482 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1779481518580125800 459 https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1755129771825000637 460 https://twitter.com/ozleisraelaza/status/1780525230064058757 461 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1780159773981220987 462 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1760407071747719357 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1761039679212671105 463 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1760359033095991623 ; https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1760640827720638639 ; https://twitter.com/wattheactualfuq/status/1760775215418634685; https://twitter.com/bernstein_ariel/status/1761809205147717664 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1762207301920776365 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1762201439785410805 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1763708246227865971 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1763708570514657704 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1764883823857218031 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1765392369531187549 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1766016416371630284 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772748840388419826 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772964108121313599/ ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-soldiers-play-with-gazawomens-underwear-online-posts-2024-03-28/ ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1775564585329729787 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1776717745045803169 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1794433825591738491 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798797098801824165 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801978091654279226 464 https://twitter.com/grapesofwhat/status/1761332020402118799; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1762556002711289987 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1763682787054211217 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1782216567431872723 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1784575504667890128 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1797962472399532407 465 https://www.haaretz.co.il/food/2024-02-13/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018d-82c5-d6dc-ab9f-cffd1ebc0000 466 https://www.mako.co.il/news-n12_magazine/781730bdada5e810/Article-979e397c1ea9f81027.htm 467 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1743296706576269446; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1739728935779234254 ; also the similar https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1801625890633159060 468 https://twitter.com/WarWatchs/status/1783121782557352320 46 In late February, the top IDF lawyer acknowledged that the actions of some soldiers have crossed the criminal threshold, and said that action must be taken against them.469 I have seen almost no reporting on such disciplinary processes within the IDF since the beginning of the war, and in the few cases where such process took place the impact on the IDF soldiers committing the acts was negligible.470 In mid May during another round of ICJ hearings, for example, the IDF moved one soldier whose destruction videos went viral on social media away from the Gaza Strip.471 In late May, Israel’s chief military advocate stated that since the beginning of the war the Military Advocate General had opened 70 investigations on cases that included the deaths of Palestinian detainees (on this see below) and looting.472 As the evidence in this document indicates, this is a miniscule number of investigations compared to the evidence for committed crimes. Dehumanization in Israeli society In the first month of the war, some 18,000 calls to flatten, erase or destroy Gaza were mentioned on Hebrew Twitter (compared to 16 in the month and a half before the war).473 Similar calls appear in public space, for example in graffiti.474 In October, an adviser to Israel’s Prime Minister called for torturing Hamas militants in a graphic way.475 In November, 90 Israeli doctors signed a letter calling to bomb hospitals in Gaza, 476 while the president of Israel’s largest university compared Hamas to Amalek.477 A popular singer used a long series of expletives against Gaza during a show for Israeli soldiers.478 In early January, a long list of rabbis, academics and ten MPs have called for the cessation of all humanitarian aid to Gaza.479 In February, a former senior Mossad figure and an important journalist agreed that children aged 5 and up in Gaza are not uninvolved in the conflict and therefore do not deserve humanitarian aid.480 The Rabbi of Tzefat compared the Gazans to Amalek and claimed that they should be eradicated.481 In April, 42% of Israeli Jews claimed that Israel should not follow international humanitarian law.482 An Israeli media outlet has also noted with glee that the number of deaths of “Arabs” in Gaza in the current war is higher than all previous wars.483 Another prominent Israeli journalist stated on live TV: “there are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip, there are none… and the fact that they are now enjoying themselves on the beach instead of being starved, instead of being jerked around, instead of being severely tormented, instead of hiding from bombing… We should have seen there a lot more revenge, a lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood”.484 Similar sentiments appear on Israel’s main TV 469 https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/02/21/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news#the-israeli-militarys-top-lawyer-reports-some-troopconduct-that-crosses-the-criminal-threshold ; https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-02-21/ty-article/.premium/top-idf-lawyersome-israeli-soldiers-have-engaged-in-criminal-behavior-during-war/0000018d-cbb5-d6e9-a38d-fbbdc0610000 470 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-11/ty-article/0000018e-2c36-d682-a9df-edbe2df50000 ; https://www.calcalist.co.il/local_news/article/rjytktkra 471 https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/defense/750891/ 472 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hkrbsjbvc 473 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-war-rhetoric.html 474 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1790031034408394798 475 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-sara-netanyahu-advisor-torture-gazans-rant 476 https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/israeli-doctors-urge-the-bombing-of-gaza-hospitals/ 477 https://www.hidabroot.org/article/1188125 478 https://www.ice.co.il/social/news/article/988380 “Gaza, you daughter of a bitch, Gaza, you Black, you garbage can, Gaza, you whore…” 479 https://twitter.com/shilofreid/status/1742919348401135788 480 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1757837275830907052 481 https://www.yeshiva.org.il/midrash/52638 482 https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/swords-of-iron-15/ 483 https://twitter.com/itamar_green/status/1741504115874627765 484 https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1782029404916285857 ; https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94_%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%96%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%A8 ; also: https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1795012044699079164 47 channels.485 Similar messages are directed at Arabs/Palestinians in general. An Israeli model/influencer stated that all Palestinians with Israeli citizenships should be annihilated, 486 a sentiment followed by a cameraman for the Israeli Channel 14.487 When three members of a family of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship died in a car accident, large numbers of Israelis voiced their joy on social media.488 An Israeli DJ played the melody of the racist chant “May your village burn”, directed at Palestinians. The crowd at the party began chanting and dancing to the tune.489 An Israeli Telegram channel with 127,000 followers shared the image of a Gazan child with cerebral palsy who starved to death as the sequel to the film E.T.490 A rabbi at the head of a yeshiva for premilitary age men stated that according to Jewish law, all Gazans must be killed, including babies.491 A popular Israeli stand-up comedian mocked Gazans who were killed from faulty airdropped humanitarian aid, declaring that they were “such morons”.492 Israeli TV promoted a genocidal song in which a choir of Israeli children sang lines such as “In a year, there will be nothing there [in Gaza] and we will safely return to our homes. Within a year, we will annihilate everyone and then we will return to plow our fields” (the original song was removed).493 Several Israeli hip hop hits have been released as well, garnering millions of views on YouTube. These songs call for repeated attacks on Gaza, dehumanize Gazans (“All your Fatmas look like whores”) and express glee for Gazans not having food, water and homes (e.g. “You don’t have bread or water. Ah and you don’t have a home either”).494 A senior journalist asserted that Gazans “have earned that hell fairly, and I don’t have a milligram of empathy”.495 A senior commentator stated that “to destroy Hamas… you have to bring Gaza to a humanitarian disaster”.496 Many other media workers and artists have said similar things.497 Voices on the street speak openly and positively about the killing of civilians in Gaza in interviews.498 One t-shirt in Israel features the text “May your [i.e. Arab] village burn”.499 After the IDF bombed and killed 7 workers of an international NGO (discussed above), a popular Israeli telegram channel expressed joy for the deaths for the foreign citizens while discussing them in a humiliating manner.500 When the IDF killed three sons and four grandchildren of Ismail Haniyeh, one of Hamas’s leaders,501 an Israeli journalist cited the religious commandment to erase the memory of Amalek.502 Another Israeli journalist attached to an image of the Israeli bombing of civilians in Rafah in late May, which killed dozens, the text “the central lighting [i.e. of bonfires for Lag BaOmer, which took place that day] this year in Rafah”.503 Some Israeli police officers apparently believe that there are no innocents in Gaza, including a fetus in his mother’s womb.504 485 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1790909070708285910 486 https://x.com/z_00pIz/status/1791336664666603703 487 https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1794698212206653773 488 https://x.com/Ahmad_tibi/status/1801934557723419012; https://x.com/z_00pIz/status/1802321259188920411 489 https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1794351306028839298 490 https://twitter.com/CensoredMen/status/1765773664325075354 491 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sy3bfhu6p ; also https://olam-katan.co.il/archives/12261 492 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1769159335299485732 ; also https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1784224046562816158 493 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV0pEUXMz6M 494 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1768989430084227090 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rk3n9V-aQs ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfZOJYA7EOg 495 https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/media/2023-12-19/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018c-7d09-de44-a9be-7d9d47790000 496 https://twitter.com/freyisrael1/status/1769996721591877793 497 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1768045698350465445 ; https://twitter.com/bokeralmog/status/1782777513678196933 ; see also https://x.com/IsraelGaley/status/1799689832257749110 498 https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5YJhcgIsyz/ 499 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1780222143445205191 500 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1775162156792631334 501 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/three-sons-hamas-leader-haniyeh-killed-israeli-airstrike-2024-04-10/ 502 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1778072422530400755 503 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1794826941209702699 ; also https://x.com/idanlandau/status/1794956280504930630 504 https://twitter.com/AlissaShira/status/1787096840216654241 48 Israeli demonstrators have repeatedly attempted to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, including holding a rave/protest just outside the border wall.505 After the “flour massacre” on 29 February, Israel’s Minister of National Security called to “completely support” all IDF troops while also calling for stopping all humanitarian aid to Gazans.506 Some IDF soldiers have also called to stop all humanitarian aid.507 When the IDF transferred about 70 Gazan orphans to the West Bank as a gesture of good will to Germany, it was harshly criticized by both politicians and the government.508 In early May, an Israeli crowd attempted twice to set fire to UNRWA’s main building in Jerusalem, calling “let your UN burn” as well.509 When a teacher was suspended for participating in a Nakba commemoration, the children of her school demonstrated against her, repeatedly shouting “may your village burn”.510 The de-humanization of Palestinians is closely associated with a sharp increase in Israeli militarism. Israeli dating practices attest to both these changes.511 It became extremely common for soldiers and reservists during the war to upload to their social media accounts, including accounts on dating apps, content related to the war – such as images of themselves in uniform brandishing guns, standing in front of destroyed buildings, sitting in abandoned homes, or filming themselves with Gazan detainees.512 One Tinder bio, for example, stated that “We are not only here to fuck Hamas”.513 Both men and women, both within straight and LGBT communities and dating apps, have reported that these images have increased the “stock value” of those that upload them (a similar effect was reported for soldiers in uniform who frequented bars).514 All of the above legitimizes as well as incentivizes violent behavior in the war within the Gaza Strip. Effects of de-humanization on detained and arrested Palestinians Thousands of Palestinians have been detained and moved to camps within Israel.515 Many of these Palestinians (as much as 85-90% according to Israeli media) are detained without any concrete 505 https://twitter.com/Lowkey0nline/status/1757326323712774650 ; https://twitter.com/loffredojeremy/status/1762480372963508266 ; https://twitter.com/mekomit/status/1768220704833446359 506 https://twitter.com/itamarbengvir/status/1763196768458604583 507 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1785410517823046018 508 https://www.inn.co.il/flashes/981582; https://www.mako.co.il/news-diplomatic/2024_q1/Article-ad64e47a0ed2e81026.htm; https://www.zman.co.il/newsletter/2024-03-12/; https://www.jdn.co.il/news/2157725/; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024- 03-12/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-3344-d5ad-addf-7f5518fc0000; https://chabad.info/news/war/1063572/; https://news.walla.co.il/item/3649971 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/on-the-line/2024-03-13/ty-article/.highlight/0000018e-32dfd897-a58f-b7dfad0b0000 509 https://twitter.com/UNLazzarini/status/1788643951945150790 510 https://x.com/AlonLeeGreen/status/1791788316943106366 511 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-24/ty-article-magazine/.premium/were-not-only-here-to-fuck-hamas-how-israelimilitarism-took-over-online-dating/0000018e-60aa-d27e-a7af-7aeec5b00000 512 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-24/ty-article-magazine/.premium/were-not-only-here-to-fuck-hamas-how-israelimilitarism-took-over-online-dating/0000018e-60aa-d27e-a7af-7aeec5b00000 513 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-24/ty-article-magazine/.premium/were-not-only-here-to-fuck-hamas-how-israelimilitarism-took-over-online-dating/0000018e-60aa-d27e-a7af-7aeec5b00000 514 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-24/ty-article-magazine/.premium/were-not-only-here-to-fuck-hamas-how-israelimilitarism-took-over-online-dating/0000018e-60aa-d27e-a7af-7aeec5b00000 515 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/09/gaza-civilians-detained-israel/ ; https://twitter.com/YinonMagal/status/1754505872753979498 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1755342772670804416 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/world/middleeast/unrwa-gaza-detention-israel.html ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1772380808327618560 ; an UNRWA report mentioned 1,506 detainees released through a single crossing point by April 4: https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/summary_on_detention_and_alleged_illtreatmentupdated.pdf ; https://x.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1793359108147728835 . In late May the number was supposedly 4,000, with more than 1,500 released, which seems like an undercount in light of the UNRWA number above: https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-27/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-ba6b-dfb0-a7af-fb7b4c150000. Gaza’s Government Media Office estimates that at least 5,000 citizens were detained: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6342/Hostages-of-Israelirevenge-in-the-Gaza-Strip:-Testimonies-of-100-released-Palestinian-detainees-reveal-crimes-of-torture,-cruel-treatment 49 connection to Hamas.516 The conditions throughout the process of arrest and detainment are appalling, as a released Gazan poet has narrated in detail in The New Yorker in January.517 Many others have shared similar stories, including on the torture they experienced.518 One NGO wrote a report based on interviews with 100 released Palestinian detainees, revealing various kinds of torture and abuse and concluding that “the Israeli army routinely and widely commits crimes of arbitrary arrest, enforced disappearance, willful killing, torture, inhumane treatment, sexual violence, and denial of a fair trial.”519 For example, several Palestinians claimed that the IDF brought groups of 10-20 Israeli civilians to watch the torture they underwent when they were detained. 520 Online videos provide more evidence for the torture. 521 In one, a Gazan doctor who was detained by Israel said that he was held for 45 days, throughout which he was blindfolded and handcuffed, with his legs tied in clamps in what amounts to torture. He was subsequently released.522 The official position of Israel’s medical directorate recommends such blindfolding and handcuffs.523 At least 8 Palestinian prisoners and captives have died in Israeli jails since the beginning of the war,524 where conditions are appalling as well.525 The IDF has admitted that additional detained Palestinians from Gaza have died but refused to supply additional details,526 until in early March Ha’aretz revealed that 27 Gazans died in IDF detention.527 By late May, the number increased to 35 including two who died en route to the detention facility after soldiers beat them, and two who died because of poor medical treatment.528 By early June, the number of Palestinians who died in potentially criminal circumstances according to the IDF increased further to 48.529 For comparison, in the notorious American Guantánamo prison, 9 prisoners died over more than 20 years of operation.530 The IDF refused to answer whether it opened Military Police investigations for the deaths of these Gazans. 531 In late March, Physicians for Human Rights Israel examined 10 cases of 516 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-12-10/ty-article/.premium/0000018c-542b-df2f-adac-fe2f4bf80000 ; but see also the numbers here: https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-27/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-ba6b-dfb0-a7af-fb7b4c150000 517 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/01/a-palestinian-poets-perilous-journey-out-of-gaza 518 https://www.mekomit.co.il/20-%d7%a9%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%a2%d7%9c- %d7%94%d7%91%d7%a8%d7%9b%d7%99%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%9e%d7%99-%d7%a9%d7%96%d7%96- %d7%9e%d7%95%d6%bc%d7%9b%d6%b6%d6%bc%d7%94-%d7%90%d7%96%d7%a8%d7%97%d7%99%d7%9d/ ; https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1747273886264443173 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1756754492790349978 ; https://twitter.com/marwasf/status/1762590590737207562 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-10-23/tyarticle/.premium/0000018b-5be6-d473-a5fb-7fefd68c0000 ; https://twitter.com/Kahlissee/status/1783737956026454347 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1785941575157067916 ; https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1786857586098155534 ; https://x.com/EuroMedHR/status/1794349445498421495 ; https://x.com/ihcentoo/status/1797391918172659737. Many accounts here: https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6342/Hostages-of-Israeli-revenge-in-the-Gaza-Strip:-Testimonies-of-100-released-Palestiniandetainees-reveal-crimes-of-torture,-cruel-treatment ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6367/Killing,-torture,-and-injections-ofunknown-substances:-Intl.-community-must-act-on-Israeli-violations-of-Gaza-detainees 519 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6342/Hostages-of-Israeli-revenge-in-the-Gaza-Strip:-Testimonies-of-100-released-Palestiniandetainees-reveal-crimes-of-torture,-cruel-treatment 520 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6153/ 521 https://twitter.com/brown_johnbrown/status/1743021596682371453 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1753512387322474545 ; https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1753044873974849578 ; https://twitter.com/arixegal/status/1759978751524212926 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1780281723424547297 522 https://twitter.com/ReneeLevant/status/1754269959927079245 523 https://img.mako.co.il/2023/12/20/MEDIC.pdf 524 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-12-06/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018c-3b9b-d11b-a3bf-ffbb16d80000; https://twitter.com/KhalilAsslan/status/1741926482463633866 ; https://twitter.com/MustafaBarghou1/status/1761325667252092984 525 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1759571535637954816 526 https://www.mekomit.co.il/20-%D7%A9%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%A2%D7%9C- %D7%94%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%99-%D7%A9%D7%96%D7%96- %D7%9E%D7%95%D6%BC%D7%9B%D6%B6%D6%BC%D7%94-%D7%90%D7%96%D7%A8%D7%97%D7%99%D7%9D/ 527 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-07/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-1240-df16-a58e-1ffedcf70000 ;also 2 more here: https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1781018819961454697 ; and one more here: https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1789930610783408368 528 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-28/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-bbb6-dc1f-abef-ffbf9de50000 ; for examples see: https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1781018819961454697 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1789930610783408368 529 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-06-03/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-dab1-db0d-a98f-def9186a0000 530 https://reprieve.org/uk/campaign/guantanamo/faq/ 531 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-01-02/ty-article/.premium/0000018c-c6e1-d6c4-ab8d-e7f5fd670000 50 Palestinians who died in detention facilities, and participated in the autopsies of five. In two cases, the autopsies found severe signs of violence and assault, four people suffered from medical issues, and in one case the specific cause of death was medical neglect.532 According to a law amendment that was passed after the beginning of the war, Israel can now hold “illegal fighters” as detainees for up to 45 days without a warrant or notifying their families, and putting a detainee in contact with their lawyer can be delayed for up to 75 days (or half a year, if a judge approves).533 The same law was used, for example, to detain and imprison an 82-year old woman with Alzheimer disease for almost two months.534 Israel has declared that families of detainees can receive no information about them for the first 90 days of their detention, after which they can send an email to a generic email address to attempt to schedule an appointment between the detainee and a lawyer.535 As a result of these policies, for example, a Gazan who was detained with his wife said that she was separated from their children (a 4 year old boy and a half year old baby), and that since his release he has not found her or them.536 Early details from an UNRWA report based on over a hundred interviews with released detainees contained many gruesome details, such as a Gazan law student who was beaten so badly that his genitals turned blue and his urine continued to contain blood for weeks. He was forced to sleep naked in the open air, next to a fan blowing cold air, and was played music so loudly that his ears bled.537 The released UNRWA report added details, referring for example to some detainees being forced into cages and attacked by dogs (several released detainees, including a child, had dog bite marks).538 Detainees were threatened with prolonged detention, injury or the killing of their family members if they did not provide information.539 One detainee stated that the soldiers shot nails on his knee, and that those nails were kept there for about 24 hours. Other forms of abuse include drinking from toilets, keeping at least one group of detainees naked, and sticking an electric probe up the anus of male detainees (one person is said to have died after such treatment).540 An ABC report interviewed one Palestinian who described how Israeli forces would bring dogs on a leash to pee on the detainees and feed detainees rotten food and salted water.541 Another detainee recounted he lost 37 kilograms during his period in detention and described experiencing electric shocks as a form of torture.542 One released detainee recounted that he could use the restroom for only four minutes, after which he would be electrocuted.543 One British doctor returning from Gaza recounted the case of a Gazan who had to use a wheelchair and had been detained for a few weeks during which he was handcuffed and developed pressure sores on both sides. When he was released, his hip bones were visible on both sides.544 A BBC investigative report in mid-March found that the IDF beat, humiliated and detained for days dozens of Gaza medical staff from Nasser hospital. The UK foreign secretary said that the report was “very disturbing”, 545 while the UNICEF 532 https://www.phr.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Death-in-Israeli-Prisons-28.03.24-Ver.pdf 533 https://www.mekomit.co.il/20-%d7%a9%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%aa-%d7%a2%d7%9c- %d7%94%d7%91%d7%a8%d7%9b%d7%99%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%9e%d7%99-%d7%a9%d7%96%d7%96- %d7%9e%d7%95%d6%bc%d7%9b%d6%b6%d6%bc%d7%94-%d7%90%d7%96%d7%a8%d7%97%d7%99%d7%9d/ 534 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-02-01/ty-article/.premium/0000018d-5f18-d0af-a3af-7fbcea840000 535 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-02/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-3945-d516-afbf-ffc73dd00000 536 https://twitter.com/Hanine09/status/1769258663837827582 537 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/03/world/middleeast/unrwa-gaza-detention-israel.html 538 https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/summary_on_detention_and_alleged_ill-treatmentupdated.pdf 539 https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/summary_on_detention_and_alleged_ill-treatmentupdated.pdf 540 https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/summary_on_detention_and_alleged_ill-treatmentupdated.pdf 541 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-19/allegations-of-gaza-abuse/103692464 542 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-19/allegations-of-gaza-abuse/103692464 543 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6367/Killing,-torture,-and-injections-of-unknown-substances:-Intl.-community-must-act-onIsraeli-violations-of-Gaza-detainees 544 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEBcDUYtMts 545 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68513408; https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-68546268 51 spokesperson revealed the extent of destruction in the then-empty hospital.546 As of June, according to one NGO, international press reports documented at least 7 cases of rape against Palestinian prisoners and detainees.547 In early April, an Israeli doctor in the hospital in the detainment facility Sde Teiman described in a letter the harsh conditions in which the detained Gazans are held. His letter stated that in the week of his writing, two patients’ legs were amputated because of injuries they sustained because of the way in which their legs were restrained during their detainment (“this is a regular event”). All patients in the hospital are straw-fed, wear diapers, are blindfolded and their hands and feet are all handcuffed548 (even before the war, 95% of prisoners were restrained when they received medical treatment)549 . Another doctor reported the same and added that the detainees are naked except for the diapers. He believed that “even the medical treatment at the base amounted to torture”.550 A medical source described the situation as “it’s like a different world or a black hole. There’s a disease incubator there”.551 In mid-April Physicians for Human Rights Israel called to “Shut down the Sde Teiman Facility Now”, stating that it reflects “a moral and professional low point”.552 A further investigation by CNN in May confirmed the aforementioned findings based on three Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the camp. It also added descriptions such as that “the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot”. Gazas were regularly beaten “out of revenge”, while the Gazans were “stripped down of anything that resembles human beings”. 553 A New York Times report in June provided additional similar evidence, adding details about the rape of male Gazan detainees. 554 An Israeli medic said that he was ordered to perform medical procedures outside his area of expertise, and that he was ordered to perform these medical procedures without anesthesia.555 For weeks the facility’s hospital lacked medicine for treating chronic illnesses. In early April the facility held some 600-800 Gazans (and 849 others were arrested in Israeli prisons), 556 but Israel began phasing out the camp in early June.557 The number of women detained in Gaza (and the West Bank) since Oct. 7 has been in the hundreds (140 in Gaza in mid-December558). In mid-February, a panel of experts appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Council found evidence for egregious human rights violations, including keeping Gazan women in a cage in the rain and cold, without food, sexual assault against detained women including rape in two cases, and threats of rape and sexual violence, as well as uploading pictures of female detainees in degrading circumstances.559 One Palestinian detained woman stated that “For the most of the interrogations, I and the majority of the detainees were repeatedly threatened with rape”.560 Another Palestinian woman has spoken about the sexual, emotional and physical abuse she has 546 https://twitter.com/1james_elder/status/1770440852717912117 547 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6367/Killing,-torture,-and-injections-of-unknown-substances:-Intl.-community-must-act-onIsraeli-violations-of-Gaza-detainees ; see also below. 548 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-04/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-9ac3-dd2b-ad9f-dadb900f0000 549 https://www.israelhayom.co.il/health/article/14391915 550 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-19/allegations-of-gaza-abuse/103692464 551 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-28/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-bbb6-dc1f-abef-ffbf9de50000 552 https://www.phr.org.il/en/shut-down-the-sde-teiman-facility-now/ 553 https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd/index.html 554 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-detention-base.html 555 https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd/index.html ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-10/ty-article/0000018f-622a-d9a0-a38f-ee2f1f8e0000 556 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-04/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-9ac3-dd2b-ad9f-dadb900f0000 557 https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/middleeast/israel-top-court-sde-teiman-hearing-intl/index.html ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-06-05/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-e1b1-db29-a3ef-edbb381c0000 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-06-11/ty-article/00000190-0719-da02-a1dc-ff5b23460000 558 https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/un-human-rights-office-opt-disturbing-reports-north-gaza-mass-detentionsill-treatment-and-enforced-disappearances-possibly-thousands-palestinians 559 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/israelopt-un-experts-appalled-reported-human-rights-violations-against 560 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6342/Hostages-of-Israeli-revenge-in-the-Gaza-Strip:-Testimonies-of-100-released-Palestiniandetainees-reveal-crimes-of-torture,-cruel-treatment (p. 45). 52 experienced for over a month in which she was detained.561 Other women have said similar things.562 In late March, an Israeli former general claimed that a US official accused the IDF of “systematically” abusing Palestinian women.563 In late May, an NGO report described that women detainees were sometimes kept nude in front of male soldiers and were threatened with rape, as well as undergoing the same forms of torture that men detainees underwent.564 561 https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1762502752184467495 562 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1772749440027074609 ; https://twitter.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1773318803075531136. In late March, a woman claimed (almost certainly falsely) that IDF soldiers had raped Palestinians in context of a raid into al-Shifa hospital but the account was removed and both a former editor at al-Jazeera (that published it) and the woman’s brother stated it was false. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mN1SRUx0R8 ; https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240324-women-in-gaza-are-being-rapedand-this-is-not-being-investigated-or-reported/ ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1771585576963092757 ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/by115igc0a ; https://www.timesofisrael.com/al-jazeera-report-alleging-idf-rapes-in-shifa-hospital-retracted/ 563 https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-793420 564 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6342/Hostages-of-Israeli-revenge-in-the-Gaza-Strip:-Testimonies-of-100-released-Palestiniandetainees-reveal-crimes-of-torture,-cruel-treatment 53 Ethnic cleansing Last updated: June 18, 2024 Ethnic cleansing is openly discussed in Israeli discourse, including by ministers in the ruling government. This includes the ministers of Finance,565 National Security (who also stated he would like to live in Gaza), 566 Heritage (who also called to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza), 567 Agriculture (who claimed that another Nakba was ongoing),568 the former Minister of Information569 and a former Minister of Justice.570 Israel MPs have also participated in the discussion.571 Other state officials have said similar things. The head of a local council, for example, proposed to send all Gazans to Lebanon, flatten the whole Strip so “it becomes an empty museum like Auschwitz”.572 Some IDF officers and soldiers fighting in Gaza support the same idea.573 A Israeli government plan proposal to repopulate all Gazans to the Sinai Peninsula (part of Egypt) has been leaked.574 Israel has also attempted to get the US to pressure Egypt into accepting Gazan refugees,575 and has attempted to convince several countries including Congo to accept Palestinian refugees.576 Other locations members of Israel government suggested as potential resettlement locations include Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the European Union and Chile.577 According to Israeli media, Chad and Rwanda have expressed interest to accept tens of thousands of Palestinians in exchange for generous financial support that included military support.578 In early February a coalition MP stated that the removal of Gazans from the North of the Strip is “the only achievement we have in the war”.579 In mid-February a local human rights organization revealed that Egypt was building a high-security area for the reception of Palestinian refugees,580 and in late March an Egyptian source claimed Egypt was preparing for the entrance of 150,000 Palestinians during an Israeli invasion of Rafah.581 Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, suggested in mid March that Israel should remove civilians from Gaza and added that “waterfront property [in Gaza] could be very valuable”.582 According to 565 https://www.timesofisrael.com/ministers-call-for-resettling-gazas-palestinians-building-settlements-in-strip/ ; https://x.com/N12News/status/1798769743119167566 566 https://www.timesofisrael.com/ministers-call-for-resettling-gazas-palestinians-building-settlements-in-strip/ ; https://www.kikar.co.il/%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%90%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA/sdtng3 ; https://x.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1798729352412319874 567 https://twitter.com/Eliyahu_a/status/1772645094295830643 ; https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/politic/596470/ 568 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-12/ty-article/israeli-security-cabinet-member-calls-north-gaza-evacuation-nakba2023/0000018b-c2be-dea2-a9bf-d2be7b670000 569 https://www.hidabroot.org/article/1187840 570 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEu-dQWOlL4 571 https://twitter.com/tzvisuccot/status/1754822778950148138 ; see also https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf, paragraphs 138- 141. 572 https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-778367 573 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1794113236708573451 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1794826941209702699 574 https://www.mekomit.co.il/%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%a1%d7%9e%d7%9a-%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%9c%d7%90-%d7%a9%d7%9c- %d7%9e%d7%a9%d7%a8%d7%93-%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%95%d7%93%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%99%d7%9f- %d7%9b%d7%99%d7%91%d7%95%d7%a9-%d7%a2%d7%96%d7%94-%d7%95/ ; https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gazapopulation-transfer/ 575 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/21/biden-netanyahu-dispute-palestinian-state/ 576 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-officials-said-in-talks-with-congo-others-on-taking-in-gaza-emigrants/ 577 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/01/04/gaza-displaced-civilians-resettlement-israel/ 578 https://www.zman.co.il/453910/popup/ 579 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/war-2023/2024-02-05/ty-article-live/0000018d-762a-dd6e-a98df62a9c200000?liveBlogItemId=310435701#310435701 580 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-egypt-building-buffer-zone-palestinian-refugees 581 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hkl1144rkc ; https://www.alaraby.co.uk/politics/%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1- %D8%AA%D8%B7%D9%84%D8%A8-%D9%85%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%88%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AA- %D9%88%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%B9%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%85%D9%86- %D8%A3%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%83%D8%A7-%D9%82%D8%A8%D9%84-%D8%B9%D9%85%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9- %D8%B1%D9%81%D8%AD 582 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev 54 estimates, the number of Palestinians who left to Egypt by April was 30-50 thousand.583 In early April, a coalition MP said that several government offices were working on an operational program to resettle the Gaza Strip with a Jewish population “behind the scenes”.584 In late April, Israel’s Minister of Finance described the upcoming battle in the southern Gaza Strip as against Amalek, and called for absolute destruction of the cities there.585 The absence of clear war plans,586 war goals or a clear end game to the war has allowed many Israelis to support the resettling of Gaza with Jewish settlements after the war.587 Over 30 right-wing organizations have supported this goal in a late January conference.588 A total of 11 ministers and 15 MPs (of a total of 120) participated in the conference.589 Several IDF soldiers have stated their will to resettle Gaza while uniformed and within Gaza.590 In March, the commander of an armored battalion did the same during an interview with Israeli TV.591 A poll from December found that 58% of Israelis (likely Jews) believe that the entire population of Gaza should be transferred away from the Gaza Strip.592 Other polls from January, February, March and April reveal that some 20-25% of Israeli Jews believe that Israel should resettle Gaza.593 A poll from March-April revealed that 50% of Israeli Jews thought that Israel should govern the Gaza Strip after the war. 594 Anecdotal evidence from Gaza and Israeli society provides more indications: A video from late February presents an Israeli civilian tractor sowing fields within the Gaza Strip as a “victory photo”.595 In early March, Jewish activists were able to briefly enter the Gaza Strip in an attempt to build a settlement there.596 A video of a military convoy driving in a major road in the Strip reveals a very large number of Israeli flags placed along it.597 A prominent settler leader declared in an interview on CNN that removing the local population of Gaza is necessary, while also claiming that she had a list of 500 Jewish families that were ready and willing to resettle Gaza.598 A former MP claimed on TV in June that “we [Israeli Jews] could not live in this land if even one such Islamo-Nazi remains in Gaza, and not before we return to Gaza and turn it into Hebrew Gaza”.599 583 https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-04-04/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018e-a379-d315-ab9f-aff98d4b0000 584 https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1777360030380986803 585 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1785075803870404644 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-30/tyarticle/.premium/0000018f-2e6c-d502-a5bf-eeeeebb50000 586 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/18/biden-israel-gaza-rafah-palestinians/ 587 https://www.mako.co.il/news-politics/2023_q4/Article-9f47fed9563eb81027.htm ; https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article794770 588 https://twitter.com/AlonLeeGreen/status/1746855797328433438 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/world/middleeast/israelgaza-settlers.html 589 https://www.mako.co.il/news-politics/2024_q1/Article-7ce65d03aa05d81027.htm 590 https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1746854844818681861; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1745907053426565605 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1781809245312180237 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1788897079642689855 ; https://x.com/abierkhatib/status/1793720981607071831 ; several images in this thread: https://x.com/YehudaShaul/status/1737112308672016760 591 https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/defense/727102/ ; he was reprimanded as a result. 592 https://www.now14.co.il/%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A8- %D7%AA%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%9A-%D7%91%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%99- %D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%A2%D7%94-%D7%92%D7%9D-%D7%91%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%99/ ; a similar question in the same poll had higher support. Also: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/ryals5f00p 593 https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/swords-of-iron-14/ ; https://jppi.org.il/en/%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%A8- %D7%97%D7%93%D7%A9-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%9D- %D7%95%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%90%D7%99- %D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%9E%D7%A1 ; https://en.idi.org.il/articles/53666 594 https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/30/israeli-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/ 595 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1760758994350588388 596 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/r11oner3a; https://www.972mag.com/israeli-settlers-gaza-outpost-erez-crossing/ 597 https://twitter.com/VerminusM/status/1774080556701245486 598 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkXJwErm8DM ; also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqRzfb2oMaM ; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68650815 ; also https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-26/tyarticle/.premium/0000018f-15e8-da70-a7bf-7deb81b40000 599 https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1802435990251848148 55 Inside the Gaza Strip, IDF soldiers appear to have constructed “the first synagogue in Khan Younis”,600 another synagogue there,601 as well as inaugurated a Torah scroll in at least four occasions (Sheikh Radwan in Gaza City, the Islamic University in Gaza, Khan Younis, and the Netzarim Corridor).602 One soldier filmed himself spray painting the Temple in Jerusalem on the ruins of a destroyed mosque in Gaza.603 An IDF military “pizzeria” has allegedly opened in Khan Younis, and soldiers placed a sign of a fast food restaurant that might soon open in Gaza.604 Other soldiers hold a commercial sign of an American construction company from New Jersey (and an American flag) with the destroyed buildings of Gaza in the background.605 Donna Italia (an international pizzeria chain) appears to have opened a pizzeria in a displaced family’s home in Khan Younis to support IDF troops.606 Many of these initiatives, it seems, were relatively short-lived. In late March, it appears that soldiers recorded themselves reading the Scroll of Esther in al-Shifa hospital.607 Videos from April show that soldiers took over the Turkish Palestinian Friendship Hospital, turned it into a barracks and celebrated a large Passover feast (seder?) in it. 608 A different unit took over a Gazan school, transforming it into its base.609 In May, a journalist showcased the first military synagogue in the area of Rafah, 610 while soldiers from an IDF unit prepared a makeshift sign declaring a new settlement in the Gaza Strip.611 All the evidence I have seen indicates that Israel is systematically destroying Gaza to make it unlivable in the future. In the first week of fighting, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza – over the annual total used by the US in Afghanistan.612 In the first three months of fighting Israel had destroyed over 10,000 buildings in the Strip – compared to some 4,700 buildings in Aleppo after three years of fighting. A coalition of aid groups stated in December that rebuilding the housing destroyed to that point will take 7 to 10 years if financing is available and will cost some $3.5 billion.613 According to a joint report by the World Bank and the UN, the cost of damage to physical structures alone was around $18.5 billion at the end of January (the cost during the 2014 Protective Edge was $1.4 billion).614 In mid May a UN official stated that rebuilding could cost around $50 billion over two decades.615 The amount of debris created by the destruction of residential areas (estimates ranged between 26 and 37 million tons in April) will take many years to remove.616 A top UN demining official claimed that simply clearing the debris could take as much as 14 years.617 An expert 600 https://twitter.com/yanivkub/status/1742189448006127715 601 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1745979741931282775 602 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1743588216630919271 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1750793042850664750 ; https://twitter.com/KhalilAsslan/status/1753364384800252200 ; https://x.com/moshebs11/status/1766830282219372906 603 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1756666882331988140 604 https://twitter.com/arixegal/status/1747704367145201666 605 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1759534834710352030 606 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1753547113638604865 ; also https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1765450350549487672 607 https://twitter.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1771974813491360211 608 https://twitter.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1778864079995568598 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1784694240921989320 609 https://twitter.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1785413134011838765 610 https://twitter.com/YakiAdamker/status/1787846143096828303 611 https://twitter.com/T_Nachala/status/1786806755374084274 612 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-04/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/amid-israeli-destruction-in-gaza-a-new-crimeagainst-humanity-emerges-domicide/0000018c-d585-d751-ad8d-ffa5965e0000 613 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542 ; https://twitter.com/NRC_MiddleEast/status/1741341343111110950 614 https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/14e309cd34e04e40b90eb19afa7b5d15-0280012024/original/Gaza-Interim-DamageAssessment-032924-Final.pdf ; also the estimate of $20 billion in mid-February: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-postwar-reconstruction-estimated-20-billion-un-trade-body-2024-02-15/ 615 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-02/rebuilding-gaza-to-cost-50-billion-over-two-decades-un-says 616 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-150; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/26/gazas-37m-tonnes-of-bomb-filled-debris-could-take-14-years-to-clear-says-expert ; Earlier estimates stated that removing 8 million tons would take about three years: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gazastrip-and-israel-flash-update-104 617 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/26/gazas-37m-tonnes-of-bomb-filled-debris-could-take-14-years-to-clear-says-expert ; https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1149051 56 on the warfare-related destruction pointed out that the case of Gaza fits the term ‘domicide’, a massive violation of the right to housing and basic infrastructure in residential areas by making them inhabitable, which is itself a crime against humanity.618 Israel is said to have dropped over 500 2,000-pound bombs within the densely populated urban area, despite the massive collateral damage these bombs cause (causing death or injury in a radius of up to 365 meters around the target). These bombs are four times heavier than the largest bombs the United States used when fighting ISIS in Mosul; the US dropped a single such 2,000-pound bomb throughout its fight with ISIS.619 After two months of fighting, Israel had already caused more destruction in Gaza than Syria in Aleppo (2012-2016), Russia in Mariupol in 2022, or (proportionally) the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II,620 as well as the fights against ISIS in Mosul (2016-7) and Raqqa (2017).621 Over 60 percent of Gaza’s housing units have been destroyed or damaged.622 As of mid-January experts estimate based on satellite imagery that between 142,900 to 176,900 buildings have been damaged.623 By early March, 54.8% of the buildings in the Gaza Strip were likely damaged or destroyed (~70% in the North, ~50% in Khan Younis).624 By early June, the amount increased to 58.5%.625 Drone videos reveal the extent of the destruction.626 By late March, some between a quarter and a third of greenhouses were completely destroyed, some 40-48% of tree crops in Gaza have been damaged; some 48% of tree cover has been lost or damaged; and some 38% of farmland (roughly half the Strip’s total land area) was destroyed by Israeli military activity.627 Some of the destruction is purposeful, as indicated in videos by IDF troops.628 As a result of the war and destruction, 89% of Gazan workers lost their jobs by December.629 As of April, all staff of at least one hospital have not been paid since October 7.630 According to estimates, the GDP of Gaza has decreased by some 80%.631 Israel has destroyed not only buildings whose connection to Hamas militants is weak or nonexistent, 632 but also a long list of cultural institutions,633 historical and archaeological sites,634 dozens of governmental buildings (including the parliament635 and the main courthouse)636, religious 618 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-04/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/amid-israeli-destruction-in-gaza-a-new-crimeagainst-humanity-emerges-domicide/0000018c-d585-d751-ad8d-ffa5965e0000 619 https://www.cnn.com/gaza-israel-big-bombs/index.html; https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/israel-opt-us-mademunitions-killed-43-civilians-in-two-documented-israeli-air-strikes-in-gaza-new-investigation/ 620 https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-bombs-destruction-death-toll-scope-419488c511f83c85baea22458472a796 621 https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/14/gaza-war-israel-civilian-deaths-urban-warfare-hamas/ 622 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 623 https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2024/jan/30/how-war-destroyed-gazas-neighbourhoods-visual-investigation 624 https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Feb_July2024_Special_Brief.pdf (p. 6). See also alternatives: https://unosat.org/products/3804 (35% till late February); https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gazadestruction-bombing-israel-aa528542 (50% till late December). 625 https://www.conflict-damage.org/, accessed June 17 (the number is updated to June 1). 626 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1777786701768708193 627 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/29/gaza-israel-palestinian-war-ecocide-environmental-destruction-pollutionrome-statute-war-crimes-aoe ; https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/ecocide-in-gaza 628 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1796232276818424251 629 https://gisha.org/almost-89-of-gaza-residents-have-lost-their-jobs-heb/ ; according to another report from late March, 74% of Gazas were unemployed: https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/14e309cd34e04e40b90eb19afa7b5d15-0280012024/original/Gaza-InterimDamage-Assessment-032924-Final.pdf 630 https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/surgeons_in_gaza 631 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148296 632 https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/ ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1790901748346867875 ; https://x.com/JalalAK_jojo/status/1797296916763418747 633 E.g. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-army-says-it-struck-islamic-university-of-gaza/3015542 634 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-26/ty-article-magazine/.premium/bombing-historical-sites-in-gaza-israel-is-destroyingeverything-beautiful/0000018c-a565-df1f-a7bf-b7e53e8e0000; https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/12/22/gaza-city-archivesamong-heritage-sites-destroyed-in-israel-hamas-war ; https://www.unesco.org/en/gaza/assessment ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1766458940118769799 635 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542 57 buildings (over 233 mosques and 3 churches637), universities (most or all universities in Gaza have been destroyed according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor; at least 5 of 7 major universities were destroyed or partially damaged according to NBC; 12 of 12 were damaged or destroyed according to Le Monde),638 hospitals,639 educational facilities (88% of school buildings sustained some level of damage; 13 public libraries were destroyed or damaged),640 archives,641 and UN offices.642 Already in early December, Israeli attacks destroyed or damaged more than 100 heritage sites, including buildings from Gaza’s medieval, Byzantine and Roman periods 643 (by mid April the number rose to 195 such sites). 644 Soldiers have been filmed within a warehouse filled with antiquities, and there appears to have been a post by the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority that claimed that some of those antiquities were taken to Israel and presented in the Knesset (the post was later deleted).645 An investigative report by an NGO followed a single unit’s path within Gaza, raising serious concerns regarding the justification of the many explosions it was responsible for.646 Certain areas have been completely cleared of Palestinian buildings. For example, one IDF soldier claims his unit received orders to destroy the village of Khuzaʽa and uploaded a video showing that they accomplished the mission over two weeks.647 In this reality, even a simple shelter such as a tent is sold for more than $800. Those who cannot afford such an expense improvise a shelter from simple materials.648 An alternative is to rent half destroyed and burnt apartments. One such apartment in Khan Younis cost $330/month.649 The civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip necessary to the functioning of a society has been severely damaged. Most of Gaza’s 980 registered NGOs have ceased operations.650 Some 88% of all school buildings have sustained damage.651 As of late March, Israel has destroyed 91% (51 of 56) of bank branches and 92% (84 of 91) of the ATMs in the Gaza Strip. All surviving branches and ATMs are in the Strip’s south.652 Using an ATM or attempting to get access to one’s money through money changers have high commissions (e.g. 17%).653 At least 16 cemeteries have been desecrated by the 636 https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-destroys-gaza-courthouse-dozens-govt-buildings 637 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-192 638 https://twitter.com/PeruginiNic/status/1747730495482310771 ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6108/Israel-kills-dozens-ofacademics,-destroys-every-university-in-the-Gaza-Strip ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6163/Israel%E2%80%99s-demolition-ofeducational-institutions,-cultural-objects-in-Gaza-is-additional-manifestation-of-genocide ; https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/gazauniversities-destroyed-israel-military-war/index.html ; https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/07/all-12-universitiesin-gaza-have-been-the-target-of-israeli-attacks-it-s-a-war-against-education_6592965_4.html ; example: https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1786005107986841626 639 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1760766861279391872 640 https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-12-12/gaza-library-bombing; https://lithub.com/gazas-main-public-library-has-beendestroyed/ ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1759474743189660011 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impactsnapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 641 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCNftkL7cx4 642 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1771195504883339683 643 https://www.npr.org/2023/12/03/1216200754/gaza-heritage-sites-destroyed-israel, https://www.heritageforpeace.org/wpcontent/uploads/2023/11/Report-of-the-effects-of-the-last-war-of-2023-on-the-cultural-heritage-in-Gaza-Strip-Palestine-english.pdf 644 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/un-experts-deeply-concerned-over-scholasticide-gaza 645 https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240122-israel-army-displays-artefacts-stolen-from-gaza-in-the-knesset/ ; https://twitter.com/EmekShavehHeb/status/1749030636529008651 646 https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/04/29/weve-become-addicted-to-explosions-the-idf-unit-responsible-for-demolishing-homesacross-gaza 647 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1744195835577921772 ; also https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/04/29/weve-becomeaddicted-to-explosions-the-idf-unit-responsible-for-demolishing-homes-across-gaza ; and an interview with an IDF soldier who fought there: https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1798462630736396472 648 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/18/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-economy.html 649 https://x.com/IamIbrahim21/status/1797521016702550496 650 https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/14e309cd34e04e40b90eb19afa7b5d15-0280012024/original/Gaza-Interim-DamageAssessment-032924-Final.pdf 651 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024 652 https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1774422433736393207 653 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/18/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-economy.html 58 IDF, often by bulldozing.654 One video shows a bulldozer driving within a cemetery,655 while another shows the results of such an operation, with corpses left scattered across the landscape.656 The IDF has also bulldozed burial sites at Nasser hospital.657 The IDF further bulldozed broad areas in the Gaza Strip.658 An online video depicts the torching of the Shujjaiya neighborhood in a military operation.659 Satellite images reveal the massive extent of destruction of Khan Younis.660 In late March, a UNICEF spokesperson described “utter annihilation” in Khan Younis, stating that “the depth of the horror surpasses our ability to describe it”.661 Evidence supports the conclusion that Israel is attempting to destroy all buildings inside the Gaza Strip within a kilometer of the Israel-Gaza fence to create a “buffer zone”.662 This buffer zone will take over 16% of the territory of the Gaza Strip.663 Such destruction has been described by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights as a “grave breach of the Fourth Geneva convention and a war crime”.664 In mid-February, Israeli media announced that the IDF was constructing a road to bisect the Gaza Strip, suggesting its plans for a long occupation.665 In early March, its construction was completed,666 and it enables rapid movement and will be held by Israel for “at least another year” according to the IDF.667 At least 750 buildings have been destroyed to create a buffer zone on both sides of the road.668 In subsequent months, Israel built bases within the Gaza Strip by taking over civilian infrastructure such as hospitals and schools, as well as watchtowers and outposts. 669 The destruction in Gaza has resulted in the displacement of some 75 percent of Gaza’s population.670 An investigation of Israel’s evacuation orders to Gazans revealed numerous unclarities and inconsistencies within the IDF’s official orders.671 This included, for example, five different geographical definitions of the al-Mawasi “safe zone”, which was itself bombed and invaded by IDF ground troops.672 Other supposed “safe zones” were not safe. An NBC investigation examined seven airstrikes that took place in areas the IDF declared as safe, killing civilians.673 Some of the evacuation 654 https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/20/middleeast/israel-gaza-cemeteries-desecrated-investigation-intl-cmd/index.html ; https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1749145986595713498 ; also: https://twitter.com/HossamShabat/status/1779565112300302634 655 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1771125186370101561 656 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1743386378606412188 657 https://news.sky.com/story/israel-bulldozed-mass-graves-at-gaza-hospital-sky-news-analysis-shows-13121638 658 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1750443193575886945 659 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1767698980127838474 660 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-03-14/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-3bab-db12-a9ef-fbfb627d0000 661 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/22/unicef-official-utter-annihilation-gaza 662 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1758376261628436523 663 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-03-28/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018d-9cc9-df62-a3fd-9ecdb8420000 ; https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-hamas-war-buffer-zone-explained-2a7347af ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/135417/ 664 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/widespread-destruction-israeli-defence-forces-civilian-infrastructure-gaza 665 https://twitter.com/YairWallach/status/1759572148559962424 666 https://news.sky.com/story/israel-completes-construction-of-road-which-cuts-across-gaza-strip-13089556 667 https://twitter.com/Doron_Kadosh/status/1762434310831796618 ; https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-is-building-a-roadbisecting-gaza-in-next-phase-of-war-c73503ff 668 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/17/gaza-israel-netzarim-corridor-war-hamas/ 669 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/17/gaza-israel-netzarim-corridor-war-hamas/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-04-18/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-f03c-d240-a19f-f43f6da50000 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1795129920902873557 ; https://inews.co.uk/news/world/israel-gaza-superhighway-watchtower-post-warplans-3090909 670 https://twitter.com/UNHumanRights/status/1742863747683668418; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshotgaza-strip-12-june-2024 671 For example: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/26/middleeast/hala-khreis-white-flag-shooting-gaza-cmd-intl/index.html ; https://x.com/marcowenjones/status/1795063041513402446 672 https://gaza.forensic-architecture.org/displacement ; https://content.forensic-architecture.org/wpcontent/uploads/2024/03/Humanitarian-Violence_Report_FA.pdf ; https://content.forensic-architecture.org/wpcontent/uploads/2024/05/Inhumane-Zones-Report-Forensic-Architecture_WEBSITE.pdf ; also https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session56/a-hrc-56-crp-4.pdf, paragraph 96. 673 https://twitter.com/NBCNightlyNews/status/1784001112124932600 59 orders were given online during periods of full communication outages.674 Already by early February, 67% of the Gaza Strip’s area was under evacuation orders.675 As a result of these repeated orders and the general overcrowdedness of the Strip, many Palestinians have been displaced several times.676 674 https://content.forensic-architecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Humanitarian-Violence_Report_FA.pdf (e.g. p. 28) 675 https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/israel-s-evacuation-covers-67-of-gaza-leaves-palestinians-crammed124020600748_1.html 676 https://gaza.forensic-architecture.org/displacement ; https://content.forensic-architecture.org/wpcontent/uploads/2024/03/Humanitarian-Violence_Report_FA.pdf ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%91- %D7%91%D7%A8%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%97-%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%93%D7%A8- %D7%95%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%97%D7%99%D7%9D- %D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%9B/ ; examples at https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/surviving-genocide-people ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK7oytWs7vQ ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/133730/ ; https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/israeltried-starve-gaza-palestine ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/135043/ ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/135923/ 60 Hostages Last updated: June 18, 2024 Within this context, the Israeli government has refrained from making serious moves to release the 120+ Israeli hostages that remain in Gaza.677 To date, seven hostages out of some 250 taken on October 7 have been released by military operations.678 The military operation that released two of them in February also killed 74 Gazans (or about 100), mostly civilians.679 Another military operation that freed four hostages in June also killed 274 Gazans, many of which were women and children, and wounded hundreds. 680 Three other Israeli hostages were killed by IDF forces within Gaza despite waving white flags and calling for help.681 Another was killed during an attempted rescue operation.682 Three others were supposedly killed by gas that the IDF flooded the tunnels with.683 In late February an Israeli report found that at least 10 hostages were killed by the IDF’s actions, including a case where the IDF bombed a building that it suspected had a Israeli hostage.684 In late March a senior journalist specializing in military intelligence shared an estimate that only 60-70 of the hostages are still alive.685 US intelligence assessments seem to suggest a similar number.686 The number appears to have decreased as of late May.687 On the other hand, a temporary ceasefire has resulted in the release of 105 hostages.688 Instead of negotiating additional hostage releases, the Israeli government prefers to continue its military operation, despite the obvious risk to the hostages. Those hostages who have been released in the previous exchange have repeatedly stated that Israeli bombardments they experienced were among the most terrifying things they experienced during their captivity.689 The spokesperson for the Likud, the largest party in the Israeli parliament, met the families of the hostages and warned them against pushing for an early election because “it will be bad for the hostages” and “in such a period [i.e. elections] a lot of filth will surface”.690 There is additional evidence that families of the hostages fear that if they speak up too loudly their family members might be pushed to the end of the list of hostages to be released.691 In mid-March, the chief of staff of the IDF unit responsible for the hostages resigned as he felt that Israel’s political leadership was not interested in moving towards a deal.692 Similar feelings have been expressed within Israel’s security apparatus.693 Several 677 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-113 678 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-30/ty-article/.premium/israel-rescues-woman-soldier-kidnapped-to-gaza-byhamas/0000018b-81cc-df47-a3df-ffcdbcdc0000 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/11/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hostagesrescued.html 679 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-strikes-rafah-refugee-camp-22-killed-local-health-officials-say-2024-02-12/; https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-rafah-ground-offensive-looms-intl-hnk/index.html 680 https://x.com/ofercass/status/1799425838397395195 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-rescues-four-hostagesgaza-palestinians-say-50-dead-israeli-assault-2024-06-08/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-06-08/ty-article/0000018f-f7e1- d084-abef-f7e94fff0000 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-pounds-central-gaza-palestinian-death-toll-hostage-rescueraid-rises-274-2024-06-09/ ; also https://www.972mag.com/nuseirat-camp-israeli-hostages-massacre-gaza/ 681 https://www.ft.com/content/2e299603-2fed-4855-9694-9801008c48dc 682 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rjzpo117da 683 https://twitter.com/tomashinyu3/status/1747651031737979233 ; https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-said-their-sonswere-murdered-by-hamas-these-mothers-werent-convinced-15461312 684 https://www.ha-makom.co.il/post/revital-host-idf ; with a high degree of probability also these four hostages: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b1e4mwjea . See also: https://ynet.co.il/news/article/ry7qkbjbc 685 https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/yossimelman/2024-03-26/ty-article/0000018e-7564-d787-a5de-75e616c60000 686 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-may-not-have-enough-living-hostages-for-cease-fire-deal-61606c66 687 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-05-26/ty-article/.premium/rafah-operation-advances-as-israel-faces-added-pressure-byicj-ruling-to-end-the-war/0000018f-b179-dfc6-a3ef-b57daa210000 (less than 64 hostages remain alive) 688 https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/world/hostage-israel-hamas-deal-dg/ 689 https://www.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-1061467 690 https://twitter.com/Bar_ShemUr/status/1757852992215056477 691 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bjkutcon6 692 https://13tv.co.il/item/news/politics/security/sqpwy-903972705/ 61 government members scorned the hostages’ family members.694 In late March some of the family members of the hostages publicly blamed Israel’s Prime Minister for continuously postponing a deal to release them.695 In mid-April, two members of Israel negotiations team, at least one of whom was involved in it for six months, said explicitly that the government and especially Israel’s prime minister are trying to delay and even prevent a deal to release the hostages.696 A former spokesperson for the families of the hostages agreed that Israel’s Prime Minister was preventing a deal for personal political reasons.697 Several domestic and foreign sources – including from Qatar – said similar things.698 In May, coalition MPs ramped up their explicit attacks against the families of hostages,699 while police and government supporters used violence against them in the streets.700 In late May, an aide to the Israeli Prime Minister said that Israel will not end the war for a deal to free all hostages, and verbally attacked family members of the hostages who visited him.701 In June, a senior Israeli politician and former member of the war cabinet stated that the Prime Minister rejected a deal for political reasons.702 693 https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/yossimelman/2024-03-26/ty-article/0000018e-7564-d787-a5de-75e616c60000 694 https://13tv.co.il/item/news/politics/politics/hostages-903992721/ ; for similar sentiment towards family members of civilians killed during Oct. 7, see https://www.maariv.co.il/news/politics/Article-1085268 695 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bjebbohyc 696 https://twitter.com/Uvda_tweet/status/1778496650798833931 697 https://www.zman.co.il/481871/ 698 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-14/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-de16-deb6-afee-ded71d110000 ; https://twitter.com/_selftitled_/status/1784272179817041951 ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra13937291 ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hyw3njjr0 699 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hko00u9uma 700 https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/local/article/15767757 ; https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/local/article/15775483 701 https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-wont-end-war-for-deal-to-free-all-hostages-pms-aide-said-to-tell-families/ ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sj118wnin0 ; https://www.maariv.co.il/news/politics/Article-1103425 702 https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/politic/760712/ 62 The West Bank Last updated: June 18, 2024 The West Bank has received less attention in media and public discourse. Israel has long failed to enforce the law on its Jewish settlers. For example, out of more than 1,600 cases of settler violence between 2005 and 2023, only 3% ended in a conviction.703 The situation there has deteriorated rapidly since the beginning of the war. At least 18 herding/Bedouin Palestinian settlements there have been abandoned after attacks by Israeli Jewish settlers (968 recorded since October 7).704 About 4,000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank in 2023, 705 and 2,155 have been displaced since October 7 because of the destruction of their homes. 706 Jewish settlers have killed several Palestinians, and have wounded, terrorized and abused others.707 Settlers conducted periodic larger rampages against Palestinian villages as well.708 When a 72 year old Jewish Israeli media photographer was caught by these settlers during such a pogrom they beat him up, stole his belongings and burned some of them, and broke his elbow and a finger. The photographer stated that IDF soldiers accompanied the settlers and refrained from helping him despite his pleas.709 Many of the settlers recruited for wartime territorial defense units now operate in uniform with IDF backing, and attack and abuse Palestinians in this context.710 In late May the IDF announced it would provide rifles to settlers who are not part of the territorial defense units.711 A total of 521 Palestinians have been killed between October 7 and the time of writing. 712 Half the fatalities in the West Bank since the beginning of 2023 (four times higher than in 2022) were reported in operations that did not involve armed clashes. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem stated that Israeli police in Jerusalem used live ammunition and shot-to-kill Palestinian rioters, killing five in early-mid October.713 Since October 7, 5,200 Palestinians have been injured in the West Bank.714 A Wall Street Journal investigative report found that after Oct. 7 Israeli settlers have rapidly built both illegal roads and settlements in the West Bank. The Israeli government refused to review the evidence the newspaper supplied.715 In late March the IDF was still blocking the entrances to West Bank villages, forcing residents to make long detours to enter or leave.716 As of the same time, Israel 703 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html 704 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-178-west-bank ; https://twitter.com/YehudaShaul/status/1758122975386014057 ; also https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1770753310686917108 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1770743445969064360 ; https://www.mekomit.co.il/%D7%A7%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%94- %D7%A4%D7%9C%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A9%D7%94-10- %D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%97%D7%A8-%D7%A9%D7%A7%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%99/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-30/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018f-1068-d97f-abcf-fce987090000 (18) 705 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/about-4000-palestinians-displaced-west-bank-2023 706 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-178-west-bank 707 For example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/01/09/israel-settler-violence-qusra-west-bank/ ; https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/israel-west-bank-settlers-attacks-palestinians ; https://twitter.com/masafering/status/1786353369658839199 ; https://x.com/Issaamro/status/1796595059259044284 ; https://x.com/masafering/status/1802412746572435879 708 https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-west-bank-war-f85997a95d5579159ffe83d2c0cb988e ; https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-west-bank-7e75e1ef8f5307946d24f8b9a190fd66 ; https://twitter.com/AlonLeeGreen/status/1779136328480805197 709 https://www.ynet.co.il/yedioth/article/yokra13889978 710 https://x.com/btselem/status/1793384580046565608 ; https://x.com/nurityohanan/status/1798226333186871622 ; https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1801295354840629385 711 https://x.com/tzvisuccot/status/1796110479816818955 712 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-178-west-bank 713 https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1754079208643420204 714 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-178-west-bank 715 https://www.wsj.com/video/series/in-depth-features/visual-evidence-shows-illegal-settler-construction-in-west-banksurging/BF11225B-45A7-430A-A39C-48336B5B8286 716 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-19/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-50c4-dca4-ad8e-f4fe5f020000 63 has prevented Palestinians from the West Bank from entering Israel for work, resulting in a loss of their income and a deteriorating economic condition.717 In some cases, Israel has also prevented Palestinians from working their agricultural lands for many months.718 In the first three months of 2024, Israel declared a record amount of land in the West Bank (almost 11,000 dunam, equal to 2,743 acres) as state-owned, 719 including the single largest land seizure since at least 1993.720 A New York Times investigative report revealed a document in which the most senior general in command of the West Bank admitted in March that there was a sharp increase in illegal Jewish settlement building, and that in parallel that was de facto no regulation on this illegal building. Both sharply contrasted with Palestinian building, which was heavily regulated.721 In May, Israel’s Minister of Defense cancelled a law that was originally part of the 2005 disengagement plan and that prohibited settlements in four locations.722 Evidence for the killing of Palestinians Several videos depict the killing of unarmed and unthreatening Palestinians.723 When an Israeli police officer shot and killed a 12 year old boy who launched a firework, Israel’s National Security minister commended him and said he should receive a medal.724 Israeli troops disguised as medical workers and Muslim women have entered a hospital in the West Bank and killed three unarmed militants there in their beds as they slept, including one who was paralyzed for three months.725 In a different case, an IDF soldier killed a Palestinian who had converted to Judaism after finding a knife in his belongings. Two videos reveal that the man was shot as his hands were raised.726 Two Palestinian herders were killed by settlers when IDF soldiers were present but did not get involved.727 Abuse, humiliation and detainment of Palestinians Multiple videos present Israeli troops abusing and humiliating Palestinians,728 hitting or firing at them,729 parading them half-naked in the streets,730 destroying their property731 or public 717 https://news.sky.com/story/the-war-may-be-in-gaza-but-its-effects-can-mean-starvation-in-the-west-bank-13101929 718 https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2024-05-25/ty-article/.premium/distance-requirements-and-barriers-howpalestinians-are-being-expelled-from-their-land/0000018f-acf8-df13-a3af-bcfea1270000 719 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-11/ty-article/.premium/israel-has-declared-record-amount-of-west-bank-land-as-stateowned-in-2024/0000018e-c7a2-dd23-a3cf-e7a713c90000 720 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/22/israel-largest-west-bank-settlement-blinken-visit/ 721 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html; https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/16/magazine/fox-document-march-24-redacted.html ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/byxkztxxc 722 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bkfau7iq0 (immediate implications were symbolic as a different directive temporarily prevented civilian access to the area). For one of the laws: https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/legalinfo/disengagementplan/he/%D7%A6%D7%95%20%D7%9E%D7%A1’%202137%20– %20%D7%A6%D7%95%20%D7%91%D7%93%D7%91%D7%A8%20%D7%91%D7%99%D7%98%D7%95%D7%9C%20%D7%97%D7%95%D7% A7%20%D7%94%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%A0%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%AA%20%D7%91%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%97%D7%91%20%D7%9 7%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A9.pdf 723 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1746987605034447294 ; https://twitter.com/AJA_Palestine/status/1781371375623536907 ; also https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/twilight-zone/2024-04-20/ty-article-magazine/.premium/a-palestinian-is-shot-dead-by-an-israelisniper-for-daring-to-go-up-on-his-roof/0000018e-f9a5-d6a0-a9ef-f9bd171b0000 724 https://twitter.com/Kahlissee/status/1767976353532383504 ; https://twitter.com/itamarbengvir/status/1767860298432528673 ; https://twitter.com/origivati/status/1767806214254002619 725 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forces-kill-3-gunmen-west-bank-hospital-army-says-2024-01-30/ 726 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hym4dpy0t ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hk9p5nact ; https://twitter.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1773557971831632078 727 https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/133998/ 728 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1741445118333222937 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1748100280560845092; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1747358396519493874 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1751689800254476390 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1760462497943839127 ; https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1765200009580925182 ; 64 infrastructure,732 blocking roads,733 defacing Palestinian symbols, 734 and calling for another Nakba.735 One soldier shared an image in which he claimed to have stolen a bag full of money notes.736 Another shows a soldier celebrating his birthday(?) with balloons while a handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian is lying on the ground behind him.737 One video showed Israeli forces kidnap or detain a Palestinian, dressed him in uniform, cuffed his hands and feet, and apparently used him as a human shield.738 As in Gaza, here too there are video clips humiliating and de-humanizing Palestinians, 739 describing them as Amalek,740 as well as images of soldiers posing with lingerie inside Palestinian houses they raid.741 There are several video clips of settler youths confronting and attacking Palestinians, 742 as well as settlers dressed up as soldiers who detain Palestinians, including on their own lands.743 Yet other videos show settlers stealing Palestinian property, 744 or soldiers who do not intervene when settlers harm Palestinian civilians and their property.745 A deputy mayor of the large Israeli city of Be’er Sheva uploaded content of his own reserve military service, complete with blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinians and revenge content.746 More Palestinians, including children,747 are being arrested in the West Bank. In the first month of fighting, over 2,200 Palestinians were arrested. Over 2,000 Palestinians were held in administrative detention, without charge or trial. These detained Palestinians have been subjected to torture and degrading treatment, according to Amnesty International.748 Until late May, almost 5,000 people were arrested in the West Bank (the number does not include people arrested and released before they were brought in front of a judge).749 At that moment, Israel held under arrest or detention (i.e. https://twitter.com/masafering/status/1770529772885483666 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1770320641826169263 ; https://twitter.com/adinitay/status/1771990979333026009 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1780354741882474980 ; https://twitter.com/adinitay/status/1781214747104252184 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1781397024417448055 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1783507450643063185 ; https://twitter.com/ofercass/status/1785416217152344434 ; https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1791485421903401141 ; https://x.com/brown_johnbrown/status/1792560897732341961 ; https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1793287354372825172 ; https://x.com/LensVeritatis/status/1793454169741033661 729 https://twitter.com/AdameMedia/status/1761508331598848224 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1781945504240214016 ; 730 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1787112612880105776 731 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1743038305581593033 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1756688401233817855 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1776551587885801759 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1781677858953285846 ; https://x.com/Mistaclim/status/1801853273114116104 732 https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1751125745701671025 733 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1782135295204262065 734 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1768010284860416327 735 https://x.com/btselem/status/1793384580046565608 736 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1756695309239939117 737 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1758619734809928130 738 https://twitter.com/TameeOliveFern/status/1752615765092815206 739 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1756696385510883830 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1756697908907233406 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1765313264324333905 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1765436458108653778 ; https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1765673191521874004 ; 740 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1790921496421937522 741 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1782837821432082700 742 https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1769277315941339483 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1769435760392900855 ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1769300216719515931 ; https://twitter.com/masafering/status/1769723591480742007 ; https://twitter.com/masafering/status/1775593225278939147 (probably settlers?) ; https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1785895596198400359 ; https://twitter.com/Issaamro/status/1790820035201466412 743 https://twitter.com/masafering/status/1769453241929011501 744 https://twitter.com/Mistaclim/status/1753732272816029757 ; https://x.com/Mistaclim/status/1794071598372172056 745 https://twitter.com/Yesh_Din/status/1779501559379849229 746 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-20/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-9268-d212-abcf-d66d978d0000 747 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1775555921151693151 748 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/11/israel-opt-horrifying-cases-of-torture-and-degrading-treatment-of-palestiniandetainees-amid-spike-in-arbitrary-arrests/ 749 https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-05-28/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018f-beff-d0b7-abdf-feff4aa90000 ; according to the Palestinian government, the number was close to 9,000: https://cda.gov.ps/index.php/en/51-slider-en/17065-on-the-233rd-day-ofgenocide-brief-on-detention-campaigns-carried-out-in-the-west-bank-since-october-7-until-may-26-2025 65 before their conviction) 7,016 people, of which 4,299 (over 60%) were held without a trial or an indictment (the numbers do not include Gazans).750 Many descriptions of released detainees refer to constant abuse by their prison staff.751 One said that daily, since Oct. 7 their guards required them to crawl while draped in an Israeli flag and kiss the Israeli flag, beating them if they refuse to do so. Food was thrown to the floor and stepped on.752 Another prisoner from Betlehem narrated at length the violence, abuse and degrading humiliation that he suffered while in Israeli prison for three months as part of his “administrative detention”, a status that was sufficient to hold him without charges or evidence.753 Online social media content includes more evidence. 754 A senior Palestinian politician, the Speaker of the Legislative Council, was arrested in October. When he was released in June, he recounted some of his experiences – including a prisoner that was allegedly killed because he asked whether there was a ceasefire in Gaza, and another who was killed because he asked the Israeli prison staff not to insult his parents.755 750 https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-05-28/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018f-beff-d0b7-abdf-feff4aa90000 751 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/2023-12-30/ty-article/0000018c-b51e-d45c-a98e-bf5e7a340000 ; https://twitter.com/RZabaneh/status/1784223150156181904 752 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-01-02/ty-article/.premium/0000018c-c6e5-d6c4-ab8d-e7f561840000 753 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/twilightzone/2024-03-22/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-62b4-d541-a78e-ffff79470000 754 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1761463527489900685 ; https://x.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1801267126956618150 755 https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1801743540436771252 ; https://x.com/Palestinecapti1/status/1801781895413555571 66 The media, propaganda and the war (disclaimer)756 Last updated: June 18, 2024 To focus the discussion this section will examine Israeli and American media as well as other actions of the Israeli state to limit public discourse. Introduction: propaganda, sometimes known as public diplomacy, aims to disseminate information to influence public perception. Such propaganda may convey facts, lies or anything in between. States and other actors in the 21st century commonly employ propaganda. The propaganda of the Israeli state is often called hasbara (lit. “explaining”).757 Context: Scholars have argued for decades that despite the large quantities of information to which we are exposed, most individuals extract only a little of this information, and even less knowledge and understanding.758 The result of this process has been labeled already in the 1990s as “the destruction of political intelligence” due to the manipulations of modern media.759 This section assumes that the information conveyed by state, non-state and media actors is biased, but is also not completely reliable or unreliable by definition. Rather, these actors author and disseminate information that fits within their different interests (e.g. political, economical or ideological). The main problem is not “fake news” – but rather the fact that much of the information conveyed is used out of context and weaponized to further these interests, leading to misinformation and disinformation.760To better evaluate the reliability of the information that different voices disseminate one must employ critical reading and thinking, alongside a careful consideration of the source of information. Part of Israel’s propaganda is institutionalized through the state apparatus.761 Israel is unique among self-defined western democracies in that it has a military censorship (see also below), which requires by law that any article about security issues must be first submitted to it.762 When the censor intervenes in an article, the media outlet cannot convey that information to readers (for example by blacklining excised content).763 Israel’s Prime Minister has pressured the chief censor of the IDF to intervene in additional cases, including cases without a security justification.764 In a similar case, a website without formal affiliation that was created by the Israeli Ministry of Hasbara and aimed at international consumption had been blocked from access within Israel.765 The state of Israel has been buying positive coverage in international media since 2018, claiming that many other countries have been doing the same.766 A long list of local politicians and government 756 Because of the nature of the evidence, this section includes discourse to a greater extent than the rest of this document. The truth is also considerably less clear. I nonetheless did my best to present the evidence in a critical manner. Feedback would be welcome. 757 https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%94_%D7%94%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90 %D7%9C%D7%99%D7%AA ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/272146 758 https://lib.civics.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=9260&kwd=2079 759 https://lib.civics.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=9260&kwd=2079 760 https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/understanding-information-disorder/ 761 https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/ 762 See for example: https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2022-07-26/ty-article-opinion/00000182-39f9-d145-a3df-7dfb21db0000 763 https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/134881/ ; but see also: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-05-29/ty-articleopinion/.premium/reason-for-detention/0000018f-c0d3-dade-adef-ecfb884f0000 764 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-11-29/ty-article/.highlight/0000018c-1adf-d4e4-a1df-3edf52340000 765 https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-04-02/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018e-9ef0-d9c2-afbe-bef6abb00000 ; https://saturday-october-seven.com/ 766 https://www.the7eye.org.il/281581 67 offices have been doing the same in national media.767 Government offices have sometimes used contracts that allow them to veto the content of the positive coverage that they had bought.768 Already in 2017, the Israeli government had invested tens and perhaps hundreds of millions of shekels (likely tens of millions of dollars) to create a network of organizations through which it could relay its propaganda messaging, originally directed against the de-legitimization of Israel and the BDS movement.769 Unlike traditional and direct propaganda, this propaganda is conducted through civic organizations rather than governmental ones, and the association with the state is hidden from the consumers (and sometimes also the civic organization itself).770 The Israeli government had worked with hundreds of these organizations and likely maintains these connections.771 Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry, for example, oversees several firms that are supposed to carry out such operations to avoid entangling Israel in a diplomatic crisis.772 In January 2024, Israel acquired a technological system for mass influence that can create content suitable for online influence operations and began using it.773 In additional to state-led efforts, several start-up companies have attempted to influence discourse on their own both before and during the war.774 Outside Israel, many established media outlets whitewash Israel using different means and methods. A former media worker in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recounted how any reporting on Palestine faced major difficulties, including the cancellation of interviews, allowing the repetition of verifiably false pro-Israel claims on air, refusing to have discussions about difficult issues from Israel’s perspective (e.g. whether a genocide might be happening), not providing key context to current events (e.g. the situation pre-Oct. 7), editing out controversial material (e.g. references to genocide and starvation), adding disclaimers about the un-verifiable nature of even personal statements (e.g. the deaths of interviewees’ extended family members), removal of names and contact information of Palestinian speakers from internal databases, and ignoring genocidal statements by Israeli officials. 775 This was at least partially related to complaint campaigns by rightwing lobby groups, which produced a chilling effect.776 Some of the influence on media comes from powerful business elites. A group of these elites discussed a plan to spend some $50 million on a media campaign that was supposed to frame Hamas as a terrorist organization among Americans.777 *** Following a pattern from earlier wars in Gaza,778 the current war has been enabled and facilitated by massive media efforts779 to shape discourse in Israel as well as in the West – in countries such as the 767 https://www.the7eye.org.il/281581 ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/268428 ; many examples in https://shakuf.co.il/books/criticalreading.html 768 https://www.the7eye.org.il/281581 769 https://cdn.the7eye.org.il/uploads/2017/11/mizam201217.pdf ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/272146 ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/269874 ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/262318 ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/276553 ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/444078 ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/399982 ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/443586 ; https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-713678 ; https://forward.com/israel/453286/us-pro-israel-groups-failed-to-disclose-grantsfrom-israeli-government/ 770 https://www.the7eye.org.il/272146 771 https://www.the7eye.org.il/272146 ; https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://fs.knesset.gov.il/20/Committees/20_ptv_348357.doc& ved=2ahUKEwjE5r24_ZCFAxVhElkFHcatCNwQFnoECBEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2FYnze1NfDxOLulPUg-2rX (p. 8). 772 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-06-05/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-secretly-targeted-americanlawmakers-with-gaza-war-influence-campaign/0000018f-e7c8-d11f-a5cf-e7cb62af0000 773 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-01-16/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018c-e8c1-d765-ab9d-f8fd29800000 774 https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/can-ai-help-hasbara/ ; https://wordsofiron.com/; https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rkrug57na 775 https://breachmedia.ca/cbc-whitewashed-israels-crimes-gaza-firsthand/ 776 https://breachmedia.ca/cbc-whitewashed-israels-crimes-gaza-firsthand/ 777 https://www.semafor.com/article/11/09/2023/billionaires-discuss-50-million-anti-hamas-media-blitz 778 Amer, “War Reporting in the International Press: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Gaza War of 2008-2009”, Ph.D Dissertation (Hamburg, 2015). 779 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/israel-social-media-twitter-messaging-david-saranga-1234874381/ 68 United States, Canada,780 the United Kingdom and Germany781 . Israel maintains a powerful hold over media attention, particularly in the US. The Intercept, for example, has highlighted how Israel repeatedly “chooses an issue and demands global attention to its agenda at the expense of any other matter”.782 Israel’s information warfare strategy has focused on four efforts: (1) emphasize the horrors of the Oct. 7 events; (2) discredit critical voices; (3) limit the flow of information about the conflict coming out of Gaza; and (4) rally the Israeli public by advertising its military prowess and the destruction of Gaza.783 The chief aim of this campaign was to legitimize the massive Israeli attacks against Gaza. The following four sections of this document expand on each of these four efforts. Emphasizing the horrors of the Oct. 7 attacks Immediately after Oct. 7 Israel began a massive advertisement campaign to emphasize the horrors of the Hamas massacre.784 One examination of the evidence found that in the first ten days, Israel “flood[ed]” social media with at least 70 ads, including graphic videos, to millions. About 30 ads were completely removed from Google’s public library because of the violent images they contained.785 A different review found that in less than two weeks, Israel targeted audiences in Western Europe in particular with some 88 ads, spending $7.1 million to reach nearly a billion impressions.786 In at least six European countries, pro-Israel ads including disturbing content were used in advertisements in family-oriented video games, where they were watched by children.787 In the first month of the war, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ digital team estimated they had reached 2 billion people.788 On Facebook and Instagram alone, US pro-Israel organizations spent over $2.2 million on online ads by December, spending 100 times more than pro-Palestinian groups.789 An Israeli NGO revealed in a report that Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs ran a $2M pro-Israel covert campaign that included three new media outlets and hundreds of Twitter profiles to target Democrat congressmen/women and senators from the US (predominantly Black) in attempt to a sway their opinion on Hamas crimes on Oct. 7 (especially sexual crimes) as well as UNRWA (see below for a detailed discussion of the UNRWA discourse).790 Despite the real horrors of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, Israeli officials repeatedly shared content that was soon disproved as unreliable or outright fake.791 Most Israeli media chose not to inform the public that these stories had been refuted.792 In a conversation with US President Joe Biden, the Israeli Prime Minister himself has stated falsehoods such as that Hamas “took dozens of children, bound them up, burned them and executed them.”793 His wife wrote to Jill Biden a story about a hostage held by Hamas who gave birth in Gaza, a story supported by the Israeli state and media that 780 https://breachmedia.ca/cbc-whitewashed-israels-crimes-gaza-firsthand/ 781 https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-271-reasons-of-state-memory 782 https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-lies-palestinians/ ; also https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/acontinuous-series-of-insults-to-our-understanding 783 https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/11/israel-gaza-hamas-netanyahu-warfare-misinformation/ 784 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/israel-social-media-twitter-messaging-david-saranga-1234874381/ 785 https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-social-media-opinion-hamas-war/ 786 https://www.lalibre.be/international/moyen-orient/2023/10/23/israel-a-concentre-sa-campagne-publicitaire-youtube-anti-hamas-surla-france-de-la-propagande-4MECZ54CHFFWRPWBVU5BVPIB6U/ 787 https://www.eurogamer.net/rovio-blocks-disturbing-pro-israel-ad-found-in-angry-birds-and-other-games 788 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/israel-social-media-twitter-messaging-david-saranga-1234874381/ 789 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/06/israel-palestinian-advocacy-groups-social-media-spending-00130118 790 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-03-19/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-4cd5-d26a-afbf-ecd552de0000; https://fakereporter.net/pdf/pro-israel_influence_network_report-0324.pdf?v=2 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/technology/israel-campaign-gaza-social-media.html 791 https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-sexual-violence-zaka-ca7905bf9520b1e646f86d72cdf03244 792 For two exceptions to this rule: https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2023-12-03/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018c-2036- d21c-abae-76be08fe0000 ; https://twitter.com/moshe_aryeh/status/1750418165736100294 793 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq5hTirpL9s 69 was subsequently proved as fake.794 The IDF accepted and claimed to have verified evidence of beheaded babies, later found out to be false.795 Other stories such as putting a baby in the oven or cutting a baby out of his mother’s belly and stabbing it, were all promoted by the media and/or the IDF, yet found out to be fake as well.796 Israeli officials such as Israel’s Minister of Economy continued to repeat these falsified stories in international interviews at least as late as April.797 A university researcher that was tasked with investigating rapes on Oct. 7 by Israel was chosen to receive the prestigious Israel Prize for her work, even though she never published the report for which she received the prize, featured fake evidence in her messaging, and was strongly criticized by Israeli state employees who cast serious doubts on her methodology and refused to collaborate with her.798 Other stories during the war, such as the Israeli claim that the central Hamas bunker is located under al-Shifa hospital, were found to be false (see also the discussion of the flour massacre above).799 Discrediting critical voices outside Israel Israel also discredited critical voices. One tactic to do so was by claims of antisemitism, a tactic Israel has used for many years.800 When Amnesty International claimed war crimes were conducted by both sides in late October, Israel attacked it as antisemitic.801 Israel and its media attacked climate activist Greta Thunberg who called for a ceasefire in Gaza in late October, while an IDF spokesperson stated that “whoever identifies with Greta in any way in the future, in my view, is a terror supporter” (he later apologized).802 Greta was subsequently removed from the Ministry of Education’s materials in Israel.803 Supporters of a ceasefire in Gaza in November were smeared as “pro-Hamas” or “pro-Palestinians” in both Israel and the US.804 Israeli officials accused photographers who worked for foreign outlets on Oct. 7 of working for Hamas, describing them as terrorists – even as no evidence was produced to support the claims and the media watchdog who made the allegations walked 794 https://news.walla.co.il/item/3623538 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LScqOF48h34; https://www.maariv.co.il/news/health/Article-1067610 ; investigation here: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/hamas-committed-documented-atrocities-but-a-few-false-stories-feed-the-deniers/0000018c-34f3-da74-afce-b5fbe24f0000 795 https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1MYGNorgjgLJw ; https://theintercept.com/2024/02/07/gaza-israel-netanyahu-propaganda-liespalestinians/ 796 https://twitter.com/Israel/status/1717553687025815817 ; https://www.mako.co.il/culture-articles/Article-cdbeed08ded1b81027.htm; https://www.news1.co.il/Archive/001-D-475197-00.html; https://www.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-1043930; https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1716462311370633484 . The story about the baby cut from its mother’s belly remained in public discourse into March, when it was cited during a discussion of one of the Israeli Parliament’s Committees, https://twitter.com/KnessetT/status/1769687691669430716 (0:38). 797 https://twitter.com/_waleedshahid/status/1775934807165272158 798 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/skt8j03rt; https://13tv.co.il/item/news/domestic/internal/r16up-903990418/. The researcher is the niece of a journalist closely associated with Israel’s Prime Minister. https://www.calcalist.co.il/local_news/article/hjnoxpf0a . For a good critical take of the state of the evidence regarding the rape cases from Oct. 7 see: https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-04- 18/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018e-edb5-dbb3-a3bf-fdfd6e0d0000 and https://www.thetimes.com/magazines/the-timesmagazine/article/israel-hamas-rape-investigation-evidence-october-7-6kzphszsj . On antisemitism see also: https://www.972mag.com/ihra-antisemitism-israel-inversion-projection/ 799 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/us/politics/israel-al-shifa-hospital-hamas-evidence.html ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/21/al-shifa-hospital-gaza-hamas-israel/ ; see also the evidence-less: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/03/hamas-gaza-israel-alshifa-tunnels/ ; and the recognition of the false claims at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/01/gaza-al-shifa-hospital-israel/ 800 https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1649970 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TFxpp7pco ; https://www.columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2024/04/10/jewish-faculty-reject-the-weaponization-of-antisemitism/ 801 https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-calls-amnesty-international-antisemitic-and-biased-after-it-criticized-war-crimes-by-all-parties/ 802 https://www.dw.com/en/greta-thunberg-faces-backlash-for-pro-palestinian-post/a-67172344 803 https://www.ynet.co.il/environment-science/article/b1uzeagf6 804 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/skttx811ba; https://theintercept.com/2023/11/09/republican-debate-hamas-gaza-ceasefire/ 70 them back.805 A Human Rights Watch report found more than a thousand cases of the removal or censorship of pro-Palestinian content written in 60 countries on Facebook and Instagram. In a systematic examination of all this content, all but one contained content defined as “peaceful”. In parallel, only a single case of removal of pro-Israeli content was found (according to HRW, the ratio is not necessarily representative). One of the four cited reasons for the removal of content was a direct request by the Israeli state.806 When the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan decided to announce his intention to seek arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Secretary of Defense in May, Israel’s Prime Minister described Khan as taking his place “among the great antisemites in modern times” and compared him to judges in Nazi Germany who denied Jews basic rights and enabled the Holocaust, while his decision was “a moral outrage of historic proportions”.807 To place this harsh criticism in context, Khan was Israel’s preferred candidate for the position back in 2021.808 Israel’s Prime Minister also described the issue of warrants as “an antisemitic hate crime”.809 A joint investigative report by the Guardian and +972 Magazine/Local Call found that Israel conducted a long covert operation against the ICC in attempt to sway its officials and Khan’s predecessor from investigating Israel’s war crimes and issuing arrest warrants to Israeli officials. 810 Some of the details were known to an Israeli journalist in 2022, but as he worked on the story he was threatened by two senior officials in Israel’s military apparatus, and did not proceed with publishing those details.811 Limiting information flow from Gaza Israel attempts to control media reporting on Israel in support of its own propaganda. To date, Israel has not allowed international reporters to enter the Gaza Strip independently, limiting the world’s ability to witness the true cost of the war, 812 and hindering investigations of atrocities within the Strip such as the “flour massacre”. 813 As discussed above, Israel attempts to prevent Gazan journalists from reporting on events from Gaza, including by threatening their lives and the lives of their families. In another example, the IDF’s censor declared early in the war a ban on reporting on 8 subjects without approving them first. This censorship applies to Israeli journalists and their foreign counterparts, who have to sign a document that they will comply with the censor to get a visa as a journalist in the country.814 CNN, for example, has admitted that it runs all its Gaza coverage through 805 https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/11/11/photojournalists-embedded-with-hamas-on-october-7-heavy-butunsubstantiated-israeli-accusations_6247085_8.html ; https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-photographers-attack200be1ba47361f1c1fc113cdaeb65d04 806 https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and; and for context: https://www.972mag.com/meta-arabic-palestine-censorship/ . For more on Meta’s internal censorship of any support for or solidarity with Palestinians: https://theintercept.com/2024/05/22/whatsapp-security-vulnerability-meta-israel-palestine/ . On Israel’s Cyber Unit’s work with social media companies to censor content see: https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10292 ; on the Biden admin working with social media companies see also: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/biden-admin-working-with-social-media 807 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O2i0G9qQUM; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw4490z75v3o; also https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-absurd-icc-bid-to-arrest-israeli-leaders-is-the-new-antisemitism/ 808 https://www.timesofisrael.com/uks-karim-khan-elected-next-icc-prosecutor-will-replace-controversial-bensouda/ 809 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-30/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-icc-arrest-warrants-against-israeli-leaders-wouldbe-antisemitic-hate-crime/0000018f-3037-d0b5-a59f-31f78a070000 810 https://www.mekomit.co.il/%d7%97%d7%a9%d7%99%d7%a4%d7%94-%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%9c%d7%97%d7%9e%d7%94- %d7%94%d7%9e%d7%9c%d7%95%d7%9b%d7%9c%d7%9b%d7%aa-%d7%a9%d7%9c-%d7%99%d7%a9%d7%a8%d7%90%d7%9c- %d7%a0%d7%92%d7%93-%d7%91%d7%99%d7%aa/ ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/28/israeli-spy-chief-iccprosecutor-war-crimes-inquiry 811 https://www.mako.co.il/news-columns/2024_q2/Article-6736c6e7f3ebf81027.htm 812 https://twitter.com/FPAIsPal/status/1777599364568875206 ; https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-08/tyarticle/.premium/foreign-press-association-calls-on-israel-to-lift-ban-on-independent-press-in-gaza/0000018e-be21-d92b-adaffe6513ea0000 813 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/opinion/gaza-journalists-censorship-israel.html 814 https://theintercept.com/2023/12/23/israel-military-idf-media-censor/ 71 its Jerusalem bureau, itself monitored by the censor.815 Israeli media, especially during the beginning of the war, stressed repeatedly that their coverage had passed military censorship, thus creating an atmosphere that strongly promoted self-censorship as well.816 Already in December, Israeli researchers declared that the media was becoming a propaganda arm of the government.817 In 2023, the Israeli censors prevented the publication of 613 articles (almost four times as many as in 2022) and intervened in the text of 2,703 articles (almost three times as many in 2022).818 In total, the censors intervened in 31% of the articles sent to it.819 In late May, Israel seized the equipment of the Associated Press that was putting out a live video feed of Gaza, and returned it only as a result of American pressure.820 In June, after the successful IDF operation to release four Israeli hostages, an anchor on Israeli TV acknowledged that they “cannot show” a video clip of the results of the operation in the Nuseriat refugee camp, in which the IDF killed some 274 Gazans and injured hundreds more.821 Rallying the Israeli public around the war To rally the Israeli public around the war, Israel strongly limits the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. Israeli police has been repressing anti-war protests since the beginning of the war, often with excessive violence.822 In late March, the police entered the house of an anti-government activist who was suspected of coloring a fountain’s water red, trashing her place,823 while also using excessive force to disperse a demonstration that claimed that “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza”, claiming that such statements “disturb the public peace”.824 In another demonstration the police prohibited reading the names of dead Gazans and confiscated both the microphone and the pages with the list of their names.825 In April, the police showed up in a 75 year-old protestor’s home and beat him to prevent him from using a cardboard tank in an anti-government protest.826 The Minister for National Security established a police team to track and remove human rights activists from the West Bank.827 The police has repeatedly seized and shredded signs with anti-war messages held in “a long list of demonstrations and vigils”.828 The Israeli Prime Minister’s office did not allow the father of one of the Israelis killed on Oct. 7 to say a short prayer in a memorial ceremony associated with the state based on an earlier op-ed he wrote that was critical against the Prime Minister.829 The Israeli Channel 12 decided to minimize attention to protests by the families of the 815 https://www.salon.com/2024/01/05/cnn-admits-it-runs-all-gaza-coverage-through-bureau-monitored-by-israeli-militarycensor_partner/ ; https://theintercept.com/2024/01/04/cnn-israel-gaza-idf-reporting/ 816 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-25/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-israeli-media-became-a-wartime-governmentpropaganda-arm/0000018c-a0d3-d957-a98f-aed3ea560000 817 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-25/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-israeli-media-became-a-wartime-governmentpropaganda-arm/0000018c-a0d3-d957-a98f-aed3ea560000 818 https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/134881/ 819 https://www.mekomit.co.il/ps/134881/ 820 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-05-21/ty-article/israeli-officials-seize-ap-equipment-halt-gaza-live-broadcast-citing-aljazeera-law/0000018f-9b4e-dce9-a1cf-ffce461c0000 821 https://x.com/Morpheus1099/status/1799407973791645979 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-pounds-centralgaza-palestinian-death-toll-hostage-rescue-raid-rises-274-2024-06-09/ ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/09/likethe-horrors-of-judgment-day-palestinians-on-israels-hostage-rescue 822 https://www.972mag.com/israel-police-repression-protests-gaza/ 823 https://twitter.com/JoshBreiner/status/1772662679225635054 824 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b1pqgh4yr 825 https://twitter.com/OmerArvili/status/1776192429709812033 826 https://twitter.com/RedRevDanny/status/1779844167226609787 827 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra13887273 828 https://www.acri.org.il/post/_1084 ; also https://twitter.com/ofercass/status/1783896320933036133 829 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hkj7dmdv0 72 Israeli hostages in Gaza against the government.830 In June it was revealed that an elite police unit was tasked with disrupting anti-government or pro-hostage release protests in Jerusalem.831 Palestinian citizens of Israel were not allowed to protest early during the war with the support of Israel’s Supreme Court,832 a situation that has only partially improved subsequently.833 Freedom of speech, particularly among Palestinian citizens of Israel, has been curtailed significantly.834 A poll found that 76% of Palestinian Israelis stopped publishing content on social media in the first two months of the war, and 63% of Palestinian Israelis did not express their opinions at all in mixed Jewish-Palestinian groups on social media.835 Israel has attempted to pressure Palestinian journalists from the West Bank from publishing about the war.836 In early April Israel passed a law to shut down the operations of the critical channel Al-Jazeera in the country.837 After some deliberation, the government decided to shut down the channel in early May, sending police to immediately raid some of its local offices.838 Also in May, an Israeli teacher who attended “a pro Palestinian demonstration” with “Palestinian flags” in Israel (a Nakba commemoration) she was immediately suspended from teaching in her school.839 In the same month, the University of Haifa forbade a student demonstration against the war in its area, 840 and when a Palestinian citizen of Israel who owns a beauty salon expressed her sadness and solidarity with Rafah victims, she was arrested, ziptied and blindfolded.841 A Palestinian-Israeli TV host who wrote a social media post critiquing the release of one of the Israeli hostages in June at the price of so many dead Gazan civilians was immediately fired from her job.842 In addition, Israeli media has revealed that the IDF has conducted a covert campaign aimed at influencing Israeli citizens during the beginning of the war. As part of this campaign, the military opened and operated a Telegram channel that shared exclusive explicit content from IDF sources that showed the abuse and dehumanization of Palestinians, mostly within a Gaza context.843 In a more subtle case of media manipulation, the IDF edited out the thanks a released hostage’s father expressed to US President Biden, leaving only his gratitude towards the IDF.844 The deeper discussion of Israeli media and discourse in the next two sections highlights the success of Israel’s attempts to rally the Israeli public. Israeli media and discourse 830 https://www.themarker.com/blogs/2024-06-06/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-ecfe-dcb4-a38ffdffdf470000?gift=4cc430b6ec7c45b3adaf05ab9b10ba52 831 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rk0tbkyba 832 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/2023-11-16/ty-article/.premium/0000018b-d84e-dffa-adef-fe4e97f50000; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/law/2023-11-08/ty-article/.premium/0000018b-af66-dedf-adab-ef76b2400000 ; https://13tv.co.il/item/news/domestic/crime-and-justice/war-protest-903791798/ 833 For example: https://x.com/nirhasson/status/1796567421412938129 834 https://www.calcalist.co.il/local_news/article/ryzhcr0g0 835 https://www.the7eye.org.il/521195 836 https://twitter.com/ytirawi/status/1774836624280473643 837 https://apnews.com/article/israel-al-jazeera-qatar-hamas-war-gaza-49c2aa4afb3c3b0ee6ac314b63d80716; https://www.ynet.co.il/entertainment/article/r1l7bidy0 838 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rkdg311hfc#autoplay ; https://www.ynet.co.il/entertainment/article/rj8nuc4fa#autoplay 839 https://ononews.co.il/news-ganei-tikva/%D7%92%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%95%D7%94- %D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%91%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A2%D7%93%D7%94- %D7%91%D7%94%D7%A4%D7%92%D7%A0%D7%94-%D7%A2%D7%9D-%D7%93/ ; https://www.mako.co.il/newseducation/2024_q2/Article-cd8e2891d687f81026.htm 840 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/education/2024-05-20/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-91a1-d17a-a9df-91f1247f0000 841 https://x.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1795813951940202938 ; https://www.ha-makom.co.il/rasha-kraiem 842 https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/gallery-news/2024-06-08/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-f899-df2e-a5df-fefd24c30000 843 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-01-16/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018c-e8c1-d765-ab9d-f8fd29800000 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-02-04/ty-article/.premium/0000018d-7042-dd6e-a98d-f462d6a00000 ; 844 https://www.ha-makom.co.il/idf-pr 73 Following the above, Israeli journalists cannot get independent access to the Gaza Strip or to Gazans. The entire connection between Israeli journalists and the war is moderated through the IDF. One journalist summarized things as such: “if there is something that the military does not want us [journalists] to see and hear – we will not see it and not hear it. The IDF prevents us, Israeli journalists, any contact with Palestinians in the Strip… all the articles and images coming out of the Strip with journalists undergo a careful examination of the military censorship. This article was also changed by it. Most entrances of journalists to the Strip are very short… about half an hour on the ground… Sometimes it seems that the IDF stages scenes with more military action for those journalists it wishes to reward”.845 Israeli discourse almost uniformly ignores Palestinian voices. Even before the war, only 4% of interviews or screen time featured Palestinian-Israelis (about 20% of the population), a number that dropped after the beginning of the war.846 Instead, the dominant perspective provided to the Israeli public is the official account of the IDF’s spokesperson which is rarely challenged despite many examples of falsehoods and misrepresentations of reality by the IDF in the war.847 For example, despite Israeli claims to have killed large amounts of Hamas militants (10,000-13,000 as of late February-early March),848 the number has not been challenged in Israeli media, while a BBC examination found almost no evidence for this in hundreds of IDF videos, and little support for the number in the IDF’s own reporting.849 For several months, the IDF spokesperson presented the IDF’s perspective on prime time every day on all Israeli TV channels with little criticism.850 There is almost no attention in Israeli media to the experiences of civilians in Gaza or the horrors of war.851 Destruction, when showed, is sanitized through images of buildings destroyed from far away.852 Nonetheless, in April a poll found that two thirds of Israeli Jews saw few or no pictures or videos about the widespread destruction in Gaza.853 For example, the dozens of civilians deaths caused by the military operation that released two hostages in February were barely covered in Israeli media.854 Most Israeli media has not covered the atrocities and war crimes conducted by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, and the ones that have done so did it only months after the beginning of the war.855 The main challenges to dominant Israeli narrative in Hebrew language discourse come from independent media such as +972 Magazine/Local Call and The Seventh Eye, which nonetheless have 845 https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2023-12-28/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018c-aaf0-d22d-a3dd-bff9c4ad0000 846 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/inside-israel-its-a-very-different-war-628097b2 847 https://www.the7eye.org.il/501228 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/television/tv-review/2024-01-16/tyarticle/.highlight/0000018d-10f6-d71c-ad9f-53f6b2c90000 848 https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/defense/article/15395367; https://www.ynet.co.il/blogs/118daysofwar/article/sksjxiy9a ; https://www.politico.eu/article/israels-netanyahu-says-he-will-defy-bidens-red-line-and-invade-rafah/ 849 The BBC found that only one of the 280 videos that the IDF uploaded to its website until 27 February showed what appeared as dead bodies of Hamas militants. The IDF referred in 160 posts to specified numbers of Hamas militants killed, reaching a total of 714. Other references were vague and therefore difficult to count. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68387864 850 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-25/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-israeli-media-became-a-wartime-governmentpropaganda-arm/0000018c-a0d3-d957-a98f-aed3ea560000 851 https://hazmanhazeh.org.il/dehumanization-by-disregard/; https://www.the7eye.org.il/503665 ; https://www.kikar.co.il/journalism/s6bo7x ; https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/17/gideon_levy_israel_gaza ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myby8-55uwc ; this has been the case also in the previous Gaza war: https://www.the7eye.org.il/128234 ; https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/inside-israel-its-a-very-different-war-628097b2 ; https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/17/amira_hass_israel_palestine_gaza ; https://x.com/the7i/status/1799724456958706071 852 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-25/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-israeli-media-became-a-wartime-governmentpropaganda-arm/0000018c-a0d3-d957-a98f-aed3ea560000 853 https://en.idi.org.il/articles/53666 854 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-03/ty-article/.highlight/0000018e-a04c-ded0-a18f-e2fc22fc0000 855 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-25/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-israeli-media-became-a-wartime-governmentpropaganda-arm/0000018c-a0d3-d957-a98f-aed3ea560000 ; while I am unaware of such an analysis being done with Israeli respondents, Gazans who watched videos of Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7 are 15 times more likely to believe that Hamas committed atrocities in the attack, see: https://pcpsr.org/en/node/980 74 very limited reach and resources856 and are themselves under military censorship857 as well as NGOs such as B’Tselem and Gisha.858 Israeli media also minimizes the coverage of reports by international institutions, as the common assumption that the media promotes is that these institutions are inherently biased against Israel. For example, 60% of Jewish Israelis believed that the ICC was planning to issue warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defense because of the “continued anti-Israeli bias of the ICC”.859 In this context, Israel has obstructed external official investigations into the Oct. 7 atrocities, for example one led by the UN Human Rights Council,860 and another that aimed to investigate sexual violence on Oct. 7.861 When these reports were published, they received little attention in Israeli media, which often focused on discrediting them. Israeli’s media’s uncritical pro-war position Israeli media’s pro-war position is rationalized, justified and widely accepted. Already before the war, many Israeli journalists intentionally shifted their coverage to the right or self-censored in recent years.862 The new CEO of Channel 13 told his employees in mid-March that they should unite the nation by providing entertainment and Israeli hasbara (i.e. public diplomacy/propaganda).863 An important Israeli journalist has stated that he believes that journalism should be used to bolster Israeli morale during the war.864 Accordingly, Israeli media amplifies pro-war voices – seen to support the state’s goals – while silencing others. Especially early in the war, Israeli journalists avoided reporting on friendly fire casualties in the IDF.865 The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz (considered to be leftist by Israeli standards), for example, waited for five months until it called for a ceasefire,866 despite overwhelming evidence for the humanitarian costs of the war, widespread acknowledgement that the Israeli Prime Minister was prolonging the war for his own personal interests, and the apparent inability of the IDF to reach its military objectives. Similarly, it waited for almost half a year before speaking against the real possibility of ethnic cleansing in Gaza,867 and published only in late March a piece covering a report that estimates excess mortality in Gaza because of famine and disease, which had been published originally in mid February.868 An important journalist in the newspaper flipped his own position without any admission of his earlier mistake.869 In another example, when an Israeli director won a prize for a film and discussed Israeli apartheid in his victory speech, the Israeli Channel 11 described it as 856 https://www.972mag.com/ ; https://www.the7eye.org.il/ 857 https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/israel_gaza_war_gospel_artificial_intelligence 858 https://www.btselem.org/hebrew/press_releases/20231010_revenge_policy_in_motion_israel_committing_war_crimes_in_gaza ; https://gisha.org/targeting-civilians-is-a-war-crime/ 859 https://www.idi.org.il/articles/54307 860 https://www.timesofisrael.com/government-forbids-doctors-from-speaking-to-un-group-investigating-oct-7-atrocities/ 861 https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231206-un-seeks-israel-access-for-hamas-sexual-violence-investigation ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/accounts-sexual-violence-hamas-attack-mount-justice-is-remote-israels-victims-2023-12-05/ 862 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/inside-israel-its-a-very-different-war-628097b2 863 https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/media/2024-03-13/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-38a2-d21d-a3ef-3be6160f0000 864 https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-01-14/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018d-0361-d832-a59d-17f7e2e50000 ; also https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/media/2023-12-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018c-a5c7-d97c-a9ec-bfcf6d6d0000 865 https://www.the7eye.org.il/503392 866 https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/editorial-articles/2024-03-01/ty-article-opinion/0000018d-f607-da4e-adbf-f6bf17c30000 ; compare to the newspaper’s position during the 2014 war in Gaza: https://www.the7eye.org.il/128234 867 https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/editorial-articles/2024-03-27/ty-article-opinion/0000018e-7bc4-d680-a1cf-ffc775940000 868 https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/2024-03-27/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018e-8062-d49b-a3bf-f47f49810000; https://gaza-projections.org/gaza_projections_report.pdf ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/editorial-articles/2024-03-31/ty-articleopinion/0000018e-907e-d9a4-a7bf-dc7f1b1f0000 869 https://twitter.com/idanlandau/status/1777753047789117499 75 antisemitic870 while Ha’aretz featured no less than four pieces against him.871 A Palestinian citizen of Israel who wrote an op-ed in the newspaper was not allowed to use the term ‘Palestinian’ to refer to Israeli citizens – and the editorial staff changed it to the socially acceptable ‘Arabs’.872 Israeli media continued to disseminate claims that had already been debunked. A serious investigative program on Channel 12 broadcasted an interview with a senior IDF general who claimed to have seen atrocities that did not happen.873 The Israeli Channel 14 has presented especially egregious examples of promoting fake news and reiterating false claims. In one case, for example, a popular anchor discussed in depth a supposed The Atlantic piece about the events of Oct. 7, aiming to absolve the Israeli Prime Minister from responsibility. A brief subsequent investigation revealed that the Atlantic piece never existed.874 In a different case the channel televised an interview with an IDF officer who openly lied about atrocities in the Gaza envelope well after those atrocities had been shown to be false in Israeli media.875 On other occasions, Israeli media casts doubts on evidence that weaken Israel’s legitimacy. For example, in late March Channel 11 broadcasted a segment under the title “Is there a famine in Gaza?”,876 while the popular news website Ynet uncritically conveyed an official response that “there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza” and blamed the UN for any problems in the distribution of food in Gaza.877 American media In American media, several studies and experts have pointed out that there has been a pervasive bias against Palestinians for a century.878 For example, a survey of the American media’s coverage of Palestinians found that only a tiny minority (less than 2%) of editorials, columns and guest opinion pieces that discussed Palestine in the New York Times and Washington Post (between 1970-2019) were written by Palestinians.879 The media coverage of the beginning of the war remained strongly pro-Israeli.880 A Newsweek editor, for example, called for large parts of Gaza to be flattened to resemble a parking lot.881 The New York Times supplied direct quotes from Israeli government and military officials four times as much as the equivalent Palestinian quotes.882 In another example, an investigation by The Guardian demonstrated that CNN’s coverage is heavily biased towards Israel,883 a critique that surfaced within the channel as well.884 Similarly, a study by The Intercept found that already early in the war, the coverage of Palestinians in top newspapers in the United States decreased as the number of Palestinian deaths increased. Strong emotional words were 870 https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/media/2024-02-26/ty-article/.premium/0000018d-e6ee-d7f4-a3dd-e6ee92270000 871 https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/opinion/2024-02-28/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018d-ef8e-d1e0-a1dd-ffffe46f0000; https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-02-28/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018d-eedc-d7f4-a3dd-eedcb0040000; https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-03-05/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018e-0b2c-d9cb-afdf-0bbc88e20000; https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/opinion/2024-03-04/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-0a17-d9cb-afdf-0a9f2b770000 872 Discussion of her speaking in another podcast at: https://youtu.be/WHCMVqNOre0?si=PlZXwSpzeJ4boVyR&t=2430 873 https://www.mako.co.il/news-military/6361323ddea5a810/Article-831cb8cdf6d6b81026.htm, https://twitter.com/brown_johnbrown/status/1768222848361881615 874 https://twitter.com/FakeReporter/status/1761696937256853788 875 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-01-21/ty-article/.premium/0000018d-2bb4-daf5-a1bf-aff41ac80000 876 https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1770492431990956343 877 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sys5qltaa ; for context: https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Feb_July2024_Special_Brief.pdf 878 Many references here: https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/new-york-times-complicit-plausible-genocide ; https://newrepublic.com/article/171286/new-york-times-israel-coverage-history-netanyahu 879 https://www.972mag.com/us-media-palestinians. The Nation included a higher ratio (10.5%); the New Republic had no pieces authored by Palestinians. 880 https://www.columnblog.com/p/massacred-vs-left-to-die-documenting 881 https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1711185635229282605 882 https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/the-times-quotes-israeli-and-american-sources-more-than-3-times-as-much-as-palestinians 883 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/04/cnn-staff-pro-israel-bias 884 https://theintercept.com/2024/03/01/cnn-christiane-amanpour-israel-gaza-coverage/ 76 disproportionally used to describe Israeli deaths and not Palestinian ones.885 A different investigation found a similar effect continuing throughout February in The New York Times. 886 A third investigation found that until March the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal used the term ‘brutal’ far more often to refer to Palestinians and their actions (77% of cases) than Israel despite the lopsided death toll between both sides. 887 An internal memo at The New York Times told journalists to avoid terms such as “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, “occupied territories”, “refugee camps” or “Palestine” in its coverage of the war.888 Similar editorial guidelines at the global news syndicate AFP were similarly pro-Israeli.889 While Israeli casualties are individuated in reporting, the far greater number of Palestinian casualties is frequently described collectively and in passive terms.890 An examination of 5 leading media outlets reveals how Palestinians are dehumanized and often reduced to numbers, which are then doubted.891 The selection of language to blur Israeli responsibility, for example to the killing of Palestinians, and preserve its image has been long documented and continues throughout the war.892 As a result, for example, a February poll found that half of Americans do not know whether Israelis or Palestinians have had a higher death toll, despite the massive discrepancy in reality between both sides (about 20 Palestinians had been killed for each Israeli).893 The New York Times published an editorial in which it recognized that military aid to Israel cannot be unconditional only after more than half a year of war.894 American media has also largely avoided investigations of events that could make Israel appear negatively. As at least some of these investigations, especially those concerning the events on Oct. 7, have been covered in Israeli media, it appears that this is an explicit pattern that corresponds with the decisions of the political class in the US. The media watchdog group FAIR pointed out that US media shields its audience from reports of Israeli friendly fire incidents in the Oct. 7 attacks – reports that had been widely in Israeli media.895 Notably, Ronen Bergman, a journalist working for both the Israeli Yediot Ahronot and The New York Times, has investigated these incidents in his Yediot Ahronot publications but not in his New York Times ones.896 The New York Times has briefly or not covered other negative stories on Israel such as Israel’s targeting policy, its responsibility in starving Palestinians, or its torturing of detainees.897 Instead, a major story covering Hamas’ mass rape during Oct. 7 in The New York Times received inordinate resources – including the funding to conduct 150 interviews898 – and was solicited by the paper itself. Inexplicably, the story was given to a former Israeli intelligence officer with no former reporting experience, who also liked a tweet that called 885 https://theintercept.com/2024/01/09/newspapers-israel-palestine-bias-new-york-times/ 886 https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/the-times-quotes-israeli-and-american-sources-more-than-3-times-as-much-as-palestinians 887 https://fair.org/home/brutal-is-a-word-mostly-reserved-for-palestinian-violence/ 888 https://theintercept.com/2024/04/15/nyt-israel-gaza-genocide-palestine-coverage/ 889 https://www.declassifieduk.org/analysis-how-the-uk-and-us-media-dehumanise-palestinians/ 890 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/11/a-new-abyss-gaza-and-the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine ; https://newyorkwarcrimes.com/the-times-quotes-israeli-and-american-sources-more-than-3-times-as-much-as-palestinians 891 https://www.declassifieduk.org/analysis-how-the-uk-and-us-media-dehumanise-palestinians/ . For an exception: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/18/world/middleeast/gaza-university-class.html 892 https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/new-york-times-complicit-plausible-genocide ; https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1763453379811098672; https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1764012307385053635; https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1764815517548994866; https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1764752005673984066; https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1763254348942037335; https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1762992473067130934; https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1761979317779824767 ; https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1767686506939068845; the author of these tweets includes many other examples. See also: https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1799543857539108962 893 https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/03/21/emotions-news-and-knowledge-about-the-israel-hamas-war/ 894 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/13/opinion/israel-military-aid.html 895 https://fair.org/home/shielding-us-public-from-israeli-reports-of-friendly-fire-on-october-7/ ; also https://theintercept.com/2024/02/27/zaka-october-7-israel-hamas-new-york-times/ 896 https://fair.org/home/shielding-us-public-from-israeli-reports-of-friendly-fire-on-october-7/ 897 https://palestine.beehiiv.com/p/new-york-times-complicit-plausible-genocide 898 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html 77 upon Israel to “turn the [Gaza] strip into a slaughterhouse”.899 After its release, independent media as well as The Intercept found a long list of fundamental problems with the account.900 The New York Times itself had to admit that some of the information it had published was false,901 and later cut its ties with the reporter.902 The Nation described the piece as “the biggest failure of journalism” at the Times in the past two decades,903 while Ha’aretz compared the collapse of the Times’ piece to its October 7.904 In late April, 59 journalism and news media professors from top universities called upon the New York Times to address open questions about the piece.905 Despite all these questions, in early May the New York Times received a Pulitzer in international reporting for its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.906 The treatment of UNRWA as a case of media misrepresentation One example of the actions of Israel’s media strategy is the treatment of UNRWA, the UN body responsible for the support of Palestinian refugees. The same day after the ICJ found that it was plausible that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza (Jan. 26), Israel asserted that 12 UNRWA employees (out of c. 13,000 in the Strip) participated in the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel.907 Almost immediately, 16 of UNRWA’s donors – western countries – declared they would suspend their funding of UNRWA.908 Israeli and Western media followed the UNRWA story with coverage and discussions, burying the much more substantial ICJ story. Although Israel has not released any publicly available evidence to support these claims to date,909 a story in the British Channel 4 revealed the document Israel supposedly sent UNRWA’s donor countries. The document itself was extremely brief. Containing no actual evidence, it includes a single line about each of the 12 UNRWA employees that were supposed perpetrators.910 A different intelligence dossier released by Israel contains no evidence either.911 To date, the head of UNRWA has stated that despite multiple requests Israel has not shared any details of the allegation with him or his organization.912 Other claims made by Israel were never made to UNRWA but directly to the media.913 An assessment by the US’ national intelligence council assessed the involvement of a handful of UNRWA workers in the 899 https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7 . Her partner’s nephew worked with her, as well as a veteran reporter who was responsible for the framing. 900 https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7; https://theintercept.com/2024/03/04/nyt-october-7- sexual-violence-kibbutz-beeri/; https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1236130609/new-york-times-hamas-attacks-israel-palestine ; https://jacobin.com/2024/02/new-york-times-anti-palestinian-bias 901 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/world/middleeast/video-sexual-assault-israel-kibbutz-hamas.html 902 https://www.ynetnews.com/culture/article/rkoh8h8ya 903 https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/new-york-times-intercept-hamas-rape/ 904 https://www.haaretz.co.il/gallery/galleryfriday/2024-03-28/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/0000018e-7ab6-de80-a78f-7bf747280000 905 https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/04/29/new-york-times-oct-7-journalism-professors-letter/ ; https://www.ynet.co.il/entertainment/article/bk8ntgcw0 ; https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/8/nyt_investigation ; the letter is at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/adc3143c-ecc7-477f-8a38-a76308b18cca.pdf 906 https://twitter.com/PulitzerPrizes/status/1787561713291645419 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/business/pulitzer-prizewinners.html 907 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/world/middleeast/un-aid-israel-oct-7-attacks.html . As of late May, allegations have been made against 19 UNRWA staff members. The investigation is being conducted by the top investigative body in the UN (the Office of Internal Oversight Services). One case was closed because there was no evidence, 4 cases were suspended because of insufficient evidence, and another 14 cases remain under investigation, see https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/opinion/israel-gaza-un-unrwa.html . 908 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/01/unrwa-funding-pause-employees-october-7-hamas-attack-claims-no-evidence-un 909 But see this video (originally reported on by The Washington Post) that allegedly shows an UNRWA worker taking the body of an Israeli on Oct. 7: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-presents-video-allegedly-showing-un-aid-worker-taking-body-israeli-oct-7- 2024-02-17/ 910 https://twitter.com/DrSakriKaia/status/1754685268454785074 911 https://www.scribd.com/document/702738861/Swords-of-Iron-UNRWA-Hamas-Relations ; survey of how the media has treated Israel’s claims here: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/unwra-hamas-israel/ 912 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-02-20/ty-article-magazine/.premium/unrwa-chief-waiting-for-israels-evidence-on-hamasinfiltration-of-gaza-employees/0000018d-c5fc-db3b-a9cf-cdfdfd5a0000 ; https://twitter.com/UNLazzarini/status/1760764594644013287 913 https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unrwa-claims-versus-facts-press-release-26feb2024/ 78 Oct. 7 events “with low confidence”.914 The weak evidence supporting the Israeli claim has led to several of the countries that stopped funding to resume it in March and April. 915 Other countries did so subsequently or expressed plans to do so, and some even increased their humanitarian support for Gaza.916 In mid-March, the EU’s top humanitarian aid officer said that he had seen no evidence from Israel that supported Israel’s accusations against UNRWA.917 According to UNRWA’s own leaked report, Israel pressured Gazan employees of UNRWA to falsely state that UNRWA has links to Hamas and that its staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks. The employees were severely beaten, tortured and were threatened that their family members would be harmed.918 In late March an Israeli organization released a report that revealed a pro-Israeli influence operation that targeted US Black Democrat legislators, in attempt to sway their opinion against UNRWA and the Palestinians. 919 A few months later it was revealed that the operation was orchestrated by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry and run by a political campaigning firm.920 In late April, an independent review by a former French foreign minister and three research institutions mentioned again that the Israeli government has not yet substantiated its claims that UNRWA’s staff has had links to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. It added that UNRWA regularly supplied Israel and other countries with lists of its employees for vetting, and that the Israeli government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns regarding its staff since 2011.921 Israeli officials have long stated that they want to shut UNRWA down.922 Israel has recently stated again this aim,923 and has acted upon it,924 going as far as proposing a bill that designated UNRWA as a terrorist organization in late May.925 These indicate that Israel has been weaponizing its allegations against UNRWA for this purpose.926 In the recent war Israel and Israeli media state or insinuate there is a connection between UNRWA and Hamas, but Israeli media fails to independently evaluate the claims by the IDF, or mention facts such as that UNRWA is very frequently audited within the UN,927 or notify its audience that all UNRWA employees had been approved by Israel and re-approved 914 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-finds-claims-that-u-n-aid-agency-staff-took-part-in-hamas-attack-credible-957b747e 915 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68518468 ; https://twitter.com/Kahlissee/status/1763587426163798282 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/unrwa-donors-likely-resume-funding-soon-norway-says-2024-03-06/; https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-holds-back-part-unrwa-payment-boosts-palestinian-aid-2024-03-01/ ; https://www.timesofisrael.com/france-to-resume-unrwa-funding-while-ensuring-right-conditions-are-met/ ; https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/3/29/japan-to-resume-funding-to-unrwa-following-sweden-finland-and-canada ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/24/germany-to-resume-funding-of-unrwa-aid-operations-in-gaza 916 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-uk-unrwa-plan-place-resume-funding; https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20240228_10/ ; https://apnews.com/article/australia-unrwa-hamas-israel-gaza-funding1b4bcb81251cf7eeed0904da9fe4144b 917 https://www.reuters.com/world/no-evidence-israel-back-unrwa-accusations-says-eu-humanitarian-chief-2024-03-14/ 918 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/unrwa-report-says-israel-coerced-some-agency-employees-to-falsely-admit-hamaslinks/ 919 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-03-19/ty-article-magazine/.premium/0000018e-4cd5-d26a-afbf-ecd552de0000; https://fakereporter.net/pdf/pro-israel_influence_network_report-0324.pdf?v=2 920 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-06-05/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-secretly-targeted-americanlawmakers-with-gaza-war-influence-campaign/0000018f-e7c8-d11f-a5cf-e7cb62af0000; https://fakereporter.net/pdf/proIsraeli_influence_network-new_findings-0624.pdf 921 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/22/israel-unrwa-staff-terrorist-links-yet-to-provide-evidence-colonna-report ; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/22/unrwa-israel-hamas-report-palestinians/ ; https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/unrwa_independent_review_on_neutrality.pdf . See also on this the report by the three research institutions and a following analysis twitter thread: https://www.passblue.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/04/2024_04_20_UNRWA-final-technical_report.pdf ; https://twitter.com/MartinKonecny/status/1783445318329147400 922 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0bMANfC0BQ ; https://jewishcurrents.org/the-campaign-to-abolish-unrwa 923 https://www.kikar.co.il/israel-news/sa71dg ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-03-11/ty-article/.premium/0000018e-2dbcd468-a9ff-2fbdbafa0000 924 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/31/israel-plan-un-dismantle-palestinian-relief-agency-unwra; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/26/israel-unrwa-palestine 925 https://www.msf.org/israeli-proposal-designate-unrwa-terrorist-organisation-outrageous 926 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-04-24/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-1017-d361-a3ef-52f798500000 927 https://www.unrwa.org/who-we-are/frequently-asked-questions [under oversight of UNRWA spending]; https://youtu.be/LA_xtBh3eLw?si=DXUkq3gct46VbE9O&t=445 79 every year, and that UNRWA screens all its employees against the UN Security Council sanctions list twice a year.928 UNRWA also fired several employees who were found to be linked to Hamas in the past.929 Moreover, the closure of UNRWA would massively exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, while discussions in Israeli media include no clear plan for providing alternative aid to Gazans (polls in late March and late May found that UNRWA oversaw the provision of assistance for 62% and 53%, respectively, of respondents in shelters in south Gaza, in parallel to complaints for discrimination in those shelters930). Another case of successful propaganda: doubting the Palestinian death toll931 Early during the war, Israel had publicly disputed the Palestinian death toll, claiming that it was exaggerated and unrealistic. Here too the media played a major role in propagating this claim, planting the seeds of doubt in the minds of many. Until today, the media retains these doubts, often by mentioning that Palestinian casualties are reported by, e.g. the “Hamas-led Ministry of Health in Gaza” (emphasis mine). The doubts reached as high as US President Joe Biden, who publicly doubted the number of casualties in a well-covered speech on Oct. 25 in which he stated he had “no confidence” in these numbers.932 The relatively large number of Hebrew-speaking comments responding to an earlier version of this document (released on Twitter/X on 15 March) reveals that these doubts remain in the minds of many in Israel. Superficial doubts of the death count continue to appear periodically in Israeli Hebrew-speaking media as well as strongly pro-Israel think tanks groups. 933 Nonetheless, this is an untenable position. Disregarding the obvious interests of Israel to minimize the Palestinian death count, a few days after Biden doubted the Palestinian death count, the health authorities in Gaza released a list of the 6,747 dead Palestinians who had died until Biden’s statement on Oct. 26, including their names, sex, age and IDs.934 To the best of my knowledge, nobody, including Israel who holds the population registry for Gaza, has doubted the veracity of this list.935 Subsequently, Biden himself apologized for casting public doubt on the Palestinian death toll.936 To the best of my knowledge, there have been no explicit doubts of the Palestinian death toll in major international media outlets since that point (despite the repeated insinuations discussed above). The single attempt to do so, a March piece in the conservative Jewish Tablet Magazine, used cherry-picked and partial data to make a statistical argument.937 Although several experts and 928 https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unrwa-claims-versus-facts-press-release-26feb2024/ ; https://jewishcurrents.org/thecampaign-to-abolish-unrwa 929 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/world/middleeast/unrwa-hamas-gaza.html 930 http://pcpsr.org/sites/default/files/Poll%2091%20English%20press%20release%2020%20March%202024.pdf (pp. 7-8); https://pcpsr.org/en/node/980 931 I have added this content here because of public interest, particularly in the responses to my publishing of the Hebrew version of this document on March 15. I hope that it sheds some more light on both my methodology while also presenting another case of media bias, propaganda and their lingering effects throughout the war. 932 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/biden-says-he-has-no-confidence-palestinian-death-count-2023-10-26/ ; https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208577490/biden-says-hes-worried-about-civilian-deaths-in-gaza-but-questions-death-toll-st ; https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-palestinians-news/card/biden-says-he-doubts-accuracy-of-palestinians-death-tollreports-WXQUdN2EwX9EZO3Jhziq 933 https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/04/09/hamas-run-gaza-health-ministry-admits-to-flaws-in-casualty-data/ ; https://twitter.com/petersavodnik/status/1778620648551829969 ; for the FDD: https://web.archive.org/web/20191116031839/https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/11/anti-iran-advocacy-group-fddregisters-to-lobby.html ; Seliktar, Ofira, and Farhad Rezaei. Iran, Israel, and the United States: The Politics of Counter-Proliferation Intelligence. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, pp. 162, 168. 934 https://mondoweiss.net/2023/10/this-is-a-list-of-the-names-of-more-than-6000-palestinians-that-israel-has-killed-in-gaza/ 935 https://theintercept.com/2023/10/31/gaza-death-palestine-health-ministry/ 936 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/27/biden-israel-palestine-muslim-americans-war/ ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/us/politics/biden-aide-israel-regret.html 937 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers/ 80 observers quickly refuted it as a case of shoddy statistics,938 a series of Israeli media outlets (as well as AIPAC) attempted to boost this message without any criticism to sow doubt.939 Another attempt to cast doubt on the Gaza Health Ministry took place in mid May, after the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, which publishes summary reports every few days, changed the source of data it used for reporting on the composition of deaths (moving from over 9,500 women deaths and over 14,500 children deaths according to vague estimates by the Gaza Media Office, to more concrete 4,959 identified women, 7,797 identified children, and some 10,000 unidentified deaths according to data by the Gaza Ministry of Health).940 Although the total number of reported casualties did not change, and the identification of individuals by their name and full demographic information represented a step forward in the granularity and reliability of the data coming from Gaza, the media reporting on the issue – which began only several days after the publication of the numbers – mainly served to cast doubt on the reported data as well as the UN (and again this was led by openly pro-Israel media outlets).941 Although the “halving” narrative was soon refuted by the Deputy Spokesperson for the UN’s Secretary-General as well as several media outlets, 942 the information warfare damage has been done.943 The Gaza Health Ministry reported mortality does contain some methodological challenges. The most serious problem is the division of the death count into three separate categories. The first includes reports of mortality through hospitals (20,976, or 61% of the total in the report from May 3). The second includes Gazans own reporting of deaths they know of (3,715, or 11% of the total). Both categories include full demographic information, and people listed in them appear on the Ministry’s lists of mortality (last published on April 30). The third category is currently listed as deaths about which only ‘partial information’ is known (9,963, or 29% of the total). According to earlier reports by the Ministry, these were collected from “reliable media sources” (unclear which) in areas where the Health Ministry has no communications or where the health system has broken down.944 Several serious media outlets have accepted the Gaza death count945 and declared that “the figure is widely viewed as the most reliable one available”.946 In December, a peer-reviewed scholarly 938 Most obviously as the piece was published 5 months after the beginning of the war but examined a subset of only 15 days at the beginning of the war. Others have refuted this account, e.g. https://twitter.com/joftius/status/1766199967364890949 ; https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1769476779234721915 939 https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-791838; https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/world-news/middleeast/article/15388434 ; https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/artc-expert-claims-hamas-s-gaza-death-toll-exaggerated-or-faked ; https://www.jns.org/hamas-fakes-casualty-figures-the-numbers-are-not-real/ ; https://twitter.com/AIPAC/status/1769387362289655835 940 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-213; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-215 941 https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-800772; https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/05/13/un-cutsestimates-women-children-deaths-gaza/73669560007/ ; https://www.foxnews.com/world/un-revises-gaza-death-toll-50-less-womenchildren-killed-previously-reported . Also https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/13/gaza-ministry-revises-figures-forwomen-and-children-killed ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-says-gaza-death-toll-still-over-35000-not-all-bodiesidentified-2024-05-13/ 942 https://x.com/marcowenjones/status/1790086787764715922 ; https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-un-halve-gaza-death-toll1900325 943 For example: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/gaza-death-count/678400/ 944 This is hardly ideal, but considering the challenges to get a decent count in real time is acceptable. Notably, death counts are notoriously difficult to count even in less disrupted environments. At the aftermath of hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, the government claimed for half a year that less than a hundred people died, then revised its assessment to 2,975. I have studied this controversy as a scholar as events unfolded in 2017-2018. The best summary I know of is this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Maria_death_toll_controversy . As of early April, the Ministry also opened a website in which people could report their dead family members: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-gaza-authorities-lose-count-of-the-dead779ff694 (according to the Ministry of Health, the form opened in January and is accessible here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScndnMojIJoflfSPTD25uqkZSzUH–G05AMwcbbyJB42bNQcw/viewform) 945 https://time.com/6909636/gaza-death-toll/ 946 https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war 81 analysis in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet has argued that there was “no evidence of inflated mortality” in the reports from Gaza.947 The Gaza Health Ministry has provided reports of deaths to several media outlets, for example to al-Jazeera (a list of several thousand children who were identified as killed, published)948 and to NPR (a report on the death count, unpublished).949 In mid March, an expert epidemiologist with 30 years of experience in field measurement of mortality in crises accepted the number, adding that “In fact, there may have never been a major conflict where real-time surveillance data about deaths was more complete than is unfolding in Gaza today.”950 In late April, both a UN official and IDF military officials agreed that the number is reliable.951 Notably, the recent war has been the first major Gaza operation in which Israel does not keep its own estimates of the Palestinian death count. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other source for mortality in Gaza as of writing.952 An Israeli investigative journalist report revealed that the IDF itself is using the official Gaza death count, updating it daily in its own internal briefings.953 This has been confirmed by the Wall Street Journal. 954 Israel’s Prime Minister himself has claimed in an interview that Israel has killed 13,000 Hamas militants (see below on this number) and that 1-1.5 civilians died for each militant, indicating a total Palestinian death count of 26,000-32,500 as of March 10. 955 This range includes the Palestinian death count the next day, 31,112. 956 In late March, in a closed briefing to Senate Republicans, Israel’s Prime Minister reiterated his position, stating that he estimated the death toll to be some 28,000 (about 14% lower than the official Gaza Health Ministry estimate on the next day, 32,623).957 In late April, IDF officials estimated that the death toll was around 36,000 (the Ministry estimate was more than 34,000).958 In early May, Israel’s Prime Minister estimated a total death toll of about 30,000 (again about 14% less than the Ministry’s estimate, 35,091).959 Additional evidence supporting the Palestinian death count claims include the fact that in previous wars, the gap between the Israeli and Palestinian versions of the Palestinian death tolls have been negligible. Thus for example, for the 2014 Operation Protective Edge, Israel officially estimated 2,125 Palestinian deaths960 whereas the Palestinian Ministry of Health counted 2,310 Palestinian deaths961 (the UN Human Rights Committee’s count reached 2,251962). The reported number of Palestinian deaths is probably an undercount as it is likely that many deaths have not been found or have not been reported to the health ministry.963 The death toll does not include more than 10,000 people 947 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02713-7/fulltext 948 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlCzT9_YE9Y 949 https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war 950 https://time.com/6909636/gaza-death-toll/ 951 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-gaza-authorities-lose-count-of-the-dead-779ff694 952 https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208577490/biden-says-hes-worried-about-civilian-deaths-in-gaza-but-questions-death-toll-st 953 https://www.mekomit.co.il/%D7%94%D7%A6%D7%91%D7%90-%D7%91%D7%93%D7%A7-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%90- %D7%A9%D7%93%D7%99%D7%95%D7%95%D7%97%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9D- %D7%91%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%93-%D7%94%D7%91/ 954 https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-and-israels-unprecedented-intelligence-sharing-draws-criticism-a85979b4 955 https://www.politico.eu/article/israels-netanyahu-says-he-will-defy-bidens-red-line-and-invade-rafah/ 956 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-136 957 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/us/politics/netanyahu-schumer-israel.html ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilitiesgaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-175 958 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-gaza-authorities-lose-count-of-the-dead-779ff694. The estimates were that 11,000-13,000 Hamas militants were killed, and that the ratio of militants to civilians is roughly 1 to 2. 959 https://www.barrons.com/news/netanyahu-hamas-fighters-comprise-almost-half-gaza-s-death-toll-42cfe029 960 https://mfa.gov.il/ProtectiveEdge/Documents/PalestinianFatalities.pdf 961 https://web.archive.org/web/20150111023729/http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=751290 962 http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoIGaza/A_HRC_CRP_4.doc 963 https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1743019663913537943 82 missing under the rubble.964 Gaza’s own electronic system for counting the dead was disrupted already on Nov. 12.965 By April there were clear indications that the Ministry was unable to reach many of the dead.966 Estimates of Hamas militant deaths by Israelis are often exaggerated, as is natural and unsurprising in military engagements on both sides.967 On other occasions, Israeli officials have long produced wild exaggerations with regards to the number of killed Hamas militants. On November 5, for example, “a senior security official” (perhaps the Minister of Defense), stated that the IDF has already killed 20,000 Gazans, “mostly terrorists”.968 The overall Palestinian count back then was only 9,770.969 The exaggerations on the Israeli side have been strongly suggested, for example, by a BBC fact checking analysis of all IDF videos.970 Altogether, all the evidence strongly suggests that the Palestinian death counts are as precise as might be expected during a war, even more so considering the serious and sustained damage to the Gaza health system and its reports. The fact that a significant amount of interested commentators continues to doubt the reports and is willing to do so publicly highlights both the effectiveness of the propaganda campaign during the beginning of the war, and the tenacity of Israel’s information war that continues to be waged as of writing. 964 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-june-2024; See also: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/25/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news#missing-people-under-gazas-rubble-make-for-a-shadowdeath-toll ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/08/relatives-anguish-tens-of-thousands-missing-in-gaza-war 965 https://www.npr.org/2024/02/29/1234159514/gaza-death-toll-30000-palestinians-israel-hamas-war 966 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/in-gaza-authorities-lose-count-of-the-dead-779ff694 967 The same is true for Hamas estimates of IDF casualties in their official communications channel. These estimates are often exaggerated or massaged, for example by Hamas claiming they have “targeted” a tank which implies (but does not actually state) that the tank sustained any damage, or by showing a video of Hamas militants firing a projectile at a tank and often an explosion but not showing actual damage done. 968 https://www.calcalist.co.il/local_news/article/thpk0egl5 969 https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-death-toll-numbers-injured-5c9dc40bec95a8408c83f3c2fb759da0 970 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68387864 83 US involvement in the war Last updated: June 18, 2024 The US has played a crucial role in the Israel-Gaza war since its beginning by providing support for Israel. This support took several forms: military aid (actual weapons) and funding to purchase such weapons from the US; protecting Israel by deploying US military assets defensively and offensively; diplomatic support; and largely freeing Israel from American oversight and accountability. Each form is discussed in a separate subsection below. The fifth subsection examines the significant changes in American rhetoric over the war which became more critical as the war continued. The overall trend is clear – the US overwhelmingly supported Israel through its actions. Its more critical remarks towards Israel led to almost no changes in its policy towards Israel. The final section briefly deals with notable cases of visible internal dissent in the US – in both the administration and in broader society. A later section, “Zoom-in 2”, examines the campus protests in the US over April and May. US military aid to Israel The US has been supporting Israel for long before the war, to the extent that “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II”, with a total of $158 billion provided until 2023 (more than $260 billion and up to $317.9 billion if adjusted for inflation).971 In 2016, the US and Israeli governments agreed that over the ten years between 2019 and 2028 the US would provide Israel with a total of $38 billion in military aid (in the previous two decades, the US had provided Israel with a total of $30 and $21.3 billion in military aid).972 Over the decade before the war (2013-2022), 68% of Israel’s weapon imports came from the US.973 The US began providing military support to Israel with hours of the Oct. 7 attack. In the next ten days, the US sent five shipments of military aid to Israel.974 In the first two months of the war, the US may have sent some 200 planes carrying a total of some 10,000 tons of military equipment.975 In the first three months of the war, the US provided Israel with at least 15,000 bombs, including more than 5,000 unguided bombs and more than 5,400 two-thousand pound bombs, as well as over 57,000 155mm artillery shells976 (Israel used over 100,000 artillery shells in less than two months of fighting).977 Additional munitions requested include kamikaze drones, dive-bombing drones, missiles, rockets and mortar rounds.978 Subsequent months saw more sales of the same and similar items.979 In early March it was revealed that the US approved more than 100 separate military sales to Israel since the beginning of the war, as the Biden administration bypassed Congress to approve the 971 https://sgp.fas.org/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf ; https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-military-aid-does-the-us-give-to-israel/ ; https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2023-10-10/how-much-aid-does-the-u-s-give-to-israel 972 https://sgp.fas.org/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf 973 https://theconversation.com/where-do-israel-and-hamas-get-their-weapons-220762 974 https://web.archive.org/web/20231110173047/https://time.com/6325247/us-military-assistance-israel/ ; for example: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-10/boeing-sped-1-000-smart-bombs-to-israel-after-the-hamas-attacks 975 https://www.now14.co.il/%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%91%D7%AA-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%95%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA- %D7%9C%D7%A6%D7%94%D7%9C-%D7%9E%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A1-%D7%94%D7%97%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A9-%D7%94- 200-%D7%A0%D7%97%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%99/ ; this piece refers to 140 US airplanes landing in Israel in the first five months of the war: https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-03-07/ty-article/0000018e-1947-d7d3-abce-79ef48310000 976 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-sends-israel-2-000-pound-bunker-buster-bombs-for-gaza-war-82898638 ; some of the artillery shells were supposed to be sent to Ukraine: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/19/us-israel-artillery-shells-ukraine-weapons-gaza 977 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-775523 978 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-11-16/ty-article/.premium/shells-laser-guided-missiles-and-bunkerbusters-the-munitions-the-u-s-supplied-israel/0000018b-d3b9-dffa-adef-f7b990750000 979 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-plans-to-send-weapons-to-israel-amid-biden-push-for-cease-fire-deal-184e75bc 84 packages, avoiding reporting on them by drawing from existing US stockpiles, accelerating previously approved deliveries and sending the weapons in smaller batches that fall below the minimum dollar threshold that requires the administration to notify Congress.980 Only two approved sales to Israel had been made public by that point.981 At the same time, officials claimed there were 600 active cases of potential military transfer or sales to Israel, worth more than $23 billion.982 In subsequent weeks and months the US continued to sign off on more military sales to Israel. In late March, for example, it authorized the transfer of another 1,800 two-thousand pound bombs as well as another 500 five-hundred-pound bombs, and authorized the transfer of 25 fighter jets and engines.983 In early April, the US administration authorized the transfer of over 2,000 smaller bombs (five-hundred pounds or smaller) to Israel.984 Although the US provided an enormous amount of military aid to Israel throughout the war, the flow of munitions slowed down after a few months as the US began running short on munitions it could quickly provide to Israel while also meeting Ukraine’s needs and maintaining’s the US’s own supplies.985 The US continued selling weapons to Israel during April, considering a deal of more than $18 billion to sell up to 50 fighter jets.986 In April, the US House of Representatives approved $26.3 billion of aid to Israel (direct military aid, but also funding to replenish US stockpiles, support for US operations in the region and humanitarian aid).987 In early May, the US admitted that it delayed sending one shipment of weapons to Israel (6,500 JDAMs, kits that turn “dumb” bombs into precision bombs).988 Almost in parallel, however, it continued to push existing deals – including one worth over $1 billion – through the pipeline.989 All of the above demonstrate the US’ continued strong support of Israel militarily. Active deployment of US military The US has also supported Israel through the active deployment of US military assets in the Middle East region since the beginning of the war. In the first few days after October 7, the US sent two aircraft carrier groups to the area. Subsequently more aircraft were sent to the region.990 Other assets, such as some of the US’ most powerful missile defense systems were also deployed to the Middle East.991 In mid October, the US prepared about 2,000 US troops for possible deployment to Israel.992 All of these signaled its commitment to support Israel and to deter any widening of the war. In case the war escalated out of control, the US military also had plans to evacuate all US citizens from Israel (more than 600,000 people).993 In addition, the US sent a general and several other officers to help advise Israel’s military leadership in the war.994 980 https://www.wsj.com/world/how-the-u-s-arms-pipeline-to-israel-avoids-public-disclosure-e238de75 981 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/06/us-weapons-israel-gaza/ 982 https://www.wsj.com/world/how-the-u-s-arms-pipeline-to-israel-avoids-public-disclosure-e238de75 983 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/03/29/us-weapons-israel-gaza-war/ . These sales had been approved years before. 984 https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/04/politics/us-israel-bombs-transfer/index.html 985 https://www.wsj.com/world/how-the-u-s-arms-pipeline-to-israel-avoids-public-disclosure-e238de75 986 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/01/politics/biden-administration-f15-fighter-jets-israel/index.html 987 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-vote-long-awaited-95-billion-ukraine-israel-aid-package-2024-04-20/ 988 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-delays-sending-precision-weapons-to-israel-253f12f0 989 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/r1wdjobma ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/politics/biden-arms-sale-israel.html 990 https://web.archive.org/web/20231110173047/https://time.com/6325247/us-military-assistance-israel/ 991 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/22/world/middleeast/patriot-israel-hamas-iran-gaza-eisenhower-pentagon.html 992 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/16/politics/us-marines-pentagon-israel/index.html 993 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/23/us-evacuation-plans-israel-lebanon-hamas-war/ 994 https://www.axios.com/2023/10/23/israel-gaza-war-marine-general-ground-operation 85 Some US forces operated within Israel. At least two US bases are known within Israel.995 Media coverage revealed that the US was using contractors in “multiple military bases” in Israel, ostensibly to support US Special Operation forces within the country. 996 There were also Delta Force troops in Israel early in the war.997 According to the Pentagon, these troops provided intelligence and planning as well as advice to the IDF on hostage recovery efforts, and they participated at least in these manners in the Israeli operation that ended up releasing four hostages in June. 998 Other personnel involved in the war and in Israel include CIA officers, FBI agents, and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) personnel.999 Biden’s National Security Adviser said the intelligence the US was passing to Israel was not limited and that the US is “not holding anything back. We are providing every asset, every tool, every capability”.1000 As the war continued, the US was drawn more closely into actual combat, often in the form of bombing targets that were aggressive or critical toward Israel and the role the US played in the war. In the Red Sea in particular, US ships shot down many missiles sent by the Houthis in Yemen, beginning in mid-October.1001 When the Houthis began attacking Israeli-affiliated ships and ships sailing to Israel,1002 the US began to bomb them as well, with strikes beginning in mid January and continuing as of the writing of this document. 1003 American support for Israel during the war led to over 170 attacks against US bases in Iraq and Syria.1004 After three US service members were killed in an attack on a base in or near Jordan in late January, 1005 the US proceeded with a widespread campaign of air attacks and assassinations on targets in the region (attacking in Yemen, Iraq and Syria) that continued in subsequent months.1006 The US briefly became directly involved in the broader Middle East conflict when it participated in shooting down drones and missiles that Iran fired towards Israel in mid April in response to the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria (which Israel did not inform the US about).1007 After allegedly shooting down more than half of the Iranian missiles and drones of what was one of the largest drone strikes in history, 1008 the US quickly declared that it would not join Israel in counterattacking Iran.1009 As such, it likely played an important role in deescalating the subsequent immediate tensions between Israel and Iran. Diplomatic support 995 https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-first-us-establishes-permanent-military-base-in-israel/; https://theintercept.com/2023/10/27/secret-military-base-israel-gaza-site-512/ 996 https://theintercept.com/2023/12/11/tiktok-military-contractor-recruiting-israel/ 997 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2023/10/20/white-house-shares-identities-secret-special-ops-israel/ 998 https://web.archive.org/web/20231110173047/https://time.com/6325247/us-military-assistance-israel/ ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/world/middleeast/gaza-hostage-rescues-israel.html 999 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/14/us-israel-intelligence-cia-hostages/ 1000 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/14/us-israel-intelligence-cia-hostages/ 1001 https://abcnews.go.com/International/security-incident-involving-us-navy-destroyer-red-sea/story?id=104147141 1002 For example https://www.cbsnews.com/news/houthi-missile-drone-attack-red-sea-shipping-vessels-uss-gravely-dwight-eisenhower/ 1003 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-uk-strike-yemen-to-retaliate-houthi-attacks/ ; https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PRESSRELEASES/Press-Release-View/Article/3776858/may-15-us-central-command-update/ 1004 https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-january-28-2024 1005 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/us/politics/us-troops-drone-attack-jordan-iran.html 1006 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/07/us/politics/us-strike-iraq-milita.html 1007 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/04/11/israel-damascus-strike-iran/ ; or informed just before the attack, according to: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/world/middleeast/iran-israel-attack.html 1008 https://theintercept.com/2024/04/15/iran-attack-israel-drones-missiles/ ; https://www.foxnews.com/world/us-military-shoots-downdozens-iranian-drones-fired-israel-jewish-state-air-defense-system-excels; https://mwi.westpoint.edu/what-irans-drone-attack-portendsfor-the-future-of-warfare/ 1009 https://www.axios.com/2024/04/14/biden-netanyahu-iran-israel-us-wont-support 86 Throughout the war, the US provided Israel with strong diplomatic support which became indispensable for Israel’s conduct of its war in Gaza. The clearest indication of this diplomatic support was a series of US vetoes in the UN Security Council, the only UN body with executive power. Other indications include the use of US leverage to influence international institutions such as the International Criminal Court. The US reinforced its diplomatic support by attempting to prevent de-escalation talk already at the beginning of the war. An internal memo in mid October discouraged diplomats from making public statements that the US wants to see less violence, stating that high-level officials do not want press materials to use specific phases: “de-escalation/ceasefire”, “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm”.1010 A few days earlier, the US Secretary of State used such a phrase on Twitter/X, then deleted his tweet and replaced it with a more militaristic version.1011 This move removed pressure from Israel at the beginning of the war, which was its bloodiest stage as of writing, and allowed it more freedom to act as it willed. The US reinforced its diplomatic support for Israel in the United Nations. In mid October, it vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting (12 countries voted in favor, the US voted against, 2 other countries abstained).1012 In late October, it rejected a General Assembly non-binding resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire (which passed by 121 to 14, with 44 abstentions). 1013 In early December the US vetoed a second Security Council resolution that called for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” (13 countries voted in favor, the US voted against, one other country abstained).1014 In late February, the US vetoed a third resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire (13 countries voted in favor, the US voted against, one other country abstained). 1015 In a fourth Security Council vote in late March calling for an immediate ceasefire during Ramadan the US chose to abstain (14 other countries voted in favor), causing those present at the Security Council to applause in hope that the war was about to end. 1016 Nonetheless, the US quickly declared that the resolution was not binding.1017 This resolution had no impact. The US was also involved in stopping other motions from moving forward.1018 Therefore, for example, it vetoed the Palestinian request for full UN membership in mid April (12 countries in favor, the US against, 2 abstentions).1019 According to the executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce, the US Secretary of State threatened that if Palestine would become a state, the US will defund the UN, which would lead to famine (“the world would have to starve as the Gazans are”). 1020 The US’s own attempt to propose a temporary ceasefire – incidentally the first time it used the term “ceasefire” – was vetoed by Russia and China in March. 1021 In June the US made more serious efforts to reach a ceasefire, but as of writing was unable to get Israel or Hamas to accept its proposal publicly. Israel itself implied that the US had some kind of clout with the International Criminal Court (ICC). In April, amidst rumors that the ICC will issue warrants for Israeli leaders including its Prime Minister, 1010 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-department-internal-emails-gaza-israel_n_65296395e4b0a304ff6ff95d 1011 https://twitter.com/RobbieGramer/status/1711366571665342603 1012 https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142507 1013 https://www.reuters.com/world/un-overwhelmingly-calls-aid-truce-between-israel-hamas-2023-10-27/ 1014 https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-12-08-23/h_a7ad699a7e1acbc51205feb2276cdf29 1015 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/20/us-vetoes-un-resolution-ceasefire-israel-gaza 1016 https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147951; https://twitter.com/tparsi/status/1772281999358648553 1017 https://twitter.com/AssalRad/status/1772315270880866802 ; https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-says-ceasefireresolution-non-binding-less-influential-security-council-members-object/ ; 1018 https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-blocks-security-council-motion-blaming-israel-for-deadly-gaza-aid-convoy-incident/ 1019 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/18/us-veto-palestine-membership-request-united-nations-council 1020 https://x.com/halalflow/status/1792944530389393422 1021 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/world/middleeast/us-cease-fire-resolution-vetoes.html 87 Israel announced to the US that it will punish the Palestinian Authority, potentially causing its collapse.1022 The move was a signal to the Americans to pressure the ICC and try to prevent the issue of warrants. In parallel, 12 Republican senators wrote a letter to the ICC Prosecutor threatening him personally as well as his employees and associates and their families if he issued a warrant for Israel’s leaders (“Target Israel and we will target you… You have been warned.”).1023 When the ICC did, in fact, begin the process of putting out arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, Biden rejected the ICC’s application and stated that “What’s happening is not genocide”.1024 The US administration followed by signaling that it will censure the ICC with sanctions, 1025 and the US House passed a sanctions bill that would apply economic sanctions and visa restrictions to individuals and judges associated with the ICC as well as their family members.1026 US oversight and Israeli accountability In parallel to its strong support of Israel, the US state apparatus minimized its oversight of Israeli actions in what was almost certainly a political decision by the US administration. De facto, the US state apparatus preferred not to know or to feign ignorance of clear evidence coming out from Gaza. At the same time, the US did not seriously hold Israeli accountable for past and present misconduct. As a result, Israel was not accountable for its actions even within the US’ own frameworks and mechanisms for overseeing aid and its use. In the first three months of the war the US had not formally assessed whether Israel’s actions in Gaza violated human rights, despite many indications that raised that possibility. 1027 Its Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that South Africa’s genocide charge against Israel – deemed to be plausible by the ICJ at the time – was “meritless”.1028 The outright rejection of such allegations prevented a more serious assessment of Israel’s conduct, which could have had more serious consequences for the US support of Israel. There are clear indications that the top officials in the US preferred to stall any such assessments. 1029 According to the 1997 “Leahy laws” (named after the senator who sponsored them) in the US, the US is required to cut off assistance to any foreign military or law enforcement units that are credibly accused of flagrant human right violations. This credible information standard is intentionally low and does not require proof or clear and convincing evidence. 1030 Israel, however, has long been treated leniently on this issue.1031 A review by the Guardian found that special mechanisms were used to shield Israel from the Leahy laws, and that no similar special arrangements exist for any other US ally (as one former state department official stated “everyone knew the rules were different for Israel”). 1032 A former director of the State Department office responsible for Leahy laws 1022 https://www.axios.com/2024/05/01/us-israel-palestinian-authority-icc-arrest-warrant 1023 https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1787503022299332951. The prosecutor also noted that “a senior leader” told him that the ICC was “built for Africa and for thugs like Putin” and not for the West or its allies: https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1792748783996207206 1024 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/may/20/biden-trump-democrats-immigration-latest 1025 https://www.ft.com/content/6700a246-e0cd-49d8-b5ef-d2379e86290f 1026 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/04/us-house-icc-sanctions-netanyahu-? 1027 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/01/04/us-hasnt-formally-assessed-if-israel-violatinghuman-rights-00133799 1028 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/blinken-says-daily-toll-gaza-too-high-israel-genocide-charge-meritless-2024-01-09 1029 https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-blinken-leahy-sanctions-human-rights-violations?taid=662030f9d453a400011f6bcc 1030 https://www.justsecurity.org/96522/israel-leahy-law/ 1031 https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-blinken-leahy-sanctions-human-rights-violations?taid=662030f9d453a400011f6bcc 1032 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/18/us-supply-weapons-israel-alleged-abuses-human-rights 88 vetting said the same.1033 Despite several letters by Leahy himself that refer to gross violations of human rights by the IDF, no unit had been punished for that reason. 1034 A similar case has to do with intelligence sharing. According to US laws, the recipient of the intelligence is supposed to be compliant with international law. In the case of Israel, internal reviews found evidence that its assurances of compliance with international law were insufficient and that there was little independent oversight to confirm that the intelligence that the US supplied was not contributing to civilian deaths.1035 Some officials and lawmakers expressed the same concerns.1036 As noted above, there were no indications that the US limited its intelligence sharing with Israel in response.1037 In late April, a week-long media story reflected the Biden administration’s approach to Israeli accountability. The so-called “Leahy laws” were central in this case as well. On April 18, ProPublica published a story about Blinken ignoring a special State Department panel’s recommendation to disqualify some Israeli units from US military aid for abuses such as extrajudicial killings and an allegation that interrogators tortured and raped a Palestinian teenager accused of throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails.1038 On April 20 (the same day the US House voted to pass $26 billion in Emergency Israel Aid),1039 the website Axios published a scoop according to which the US was expected to sanction a specific IDF unit for its human rights violations in the West Bank. Most of these violations took place well before the current war,1040 and include, for example, a case in which soldiers from the said unit captured a 78 year old Palestinian-American, handcuffed and gagged him and left him on the ground. He was found dead a few hours later (no criminal charges were pressed in the case).1041 Two other military units and two civilian units were accused of “human rights violations” but the US administration was content to resolve the issue with those four units through Israeli “remediation” efforts.1042 The same day that the Axios scoop was released, the Israeli Prime Minister responded with outrage to the idea of sanctions on an IDF unit (“If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF – I will fight it with all my strength”; he also called it “the height of absurdity and a moral low”).1043 The story drew much attention for a few days,1044 after which Blinken wrote in an internal letter that was leaked to ABC that Israel has presented new information about the unit and that he opted for a process of “effective remediation” as the way forward rather than sanctions.1045 A former director of the State Department office responsible for Leahy vetting later said this approach was unprecedentedly lenient.1046 1033 https://www.justsecurity.org/96522/israel-leahy-law/ 1034 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/18/us-supply-weapons-israel-alleged-abuses-human-rights ; https://www.justsecurity.org/96522/israel-leahy-law/ 1035 https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/u-s-and-israels-unprecedented-intelligence-sharing-draws-criticism-a85979b4 1036 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/14/us-israel-intelligence-cia-hostages/ 1037 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/06/14/us-israel-intelligence-cia-hostages/ 1038 https://www.propublica.org/article/israel-gaza-blinken-leahy-sanctions-human-rights-violations 1039 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-overwhelmingly-passes-26-billion-aid-israel-gaza-tensions-iran-escalate 1040 https://www.justsecurity.org/96522/israel-leahy-law/ 1041 https://www.axios.com/2024/04/20/us-israel-sanctions-idf-west-bank ; https://news.walla.co.il/item/3659530 ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-is-israeli-netzah-yehuda-battalion-accused-2024-04-22/ ; https://www.justsecurity.org/96522/israel-leahy-law/ 1042 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-sanctions-idf-unit-netzah-yehuda-west-bank-human-rights-abuses-rcna149549 ; https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-sanction-israeli-military-units-accused-human-rights/story?id=109651562 1043 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-20/ty-article/.premium/u-s-set-to-sanction-ultra-orthodox-israeli-army-battalionbased-in-the-west-bank/0000018e-fd0b-d140-a3ee-fddf9a1c0000 ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/21/us-poised-imposesanctions-israel-defense-force-netzah-yehuda-battalion 1044 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-is-israeli-netzah-yehuda-battalion-accused-2024-04-22/ ; https://theconversation.com/netzah-yehuda-the-violent-and-aggressive-idf-unit-the-us-is-thinking-of-sanctioning-228436 1045 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-sanction-israeli-military-units-accused-human-rights/story?id=109651562 1046 https://www.justsecurity.org/96522/israel-leahy-law/ 89 The same day (April 26), a leaked confidential US paper revealed that in an internal document sent to Blinken, according to USAID (10 USAID officials cleared the paper) Israel was violating international humanitarian law, partially by blocking US-funded humanitarian support to Gaza.1047 As was revealed the next day, the document also included four State Department bureaus that assessed that Israel’s assurances were “neither credible nor reliable” and that Israel repeatedly attacked protected sites and civilian infrastructure, took little action to investigate violations, killed humanitarian workers and journalists at an unprecedented rate, and arbitrarily restricted humanitarian aid.1048 A few weeks later in mid-May, the State Department released its official report in response to the NSM-20 memorandum that required that the administration report to the US Congress on whether there were credible reports or allegations that undercut Israel’s assurances that it was complying with humanitarian law.1049 The report concluded that Israel likely used US weapons in “incidents that raise concerns” about its legal compliance, but also concluded that Israel was not currently blocking humanitarian aid, that there was no direct indication of Israel intentionally targeting civilians, and pointed out that Israel was overall committed to international law.1050 An independent task force published a detailed account that strongly disputed the conclusions of the report. 1051 Shortly after the report was published, a 20-year veteran of the US State Department, who was one of the subject matter experts that drafted the report (until taken off of it in late April), resigned in protest and said that the report’s conclusion went against the overwhelming view of experts consulted on the report, and that it was clear that Israel was playing a role in limiting the amount of food and medical supplies crossing into Gaza.1052 As the war continued, the US eventually placed sanctions on representatives of extreme right-wing movements within Israel but these were generally symbolic. In February, the US targeted four individuals accused of attacking Palestinians and Israeli peace activists in the West Bank. The four were blocked from using the US financial system and barred US citizens from dealing with them.1053 This took place as Biden visited Michigan, a key state for the upcoming election that had a large Arab-American population critical of his support of Israel.1054 The sanctions were a sign that Biden was attempting to placate his critics. In mid-March, the US announced new sanctions against two illegal outposts which served as a base for attacks by settlers against Palestinian civilians, as well as three other settlers.1055 Although at first Israeli banks blocked the seven settlers from using their personal and business bank accounts, 1056 Israeli media reported that the US eased the sanctions after a threat by Israel’s Finance Minister to cause the collapse of the Palestinian economy (the US claimed the ease of sanctions was consistent across other sanctions programs).1057 A third round of sanctions in mid April targeted an ally of Israel’s National Security Minister as well as two entities 1047 https://www.devex.com/news/exclusive-usaid-officials-say-israel-breached-us-directive-on-gaza-aid-107545 1048 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/some-us-officials-say-internal-memo-israel-may-be-violating-international-law-2024-04- 27/ 1049 https://theintercept.com/2024/05/10/israel-human-rights-gaza-report/ 1050 https://theintercept.com/2024/05/10/israel-human-rights-gaza-report/ ; for the unclassified version of the report: https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Report-to-Congress-under-Section-2-of-the-National-Security-Memorandumon-Safeguards-and-Accountability-with-Respect-to-Transferred-Defense.pdf 1051 https://www.justsecurity.org/94980/task-force-national-security-memorandum-20/ ; https://www.justsecurity.org/wpcontent/uploads/2024/04/NSM20-TF-Report-_-Final.pdf 1052 https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/30/stacy-gilbert-us-state-department-israel-gaza-aid ; https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/31/stacy_gilbert_state_dept_resignation_gaza 1053 https://apnews.com/article/biden-west-bank-israeli-settlers-palestinians-80f9e6be6f6a7bb75dc86360ac2fa6ce 1054 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68173904 1055 https://www.axios.com/2024/03/14/us-settler-sanctions-west-bank 1056 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-banks-heed-us-anti-settler-sanctions-far-right-ministers-object-2024-02-05/ 1057 https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/geopolitics/article/15507010 ; https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/geopolitics/article/15425756 ; https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240329-us-pushes-back-against-claims-it-eased-west-bank-settler-sanctions 90 that had raised funds for settlers targeted in earlier rounds of sanctions.1058 A fourth round of sanctions in mid June was directed at a settler organization that attacked humanitarian aid convoys to Gaza.1059 The sanctions themselves, especially in their moderated version, remain limited in scale and ineffective.1060 The settlers themselves, as well as local rights groups and Palestinians in the West Bank, described the sanctions as having minimal impact.1061 The few individuals involved so far suggests that the US administration used the sanctions in attempt to signal displeasure – more to domestic US voters than to Israeli or international audiences – but refrained from meaningfully doing something to change the situation during the war. US-Israeli relations Although the US continued to support Israel throughout the war, it also reprimanded it verbally for its conduct of the war in increasingly serious terms. Some of this approach likely aimed at limiting the significant hit to the US’s international reputation because of its support of Israel as well as appease domestic voters in the upcoming elections. At the same time, US has set certain limitations on Israel’s conduct since the beginning of the war. Some of these limitations have been successful in preventing Israel from opening an extra front in Lebanon, or slowing down and reducing the scale of the Israeli invasion into Rafah. At the same time, however, the US government refrained from taking serious action following its statements and declarations. This section of the document touches upon the relations on a monthly basis, generally with a paragraph for every month after October and focusing on what high US officials such as President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. The US administration’s messaging in early and mid-October emphasized the US’s complete support of Israel. Already on Oct. 7, Biden stated that the “the United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back”. The president promised coordination with Israel, material, military and diplomatic support, which he described as “rock solid”.1062 In mid-October, Biden visited Israel, stating that “I come to Israel with a single message: You’re not alone,” Biden said. “As long as the United States stands — and we will stand forever — we will not let you ever be alone.”1063 Beginning in late October, however, the rising Palestinian death toll led the US administration to shift its message to include Palestinian civilians. Both Biden and Blinken spoke explicitly about humanitarian aid for Palestinians and the need to protect them during Israel’s ground invasion. 1064 Biden expressed confidence that “Israel is going to act under the measure… the rules of war” and that “the innocents in Gaza [would] be able to have access to medicine and food and water”,1065 and pressed Netanyahu to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza.1066 Blinken stated that Palestinian civilians were victims of Hamas and that “the lives of Palestinian civilians must be protected”, among 1058 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-slaps-sanctions-entities-that-raised-funds-west-bank-settlers-2024-04-19/ ; for the fundraising see also: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-sanctions-settlers-biden-west-bank-85cee76d68c17091d9b4d3e14f3eeb74 1059 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-impose-sanctions-israeli-group-that-attacked-gaza-aid-2024-06-14/ 1060 https://jacobin.com/2024/03/biden-sanctions-israeli-settlers-palestine 1061 https://apnews.com/article/us-sanctions-israeli-settlers-west-bank-palestinians-354f8b0a44b70c25bf013614b4775900 ; also https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-13/ty-article/.premium/israel-finances-west-bank-outpost-owned-by-settlers-placedunder-u-s-u-k-eu-sanctions/00000190-1105-db28-a995-559d87720000 1062 https://www.c-span.org/video/?530992-1/president-biden-remarks-situation-israel 1063 https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-israel-hamas-gaza-palestinians-a85cb682fdc61b80285cf4ab354354ce ; https://www.npr.org/2023/10/19/1206997120/biden-israel-politics-democrat-republican-middle-east-hamas 1064 https://www.reuters.com/world/behind-bidens-shift-israel-hamas-war-gaza-deaths-international-pressure-2023-10-27/ 1065 https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/15/politics/biden-60-minutes-interview-gaza-israel/index.html 1066 https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/30/politics/biden-netanyahu-aid-gaza/index.html 91 others through allowing essential humanitarian aid into Gaza.1067 The Biden administration also urged its Israeli counterparts to think about an exit strategy before launching its ground invasion, and to exercise caution in its conduct of the war.1068 As discussed above US support has not changed in a meaningful way despite the Israeli conduct that has generally ignored these prescient early warnings, which remain relevant until the present time of writing. In November, the US continued to urge Israel to restrain its military response, at the same time that Israeli officials – sometimes giving speeches in the same time and place – rejected the idea.1069 Biden and his top advisers warned Israel that international backlash would soon erode support for Israel with dire consequences to the IDF and Israel.1070 The US President reiterated that the two-state solution was the only way to resolve the broader conflict,1071 said that al-Shifa hospital “must be protected” in the context of the first Israeli raid on it in November, 1072 and also noted that extremist settlers in the West Bank must be held accountable for their violent acts.1073 Blinken criticized Israel for not doing enough to minimize harm to civilians in Gaza, stating that “far too many” Palestinians have died and suffered.1074 He even compared the Palestinian children he saw pulled from the wreckage to his own children, because “how can we not?”.1075 More than 500 appointees and staff members criticized Biden’s unwavering support for Israel in a letter and demanded a ceasefire, and over 1,000 staffers at USAID called upon the administration to make better use of its leverage to limit the civilian death toll in Gaza.1076 Despite these warnings, the US did not establish any red lines for Israel.1077 In December, Biden warned that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, and suggested that Netanyahu had “to change his government”.1078 Blinken reiterated the need for Israel to protect civilians and sustain humanitarian assistance, 1079 and pointed out the gap between Israel’s “declared intentions to protect civilians [sic] and the mounting casualties seen on the ground”.1080 He added that “there must be no enduring internal displacement” in the Strip.1081 At meetings in one of his visits to Israel, Blinken clarified that Israel would have until early January to finish its ground operation,1082 although Israel’s army chief stated that the war will continue for “many more months”.1083 Blinken also said that bringing the war to an end “as quickly as possible” was a top priority for the US administration.1084 1067 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/31/antony-blinken-biden-aid-ukraine-israel-gazans/ . Blinken also said that Israel’s leaders supported the US’ provision of humanitarian assistance to Gaza. 1068 https://www.reuters.com/world/behind-bidens-shift-israel-hamas-war-gaza-deaths-international-pressure-2023-10-27/ 1069 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-03/blinken-shifts-israel-message-as-backlash-grows-over-gaza-deaths 1070 https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/02/politics/biden-administration-warning-israel-gaza-civilians/index.html 1071 https://apnews.com/article/biden-revitalized-palestinian-authority-israel-hamas-war-bf8defe81079d6e6371f228157f9be10 1072 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-al-shifa-hospital-in-gaza-must-be-protected-biden-says 1073 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/11/06/readout-of-president-bidens-call-with-prime-ministernetanyahu-of-israel-8/ 1074 https://apnews.com/article/blinken-israel-gaza-hamas-850cf28c13d8df087f75c0536462b604 1075 https://x.com/Channel4News/status/1720452839435038986 1076 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/14/biden-letter-israel-gaza-war-ceasefire 1077 https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/02/politics/biden-administration-warning-israel-gaza-civilians/index.html 1078 https://apnews.com/article/biden-israel-hamas-oct-7-44c4229d4c1270d9cfa484b664a22071 1079 https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-remarks-to-the-press-18/ ; https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-andunited-kingdom-foreign-secretary-david-cameron-at-a-joint-press-availability/ ; https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-withjake-tapper-of-cnn-state-of-the-union-3/ 1080 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/08/us-israel-hamas-war-gaza-civilian-protection-anthony-blinken 1081 https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-said-to-warn-war-cabinet-it-may-not-have-months-to-topple-hamas/ 1082 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/us-pressures-israel-to-end-war-against-hamas-in-a-month-3vvb52wf9 1083 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67824421 1084 https://www.timesofisrael.com/biden-presses-netanyahu-on-protecting-gaza-civilians-discusses-phasing-of-war/ 92 In January, both Biden and Blinken attempted to discuss regional peace within the framework of the two state solution,1085 and even reviewed the options for the US to recognize a Palestinian state after the war.1086 Although Netanyahu stated that he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state, Biden said it could still move forward with Netanyahu in office. 1087 US officials claimed that Biden was “running out” of patience with Netanyahu, that there were deep frustrations on the US side, and that Biden told Netanyahu that he did not want a year of war in Gaza.1088 Blinken stated that Palestinians must be allowed to return to their homes in Gaza and must not be displaced from the Gaza Strip.1089 On a different occasion he described the conflict as “gutwrenching” and that “the suffering breaks my heart”.1090 In February, Biden described Israel’s military campaign as “over the top” and claimed he was ”pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage cease-fire”.1091 The White House spokesman said that an operation in Rafah in the current circumstances “would be a disaster for those people [i.e. Palestinians] and we would not support it.”1092 A few days later, Biden told Netanyahu in a phone call that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a “credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there”.1093 At the same time, three US officials admitted that the US will not punish Israel if it launches such a military campaign into Rafah.1094 Blinken stated that “Israel must ensure that the delivery of life-saving assistance to Gaza is not blocked for any reason, by anyone” and urged Israel “to do more to help civilians”.1095 Although both Biden and Blinken pushed for a ceasefire plan (with Biden hoping for a ceasefire within a week), Netanyahu openly stated that the war will continue until Israel was completely victorious.1096 Perhaps in response, Blinken stated that Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank was “inconsistent with international law”, returning to US policy before the Trump administration.1097 Early March saw the continuation of the ceasefire narrative, when Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris called for an “immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks” in Gaza because of “the immense scale of suffering in Gaza”.1098 To date no such ceasefire has materialized. As the US admitted that the entire population of Gaza was experiencing “severe levels of acute food insecurity”, 1099 the US began airdropping aid into Gaza and began work on a temporary pier (see above for both).1100 In mid March, the US Senate Majority Leader criticized Netanyahu, declaring 1085 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/01/19/readout-of-president-joe-bidens-call-with-primeminister-netanyahu-of-israel-2/ ; https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/blinken-discuss-way-forward-gaza-he-meets-israelileaders-2024-01-09/ 1086 https://www.axios.com/2024/01/31/palestine-statehood-biden-israel-gaza-war 1087 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/19/israels-war-on-gaza-live-us-support-for-israel-ironclad-despiterebuff?update=2635028 1088 https://www.axios.com/2024/01/14/biden-netanyahu-israel-gaza-war-tensions ; https://www.axios.com/2024/01/26/bidennetanyahu-israel-hamas-war-gaza-timetable 1089 https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/09/politics/blinken-israel-gaza-war-talks/index.html 1090 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/blinken-says-us-demand-he-mourns-gutwrenching-scenes-gaza-2024-01-17/ 1091 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/08/biden-israel-gaza-speech-netanyahu/ 1092 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/08/biden-israel-gaza-speech-netanyahu/ 1093 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/2/11/israels-war-on-gaza-live-leaders-warn-of-catastrophe-if-rafahinvaded?update=2700975 1094 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/02/13/us-wont-punish-israel-for-rafah-op-that-doesnt-protectcivilians-00141013 1095 https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-a-press-availability-46/ 1096 https://apnews.com/article/blinken-netanyahu-israel-hamas-gaza-saudi-arabia-qatar-palestinians48ff7a3bbab5d92841df2949c29d9e72 ; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68410226 ; https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-walks-back-prediction-monday-ceasefire-deal-gaza-hopeful-probabl-rcna141161 1097 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/23/blinken-oppose-new-israeli-settlements 1098 https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1764409522553082344 1099 https://www.timesofisrael.com/blinken-says-all-of-gaza-facing-unprecedented-food-insecurity/ 1100 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-announces-us-will-airdrop-food-aid-gaza-rcna141436 ; https://time.com/6898685/biden-israel-pressure-gaza-aid-pier-in-state-of-the-union/ 93 that he was “a major obstacle to peace” that “lost his way”.1101 Biden later praised the “good” speech.1102 Biden himself said that Netanyahu was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel”,1103 and asserted that “Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip… Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority”.1104 The US administration also focused on the future Rafah campaign. The month also marked Biden’s first use of the idea of a red line with regards to an invasion of Rafah (“It is a red line, but I’m never going to leave Israel”), although many chose to interpret it in a limited manner that did not completely reject all Israeli military operations in Rafah.1105 Blinken declared that “a major military ground operation [i.e. in Rafah] is not the way to do it. It risks killing many more civilians… it risks further isolation of Israel around the world and jeopardizing its long-term security and standing”.1106 Biden’s Vice President Harris said that the US did not rule out any action against Israel in case it would attack Rafah.1107 Netanyahu, however, declared that if the US will not support an attack on Rafah, “we’ll do it by ourselves”.1108 In early April Biden stated that Israel “has not done enough to protect aid workers” or civilians in Gaza and said he was “outraged and heartbroken by the deaths of the World Central Kitchen workers.1109 He reiterated that Israel had to take specific and concrete steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and aid worker safety, and claimed that US policy on Gaza was contingent on Israel following those steps.1110 Biden also said that Netanyahu was making a “mistake” in his approach to Gaza.1111 Blinken warned that Israel risked becoming indistinguishable from Hamas if it didn’t protect Gazan civilians.1112 The US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, however, maintained that the US did not have “any evidence” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza (but did not completely reject the idea).1113 The Iranian attack in mid-April – in which the US took a major role in the defense of Israel – disrupted the trend of critical US statements. By the end of the month, the US administration reverted to merely calling upon Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza (for context – April was the month that saw the most supplies entering Gaza as of writing).1114 The US administration also began calling for a ceasefire deal that Israel supposedly accepted, despite no indications that Israel was actually supporting such a deal.1115 In early May, Biden conditioned aid for the first time, specifically saying that he would stop sending bombs and artillery shells to Israel if it launched a major invasion of Gaza: “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah – they haven’t gone in Rafah yet – if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem.”1116 The Rafah invasion did take place, and not only did Biden not openly halt shipments of weapons to Israel according to what US media described as an “ultimatum” to Israel (an anonymous 1101 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-schumer-speech-netanyahu-gaza/ 1102 https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/politics/joe-biden-netanyahu-phone-call/index.html 1103 https://apnews.com/article/biden-netanyahu-red-line-frustration-gaza-0f23fa8d02288c1b9d862ddc4035872e 1104 https://time.com/6898685/biden-israel-pressure-gaza-aid-pier-in-state-of-the-union/ 1105 https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-avoided-bidens-red-line-ad715144 1106 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/22/israels-war-on-gaza-live-the-choice-is-clear-a-2-state-solution?update=2790517 ; https://www.axios.com/2024/03/22/israel-gaza-netanyahu-blinken-insurgency-warning 1107 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-us-ruled-consequences-israel-invades-rafah/story?id=108431225 1108 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/22/israel-blinken-hamas-doha-negotiations/ 1109 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/02/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-death-ofworld-central-kitchen-workers-in-gaza/ 1110 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/04/readout-of-president-joe-bidens-call-with-primeminister-netanyahu-of-israel-3/ ; https://apnews.com/article/biden-netanyahu-3591fb5f82b22cf8e5d1060fccaef115 ; https://www.axios.com/2024/04/05/biden-netanyahu-us-support-israel 1111 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68766592 1112 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/blinken-warns-israel-risks-becoming-indistinguishable-from-hamas-if-it-doesnt-protectgaza-civilians/ 1113 https://www.axios.com/2024/04/09/israel-genocide-gaza-us-austin-palestinians 1114 https://apnews.com/article/blinken-israel-hamas-war-gaza-saudi-arabia-c0425791dc59e745021d3dd726dc8f09 1115 https://apnews.com/article/blinken-israel-hamas-war-gaza-saudi-arabia-c0425791dc59e745021d3dd726dc8f09 1116 https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html 94 official claimed one shipment was held), 1117 but a few days later his administration pushed forward a $1 billion arms sale to Israel.1118 In late May, the US administration clarified that it will not change its Israel policy, 1119 as the Israeli operation in Rafah expanded.1120 Furthermore, the bipartisan leadership of the United States House of Representatives and Senate invited Netanyahu to address a Joint Meeting of Congress.1121 At the same time, Biden called for a permanent ceasefire, making public an earlier proposal and urging both Israel and Hamas to agree.1122 In parallel to this inconsistent messaging, the US nonetheless ramped up its critique of Israel. Biden admitted that Israeli forced used US bombs to kill Palestinian civilians,1123 and anonymous top officials described Israel’s strategy in Gaza as “self-defeating”.1124 In response, some Israeli voices attempted to draw links between the US and Hamas based on some of their shared interests,1125 while Israel’s Minister of National Security declared that “Hamas Biden” in a tweet.1126 In June, Biden stated in an interview that “there is every reason for people to draw [the] conclusion” that Netanyahu was prolonging the war for his own political gain.1127 His statement fitted a CIA assessment that concluded that Netanyahu would defy pressure to define an “end state” for Gaza.1128 At the same time, the Biden administration concluded that Israel had not “crossed a red line on Rafah”, presenting the Israeli operation as “an uptick”.1129 For context, a Palestinian poll found that 51% of the respondents in the Gaza Strip claimed that the Rafah attack specifically displaced them.1130 Dissent in the US administration and society Over the course of the war many American officials chose to voice their dissent, some under their own name and others anonymously. Some eight or nine officials resigned publicly until late May.1131 In early May, officials who resigned said they identified an uptick in non-public resignations.1132 According to one of those who resigned publicly, over 24 people may have resigned privately.1133 Others used different channels. In one letter in February, over 800 civil servants from the EU and the US dissented from their government’s support for the war in Gaza.1134 In April, 90 lawyers in the US 1117 https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html# ; https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/09/politics/inside-bidens-public-ultimatum/index.html ; for the held aid, see: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sjnzepogr , also https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/war-2023/2024-05-07/ty-articlelive/0000018f-4fbc-d17f-adcf-ffffc4fa0000?liveBlogItemId=1873160451#1873160451 ; https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/05/politics/warisrael-palestine-gaza-biden-weapons/index.html 1118 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/politics/biden-arms-sale-israel.html 1119 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-vp-harris-says-israels-deadly-strike-rafah-was-beyond-tragic-2024-05-28/ 1120 https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/30/headlines/israel_seizes_entire_gaza_egypt_border_continues_deadly_invasion_of_rafah 1121 https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1796628344269623520 1122 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/us/politics/biden-israel-remarks-speech.html 1123 https://theintercept.com/2024/05/10/israel-human-rights-gaza-report/ 1124 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/21/biden-admin-hammering-israel-military-strategy-gaza-00159262 1125 https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-05-09/ty-article-opinion/.premium/0000018f-5d88-d1d4-afcf-fd8aae1d0000 1126 https://x.com/itamarbengvir/status/1788458123436433783 ; https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-800531 1127 https://time.com/6984968/joe-biden-transcript-2024-interview/ 1128 https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/07/politics/cia-netanyahu-assessment/index.html 1129 https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/biden-administration-israel-crossed-red-line-rafah-110739181 1130 https://pcpsr.org/en/node/980 1131 https://x.com/SanaSaeed/status/1796202013044138221. For examples: https://twitter.com/amanpour/status/1773415507732947348 ; https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/ampr/date/2023-12-04/segment/01 1132 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/05/07/more-resignations-over-israel-and-a-failed-policy00156536 ; for 9: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/30/two-more-us-officials-resign-over-biden-administrationsposition-on-gaza-war 1133 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/30/two-more-us-officials-resign-over-biden-administrations-position-ongaza-war 1134 https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTbqPLjpzDpGdamN2LWL1a-lLCkgs0nDOmgBN3MT-U-3- t5D1gIgrc5KORsHfO9nEIuOBdCnD-5tDKX/pub 95 and abroad – including 20 that work in the Biden administration – called upon the president to stop military aid to Israel (by May the number increased to 130 in total).1135 Several senior US officials noted in an internal memo that they doubted the credibility of Israel’s assurances on its use of US weapons.1136 Others anonymously described Biden’s policy on Israel as “a blatantly horrific and stupid mistake”.1137 The war has polarized Americans. While support for Israel remained stronger among Republican voters, a large number of polls indicates that Biden’s policy towards the war found little support among Democrat voters, who voiced their displeasure through different means as the war progressed. While 50% of Americans approved Israel’s military action in November, in March the number dropped to 36%.1138 Already in January, 35% of Americans thought that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza (49% Democrats, 18% of Republicans).1139 The ratio increased in May to 39% (56% Democrats, 23% Republicans).1140 In March, 52% of Americans (62% of Biden voters, 30% Trump voters) agreed that the US government should stop weapon shipments to Israel until Israel stops its attack on Gaza.1141 When the question was framed as sending military aid to Israel to help in its war against Hamas, 36% of Americans supported the policy, and 35% opposed it.1142 In May, 51% of American Jews supported Biden’s decision to withhold arms shipments to Israel if it continued its Rafah offensive (see above).1143 In May, 70% of likely voters supported a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.1144 The most visible public form of dissent to date was a series of campus protests in American universities that peaked over April and May. These are described in more detail in the Zoom-in 2 section below. 1135 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/29/lawyers-israel-arm-sales-biden-00154958 ; https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/05/01/does-israel-dissent-matter-to-biden-00155488 1136 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/some-us-officials-say-internal-memo-israel-may-be-violating-international-law-2024-04- 27/ 1137 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/03/biden-israel-strike-aid-workers-gaza-00150356 1138 https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx 1139 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/24/americans-believe-israel-committing-genocide-poll 1140 https://zeteo.com/p/gaza-israel-genocide-poll-ceasefire-us-voters 1141 https://cepr.net/press-release/poll-majority-of-americans-say-biden-should-halt-weapons-shipments-to-israel/ 1142 https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/02/younger-americans-stand-out-in-their-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/ 1143 https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-804548 1144 https://zeteo.com/p/gaza-israel-genocide-poll-ceasefire-us-voters 96 Zoom-in 1: The Second Israeli invasion of al-Shifa hospital (18 March-1 April)1145 Last updated: June 18, 2024 The second Israeli invasion of al-Shifa hospital in mid-late March stands out as a major yet distinct operation that fits into several of the sections in this document. The following section zooms into this particular event to highlight how this operation reflects the themes discussed above. In mid-late March, the IDF conducted another military operation in the al-Shifa hospital.1146 Early reports from within the Strip asserted that the IDF had killed or executed some 150 young men.1147 An NGO received testimonies of systematic crimes conducted that included deliberate killings and extrajudicial executions, as well as arbitrary detentions of some 400 individuals and torturing of local residents and patients.1148 After the IDF released an collage image with images of 358 allegedly detained terrorists from al-Shifa hospital, an NGO found that the number of images was smaller (248), that the collage included 52 duplicates, and identified 11 portraits in the collage by name as healthcare workers.1149 Several doctors and other health practitioners have been killed or executed,1150 including a pharmacist who was among those executed in front of patients.1151 People who escaped provide similar testimonies,1152 such as a young man who recounts IDF soldiers shooting at detainees around him, as well as killing several as well as his father and brother.1153 Footage of released detainees shows them in their underwear.1154 Some of the released detainees were in wheelchairs.1155 An adjacent hospital to al-Shifa (al-Helu) was bombed in the operation, hitting patient rooms as well.1156 An eyewitness claimed to see about four times groups of three to ten detainees brought to hospital buildings. Gunshots were then heard, and the soldiers then left to bring another group of detainees; other eyewitnesses recounted similar events and execution-style killings.1157 People who did not evacuate when ordered were regarded as suspects and killed.1158 Other eyewitnesses stated that they were not able to move and get food and water for days.1159 An NGO’s initial research found evidence for the execution of 13 children,1160 as well as that over 25,000 civilians were forced to evacuate their homes in the vicinity of al-Shifa, and estimated that the IDF 1145 The raid is the topic of a documentary which documents the testimonies of survivors and touches upon many of the issues below, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlerY4M9kQc 1146 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/world/middleeast/al-shifa-hospital-gaza-israel.html 1147 https://twitter.com/HossamShabat/status/1770813640251195394 ; the IDF claimed these were “terrorists”, https://twitter.com/ClubReel/status/1770822632725700746 1148 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6236 1149 https://twitter.com/HCWWatch/status/1771307184145502250 1150 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1772039795662889006 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1777339018453058024 ; https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/come-out-you-animals-how-the-massacre-at-al-shifa-hospital-happened 1151 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1771370478906822877 1152 Several testimonies of people who escaped or were released in this tweet chain: https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1772039795662889006 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1777365780172026029 1153 https://twitter.com/trhxianl/status/1771648909753864280 1154 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1771565663535960309 1155 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1771565663535960309 1156 https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1771495855587000429 1157 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6232/International-community-must-act-immediately-to-stop-Israeli-army%E2%80%99smassacre-of-Palestinians-at-Al-Shifa-Hospital ; https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/3/25/palestinian-testimonies-ofisraeli-executions-at-al-shifa-hospital ; https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/come-out-you-animals-how-the-massacre-at-al-shifa-hospitalhappened 1158 https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/come-out-you-animals-how-the-massacre-at-al-shifa-hospital-happened 1159 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/24/world/middleeast/al-shifa-hospital-gaza-israel.html ; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/1/as-those-fleeing-al-shifa-get-to-south-gaza-they-recount-israeli-torture 1160 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6246/In-a-week,-Israeli-army-executes-13-children-in-and-near-Al-Shifa-Hospital 97 demolished and torched over 1,200 housing units in the area.1161 Several consistent testimonies also reveal that the IDF used civilians as human shields.1162 Israeli footage from al-Shifa revealed that the IDF has made the hospital into a makeshift center of operations, with widespread destruction and tied and blindfolded detained Palestinians placed along its corridors.1163 Civilians living in the vicinity of al-Shifa hospital were left without food and water for days. According to one eyewitness, she was among 65 families that the IDF forced out of their building. The IDF then burned their clothes as well as the building in which they lived; other buildings and civilians were allegedly burned as well.1164 The IDF’s actions trapped over 240 sick and injured patients in the hospital without access to food, medication or treatment for about a week.1165 Doctors who were in al-Shifa during the siege reported on their extreme experiences.1166 At least 22 patients died due to lack of oxygen, food and water.1167 After the IDF finally left al-Shifa, hundreds of corpses were found amidst widespread destruction of and in the hospital.1168 Dozens or even hundreds of corpses were found decomposing in the ground in makeshift and mass graves, some of them handcuffed in what suggests execution.1169 An independent research agency based in academia found evidence that the bodies of those killed during this invasion were bulldozed.1170 An NGO claimed that based on preliminary reports, over 1,500 Palestinians were killed, injured, or are reported missing. Women and children made up half of the casualties. Hundreds of corpses were found, including some burned and others with heads and limbs severed.1171 The directors and doctors of the hospital declared that the destruction put the hospital out of service while also naming many of their colleagues who were killed, detained and displaced.1172 Despite the large amount of contrary evidence, the IDF Chief of the General Staff claimed that not a single medical personnel or local patients were harmed.1173 Israel’s former Prime Minister also claimed that not a single civilian was killed, “unprecedented in urban warfare”.1174 An IDF’s spokesperson claimed on the IDF’s official Twitter account that “200 terrorists [were] eliminated” and that more than 500 Palestinians were detained.1175 Yet when the IDF brought 1161 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6254/Al-Shifa-Medical-Complex-Witnesses-One-of-the-Largest-Massacres-in-PalestinianHistory 1162 https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-israeli-army-uses-palestinian-civilians-human-shields-its-operationshifa-medical-complex-and-its-vicinity-enar 1163 https://twitter.com/NourNaim88/status/1772757426887926144 1164 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mN1SRUx0R8 1165 https://twitter.com/PHRIsrael/status/1771499307478229244 ; also https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1771276290315653372 1166 https://twitter.com/DrMadsGilbert/status/1774371251881984169 1167 https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/4/1/israel-leaves-al-shifa-hospital-in-ruins-and-littered-with-human-remains ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6254/Al-Shifa-Medical-Complex-Witnesses-One-of-the-Largest-Massacres-in-Palestinian-History 1168 A few here, and see also the next footnote: https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1777321386991612112 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1777299876885241930 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1777306768802038012 ; https://twitter.com/HossamShabat/status/1777726280084963393 1169 https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-al-shifa-massacre-denialism/ ; https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsfeed/2024/4/1/israel-leaves-al-shifa-hospital-in-ruins-and-littered-with-human-remains ; https://jacobin.com/2024/04/al-shifa-hospital-siege-gaza-massacre ; many images and videos at the following: https://twitter.com/HossamShabat/status/1774741588226273379 ; https://twitter.com/KufiyyaPS/status/1774751378377773162 ; https://twitter.com/DrMadsGilbert/status/1774704992445731264 ; https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1774936027360297304 ; https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1776958103109664881 ; https://twitter.com/RamAbdu/status/1779859676827431399 ; this indicates 30 corpses in the relevant mass grave: https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1783855639006986260 1170 https://twitter.com/ForensicArchi/status/1778106742737375471 1171 https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6254/Al-Shifa-Medical-Complex-Witnesses-One-of-the-Largest-Massacres-in-PalestinianHistory ; https://twitter.com/EuroMedHR/status/1777652447474749720 1172 https://twitter.com/DrMadsGilbert/status/1775300379967729675 1173 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hymd23pka 1174 https://twitter.com/naftalibennett/status/1774663364314091870 1175 https://twitter.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1774816428916412574 ; the number was “over 200” in Israeli media: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/hymd23pka 98 international journalists to see the hospital just before it left, the local IDF spokesperson estimated the number of Palestinian fighters killed over two weeks of fighting at 40, while a commando leader said that the number was “a few dozens”.1176 A investigative report found that most of the people who were killed and arrested were workers in the government’s civil branch – people working in Civil Defense, the police, the interior ministry and so on, who all came to al-Shifa to collect their salaries.1177 1176 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/01/gaza-al-shifa-hospital-israel/ 1177 https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/come-out-you-animals-how-the-massacre-at-al-shifa-hospital-happened 99 Zoom-in 2: Campus Protests in the US (April 17-May 2024) Last updated: June 18, 2024 Perhaps the most noticeable form of dissent towards American policy on the Israel-Gaza war to date was a series of Gaza solidarity encampments and protests on university campuses that peaked over April and May. Over 150 universities worldwide had encampments, more than 100 of which were in the United States.1178 The Guardian described these protests as “perhaps the most significant student movement since the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late 1960s”.1179 The protestors themselves alluded and sometimes explicitly referred to the 1968 protests. Although students had protested in solidarity with Gaza on campuses from early on, few of these demonstrations drew public attention in the first months of the war.1180 The campus protests began drawing far more attention in the context of the Columbia encampment and the university’s forceful attempts to remove it in mid and late April. In response, students erected encampments on many other campuses. These encampments often took the form of students putting up tents on campus and holding a position with signs and flags for days or weeks, periodically holding events such as talks or classes, demonstrating and chanting. On some occasions students also took over buildings. As a decentralized movement, encampments in different universities had different demands but most shared sharp criticism towards Israel, especially in context of the war in Gaza. One common student demand was that their university divest from companies that profited from Israel’s occupation, or Israeli companies. Other demands included breaking ties with Israeli institutions of higher education, stopping research that supports the military, supporting Palestinian students or universities, calling for ending military support to Israel, or calling for ceasefire.1181 The protests were mainly an elite college phenomenon,1182 at least partially because those universities had larger endowments that could be invested and were more likely to have international connections that included those with Israeli universities, but also perhaps because poorer students at other institutions had other concerns.1183 The elite universities and in particular Columbia University also drew more national attention and had an outsized influence on the perception of the campus protests. The media coverage surrounding these protests was often politicized (see section on media above). An analysis of 553 protests found that 97% of them did not cause serious interpersonal violence (physical violence above pushing or shoving) or property damage (breaking a window or worse). Nearly half of the 3% of protests categorized as violent became so because demonstrators fought with police forces that were sent to clear encampments. Property damage was found in two cases.1184 Serious clashes between protestors on both sides took place only in UCLA, where video evidence showed pro-Israeli counterprotestors attacking the 1178 These two websites include references and links to the different encampments: https://students4gaza.directory/ ; https://www.palestineiseverywhere.com/ . This analysis found 123 campuses with encampments and 318 campus with protests: https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/05/24/are-gaza-protests-happening-mostly-at-elite-colleges/ 1179 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/28/us-student-protests-gaza-israel 1180 Graph at: https://theconversation.com/media-coverage-of-campus-protests-tends-to-focus-on-the-spectacle-rather-than-thesubstance-229172 1181 For student demands, organized per university, see https://students4gaza.directory/ 1182 https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/05/24/are-gaza-protests-happening-mostly-at-elite-colleges/ 1183 https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/05/24/are-gaza-protests-happening-mostly-at-elite-colleges/ 1184 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/10/peaceful-pro-palestinian-campus-protests; data and original analysis here: https://acleddata.com/2024/05/10/us-student-pro-palestine-demonstrations-remain-overwhelmingly-peaceful-acled-brief/ 100 encampment.1185 Police waited for a few hours before separating both sides, resulting in dozens of injuries among protestors in the Gaza encampment. 1186 Most university administrations opposed the encampments, being pressured by both politicians and their donors. Political pressure was most obvious in a series of hearings in which elite university presidents were brought to Capitol Hill and forced to answer questions about their university policies, mostly surrounding antisemitism and protecting their students. 1187 At least two university presidents later lost their jobs as a result.1188 Prominent donors used their donations to apply pressure to universities, publicly or privately threatening and sometimes actually pulling their support.1189 The protests also fed into local politics. At least in the case of New York, a group of dozens of business elites attempted to influence the city’s mayor to use the police to deal with protesters in Columbia.1190 Such pressure was likely felt within university as well. As a result of this pressure, many university administrations actively tried to repress student protests in different ways, commonly by using police and campus security who were overwhelmingly associated with using violence on campus. Viral videos from campuses showed heavily armed police forces using rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters.1191 Physical violence was also prevalent, with students and faculty getting beaten up by the police, sometimes on camera. 1192 As a result, over a month of protests at least 3,025 people were arrested in 61 colleges and universities. 1193 Many others were suspended or expelled from their universities. Faculty members were among those arrested as well, sometimes using excessive force.1194 On many other occasions, university administrations chose less explicit means to deal with the protestors and their voices. These 1185 https://x.com/BenzionSanders/status/1785681768349118750; https://x.com/FilmThePoliceLA/status/1785654963915588036; https://forward.com/news/608215/campus-violence-erupts-at-ucla-as-pro-israel-protesters-tries-to-dismantle-encampment/. For the pro-Israel counterprotestors identity see: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-counterprotesters-invs/index.html; https://x.com/KyungLahCNN/status/1790908711898165639. UCLA was otherwise tense as well but violence between protestors was concentrated in the single aforementioned night: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/29/palestinian-israeli-protestersclash-university-california. It appears that a single pro-Israeli counter-protester was arrested, https://forward.com/fastforward/617536/arrest-in-ucla-encampment-violence-edan-on/ 1186 https://forward.com/opinion/608479/ucla-violence-campus-protests/; https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/police-clear-outpro-palestinian-encampment-at-ucla/ ; https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-01/la-me-ucla-camp-police ; https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-30/ucla-moves-to-shut-down-pro-palestinian-encampment-as-unlawful 1187 The first hearing in early December included the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT: https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/11/business/university-leaders-testimony-nightcap/index.html. The second hearing in mid-April included the president of Columbia: https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/columbia-antisemitism-house-testimony/index.html. The third hearing was for the presidents of Northwestern, Rutgers and UCLA in late May, see: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/23/us/college-antisemitism-hearing. Unlike the former two hearings, it had no immediate impact. 1188 U Penn: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/09/penn-president-resigns-00130961; Harvard: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/harvard-president-gay-resigns-harvard-crimson-student-newspaper-2024-01-02/ . To date, the president of Columbia has kept her job, but: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/16/columbia-university-faculty-pass-vote-of-noconfidence-in-president-00158393 1189 https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/columbias-billionaire-donors-mull-giving-anti-israel-protests ; https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/05/penn-donors-react-encampment-university-response 1190 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/16/business-leaders-chat-group-eric-adams-columbia-protesters/ 1191 https://twitter.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1785443970237317351 ; https://x.com/Kahlissee/status/1783538202705285206 ; for heavily armed police forces see: https://x.com/RyanChandlerTV/status/1783197539824468403 ; https://x.com/balagonline/status/1783185444085117425 1192 https://x.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1783565419305136271 ; https://x.com/JoshuaPHilll/status/1783518484137226284 ; https://x.com/AkbarSAhmed/status/1785856063226490986 ; https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6MpTOhP5uS/ 1193 https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-campus-protests-50d754675b710c9b983faf9ec9164d81 1194 https://x.com/PatrickQuinnTV/status/1783532600637681964 ; https://x.com/RobertMackey/status/1783684235938894086 ; https://www.newsweek.com/65-year-old-man-lucky-alive-after-arrest-campus-protest-1895846 ; https://x.com/TylerKatzen/status/1785698828420608183 ; https://x.com/meznaqato/status/1785452260324979121 ; https://x.com/probablyreadit/status/1782569732538843267 ; https://x.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1786332708379017607 101 included, for example, moving to online teaching,1195 keeping police on campus,1196 moving ceremonies out of campus, or canceling valedictorian speeches.1197 Some university administrations eventually negotiated with students, sometimes reaching an agreement that fulfilled some student demands.1198 In many other cases, however, universities did not change their policies towards Israel/Gaza. Some universities preferred to resolve the issue by declaring that they would no longer comment on political issues not central to university functions.1199 The end of the academic year and the departure of many students from campuses for the summer ended almost all active protests, although in many cases students protested in various end-of-year activities such as staging walkouts of their own graduation ceremonies, 1200 raising Palestinian flags or symbols or associated signs, 1201 or demanding the cancellation of graduation ceremony speakers.1202 Coverage and reactions Instead of dealing with the protestors’ demands and grievances, media coverage was sensationalized.1203 Public attention was drawn to a few examples of incendiary language or signs, as well as to a more general discomfort or lack of personal safety a minority of students felt on campus. Much of the public debate surrounded allegations of antisemitism, often neglecting the fact that a significant portion of the students organizing and participating in the encampments, as well as supportive faculty, were Jewish themselves.1204 In the US, the protests led to a bill that aimed to define antisemitism with a broad definition that included criticism of Israel (the bill passed in the House in May).1205 Israeli voices weaponized the antisemitism in both international and domestic discourse. Internationally, Israel’s Prime Minister put out a widely covered video address in English in which he described the protests as “antisemitic” and “horrific”, comparing them to rallies in German universities in the 1930s (i.e. as the Nazi party rose to power): “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities… They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty”.1206 Netanyahu subsequently described students who chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a relatively common call in protests – as “supporting genocide” and linked it to the “sorry state of American education… there’s a deep rot and bankruptcy there”.1207 In 1195 https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/22/business/columbia-tensions-passover-virtual-classes/index.html 1196 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/nyregion/columbia-shafik-protests-police.html 1197 https://dailytrojan.com/2024/04/15/valedictorian-will-not-speak-at-class-of-2024-commencement/ 1198 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/us/brown-divestment-deal.html ; https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2024-05-06/tyarticle/.premium/rutgers-faces-backlash-over-shameful-capitulation-to-pro-palestinian-student-demands/0000018f-4e92-dcda-abcf6e9711670000 ; https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/2024-05/AGREEMENT_05072024.pdf 1199 https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/28/harvard-policy-issues-institutional-neutrality 1200 https://x.com/JalalAK_jojo/status/1793672275809718459 ; https://twitter.com/iamschvitzing/status/1789666643141914965 1201 https://twitter.com/brainnotonyet/status/1789796916022157770 1202 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/us/xavier-vermont-cancel-linda-thomas-greenfield.html 1203 https://theconversation.com/media-coverage-of-campus-protests-tends-to-focus-on-the-spectacle-rather-than-the-substance-229172 ; https://www.nybooks.com/online/2024/06/13/acts-of-language-isabella-hammad/ 1204 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/24/not-like-other-passovers-hundreds-of-jewish-demonstrators-arrested-after-newyork-protest-seder ; https://x.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1786332708379017607 ; https://x.com/ofercass/status/1783246682626400722 1205 https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-05-07/explainer-the-controversy-surrounding-the-antisemitism-bill . The proposed definition for antisemitism is the one defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which has often been used to interpret criticism of Israel as antisemitism, see: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/apr/24/un-ihra-antisemitism-definitionisrael-criticism 1206 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/24/us-campus-protests-benjamin-netanyahu-ceasefire. Some US lawmakers publicly refuted these claims, e.g. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1247670359 1207 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-says-college-protesters-chanting-from-the-river-to-the-sea-are-supportinggenocide/ 102 Israel, the campus protests were framed as a form of antisemitism and covered far more superficially.1208 Israel Today, the most widely circulating newspaper in Israel, dedicated its front page on April 25 to “Antisemitism Around the Globe” with a dark photo of a demonstration of people waving Palestinian flags covering most of the page. The subtitle read “[Jews] fearing to speak Hebrew, incitement in the media, and police incompetence… a terrifying reality”.1209 A lead to the next page presented readers with a solution (“Despite everything, there is only one place to Jews in the world [today]”, i.e. Israel).1210 Beyond a debate on antisemitism, US media outlets were concerned with the presence of nonstudents within the protests and their organization, although little evidence was presented to support these claims. A similar question concerned who was “behind” the protests, which appears to have been asked more commonly in conservative-leaning media. A Wall Street Journal opinion piece, for example, claimed with no evidence that the protestors were “groomed” by Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houtis.1211 Other right-wing commentators blamed George Soros for them.1212 Israeli media had similar concerns, decrying for example the “billions of dollars” with which Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar bought influence in American universities.1213 A third theme of Israeli coverage, aimed primarily at domestic Israeli audiences and almost completely absent from US media coverage, presented American student protestors as ignorant about the real situation in Israel/Palestine and naïve towards Hamas in particular.1214 This talking point was amplified by the work of an initiative heavily promoted by pro-Israel elites.1215 The public discussion touched upon Israeli academia as well. The Association of University Heads in Israel (VERA) put out a statement in which they voiced their “deep concern” regarding “the serious cases of violence, antisemitism and anti-Israeli washing through the campuses of many leading American universities, with the support of Palestinian organizations including terrorist organizations”. They proceeded by stating that they would help Jewish and Israeli scholars and students who desired to come to Israeli universities “and find here a personal and academic home”.1216 In May, Israel launched a well-funded program to bring Israeli ex-pat and Jewish scholars to the country because of “an unprecedented wave of antisemitism” by offering them generous grants.1217 1208 https://www.the7eye.org.il/517399 1209 https://www.pressreader.com/newspapers/n/israel-hayom/20240425 1210 https://www.pressreader.com/newspapers/n/israel-hayom/20240425 1211 https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-behind-the-anti-israel-protests-hamas-gaza-hezbollah-talking-points-d2f538ca 1212 https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-anti-israel-protesters-are-paid-soros-rockefeller-funding-activism-hamas-fba26c20 ; on Soros see also: https://www.thedailybeast.com/theres-been-a-george-soros-for-every-era-of-antisemitic-panic 1213 E.g. https://www.ynet.co.il/economy/article/yokra13903697 ; https://www.maariv.co.il/news/politics/Article-1095319 ; https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/geopolitics/article/15711685 1214 E.g. https://www.maariv.co.il/news/politics/Article-1095319 1215 For examples aimed at a US domestic audience, but with less traction, see: https://x.com/Facts_For_Peace/status/1794093433818096072 ; https://x.com/Facts_For_Peace/status/1801653974648410448 . For the connection to the group of elites, see the discussion here: https://www.semafor.com/article/11/09/2023/billionaires-discuss-50-millionanti-hamas-media-blitz; https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/05/16/business-leaders-chat-group-eric-adams-columbiaprotesters/ 1216 https://www.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-1094819 1217 https://www.themarker.com/news/education/2024-05-26/ty-article/.premium/0000018f-b5b6-d390-ab8f-f5bee80a0000; https://www.facebook.com/Bezazelsmotrich/photos/%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%95- %D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%A8-%D7%9E%D7%AA%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%93-%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%95- %D7%90%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D- %D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%9D- %D7%91%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%98%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA- %D7%94%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9D- %D7%91%D7%95%D7%90/988484582838144/?paipv=0&eav=Afbn2KFToO1qrHWpcUKB5K_G0uVHfC0qdzwc_QxQih_5pjL23tHM_3585Pm FbxxIxek&_rdr 103 Zoom-in 3: The ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza, October-December 2024 Last updated:1218 December 5, 2024 In October 2024, Israel began another operation in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Almost immediately, it became clear that this operation was qualitatively different from those that preceded it. Israel de facto began a complete siege of northern Gaza, directly attacked civilians and hospitals, and attempted to remove the local population from the area in what was quickly recognized as ethnic cleansing. This section focuses on this operation, beginning with its framing and purpose in Israeli and international discourse, and thus providing evidence that the events were well evident from early on. The section proceeds to examine the siege itself, Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon, and the attacks on the civilian population in northern Gaza, all of which supported the ethnic cleansing campaign. It also focuses on the attacks on healthcare facilities and workers in the area. Plans, voices and media coverage The blueprint for this operation had long been discussed in Israel as the so-called “Generals’ Plan”. The strongest and most vocal supporter was the former general and former head of the National Security Council, Giora Eiland. The plan itself proposes that Israel warn all residents in North Gaza that they would have one week to evacuate. Those who would choose to evacuate would be supplied food and water in a designated area. The IDF would then tighten the siege and stop the entry of all food, water and humanitarian aid to the evacuated area, forcing the remaining residents to surrender or starve to death (for more details, see the section Ethnic Cleansing/Prominent voices and plans in this document).1219 Israeli investigations revealed that the plan was designed by other organizations such as “Tzav 9”,1220 which was responsible for blocking aid from entering Gaza over the spring and summer of 2024 (and was sanctioned by the US in response).1221 Within Israeli discourse, the plan received considerable media attention, which was generally supportive. The plan was published by an NGO that claimed more than 1,500 IDF officers as members.1222 Already in mid-September, Israeli media noted that IDF generals were considering the Generals’ Plan (also described as Eiland’s Plan),1223 while a letter signed by 27 ministers and MKs (Members of the Israeli Knesset) called upon Israel’s prime minister to formally accept it.1224 The plan received some support in Israeli academia as well.1225 In late September, the prime minister stated that the plan “made sense and was under consideration”.1226 An MK stated in early October 1218 I would like to thank an anonymous reader who commented on the Nov. 2024 version of this document. 1219 https://x.com/bokeralmog/status/1831247052828786708 ; see also https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/h1psjosnc for additional supporters 1220 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=430705303386981 ; https://x.com/omrimaniv/status/1847700434716160328 1221 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-01-30/ty-article/.premium/a-new-low-the-israelis-advocating-to-starve-the-people-ofgaza/0000018d-5b42-d0fc-a9bd-5f5fc0740000 ; sanctions: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b1gdos7da ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/14/us-imposes-sanctions-on-extremist-israeli-group-for-blocking-gaza-aid 1222 https://hamefakdim-bemiluim.org/%d7%aa%d7%95%d7%9b%d7%a0%d7%99%d7%aa- %d7%94%d7%90%d7%9c%d7%95%d7%a4%d7%99%d7%9d/ ; https://hamefakdimbemiluim.org/%d7%90%d7%95%d7%93%d7%95%d7%aa/ 1223 https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/defense/799622/ ; also: https://x.com/yuval_ganor/status/1848406512609231172 ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sjcq4s11rr ; https://www.972mag.com/northern-gaza-liquidation-scenario-eiland-rabi/ 1224 https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/politics/article/16463062 1225 https://x.com/radio103fm/status/1835207918087483732?s=48 1226 https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/politic/803098/ 104 that the plan was being executed.1227 In late October, an Israeli settler NGO held a major event in preparation of Jewish settlements in Gaza. The event was attended by 19 Israeli ministers and MKs.1228 Soon after the military operation in North Gaza began (see below), it became clear that the Generals’ Plan, or a version of it, was being executed de facto. Israeli journalists stated it already on Oct. 6. 1229 More Israeli media recognized this by mid-October,1230 with indications that it was neither discussed in detail nor formally decided upon politically.1231 Many international voices also became aware of the plan at this point.1232 In response, Eiland himself claimed that what was being implemented was not his plan because the IDF began the military operation before evacuating the civilians, which would increase casualties.1233 Some voices in Israeli discourse – including the Ha’aretz editorial in late October – called for IDF soldiers to refuse to serve and implement the plan.1234 These voices had no obvious immediate effect on soldiers. Other Israeli voices called for widespread action by international institutions – including sanctions – to stop Israel. Among these was a petition signed by a few thousand Israelis who called for “every possible sanction” on Israel to stop its attack on Gaza.1235 This, too, had little effect. However, soon after, Israel’s Minister of Justice called for a 20-year prison sentence for Israeli citizens promoting sanctions against Israel.1236 By mid-late October there were clear indications that the operation was following a formal plan. This was supported by Israel’s prime minister himself, who declined US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s request to state publicly that Israel was not planning to remove or starve the population in northern Gaza. Blinken warned that not reversing Israel’s action could risk US military support.1237 In late October, IDF generals admitted that despite reaching their military objectives in the area, IDF 1227 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1842878570307219842 1228 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-16/ty-article/.premium/00000192-94aa-d9c2-a7f3-9cae337a0000 ; https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBZR6anA-q4/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-21/ty-articlemagazine/.premium/00000192-af02-d049-a3db-bf76397e0000 ; for the list of attendees: https://x.com/nitayp/status/1848282311281766869 1229 https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1842898570673852729 1230 https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1848469118363582692 ; https://www.middleeasteye.net/explainers/israel-gaza-palestine-whatgenerals-plan 1231 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-13/ty-article/.premium/00000192-8282-de72-afba-b2d79d410000 ; https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2024-10-29/ty-article-opinion/if-it-looks-like-ethnic-cleansing-it-probably-is/00000192-da04- d91e-a9df-dbad3f940000 ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/byuiwjajje ; 1232 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-21/ty-article/.premium/00000192-aeaf-da5c-a9b7-febf25980000 ; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y5zy1vvmlo 1233 https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1850011191281652154 . Eiland said he would have accepted a deal for the hostages. See also: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra14124023 . He also defended his plan: https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-10-31/tyarticle-opinion/.premium/00000192-e2a6-dd31-a9be-fbaf597b0000 ; and in this interview he threatened to maintain control of northern Gaza, and potentially occupy it: https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1857291886014206402 1234 https://x.com/eranetzion/status/1848635092463132779 ; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx24ngy9g70o ; https://x.com/TomerPersico/status/1848610983670899017 (and more emphatically a couple of weeks later: https://x.com/TomerPersico/status/1854403910305505520; https://x.com/TomerPersico/status/1855858123602309152 ; https://x.com/TomerPersico/status/1858035974783009228) ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/editorial-articles/2024-10-23/ty-articleopinion/00000192-b4d9-d006-a5b3-fed91a400000 ; https://x.com/PeaceNowIL/status/1853430263423910399 ; https://x.com/_selftitled_/status/1851698751733404138 ; https://x.com/eliavl/status/1845476781576380672 . See also https://news.walla.co.il/item/3703552; https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-11-17/ty-article-opinion/.premium/00000193-35e5- d19b-afbb-37f5b2080000 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/2024-11-16/ty-article-opinion/.premium/00000193-2b85-d506-a5d3- 2f97180e0000 1235 https://x.com/btselem/status/1848770778462060744 ; https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-10-31/tyarticle/.premium/haaretz-publisher-clarifies-hamas-remarks-as-netanyahu-govt-threatens-sanctions/00000192-e326-df50-a1bffbeef3fc0000 ; see also: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=32171 ; https://www.newarab.com/news/3000-israelis-call-every-possible-sanctionisrael 1236 https://mondoweiss.net/2024/11/israeli-justice-minister-calls-for-20-year-prison-sentence-for-citizens-promoting-sanctions-againstthe-state/ 1237 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/22/blinken-israel-netanyahu-gaza-aid/, specifically: https://x.com/eranetzion/status/1848817655115092252 105 forces were preventing Palestinians from returning to their homes.1238 International voices were similarly alarmed. A UN relief official stated that “the entire population of North Gaza is at risk of dying”.1239 By early November, an IDF general explicitly stated that Palestinians would not be able to return to their homes in Jabaliya after the end of the military operation.1240 The Ha’aretz editorial stated that the IDF was ethnically cleansing the northern part of the Gaza Strip.1241 International voices used harsher words to voice their alarm. In a joint message, the leaders of 15 United Nations and humanitarian organizations stated that “the situation unfolding in North Gaza is apocalyptic” and reiterated that the entire population in North Gaza “is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence”.1242 By mid-November, Israel’s Finance Minister said Israel should remain in northern Gaza indefinitely to pressure Hamas to release its hostages.1243 A major Israeli TV channel aired an interview with an Israeli professor who called for resettling Gaza and explicitly agreed to ethnically cleanse up to two million Palestinians, killing hundreds of thousands who would not leave.1244 By late November, Oxfam stated that Israel was in the late stages of ethnically cleansing the North Gaza governorate. 1245 A few days later Moshe Ya’alon, a former Israeli Chief of Staff and defense minister, accused Israel of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from northern Gaza.1246 Many politicians – including the leaders of the two Jewish center-left parties – and media outlets, as well as the IDF attacked Ya’alon for his statements.1247 Siege and ethnic cleansing The siege On the ground, the first step in the operation was the implementation of three nested sieges. The overall siege on the Gaza Strip, originating in 2007 but beginning in its current form at the beginning of the war, was tightened. During October 2024, Israel shut down almost all humanitarian aid entering Gaza. The average entrance of 58 trucks/day in this month was the lowest since November 2023 (the previous minimum was 113 trucks/day in Dec. 2023).1248 The amount of supplies (food, water, medical equipment) entering was one quarter of the average of the nine preceding months of 1238 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-30/ty-article/.premium/00000192-dc99-dbce-a7be-ff99f45a0000 1239 https://www.commondreams.org/news/northern-gaza-risk-dying 1240 https://archive.md/0TJKW (the tweet was later deleted); https://x.com/Doron_Kadosh/status/1853844668535955848 ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/06/palestinians-will-not-be-allowed-to-return-to-homes-in-northern-gaza-says-idf; https://x.com/idanlandau/status/1854412734168772892 . Note that the next day the IDF distanced itself from the remarks about not letting Gazans return: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/07/idf-israel-military-no-return-remarks-north-gaza , see also https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-11-08/ty-article/.premium/00000193-0bb2-de12-adbb-8bf721150000 1241 https://www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/editorial-articles/2024-11-10/ty-article-opinion/00000193-11b9-d3a2-a3d7-5bf956bf0000 1242 https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/inter-agency-standing-committee/statement-principals-inter-agency-standing-committeestop-assault-palestinians-gaza-and-those-trying 1243 https://www.timesofisrael.com/smotrich-israel-must-vow-to-stay-in-northern-gaza-forever-unless-hostages-returned/ ; see also: https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/h1takgiz1g 1244 https://www.kan.org.il/content/dig/digital/p-11685/s2024/825913/ 1245 https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/no-aid-or-access-israel-intensifies-its-ethnic-cleansing-north-gaza-governorate-says 1246 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/02/middleeast/israel-idf-gaza-moshe-yaalon-palestinians-ethnic-cleansing-intl/index.html 1247 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/s1xbixj71g 1248 Numbers are based on COGAT’s counting: https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/#AidData. According to OCHA the number was 37 truckloads/day over October: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-november-2024 ; the trend began already in the beginning of the month: https://www.npr.org/2024/10/18/nx-s1-5156064/north-gaza-is-starving-as-humanitarianaid-declines . The amount of aid entering Gaza increased in November (OCHA: 65 truckloads/day: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-3-december-2024; COGAT: 89 trucks/day by Nov. 26: https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/#AidData) 106 2024 (26.4 thousand tons in October 2024 compared to 103.4).1249 These numbers correspond to the entire Gaza Strip. They began to be reported in the Israeli media in late October.1250 Compounding the overall siege, a stricter siege was placed on the northern part of the Strip, i.e. the area north of the Netzarim Corridor, which included Gaza City and North Gaza. The amount of supplies and humanitarian aid that entered this area was one fraction of the meagre amount that entered the southern part of the Strip.1251 The third and tightest siege was placed on North Gaza – the northern-most governorate of the Strip’s five governorates, north of Gaza City – specifically on Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahiya. These were also the areas where the most military force was used, as evident by many daily attacks, commonly by airstrikes (see below). As many observers noted already in mid and late October, no food or water entered this area for weeks.1252 The IDF soon established another East-West corridor, separating North Gaza from Gaza City.1253 Evidence from witnesses indicates the absence of food.1254 Video footage showed an IDF tractor destroying humanitarian aid supplies in a warehouse in Jabaliya.1255 Both the UN and 39 humanitarian organizations raised the alarm regarding the situation in North Gaza. The UN reported in early November that all attempts by humanitarian organizations to deliver food to the besieged areas of North Gaza in October were blocked by Israel.1256 Israel falsely claimed that there was “no population” left in places like Beit Lahiya, where it continued to bomb civilians for many more days.1257 Only 11 percent of coordinated aid movements to provide humanitarian assistance to the northern Gaza Strip were facilitated by Israel.1258 One mission supplying humanitarian assistance was finally allowed in on November 11, but delays in movement authorization and crowded routes led to the convoy’s reducing its size from 14 trucks to only three.1259 One aid truck reached a school in Beit Hanoun, which was raided soon after, reportedly 1249 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-31/ty-article/.premium/00000192-de68-d6c4-adfe-feee52230000 1250 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-31/ty-article/.premium/00000192-de68-d6c4-adfe-feee52230000 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 ; https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-humanitarian-aid-military-funding-11bdf4ffd22e0f4c68b2b7b0e24bda77 1251 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-5-november-2024 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-12-november-2024 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-19-november-2024 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-26-november-2024 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-3-december-2024 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-241-gaza-strip ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitariansituation-update-243-gaza-strip 1252 https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1848819280730853559 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1848810576828305645 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1851452023117660582 (a journalist on the ground in northern Gaza); https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1846626226951409921 (another journalist from northern Gaza); https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1850583598782353415 (he was outside Gaza but his family remained in northern Gaza; many died during the military operation); https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/22/blinken-israel-netanyahu-gaza-aid/ (the first two weeks of October). See also https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-15/ty-article/.premium/00000192-8c88-d953-afbe9fd9be790000 1253 https://x.com/ForensicArchi/status/1860005331897622954 ; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8x324vr0mo 1254 https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-hunger-israel-restricts-aid (see the testimony about Jabaliya); for an exceptional distribution of aid, see: https://x.com/Stevesosebee/status/1857817939698659796 (the partner, Anera, is one of the organizations that signed on the mid-November scorecard referred to below: https://x.com/AneraOrg/status/1856374235335123234); little of the aid was in the North: https://x.com/AneraOrg/status/1858986152197583225 1255 https://x.com/tamerqdh/status/1856423763010584856 1256 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-235-gaza-strip 1257 https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-humanitarian-aid-military-funding-11bdf4ffd22e0f4c68b2b7b0e24bda77 1258 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-235-gaza-strip (this refers to movements from the southern part of the Strip; it seems that eight of these missions evacuated patients to hospitals outside northern Gaza). 1259 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-237-gaza-strip ; https://www.unocha.org/news/todays-top-newsoccupied-palestinian-territory-lebanon-haiti-philippines-ukraine 107 killing over 20 civilians.1260 The tight siege continued in mid-November, with humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza largely denied.1261 None of the attempts to reach these besieged areas with aid in November were fully facilitated. Only 5 of 53 missions in November were initially approved but were “severely impeded” on the ground, limiting their impact.1262 Winter weather in late November exacerbated the poor conditions displaced people experienced.1263 Following earlier precedents during the war, it was widely assumed that any changes in the distribution of aid would require US approval. Already in mid-October, a few weeks before the US elections, the US secretaries of state and defense issued a letter that delineated 19 measures that required Israel’s compliance. The most notable of these measures was allowing far more humanitarian aid into Gaza, with the letter stating that 350 trucks should enter Gaza every day. The US threatened to stop supplying Israel with weapons if it would not comply with these measures within 30 days. However, Israel did not comply, 1264 despite a Famine Review Committee report from Nov. 8 that stated that there was a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas in the northern Gaza Strip.1265 At the US letter’s deadline a month later, a group of eight aid organizations noted that there was “non-compliance, significant delays, or backtracking” on 15 of the 19 measures outlined in the letter, and concluded that the situation in Northern Gaza was “in an even more dire state today than a month ago”.1266 The aid entering Gaza – the item that drew the most public attention on the list – was less than one-third of the required amount (see above for more details).1267 Already before the deadline, the US signaled that it would not follow through on its threats.1268 The top US official involved in the humanitarian situation in Gaza had told aid groups that the US would not consider suspending military aid if Israel blocked food and medicine from entering Gaza since Israel is too close an ally.1269 Following these early indications, when the deadline did arrive, the US refrained from action.1270 By late November, very few supplies remained in North Gaza. The Oxfam staff member responsible for aid distribution in the area said he was able to have one daily meal consisting of one item.1271 1260 https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1856798704939761937 ; https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-army-torches-school-gazasnorth-after-entry-aid-trucks ; https://x.com/ajplus/status/1857192669543268699 ; https://www.unocha.org/news/todays-top-newsoccupied-palestinian-territory-lebanon-haiti-philippines-ukraine 1261 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-239-gaza-strip ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitariansituation-update-243-gaza-strip 1262 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-241-gaza-strip ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitariansituation-update-243-gaza-strip 1263 For example: https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1860991599427100897 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-11-25/tyarticle/.premium/00000193-5f68-d68e-a1db-ff6c45430000 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/world/middleeast/gaza-displacedwinter-tents.html . Across Gaza, as of late November, about half the population required winterization support, and about a quarter resided in flood-prone areas, see: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/reported-impact-snapshot-gaza-strip-26-november-2024 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-241-gaza-strip 1264 https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1848819280730853559; note that some Israeli reports stated that the prime minister ordered the IDF to allow more aid in, but that the IDF was unable to do so: https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-11-05/tyarticle/.highlight/00000192-fd09-de0c-a7db-ff4d78930000. Israel conducted some token moves, see for example: https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-16/ty-article/.premium/00000192-94ff-d8fa-a9df-fdfff7c60000 1265 https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_FRC_Alert_Gaza_Nov2024.pdf 1266 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/israel-gaza-humanitarian-situation-report ; https://x.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1856324289886130192 ; https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs/scorecard-israelfails-to-comply-with-u-s-humanitarian-access-demands-in-gaza/ 1267 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-11-12/ty-article/.premium/00000193-1f8e-d76d-a7db-5fcf88ea0000 1268 https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1854626313195438140 1269 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/16/biden-israel-arms-aid-00184028 1270 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/israel-gaza-humanitarian-situation-report ; https://x.com/BarakRavid/status/1856402306628989103 ; https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1856729271470813497 ; see details of the evasions here: https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1856421706505900405 ; https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1856409244016509192 1271 https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/no-aid-or-access-israel-intensifies-its-ethnic-cleansing-north-gaza-governorate-says 108 The military operation Israel’s military operation into northern Gaza began on October 5, with airstrikes killing dozens of Gazans as Israeli tanks moved in.1272 Israel continued by planting and detonating explosive barrels in residential areas, which destroyed dozens of homes, many uninhabited.1273 After a few days of siege, Israel began to call upon the local civilian population to evacuate.1274 In parallel, orders were issued to evacuate the three remaining hospitals in northern Gaza.1275 While some Gazans moved south,1276 many of them chose to stay.1277 At the same time, multiple testimonies revealed that people who tried to evacuate were bombed or shot at – including large families carrying white flags.1278 On some occasions, the IDF detained people seeking to evacuate.1279 The IDF used some detained Palestinians as human shields, forcing them to knock on people’s doors and tell other Palestinians to evacuate.1280 By mid-October, the UN condemned the “large number of civilian casualties” in Israel’s operation.1281 As part of its attack, Israel attempted to shut down various means of support to the Gazan population. Already on Oct. 9, the last warehouse for flour in North Gaza was burned in an Israeli attack.1282 The last two bakeries in the north closed in mid-late October.1283 The local Civil Defense units – groups of people whose role was to dig people out of the rubble and evacuate them to hospitals – were ordered to stop working. Israel subsequently detained some members of these units and killed others. By October 23 the local units declared that they had “completely stopped” their operations and that civilians were left “without humanitarian services”.1284 As a result, in many subsequent attacks, the local population was without support to clear rubble after bombings or to evacuate the injured to hospitals, or even to remove the dead.1285 For several days, Israel prevented the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), from accessing collapsed buildings, until eventually pointing out that there was no point in providing access anymore because the people under the rubble would have died.1286 In mid-October Israel also barred six medical NGOs 1272 https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/several-killed-israeli-air-strike-gaza-mosque-2024-10-05/ 1273 https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1846483876014703073 1274 https://x.com/MSF_canada/status/1844751751624413541 1275 https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/inside-israels-ongoing-invasion-of-jabalia-in-northern-gaza/ 1276 E.g. https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/nakba-survivor-forced-to-flee-jabaliya ; https://www.kan.org.il/content/kannews/defense/live-814626/liveid-814719/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-22/ty-article/.premium/00000192-b047- daee-a9fb-fedfab970000; according to the IDF, more than 5,000 Palestinians were evacuated by Oct. 20. According to the UN, the number of displaced people was 50 thousand by Oct. 15 (https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-229-gaza-strip); 60 thousand by Oct. 22 (https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-231-gaza-strip); 71 thousand by Oct. 29 (https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-233-gaza-strip); 100 thousand by Nov. 4 (https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-235-gaza-strip); and 100-130 thousand by Nov. 9 (https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-237-gaza-strip). 1277 https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1852689928695492648 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-articlemagazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1854585378122133633 ; for an example of the conditions of those who stayed, see: https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1854253562190090316 . On Nov. 16, the UN estimated that 65-75 thousand Palestinians remained in North Gaza: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/population-and-internaldisplacement-7-october-2023-gaza-strip ; Oxfam estimated 50-75 thousand Palestinians in North Gaza on Nov. 27: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/no-aid-or-access-israel-intensifies-its-ethnic-cleansing-north-gaza-governorate-says 1278 https://x.com/MSF_canada/status/1844751751624413541 ; https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/inside-israels-ongoing-invasion-ofjabalia-in-northern-gaza/ ; https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/northern-gaza-kamal-adwan-hospital-director-defies-israeli-order ; https://x.com/MintPressNews/status/1844015334908703014 ; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1848333440761872705 ; https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1848449955871994319 1279 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/24/israel-northern-gaza-humanitarian-collapse/ 1280 https://mondoweiss.net/2024/10/inside-israels-ongoing-invasion-of-jabalia-in-northern-gaza/ 1281 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y5zy1vvmlo 1282 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkhYMbN17tU&t=2s 1283 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 1284 https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1849182435994427434; 1285 For example: https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1858558987513344059 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1863059618705916244 1286 https://x.com/ochaopt/status/1848098727669682447 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-articlemagazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 109 that had operated in Gaza from entering the Strip entirely, providing no explanation.1287 By late November, local Civil Defense noted that all their fire, rescue and ambulance vehicles in Gaza governorate stopped working as well because of the lack of fuel.1288 Israel also limited or removed other means of support to North Gaza. This included attempts to shut down the water supply by not allowing fuel for the local pumping stations and desalination plant.1289 Evidence from mid-November indicated that the IDF took over the local desalination plant and was using it as a makeshift base.1290 The humanitarian campaign led by the WHO to vaccinate some 120,000 children against polio was temporarily stopped.1291 Israel also attempted to reduce the amount of information emerging from North Gaza, killing some of the remaining journalists and declaring that others were affiliated with Hamas, a move widely understood as rendering them targets.1292 At the same time, the area experienced “severe disruptions of communications, including internet”.1293 The daily bombings of northern Gaza continued throughout the operation, killing at least hundreds of civilians. Already by late October there were daily mass casualty events – with attacks hitting dozens to hundreds of civilians at a time – which continued at least until early December. 1294 On dozens of occasions, the IDF did not claim that people hit during the attacks were affiliated with Hamas.1295 The consequences of many attacks were filmed. However, due to the conditions of the healthcare system, the limitations on cellular internet service, and the absence of external journalists, the international media is dependent on the numbers published by the Palestinian Ministry of Health and local journalists. Estimates of the number of dead in northern Gaza have 1287 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/18/israel-gaza-war-aid-hospitals-doctors/ 1288 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-241-gaza-strip 1289 https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1849476686674280529 1290 https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-water-desalination-plant-israeli-base ; https://x.com/tamerqdh/status/1859543941068038214 1291 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/24/israel-gaza-strikes-jabalia-polio-vaccine-campaign-postponed ; https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1156466 1292 https://x.com/IDF/status/1849088691450339461 ; one of these journalists was later injured in an airstrike: https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1859286304854327323 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1859050248632471990 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1859034111714750788 1293 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-235-gaza-strip 1294 https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1851832529411588266 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-articlemagazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 ; https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/07/middleeast/jabalya-gaza-israel-strikeintl/index.html (with some specific details). For specific footage and reporting from this period, see the following very partial list: airstrikes against several family houses on Oct. 20 (https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1847767278894608653); Jabalia Preparatory School on Oct. 21 (https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1848351885901611428; https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/150633); results of an attack on the Halawa family house on Oct. 23 (https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1848843265883128050); attacks on five homes in Beit Lahiya on Oct. 26 (https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1850243630575030506; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1850256376112594991; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1850268042082877891; https://x.com/mustafabarghou1/status/1850265469481087145?s=46); airstrikes on houses in Jabalia and a school sheltering displaced families on Oct. 27 (https://x.com/idanlandau/status/1850589992994718195); an airstrike west of Gaza City on Oct. 29 (https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1851738959149187466); a four-story building with many displaced families inside on Nov. 1 (https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1852238516471648480); airstrikes on residential buildings on Nov. 2 (https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1852547862036455896; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1852677911553450486; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1853160426877722843); an attack near a water sanitation station on Nov. 3 (https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1853087728398725338); airstrikes on residential buildings in Beit Lahiya on Nov. 4 (https://x.com/DmodosCutter/status/1853435319384727784; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1853550375673930088); more attacks on houses in Beit Lahiya on Nov. 5 (https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1853752172485218305; https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1853847622236418257); an attack on a family home near a mosque on Nov. 6 (https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1854100119735431538); bombing of a school shelter and a residence on Nov. 7 (https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1854531145062642158; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1854547876300361769 ; https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/07/middleeast/jabalya-gaza-israel-strike-intl/index.html); airstrike on a residential house in Gaza City on Nov. 20 (https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1859352121579274713); attacks on residential housing in Beit Lahiya on Nov. 27-29 (https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1862005651968254040; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1862527959640277095; https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1862512152793194918; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1862517626246779011) ; an attack on a Beit Lahiya house on Dec. 1 (https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-243-gaza-strip) 1295 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 110 varied, yet almost all have exceeded 1,000 in the first month.1296 By early December, Palestinian Civil Defense estimated that over 2,700 people were killed in North Gaza, half of whom were not retrieved, and more than 10,000 were injured.1297 The personal tragic stories of several Palestinians demonstrate the impacts of the attacks on the local population.1298 Video evidence reveals improvised graveyards in the middle of urban areas such as the Beit Lahiya market.1299 One of the largest attacks was on Jabalia, where over 150 civilians were killed when the IDF bombed 11 residential apartments on the same street on Oct. 24.1300 Details of the attack were lacking as the IDF did not allow health professionals and civil defense teams to reach the area.1301 Another large attack took place on October 29, when the IDF attacked a five-story building where over 200 Palestinians were sheltering. The IDF claimed the building was attacked because a Hamas lookout was identified on top of the building on the previous day.1302 Eventually about 137 were identified as dead.1303 According to a Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson, 255 people died, many of whom remained 1296 More than 1,200 on Oct. 31: (https://archive.md/bt9pa); over 1,500 on Nov. 8 (https://www.yenisafak.com/en/news/over-1500- palestinians-killed-in-israeli-onslaught-in-northern-gaza-health-ministry-3694089). The IDF numbers were not far: “900 terror operatives” on Nov. 2 (https://www.timesofisrael.com/two-soldiers-killed-in-north-gaza-idf-says-900-terror-operatives-dead-in-jabalia-op/); “1,000 terrorists killed” on Nov. 5 (https://www.israelhayom.co.il/news/defense/article/16727495); “1,300 terror operatives” as of Nov. 22 (https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-it-killed-five-hamas-terrorists-who-led-mefalsim-area-massacres-on-oct-7/). According to the OCHA, the death toll was in the hundreds, possibly over 1,000. About 1,300 deaths were estimated by the Palestinian Civil Defense by Nov. 5: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-235-gaza-strip. The Government Media Office claimed that more than 2,000 Gazans died by Nov. 12: (https://www.arab48.com/%D9%81%D9%84%D8%B3%D8%B7%D9%8A%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%AA/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D 8%B1%D8%A8-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%BA%D8%B2%D8%A9- 2023/2024/11/12/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B9%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85- %D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D9%83%D9%88%D9%85%D9%8A-%D8%A5%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D9%84- %D9%82%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%AA-%D8%A3%D9%83%D8%AB%D8%B1-%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A3%D9%84%D9%81%D9%8A- %D9%85%D8%AF%D9%86%D9%8A-%D8%B4%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%B7%D8%A7%D8%B9- %D8%AE%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%84-38-%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%85%D8%A7) 1297 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-243-gaza-strip 1298 For the personal story of a poet whose family remained in Beit Lahiya, see for example: https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1851015506716770323 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1847276685215101146 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1847484071938519257 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1847164574648201352; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1846914259986391468 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1850246439261147276 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1852677911553450486; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1854538625733800116 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1854566739939635375 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1854656474410369538 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1850891173298106456 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1851260276001148957; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1853105080708501626 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1855275734614327683 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1856751977767600605 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1858260298408534252 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1858299701562388914 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1862419644855812188 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1862901576207077844 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1862932392081608967 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1864314281384198597 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1864284704867856422 . For a journalist’s personal tragedy: https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1854595897042083944; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1854598342333944270 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1854550843686531440 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1854658153087914106 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1855751832796274885 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1856157430503145907 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1856506570705678625 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1859676703938970109 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1862168815045394848. For the story of another journalist’s family: https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1854403068655292467 . For more civilian casualties, see: https://x.com/Abu_Salah9/status/1852144588053451216 . See also these anecdotal stories: https://x.com/OmarHamadD/status/1855705318598078864 ; https://x.com/AyaHassoun30/status/1857523402518434160 ; https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1857909049532010610 ; https://x.com/OmarHamadD/status/1857858474152980830 1299 https://x.com/muhammadshehad2/status/1858951043029106973 1300 https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1849523823093109172 ; https://x.com/Timesofgaza/status/1849531836092842341 ; https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1849517984823304699 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1849769737686859852 ; https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1849732808333287510 ; https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/150807 ; https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6522/Urgent-int%E2%80%99l-intervention-needed-to-send-rescue-teams-to-residential-blockbombed-by-Israeli-army-in-Jabalia ; https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-deadly-24-hours-underscores-urgentneed-global-intervention-yet-more-children-killed-save-children 1301 https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1849732808333287510 1302 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-30/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000192-de9d-d7b5-af97-ff9d2d0d0000 1303 The numbers changed over time. They quickly reached 93 on Oct. 29, when most reporting took place: https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1851179601390670299; https://x.com/alonleegreen/status/1851183558653550958?s=46; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1851226593319875036; https://x.com/ShovrimShtika/status/1851935062545064116; https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-official-deadly-gaza-strike-targeted-spotter-wasnt-aimed-at-felling-structure/ ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-10-30/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000192-de9d-d7b5-af97-ff9d2d0d0000. The 111 under the rubble as there was no way to rescue them.1304 Anecdotal visual evidence from northern Gaza shows many individuals crushed under buildings, 1305 as well as other explicit imagery.1306 Another attack on 17 November targeted a five-story building in Beit Lahiya, reportedly killing at least 50 or 72 Palestinians.1307 An attack near Kamal Adwan hospital on 20 November reportedly killed 66 Palestinians.1308 Some smaller attacks also drew public attention. One video shows a child injured in an attack – probably a rocket – lying on the street (“in pieces”, according to the person filming from afar). Several bystanders came to help him and were hit by a subsequent attack.1309 Other large attacks drew less public attention, such as an attack on a Beit Lahiya building that killed 87 Palestinians that took place during a communications blackout on 19 October.1310 Attacks on schools – as centers in which hundreds of displaced Palestinians were sheltering after their houses had been destroyed – were common.1311 A UNICEF report in early November found that at least 64 of 226 attacks against schools since the beginning of the war had taken place in October 2024, and that most of these attacks took place in the North.1312 An NGO found dozens of attacks on schools in northern Gaza in October 2024.1313 A substantial amount of evidence from November indicates that the pattern continued.1314 One local journalist noted that he witnessed a new school bombing almost every day.1315 These attacks were also covered in Israeli media.1316 In parallel to the above, field executions of Palestinians were reported,1317 including of Palestinians who were detained.1318 Some civilians were killed after lining up to get water.1319 Others died of number rose to 126 identified by Nov. 2 (113: https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1852479561709093263; 125: https://x.com/OnePathNetwork/status/1852676152361623595; 126: https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1852519949987668134). Another list from Nov. 1 included 137 people: https://x.com/IhabHassane/status/1852461589229642081 1304 https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1852805823157723314 1305 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1859704352124043709 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1859440967381569931 1306 https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1862908453913555096 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1864382818396057979 1307 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/at-least-96-palestinians-killed-in-israeli-airstrikes-on-northern-central-gaza/3395886 ; https://x.com/KhalilAsslan/status/1858035093589152245 ; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1858041776675668015 https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1858082971430818072 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1858042251806416971 ; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1858038134434345306 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-239- gaza-strip 1308 https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/66-killed-attack-near-kamal-adwan-hospital ; https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2024/11/21/beit-lahia-gaza/ ; https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1859663484700508233 ; https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1859513065697374658 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-241-gaza-strip 1309 https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1847352625974399346; https://x.com/Nadav_Eyal/status/1849135512373592563 . Coverage at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/21/gaza-israel-strike-jabalya-video/ ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/rknemalejg . For another incident, see: https://x.com/YousefHammash/status/1848685041833885972 1310 https://www.qna.org.qa/en/News-Area/News/2024-10/19/0042-73-palestinians-martyred-following-israeli-massacre-in%C2%A0beitlahia-in-northern-gaza-strip ; https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1858819672201691574 ; https://x.com/PalinfoAr/status/1847955843234373719 1311 For examples: https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1857812218475163850; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1857822501830598710 ; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1857799491266449519 ; 1312 https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/regular-attacks-put-gaza-schools-turned-shelters-frontlines-war 1313 https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/less-month-israeli-army-attacks-shelter-centres-39-times-displacepalestinians-and-empty-gaza-enar 1314 See for example these cases, all from mid November: https://x.com/MiddleEastEye/status/1857468010480427383; https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/11/12/dozens-killed-others-displaced-as-israel-continues-attacks-on-gaza ; https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1856250030912344560 ; https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2024/11/16/health-ministryin-gaza-says-war-death-toll-at-43-799- ; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/11/14/live-israel-bombs-gaza-camps-6-israelisoldiers-killed-in-south-lebanon?update=3324274 ; https://www.dailysabah.com/world/mid-east/israeli-strike-on-ngaza-kills-14-as-aidremains-distant-lifeline ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1857046066815779196 ; https://www.palestinechronicle.com/massacre-in-shatiisrael-bombs-school-sheltering-displaced-palestinians/ . For later attacks see for example: https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1861431831444226331; https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1861686736474050797 1315 https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1857838004619919468 1316 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-24/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000193-4db6-d68e-a1db-edb69fbb0000 1317 https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1849373431801753885 ; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1847600787901337728 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1854229496401932557 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1856287070907502972. 1318 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1853882898744553879 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1854229496401932557 1319 https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1853760310743531716 112 exposure or exhaustion as they were evacuating.1320 Survivors expressed their despair towards their reality, amidst airstrikes, destruction and lack of supplies.1321 According to a UN humanitarian coordinator who visited a school in northern Gaza, the conditions of the families that sought shelter there were “unbearable”. He reported that sewage was running everywhere and that waste was ubiquitous, asserting, “This is not a place for humans to survive. This is beyond imagination”.1322 Already in mid-October, many IDF soldiers uploaded photos showing their burning of various buildings in Jabalia.1323 At least twice over two days in mid-November, soldiers set afire UN schools that housed displaced Palestinians.1324 Other IDF soldiers spoke about establishing Jewish settlements.1325 Anecdotal evidence starting from late October – for example of soldiers placing a mezuza on a door in a building they resided in1326 or printing a Jewish philosophical book1327 – suggests that some were planning to stay in northern Gaza. Satellite imagery from mid-November indicated that Israel was destroying buildings to create another East-West route, this time cutting North Gaza (Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahyia and Jabaliya) from Gaza City.1328 By late November, satellite imagery revealed Jabaliya was “almost completely destroyed”.1329 Most Israeli media paid little attention to the events on the ground.1330 One exception is an Israeli journalist, embedded with the IDF in Gaza, who interviewed displaced Gazans. He asked them who was responsible for their condition and expressed approval when they blamed Hamas.1331 The responses could be expected, as they were surrounded by IDF soldiers. On other occasions, Israeli media focused attention on negligible stories, such as a group of soldiers who discovered a pelican in petrol and saved its life.1332 The combination of attacks, the dismantling of what remained of civil society and the use of forced displacement led many Palestinians to leave northern Gaza. Images of Palestinians leaving northern Gaza en masse circulated in the media and social media. In one, over 200 Palestinians were ordered by the IDF to strip, and were then held for hours outdoors in the cold while being subjected to verbal abuse.1333 Locations where Palestinian refugees were sheltering, such as schools, were burned, while the refugees sheltering in them were displaced again.1334 Anecdotal evidence shows the destitution of the refugees.1335 By mid November, the UN estimated that about 100,000-131,000 people were displaced from northern Gaza to Gaza City, and some 65-75 thousand people remained.1336 The 1320 https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1853876427902640403 1321 https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1857096991961985095 1322 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-235-gaza-strip 1323 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1847980759262384246 1324 https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1856798704939761937; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1857046066815779196; see also another school that was burning after a strike: https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1857078038858531087 . For earlier examples: https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1848119454980288647 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1848442788620234971 1325 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1854641685961326597 1326 https://x.com/adinitay/status/1852721404082360614 1327 https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1859318914620010722 . This was the Tanya, a book written by the founder of the Chabad movement. The movement aspires to print the Tanya “in every place which has a Jewish population”, see: https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/2515469/jewish/The-Printing-of-Tanya.htm 1328 https://x.com/BenTzionMacales/status/1857875008602636546 ; for an example of destruction, see: https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1859332541913637040 1329 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/security/2024-11-24/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000193-3eab-d5cd-a3bf-7eff92f00000 1330 See for example: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6FuOTRlFTylP5Ew0YJqf86 1331 https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1857172750940447136; https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1857208151507976566 1332 https://www.ynet.co.il/environment-science/article/r1s9f11qfkl 1333 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/29/middleeast/gaza-jabalya-palestinians-strip-photo-intl/index.html 1334 https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1856413482129748306 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1856405376079421656 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1856287070907502972 ; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1856324650180968737 1335 https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1856280401074888779 1336 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-239-gaza-strip also: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-237-gaza-strip; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitariansituation-update-235-gaza-strip . The UN continued to estimate the same amount of Palestinians remained in North Gaza in early 113 number of Palestinians who left to the southern part of the Strip, beyond the Netzarim Corridor, has been negligible as of writing. By late November, eyewitness accounts referred to corpses on the ground everywhere, as well as wounded people “drowning in their own blood with no one to help them”. 1337 In early December, both Israeli and Palestinian sources reported that Gazan civilians were displaced from the last school shelters in North Gaza, specifically Beit Lahia and Jabaliya. 1338 There were also indications of an Israeli private company operating bulldozers in Jabaliya, as well as reports of non-military individuals entering the area.1339 The healthcare system Three hospitals remained in northern Gaza at the beginning of this period: Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda, and the Indonesian Hospital. Their struggle to remain operational drew some public attention. Early on in the operation, local doctors had to perform surgeries in the street to save lives.1340 In mid-late October, humanitarian attempts to bring in food, fuel, blood and medicine were denied.1341 The IDF called upon doctors to evacuate hospitals because their lives were in danger, as the IDF was planning to blow up the hospitals.1342 Soon after the warnings, the IDF surrounded the hospitals,1343 and then raided them.1344 The IDF detained 57 medical staff of Kamal Adwan Hospital, and later released 14, shooting and injuring some as they tried to reenter the hospital.1345 At least one unidentified individual was buried just outside the hospital’s walls (where they were supposed to be identified, presumably because it was too dangerous to bring the corpse in) 1346. The raid at this hospital also damaged the oxygen station, causing the deaths of at least two infants.1347 In this context, the WHO noted that accessing hospitals across Gaza “is getting unbelievably harder” and that it lost connection with Kamal Adwan. 1348 Subsequent videos show the destruction in the area of the hospital.1349 December (https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-243-gaza-strip), but based on the evidence I have seen this was an overestimate. 1337 https://www.972mag.com/beit-lahiya-gaza-rubble-corpses/ 1338 https://x.com/TomerPersico/status/1864346370406039591 ; https://x.com/DmodosCutter/status/1862988412803862631 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1863921104726712731 ; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1864317910711173368 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1864282791900229727 ; https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1864290451139735677 . 1339 https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1863201179041218608; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1864038176987201623 1340 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/22/blinken-israel-netanyahu-gaza-aid/ 1341 https://x.com/UNOCHA/status/1849072683725525242 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-articlemagazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 ; for a testimony of the conditions see https://x.com/AMokhallalati/status/1849082736402632878 1342 https://x.com/Ahmad_tibi/status/1848647941617057834 1343 https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/b1ohgghxjg ; https://x.com/SMohyeddin/status/1849491903034572923 (longer version at: https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1849484027478044985) ; https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1849567005633884650 1344 https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1849682158387974236 1345 https://x.com/DrTedros/status/1849903588732256534 ; https://www.commondreams.org/news/northern-gaza-risk-dying ; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1849663271378297014 ; https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1849803852201046070 ; https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1852472357635432745; regarding the count of 57, see https://www.972mag.com/kamal-adwan-hospitalhussam-abu-safia/; for firing at those released: https://apnews.com/world-news/still-wrecked-from-past-israeli-raids-hospitals-innorthern-gaza-come-under-attack-again-00000192eebfd414a79fffbf88cc0000. One of the detained doctors was involved with Doctors Without Borders, see: https://x.com/AMokhallalati/status/1849082736402632878 ; https://msf.lu/en/articles/msf-alarmee-par-ladetention-du-dr-obeid-par-les-forces-israeliennes 1346 https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1853130631250669814 1347 https://x.com/EuroMedHR/status/1850132619066855815 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1849793452768125336 ; https://www.972mag.com/kamal-adwan-hospital-hussam-abu-safia/ 1348 https://x.com/DrTedros/status/1849765533559746576 1349 https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1850159665188835814 114 The key voice narrating the deterioration of the healthcare system in northern Gaza was Kamal Adwan’s Director, Dr. Hossam Abu Safieh.1350 Already in early October, Abu Safieh declared that he would not leave the hospital as long as there were patients in it, 1351 and in a later interview noted that another country offered to evacuate him and his family, but he refused out of commitment to his patients.1352 Abu Safieh reported on conditions within the hospital during its siege and invasion, and was shortly detained with other staff members during the raid in late October. Although he was soon released, his 15-year-old son was killed the same day.1353 Abu Safieh stated that he and another doctor were the only ones remaining in the hospital then, together with over 145 patients who needed surgery, some of whom were dying due to lack of treatment, and had no supplies with which to treat the patients.1354 For much of October and November, Abu Safieh continued to relay daily updates about the conditions and the operating of his hospital. He implored the international community to provide humanitarian aid and supplies; and to send rescue teams to dig people out of the rubble, and doctors to help treat the many patients. Notably, Abu Safieh and the only other doctor remaining in the hospital after the raid were pediatricians, with no expertise in surgery.1355 Abu Safieh asserted that “the healthcare system is now completely collapsed”, although the hospital continued to operate at a reduced level.1356 Video evidence suggested that there were no rescue services or ambulances to remove people from the rubble or to evacuate injured people, or shrouds to cover the dead.1357 By early November, only one surgeon remained among the three hospitals in northern Gaza.1358 Again, on multiple occasions in early November, the IDF attacked Kamal Adwan, causing direct injuries to pediatric patients.1359 One attack caused a fire that destroyed the hospital’s water tanks, obliterating the water supply.1360 The hospitals were partially evacuated in early November, as some severely injured patients were transferred to hospitals in southern Gaza.1361 Patients requiring ventilators could not be evacuated because no ambulances with ventilators remained in the Strip. 1350 See this coverage of Abu Safieh: https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1856926494812987823 ; https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-11-26/ty-article/.premium/00000193-64ec-d610-add3-7fecf8c50000 ; https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/02/opinion/gaza-hospital-kamal-adwan.html 1351 https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/northern-gaza-kamal-adwan-hospital-director-defies-israeli-order 1352 https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1862595635129528515 1353 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1850110968249930157 ; https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBlfCUmN2H3/ ; https://www.972mag.com/kamal-adwan-hospital-hussam-abu-safia/ ; https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/sondirector-besieged-north-gaza-hospital-killed-israeli-forces . A family member of the other doctor who remained in the hospital was killed a few weeks later: https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1856405028816466139 1354 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1850561278948884816 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1850891173298106456 1355 https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1851262527893622978 ; https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1854506337528365403 ; https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1855212378335391870 ; https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1856359137212240103 ; for a description of the survival of 11 of 13 patients, despite doctors working outside their fields of specialty: https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857523662435287545. 1356 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1851212348448784503 ; also https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1851262527893622978 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857523662435287545 1357 https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1851260276001148957 ; https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1851262527893622978 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857523662435287545 1358 https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1852434690600235131 1359 https://uk.news.yahoo.com/israel-tells-un-cutting-ties-093606959.html ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1852018347073818847 ; https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1853682654345875956 ; https://www.972mag.com/kamal-adwan-hospital-hussam-abu-safia/ ; https://x.com/SuppressedNws/status/1853465675659898905 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1853420267965468995 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1853119264066351514 ; https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1853830231259263091 1360 https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1854479721876074814 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1852018347073818847 ; https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1853830231259263091 1361 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/gaza-humanitarian-response-update-27-october-9-november-2024 115 Those patients’ lives were thus dependent on the remaining fuel in Kamal Adwan.1362 Other attempts to deliver supplies failed.1363 Abu Safieh’s subsequent updates referred to the deaths of injured patients due to the lack of supplies,1364 the death of people trapped under the rubble as there was no way to dig them out without the Civil Defense units,1365 and the deaths of more doctors in North Gaza.1366 On several occasions he noted that those who could reach the hospital may survive, and those that could not were left to die.1367 Abu Safieh also spoke about attacks on the hospital itself, which injured staff members, and recounted how quadcopters would drop “sound bombs” and other bombs on the hospital courtyards.1368 Several attempts to bring specialist doctors to the hospital were denied.1369 By mid-November, Abu Safieh began reporting on Gazans with malnutrition who arrived at the hospital.1370 A few days later, in the course of 24 hours the hospital received 17 cases of malnutrition and dehydration among children while an elderly died of dehydration.1371 During another raid on the hospital dozens of Palestinians, including patients, were stripped (during cold weather) and detained, and some were subsequently taken to unknown locations.1372 Very few resources remained, so that the hospital called local Gazans with access to any medications to bring them to the hospital.1373 Anecdotal evidence, reportedly from the hospital, affirms the absence of doctors and resources, as well as the suffering of patients.1374 Doctors had to cope with the loss of their family members. Two of the doctors who worked in Kamal Adwan lost 17 and 19 family members on consecutive days in mid November.1375 A humanitarian mission on 17 November delivered fuel and evacuated more patients and caregivers, but was not allowed to deliver food and was able to deliver only some of the planned medical supplies.1376 The hospital continued to be attacked – including injured people right outside the gate or Abu Safieh’s office.1377 Late November attacks injured several medical staff, disabled the hospital’s power and oxygen supply, and targeted its water supply.1378 The Director of the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit was killed in one of these attacks.1379 1362 https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/2024-11-04/ty-article-magazine/.premium/00000192-f14c-dec7-affa-f1dd75c60000 1363 For example: https://www.unocha.org/news/todays-top-news-occupied-palestinian-territory-lebanon-haiti-philippines-ukraine ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857850411601858948 1364 https://x.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1855611844456501489 ; https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1856007165791580237 1365 https://x.com/KhaledYousry22/status/1855611844456501489 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1855860121982615882 ; https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1856359137212240103 ; see also: https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1855905476795306453 (6:00) ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857523662435287545 1366 https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1856359137212240103 1367 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1855860121982615882 1368 https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1856007165791580237 1369 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857850411601858948 1370 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857523662435287545 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857850411601858948 . See also: https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857825220653994421 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1858528590297706553 . 1371 https://x.com/ytirawi/status/1859179872297382300 ; https://x.com/AbujomaaGaza/status/1859190079702405379 1372 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1858944607624835210 ; geolocation: https://x.com/AbuLocation/status/1858843252469772678 1373 https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1857175646641762675 1374 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857803828101361766 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1857624250414182465 ; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1858995226855309622 1375 https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1858905688652570662 ; https://x.com/AbubakerAbedW/status/1858502758946455815 ; https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1858599026511540389 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1858548788476137917 1376 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-239-gaza-strip 1377 https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1857175646641762675 ; https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1858905688652570662; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1858787051639820359 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1858548788476137917 1378 https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1859716133093507365 ; https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1859718365360656672 ; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1859730966820028489 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1859985594039849426 ; https://x.com/RamAbdu/status/1859845890212503727 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1860165191184384398 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1860165388526346423 ; https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1861495746391859469 ; https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-241-gaza-strip ; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1862935483950551249 1379 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1862459637301174377 ; https://x.com/HossamShabat/status/1862458598909002041 . The hospital’s chef was killed as well in an unclear location: https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1862838797961924646 116 Abu Safieh himself was seriously injured together with his two daughters in another.1380 Abu Safieh and other staff members held a makeshift protest in one of the hospital rooms, stating that 20 staff members have been hit within the hospital. 1381 Attacks on the hospital, sometimes as often as five times a day, continued into early December.1382 An international Emergency Medical Team was deployed to the hospital for the first time in 60 days on Dec. 1.1383 Information from the other two hospitals in northern Gaza was far less accessible, but evidence collected by an early November 2024 AP investigation that spent months gathering accounts of the raids on the three hospitals in northern Gaza suggests similar experiences.1384 A humanitarian mission to al-Awda hospital in mid-November delivered fuel and medical supplies to the hospital, and evacuated patients, but was not allowed to deliver food and water. Due to the lack of supplies, the hospital operated for only 4 hours a day.1385 The hospital was attacked again in late November.1386 Hospitals in Gaza City experienced many shortages as well. 1387 The aforementioned AP team interviewed many witnesses but “found that Israel presented little or even no evidence for a significant Hamas presence” in the northern hospitals. 1388 In al-Awda hospital, Israel never even claimed a Hamas presence. In the Indonesian Hospital, the IDF claimed to have identified a tunnel entrance in the yard using aerial photography, but after its raid showed no evidence for it and did not reply to a question about whether any tunnels were found in its raid. The IDF stated that Hamas used Kamal Adwan as a command center, but produced no evidence for this, and showed footage of a single pistol allegedly found in the facility.1389 From all the hospitals the IDF raided since the beginning of the war until the AP report, the IDF showed only a single tunnel shaft (the one on al-Shifa’s grounds, see above).1390 1380 https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1860458131286790339 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1860727752267063532 ; https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1861063612640420287 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1861113833542332843 ; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1860662455287885919 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1860616353297690877 ; https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1860457388169363911 ; https://x.com/translatingpal/status/1863944304466563475 1381 https://x.com/SaulStaniforth/status/1861063612640420287 ; https://x.com/MosabAbuToha/status/1860719715242398140 ; https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1860773982770716878 1382 https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1864042273261977890 1383 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-243-gaza-strip 1384 AP combined information from a round of attacks on these hospitals in late 2023, with findings of events as of early November 2024. For example, the accounts include a nurse who said he was so dehydrated that he began to hallucinate: https://apnews.com/worldnews/still-wrecked-from-past-israeli-raids-hospitals-in-northern-gaza-come-under-attack-again-00000192eebfd414a79fffbf88cc0000 1385 https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-239-gaza-strip . 1386 https://x.com/AnasAlSharif0/status/1859730966820028489 1387 https://x.com/Dr_Muneer1/status/1863059825745109229 ; this doctor appears to have been working in a hospital in Gaza City: https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1862231344329498677 ; https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1861854116114485655 ; https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1853541420017046013 1388 https://apnews.com/world-news/still-wrecked-from-past-israeli-raids-hospitals-in-northern-gaza-come-under-attack-again00000192eebfd414a79fffbf88cc0000 1389 See https://apnews.com/world-news/still-wrecked-from-past-israeli-raids-hospitals-in-northern-gaza-come-under-attack-again00000192eebfd414a79fffbf88cc0000 1390 According to AP: https://apnews.com/world-news/still-wrecked-from-past-israeli-raids-hospitals-in-northern-gaza-come-under-attackagain-00000192eebfd414a79fffbf88cc0000 117 As I hope to have demonstrated through the evidence above, the situation in Gaza is a horrible catastrophe that continues to unfold daily in front of our eyes. The least I can do is to gather the evidence and speak up now. Do not go gentle into that good night \ Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 118 Appendix 1 – The reasons underlying my definition of Israel’s actions in the war as genocide Last updated: June 18, 2024 Disclaimer: Unlike other sections in this document which summarize the evidence about the war, this one explains my position about understanding Israel’s actions in it as genocide. My definition of genocide builds upon my understanding of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This Convention defined genocide as “any of the [specified] acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” It requires two interconnected elements: 1. The commission of one or more specific acts against a group: a. Killing members of the group b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group 2. The intent behind the commission of one or more of the aforementioned acts. I believe that both these conditions have been met during the war. Israel has committed acts 1a, 1b, and 1c above. The killing of almost 2% of the population of the Gaza Strip (not including the thousands of missing Gazans) that I describe in the section above on massacring Palestinians fits act 1a. As I describe in the same section, the wounding of over 3% of the population of the Gaza Strip, as well as the collective trauma resulting from the repeated attacks on the tiny and densely populated Gaza Strip fit act 1b. The starvation of Gaza, which I describe under the section on causing the deaths of civilian populations, fits act 1c. The ‘deliberate’ aspect of act 1c is clear from the descriptions of Israeli officials and IDF members that I quote in the section about Israeli discourse and de-humanization of Palestinians. With regards to intent, I believe that a series of statements by top Israeli officials including the Prime Minister and President that took place mostly during the beginning of the war, but continued with subsequent statements by somewhat lower-ranking officials until the recent past, imply a general intention that both presented the “commander’s spirit” and legitimized disproportionate violence against Palestinians in subsequent months. Many testimonies from IDF troops – particularly middleand low-ranking officers – as well as other parts of Israeli civil society ranging from rabbis to entertainers demonstrate that themes of genocide, for example through repeated reference to biblical Amalek, and ethnic cleansing, for example through repeated references to resettling the Gaza Strip, are common in discourse. The fact that nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has been indicted or even openly censured for such extreme messages indicates the legitimacy of these messages among Israeli state officials and broader society. Based on the available evidence as of writing, I believe that Israel has attempted to do some combination of: (1) remove Gazans from the Strip, especially its northern parts; (2) make large parts of the Strip uninhabitable, hoping that this would contribute to the former objective; and (3) kill Gazans through direct violence, starvation, or prevention of aid or support, at least partially as part of the de facto policy of revenge, and at least partially as a way to facilitate the removal of Gazans 119 from the Strip. I interpret the policy of using starvation as a weapon of war – acknowledged at least since December by some NGOs1391 and now widely by international officials and lawyers1392 – as an attempt to bring about the physical destruction of Gaza as a political entity and population group, particularly to further the objective of cleansing Gaza from its inhabitants. The wholescale destruction of targets with no military value such as archives, libraries, universities, mosques and heritage sites – as well as the broader destruction of the civilian infrastructure as well as over half the buildings throughout the Gaza Strip – all contribute to the objective of making Gaza uninhabitable. I do not believe this policy was meticulously planned or put in writing. Rather, high officials in the state and military have defined the war as explicitly lenient towards exacting inordinate revenge immediately at the beginning of the war, allowing local commanders (middle and lower-ranking officers and NCOs) to act as they see fit. The same high officials both put some policies in place, such as the starvation or approval of systematic attacks on hospitals, while purposefully maintaining some level of deniability and attempting to diffuse their responsibility, at least to the public. At the same time, the high officials are unwilling1393 (and likely unable) to prevent serious acts of killing and destruction on the ground, as well as the use of genocidal language among some cultural and religious public voices, resulting in the persistence of these acts. Orders by commanders on the ground are often to just shoot every man of fighting age, as a senior Israeli journalist said on CNN.1394 Other Israeli journalists pointed out the same policy in which “everyone in Gaza sets the rules for themselves” in their own reporting based on speaking to commanders and soldiers in the field. This purposeful vagueness – with the additional backdrop of strong language supporting genocide and/or ethnic cleansing by some political, cultural and religious elites – absolves the Israeli higher command from accountability, while diffusing responsibility among lower commanders on the field. As one reserve officer put it: “the standing orders don’t matter in the field… Just about any battalion commander can decide that whoever moves in his sector is a terrorist”.1395 A sapper added “the only limit to the number of buildings we blew up was the time we had inside Gaza”.1396 Together with the absence of almost any attempt to restrain commanders or soldiers at the ground level, this results in a reality in which atrocities that are conducted at the ground level can nonetheless be superficially portrayed as “against procedures” by the high command. The key to all of this is the pervasive dehumanization of Palestinians. Palestinians are widely seen as less than human, based on discourse, behavior and opinions supporting the use of more force in Gaza. Therefore, violent actions against Palestinians are condoned and are often encouraged publicly, especially by key individuals such as the Minister for National Security, who is particularly popular among younger audiences and soldiers.1397 1391 https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-weapon-war-gaza 1392 See ICC’s expert panel report, paragraphs 28-33: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/240520-panel-report-eng.pdf 1393 The general public support that the IDF must maintain plays a significant role – reining in commanders and soldiers would easily lose this support. 1394 https://twitter.com/justfp/status/1775613111711465554 1395 https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/04/11/the-idf-is-accused-of-military-and-moral-failures-in-gaza ; for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa-VDAjL8vM 1396 https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/04/11/the-idf-is-accused-of-military-and-moral-failures-in-gaza 1397 https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/politic/250473/ ; https://www.calcalist.co.il/local_news/article/s1lxz6uvs ; https://www.ynet.co.il/news/election2022/article/s1ar9pebi 120 Appendix 2 – Methodology Last updated:1398 November 29, 2024 Note: this is my attempt to clarify my methodology in evaluating the sources of information I have been using in this document while facing the uncertain reality in Gaza. Overview As discussed in depth in the Media section of this document, the war in Gaza features purposeful obfuscation, falsification and silencing of information by various actors involved in it. Since the veracity of most information available to the public is not absolute, attempts to make sense of the war such as this document must resolve a tension. An overly naive attitude to the evidence would result in the inclusion of much false content. On the other hand, an overly sceptical attitude to the evidence would result in knowing very little – which in turn serves the purpose of some of the actors in the war. The challenge is to minimize the false information while maximizing the true information. This often boils down to the contrast between what is desirable to what is realistic within the existing constraints. Key within this war is the absence of external reporting – Israel has kept international journalists out of the Gaza Strip for over a year as of writing, significantly reducing the amount of information coming out of Gaza. The clearest voices coming out of Gaza are those of Palestinian journalists, who have been killed – sometimes purposefully so – and intimidated by Israel (I cover both topics in length in the Massacres and Media sections of the document). My personal approach has been to speak up to the best of my ability and share the truth as I understand it because of the urgency of the matter. I am aware that others may have purposefully or mistakenly misled me so that some of the content I have shared might be imprecise (if you know of any such content please inform me!). Nonetheless, I do not believe we have the privilege to wait for the fog of war to dissipate before taking action. As below, I assume very little and continuously and critically reflect on my sources, drawing on the skills I have been using in my professional work as a historian. I measure the results of my efforts – this document – by the standard of other institutions who participate in the same discourse. These include official institutions such as the United Nations, as well as reputable NGOs such as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. Some of the products of these institutions include a section describing their methodology (such as this one), and some of their products do not contain footnotes that allow one to trace the evidence they used (and reconstruct, to some extent, their methodology). The standards of countries or the media tend to be far lower. While I believe everyone discussing the war (myself included) is biased to some extent, the more reputable sources at least make an effort towards mitigating some of these biases, while countries and the media are often quite obviously biased toward some political position. Within the current discourse, I believe this document is more robust than most other summaries, reports and analyses I have encountered. It is not perfect – its development can be traced through its earlier versions, which I keep available online – and it is not final. Nonetheless, the additional information that has surfaced over time has reinforced almost all of my earlier estimates. 1398 I would like to thank an anonymous reader and Hanoch Sheinman who commented on the Nov. 2024 version of this section. 121 Furthermore, some of this new evidence has demonstrated that some of those earlier estimates have been too conservative. Below, I lay out how I examine and assess the sources of information I have used in this document, which I divide into primary and secondary sources. I follow up with a few examples of types of evidence and how I evaluate them. Primary sources By primary sources I refer to several types of evidence: 1. Evidence recorded or transmitted directly by people who experienced some aspect of the war themselves. This category would include social media posts by Israeli soldiers or testimonies by Gaza civilians. This is generally the most problematic type of primary source evidence for the purposes of this document as there is sometimes no way to verify the content and even identity of the people speaking. My tendency is to believe people who narrate their experiences in a detailed manner – whether a released Israeli hostage or a civilian in Gaza. The political opinion or affiliation of these sources may bias their accounts but it does not make them inherently unreliable. I consider these accounts more reliable if one of the following two conditions takes place. a. The person providing their testimony does it against or at least without concern to the broader interests of their side. b. The content shared corresponds to enough other testimonies, reports or stories that I have encountered, which I can cross-reference. The more independent sources say something in a detailed manner, the more I consider the information reliable. It is always possible to cast doubt on such evidence and claim that it is part of a much broader influence operation meant to convince readers of some falsity. Based on my experience participating in this discourse for over a year, these attacks tend to be attempts to discredit voices of individuals or whole groups for political purposes rather than a pursuit of the truth per se. In those cases that have been exposed as influence operations (such as this1399 or this1400) – the content is often crude and lacks detail, making such cases easier to identify as false. While crude and undetailed information could be true, I prefer to wait until more information accumulates before incorporating it in my understanding of the war. In those very rare cases where I used it in earlier versions of this document because of the relative absence of evidence early in the war, I qualified my statements accordingly and actively searched for additional information, which I incorporate in more recent versions of the document. I have been following the war carefully for over a year. Sources that continuously provide information that I can verify elsewhere become more reliable to me over time. If I discover that a source is purposefully lying or substantially wrong, I consider that source unreliable and refrain from using it. Sources that inadvertently make a mistake, discover it and admit they were wrong are exempt from this rule – I believe that such admissions make them more reliable (see point 1 above). I 1399 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/technology/israel-campaign-gaza-social-media.html 1400 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/ 122 also do not include here minor mistakes such as using outdated material – these are ubiquitous and there is no point in dwelling on them now because they are less important in the present. 2. Facts reported by journalists in the war. I generally trust fact-based reporting, but I read these critically and attempt to cross-reference them with other sources if possible. This kind of reporting can also be considered a secondary source (see #1 in that section below). 3. Statements, which I often cite because the people who make them hold some official position or have some social influence, or participate in the war in some function. I use these statements as evidence for the intentions or goals of the individual or the government they represent. These statements are not necessarily true. Because of the temporary nature of much of this material, I often end up referring in my footnotes to a random twitter account that happened to record and upload this particular type of content, which would otherwise be inaccessible to me. In these cases I clarify here that I cite the original content shared rather than the twitter account of the person sharing it, with whom I might vehemently disagree. I also accept as factual statements in media pieces about some official saying something using a direct quote. I will evaluate the statement of course, but I do not doubt that he or she said it if a journalist says so. Media reports using indirect quotes can be purposefully misleading, for example in the case of the Israeli media’s treatment of the former hostage Noa Argamani (for example here1401). 4. Official documents by an institution referring to policy, procedure and the like. These documents are also not necessarily true, but they are official and thus represent reality or what that institution wants others to believe is reality. I use such documents for their factual claims after carefully evaluating them, and can also use such documents for the purpose or intent of the issuing institution. Secondary sources 1. Media reports. Traditional media includes a wide variety of sources of different quality. Much of this media is quite clearly biased toward one or the other side and I employ the rationale I discussed above (under Primary Sources – 1). Detailed investigations that include specific bits of verifiable/falsifiable information are often more reliable. No media outlet is perfect and even the most reputable traditional media can make major errors, as demonstrated in the case of the New York Times’ Screams Without Words story or in its pro-US government / pro-Israel biased representation of the war (both cases are discussed in the Media section). 1401 https://www.mako.co.il/press_and_marketing-news_press/Article-fc827fb13af7191027.htm 123 I also take into consideration the individual journalists responsible for a story or report in my evaluation. Journalists who “got things right” in the past, have access to valuable sources and whose accounts were not refuted become more reliable over time. Journalists who act as de facto mouthpieces of a state or institution (i.e. repeat their narratives while applying little to no criticism) are far less reliable even if they are sometimes used to leak information that I cite. I refrain as much as possible from using analyses or opinion pieces that appear in the media as I believe that their value for understanding the present is limited and it is better for one to make up their own mind based on evaluating the evidence themselves. 2. NGO reports. There is no hard rule here, but in general, I consider NGOs that allow access to the sources they used through their footnotes or by quoting them directly with identifiable details as more reliable than those that do not. Within this category one should try to balance this with what is realistic. I consider NGOs that are more obviously focused on partisan politics on Israel/Palestine/Gaza as more biased and less reliable than others. My impression is that NGOs with wider interests (e.g. human rights in general) are often less biased and more reliable. I end up using NGOs that transmit more information from the ground in Gaza even when their methodology is unclear when this is the highest quality of information I can find. As above, I consider as untrustworthy NGOs that I have discovered purposefully falsify information or lie. *** Examples: • The images and videos Israeli soldiers upload in which they present their experience in Gaza and in which they act immorally or enjoy such behavior. This is a primary source. I consider this content generally authentic since the soldiers present information that is politically harmful for their own side. There have been a few cases in which such material was found to be inauthentic, but these are negligible compared to the quantity of information wilfully shared. • ZAKA accounts of the horrors of Oct. 7. This was a primary source that drew much attention early in the war. As an NGO, I believed the ZAKA accounts at first, but a few months after the beginning of the war investigative reports revealed that some of the worst atrocities they reported, which also drew the most attention, were fake. Furthermore, ZAKA did not admit that this information was fake. As a result, ZAKA lost its credibility in my eyes. • Accounts of food prices within Gaza. 124 Some of the food prices are anecdotally mentioned by individuals in Gaza; other food prices are mentioned in media articles; and some food prices are mentioned in NGO reports. All three independent sources tend to point to similar fluctuations over time, and these fluctuations are correlated with the availability of food within the Gaza Strip (or specific parts of it) as measured by other indicators, such as the number of trucks getting into Gaza. Therefore, I consider these reliable in general. • Accounts of massacres and deaths in Gaza. Throughout the war there has been a very large number of videos and images that claim to show the survivors or victims of Israeli attacks. These are often bloodied and sometimes include gory details. They are shared by individuals from Gaza and outside of Gaza, some NGO members and some media outlets such as al-Jazeera. There have been only a few cases in which this kind of material has been claimed to be fake, false or misleading. The massacres and deaths corroborate written and statistical information about the results of Israeli attacks, for example in investigative reports and NGO publications. While one cannot be completely certain that all this material is reliable, there has been enough of it coming from independent sources for me to judge most of it as reliable. *** The experience of trying to determine the truth in the process of writing this document has been illuminating for me, often revealing the wide gaps between existing evidence and the lack of reporting on that evidence, or between sometimes wild claims that are accepted as truth and the absence of evidence for those claims. I am aware that some would disagree with my methodology. I appreciate any non-partisan suggestions to make it more robust for the sake of all who would rather unravel the truth, even if that truth is deeply uncomfortable.   

05.12.24

Editorial Note

In early November, Prof. Haim Bresheeth who teaches Film Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), was detained by the police in the UK for delivering a hate speech. He was held overnight by the police and then released. Bresheeth, wearing a keffiyeh, spoke in a pro-Palestinian rally on behalf of the group Jewish Network for Palestine, which he co-founded.

In his speech, Bresheeth said that Israel “has not achieved any of its declared aims either in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, or anywhere else. What has it achieved? Murder, mayhem, genocide, racism, destruction. This is what they’re good at. They’re really good at killing babies. They are really good at killing women and old men.”

He further stated, “We will continue to come here. We will continue to be arrested when the people who are actually doing the genocide are protected by all the police and armies and the governments of the West everywhere. This is no longer about Gaza. This has turned into the West against the rest. And the rest—the whole of the world—knows exactly, for the first time, what Israel is, what it is about, what it is going to do, and we are going to stop it! Now, to know how to stop your enemy you have to understand how it works. Israel is not just colonizing Palestine. If it was just colonizing Palestine it would be much easier to stop them. They have colonized every government in the West. They have colonized the minds of Western governments, politicians, governments everywhere who support them. Without that support, without the US arming and paying for this genocide, it would stop overnight. And instead of stopping it, those governments—which I hope will be represented soon in the ICC and ICJ—are continuing, including our government, and including Sir Keir who is a Zionist through-and-through, and is supporting genocide now, as he supported it before. So, we have to fight colonialism everywhere because Israel has colonized the American mind, the British mind, the European mind. More importantly, they’ve colonized the Jewish people everywhere. They have colonized Judaism—the tradition, the beliefs, the religion, the experience of Jews for 2,000 years—was colonized by Zionism. And these Jews are supporting, in great numbers, not just here, but everywhere in the West, they are supporting the genocide. Shame on them!” 

Interestingly, he ended by stating, “The other area that I’m very worried about—because I’m an academic—is that they have colonized all the universities in the West. And we are not able to speak there. Even academics are not allowed to speak in universities if they are speaking against Zionism. We must decolonize the higher education system and the whole education system. And last but not least, I think we must decolonize the whole system of the media which is supporting, which is aiding and abetting Israel and its genocide everywhere.” 

Since the incident, Bresheeth, who is under investigation, was interviewed by anti-Israel Iranian and Qatari owned media outlets, where he insisted that his speech was not a hate speech and was crafted to state that “Israel has not achieved any of its declared aims, either in Gaza in Lebanon in, in Iran or anywhere else… they cannot fight the resistance, they have lost every single time.”

In another recent interview, the high-profile pro-Palestinian activist said: “The main and sometimes only machinery of repressing, killing, genociding and ethnically cleansing Palestinians is the IDF… This is an illegal, immoral army… It’s the organization that dictates identity in Israel.” Bresheeth laments how Zionism — which he calls “a replacement of Judaism” and “basically a non-religious religion” — has become the dominant force shaping Jewish identity, replacing previous values of cosmopolitanism, progressivism and “even socialism.” He says the “main tenet” of American Jewish support for Israel pivots around the military. “They are supporting the instrument of suppression, of murder, of destruction, of genocide.”

In an interview with the Iranian PressTV titled “Is the West selling its future for Israel?” Bresheeth talked about his arrest, which he considers illegal. He said, “think about it as a method of breaking the law by using legal means. What Britain is doing is not that different from what the Nazis invented in order to apprehend, arrest, and later even destroy the lives of millions, they passed laws that were illegal basically because they took the rights away from a whole group of people. Britain doesn’t do it to Millions, it does it to people who are actually upholding the law, the international law, which is the law in Britain, the law everywhere, which says that we should do everything we can to stop genocide where it happens, we should do all we can to prevent it happening and we should actually bring the people who are committing genocide which is the crime of crimes, to Justice. Britain is actually supporting genocide, financing genocide, arming the Israeli genocide in Gaza… the government is breaking international law by committing genocide, so instead of the news media doing this work when we are doing that for them, instead of them, we are arrested. This is a system which is against, not just us and the people of Gaza and the people of Lebanon etc., this is the West against the rest. The West is using illegal methods to break its own law because what we are saying is not acceptable to them, it exposes their methods, it exposes their illegality and they don’t want that to happen.”

Bresheeth and his colleagues accused the British police of antisemitism for arresting a Jewish man and a son of Holocaust survivors who participated in a demonstration.  This declaration is shameful because Bresheeth uses his ethnicity and background to cast aspiration on the policy.  

As IAM has repeatedly pointed out, the widely-used International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of Antisemitism states that it is the content of a given speech or text – rather than the ethnicity of the speaker or author – that determines antisemitic intent. Hiding behind his Jewish identity and the family’s Holocaust background demonstrates Bresheeth’s moral and intellectual cowardice. 

His other accusation that the Zionists colonized the universities, is equally specious. Indeed, this is an inversion of reality. As is well known, for decades now, Muslim countries poured millions of dollars into Western universities, especially in liberal arts and Middle East studies, creating a narrative deeply hostile to Zionism and the Jews. IAM has discussed numerous cases where Western universities hired former Israeli scholars who had a proven record of Israel bashing. Bresheeth himself is an example of this trend. 

The October 7 attack revealed how this decades-long indoctrination morphed into the widespread support for Hamas and a wholesale condemnation of Israel as a genocidal state intent to wipe out the Palestinians. All this despite the fact that Hamas launched an unprovoked and extremely brutal attack replete with wanton murder of men, women, and children, rape, torture, and kidnappings. More to the point, the Gaza War demonstrated that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields by embedding them in public places like hospitals, mosques, and UNRWA schools, a practice that violates humanitarian conventions.  

The widespread support of Hamas on Western campuses demonstrates the blindness of Bresheeth and his fellow pro-Palestinian advocates.  

REFERENCES:

https://twitter.com/apocalypseos/status/1855117766258573541

“Thank you for inviting me to speak on behalf of Jewish Network for Palestine and for all of you coming here for 13 months. And please don’t lose heart because it is going to be a while before we can celebrate, unfortunately. But Israel cannot celebrate either. It has not achieved any of its declared aims either in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran, or anywhere else. What has it achieved? Murder, mayhem, genocide, racism, destruction. This is what they’re good at. They’re really good at killing babies. They are really good at killing women and old men. But they cannot fight the resistance. They have lost every single time. Now, Israel has won a number of wars against very big and successful armies. You remember that? They cannot win against Hamas. They cannot win against Hezbollah. They cannot win against the Houthis. They cannot win against the united resistance to the genocide that they have started. So, we will continue to come here. We will continue to be arrested when the people who are actually doing the genocide are protected by all the police and armies and the governments of the West everywhere. This is no longer about Gaza. This has turned into the West against the rest. And the rest—the whole of the world—knows exactly, for the first time, what Israel is, what it is about, what it is going to do, and we are going to stop it! Now, to know how to stop your enemy you have to understand how it works. Israel is not just colonizing Palestine. If it was just colonizing Palestine it would be much easier to stop them. They have colonized every government in the West. They have colonized the minds of Western governments, politicians, governments everywhere who support them. Without that support, without the US arming and paying for this genocide, it would stop overnight. And instead of stopping it, those governments—which I hope will be represented soon in the ICC and ICJ—are continuing, including our government, and including Sir Keir who is a Zionist through-and-through, and is supporting genocide now, as he supported it before. So, we have to fight colonialism everywhere because Israel has colonized the American mind, the British mind, the European mind. More importantly, they’ve colonized the Jewish people everywhere. They have colonized Judaism—the tradition, the beliefs, the religion, the experience of Jews for 2,000 years—was colonized by Zionism. And these Jews are supporting, in great numbers, not just here, but everywhere in the West, they are supporting the genocide. Shame on them! They are not real Jews. We are here because we know the history of Judaism. And they are actually making sure that Jewish people will suffer from anti-Semitism everywhere. They are helping anti-Semitism every day with their genocide and with their ‘Hasbara’ and with their crimes. So, I want to say, to end, there are three other types of colonialism that we have to fight. They have colonized the Western governments and we need to bring an end to that. We—the people in the West—must stand up against our own governments. No one, who supported genocide, should sit in government anywhere. They should sit in jail! Now, the other area that I’m very worried about—because I’m an academic—is that they have colonized all the universities in the West. And we are not able to speak there. Even academics are not allowed to speak in universities if they are speaking against Zionism. We must decolonize the higher education system and the whole education system. And last but not least, I think we must decolonize the whole system of the media which is supporting, which is aiding and abetting Israel and its genocide everywhere. Thank you very much.” — Haim Bresheeth, son of Holocaust survivors and founder of Jewish Network for Palestine
6:16
7:18 AM · Nov 9, 2024·

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https://skwawkbox.org/2024/11/25/our-right-to-reject-zionism-important-ijan-even-takes-place-wednesday-in-london/

‘Our right to reject Zionism’ – important IJAN even takes place Wednesday in London

BySKWAWKBOX (SW)25/11/2024

An array of speakers will participate in International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network panel

A group of prominent speakers will sit as panellists for a landmark event by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) on Wednesday in London’s Bethnal Green including Prof Haim Bresheeth, who was wrongfully arrested earlier this month at an anti-genocide protest outside the Swiss Cottage residence of Israel’s far-right ambassador, Tzipi Hotovely.

The event will take place from 7-9pm at Pelican House, Bethnal Green. Speakers are shown below and the event will also include an opening performance by rapper and poet Usaama:

Admission is free, but a collection will no doubt be taken for the cause of Palestinian freedom and the fight against genocide and racist Zionism.

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https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/11/19/737557/Is-the-West-Selling-Its-Future-for-Israel-

Is the West selling its future for Israel?

https://www.presstv.ir/default/Embeded/737557

Tuesday, 19 November 2024 6:59 PM  [ Last Update: Tuesday]

In this episode of Have It Out with Galloway, George Galloway explores the political and strategic consequences of the West’s relationship with Israel.

George is joined by Professor Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, founder of Jewish Network for Palestine, and a live audience. To become a part of the live audience in the next episode, apply on our website at haveitoutwithgalloway.com.

George welcomes any views and questions, so come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.co.uk

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https://truthout.org/articles/jewish-anti-zionist-activist-describes-his-arrest-under-uks-anti-terror-law/

Jewish Anti-Zionist Activist Describes His Arrest Under UK’s Anti-Terror Law

Activist Haim Bresheeth, the son of Holocaust survivors and founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine, speaks out.By Derek Seidman , TruthoutPublishedNovember 23, 2024

Haim Bresheeth, center, at a national demonstration in London, U.K., in March 2024, with a group of Holocaust survivors and survivor descendants against the Gaza genocide.Sarah Sheriff

On November 1, author and activist Haim Bresheeth was arrested in London after giving a speech at a pro-Palestine rally outside the home of Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom. The 79-year-old Bresheeth, a Jewish Israeli who has lived mostly in London since the 1970s, is an outspoken critic of Zionism and Israel and a supporter of Palestinian rights. He is the son of Holocaust survivors and a founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine.

In his speech, Bresheeth said Israel is unable to win against Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. According to Bresheeth, the police told him he was being arrested under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which forbids expressing support for proscribed organizations stated in the law. Bresheeth denies breaking any law, and, he says, was released the morning after his arrest and subsequently had his case closed without charge.

Bresheeth’s arrest joins a rising wave of persecution against pro-Palestinian protesters and journalists in the U.K. Since October 7, British authorities have used the Terrorism Act 2000 invoked during Bresheeth’s arrest to crack down on critics of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The law is the cornerstone of British counterterrorism legislation, and has been criticized by Amnesty International as contributing to an “ever-expanding security state in the UK” that “appears to single out Muslims,” with vague and expanding definitions of what constitutes “terrorist activity.”

Bresheeth is a filmmaker, photographer, historian and retired professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). His books include An Army Like No Other: How the Israel Defense Forces Made a Nation and The Holocaust for Beginners. Truthout spoke to Bresheeth to get his account of his arrest, the growing repression of critics of Israel in the U.K., and why, as an Israeli Jewish son of Holocaust survivors, he feels compelled to speak out against Zionism and in support of Palestine.

Derek Seidman: What’s the background behind the protest you were arrested at?

Haim Bresheeth: In an interview after October 7, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, said Israel might have to kill 600,000 civilians in Gaza, like the United States and the U.K. did in Germany at the end of the Second World War.

I am one of the founders of Jewish Network for Palestine, an anti-Zionist organization arguing for one state in Palestine with equal rights for all, and an end of apartheid and Zionism. Together with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, we have called for the expulsion of Hotovely from the U.K., which is not a big punishment for what she said. She should actually be in the International Criminal Court for advocating genocide.

After her comments, we started weekly protests on the other side of the road outside her residence. We protested every Friday evening for the Shabbat, and the protests gradually grew. The police then moved us to a main road that actually made the protest more visible. This has been going on for just over a year.

I’m an Israeli Jew. It’s well known that both my parents survived Auschwitz. Like Tony Greenstein, I’m a “problem.” We’re both anti-Zionist Jews who are active for Palestinians’ rights.

There are very large national demonstrations for Palestine happening every week. Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman called them “hate marches” and asked the police to not allow them. But they were never stopped.

I’ve spoken at these demonstrations a number of times. There was no problem until about seven weeks ago, when a dear friend and a colleague from Jewish Network for Palestine, Tony Greenstein, a well-known activist in Britain, was arrested for saying something that the police called hate speech. [Note: Greenstein’s speech compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Nazis.]

Tony was released the next day. He is not allowed to come to the demonstration now because the bail conditions specified that. So we knew that they were on to us and that they are going to limit what we can say.

Can you discuss your arrest?

I was arrested on Friday evening, November 1, because I said that it’s clear that, despite the fact that Israel has won wars against large and strong state armies, it seems unable to win against Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. That is the sum total of what I said.

I was stopped by the police at the end of the demonstration and they told me that I was being arrested for hate speech. I told them I didn’t utter hate speech, nor did anyone else at the demonstration.

There were a lot of phone calls and arguments. After about 45 minutes, their story changed from hate speech to that they were moving to charge me under the Terrorism Act 2000, Section 12, which forbids expressing support for proscribed organizations. The policeman that arrested me told me that it all came from on high.

They kept me waiting under duress in a car park for a few hours. In the end, they brought me to the station.

What happened after they took you to the station?

They took my telephone and they put me into a filthy cell. There was a plastic sheet on the floor where you’re supposed to sit or lie down. I’m 79 and I suffer from heart disease and cancer and can’t easily get up from the floor.

I asked for my medications. Somebody went to my home and collected the medications from my wife, but they didn’t give them to me when I needed to take them at 8:00 in the evening. At 1:00 am, I insisted that I needed to get my medication, and after an hour, they allowed me to take them.Haim Bresheeth, right, at a national demonstration in London, U.K., in October 2024.Yosefa Loshitky

So it wasn’t fun. In the end, two people from the Terror Squad interviewed me for about an hour and a half. I gave my statement that said, in very great detail, why what I’ve done is totally normal, because I’m reporting facts. You can read it in the New York Times or Haaretz. I said that I have been a peace activist all my life, and claimed that they don’t have a case.

It was clear they had nothing to charge me on. After almost two hours of questioning, I told them I’m not going to say anything anymore.

After all this, they said they were not charging me today, and that they were passing my case to the Crown Prosecution Service. They tried to keep my phone, but I told them they couldn’t. I have daily cancer treatments and the only way I am told when to come is by this telephone. If you take my telephone, I said, you might as well leave me here to die. They gave me the telephone.

At first light, I arrived home. A few days later, my solicitor contacted me and said they got a “No Further Action” decision. In other words, they closed the case without any charge. So they admitted that they didn’t have anything.

Why do you think they targeted you?

Ever since October 7, I have published articles and done dozens of interviews on what’s happening. I have spoken at numerous locations, both in Europe and in Britain.

I’m an Israeli Jew. It’s well known that both my parents survived Auschwitz. Like Tony Greenstein, I’m a “problem.” We’re both anti-Zionist Jews who are active for Palestinians’ rights and against Zionism’s crimes. It’s difficult to criticize us as antisemites, because we’ve written books on antisemitism and written about the Holocaust profusely.

I used to know all the other anti-Zionists Jews in Britain. Now there are tens of thousands, if not more.

This is just a way of frightening, intimidating, silencing and criminalizing us in the pro-Palestine camp. This is happening everywhere in the EU and it’s happening in Britain. Germany and Britain are the worst places.

In Britain, the police broke into the home of journalist Sarah Wilkinson and turned it upside down. Her electronic devices were taken. Another journalist, Richard Medhurst, was stopped in Heathrow Airport and all his stuff was taken. There are others. So this is now becoming a method.

Can you talk about your background more?

My parents survived the train to Auschwitz in which a third of the people died. People who were already starving in the ghettos were put on the train, and many of them died from suffocation, starvation and weakness. My parents survived this trip and survived eight months in Auschwitz.

Both of them were then death marched from Auschwitz. There was a first march of the men to Mauthausen in Austria, and to a specific terrifying subcamp of Mauthausen called Gusen II, which the Nazis themselves called the “hell of hells.”

Gusen II was made of very long tunnels that the Nazis had paneled into the mouth of Mauthausen. They built a production line deep into that mountain for Messerschmidt plane parts. There were narrow tunnels for providing and taking out the parts. These tunnels were too small for horses, and so they instead used humans as animals of burden, pushing and pulling the trolleys the half-kilometer through the tunnels to where the production was.

My father worked in there from January 21 until May 8, 1945, the last day of the war. He was freed by the Americans. He weighed 32 kilos (around 70 pounds) when he was freed. My mother was marched to Bergen-Belsen. She had typhoid, and she was saved by a British doctor after the liberation.

My parents found their way to Italy, where they married, and I was born in a refugee camp in Rome. This is my background. I come from destruction, death, genocide.

My parents were not Zionist. They talked to me and my sister about their history because they never wanted this to happen to anyone else. Not just to Jews, but to anyone. For them, never again meant never again for anyone.

Can you elaborate more about your anti-Zionist commitments?

When I came to Britain in the early 1970s, I joined the Israeli anti-Zionist organization called Matzpen. It had a big branch in London of people who exiled from Israel because they did not want to partake in Zionist activities.

I used to know all the other anti-Zionists Jews in Britain. Now there are tens of thousands, if not more. They were produced by Israel, because Israel is carrying out its crimes in our name, and we don’t agree to that. We are fighting for the rights of the Palestinians, to return the refugees, to have a peaceful society in Palestine for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Zionism replaced the religion, the tradition, the values, the cosmopolitanism, that Jews held for 2,000 years. They were scientists, authors, musicians and workers, but they were not involved in genocide, apart from the genocide enacted against them.

In Britain, we had Islamophobic race riots this year where white working-class people attacked mosques, schools, private homes and community clubs that were Muslim. Muslims are the largest minority in Europe, and like the Jews in the 20th century, they are suffering enormous hatred.

As a Jew, as an Israeli, as a human being, I will not agree to that. I’m doing what I can against it, and Palestine is part of that.

Can you discuss the situation in Britain a bit more?

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he supports Zionism “without qualification.” He’s been chucking Jews out of the Labour Party. I was a member of the Labour Party, and so were all my friends. They were chucked out because they were supposedly antisemites. In fact, I self-referred myself to the Labour Party’s Compliance Unit for “antisemitism” just to show the absurdity of it all. I resigned in 2021 after I heard that my friend Ken Loach was expelled from the party.

I was an officer in the Israeli army and fought in totally unnecessary wars. Most of my early research is about antisemitism. But now I’m told that I’m an antisemite when I just say what is written in the papers.

What we have now, and what you will probably have under Trump, is an even worse system of Zionist values, which claim that to support genocide is okay, but to speak out against genocide is against the law.

This is unacceptable and immoral. And it’s un-Jewish. It’s against the values of Judaism of 2,000 years. There is nothing in Judaism that justifies what is happening in Gaza. This is a travesty of history.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Derek Seidman

Derek Seidman is a writer, researcher and historian living in Buffalo, New York. He is a regular contributor for Truthout and a contributing writer for LittleSis.

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https://skwawkbox.org/2024/11/03/exclusive-prof-haim-bresheeths-anti-genocide-speech-before-he-was-arrested-for-terrorism/

Exclusive: Prof Haim Bresheeth’s anti-genocide speech before he was arrested for ‘terrorism’

BySKWAWKBOX (SW)03/11/2024

Jewish Israeli academic was arrested for this as Starmer government’s assault on anti-genocide speech continues

As Skwawkbox reported on Friday night, Israeli Jewish academic Prof Haim Bresheeth was arrested by the Metropolitan Police as he spoke to the weekly anti-genocide demonstration, sponsored by Jewish groups IJAN (International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network) and and JNP (Jewish Network for Palestine), outside the London residence of far-right Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely.

Hotovely, an extremist described by Israeli paper Haaretz as ‘the ugly, extremist face of Israel’ who has attempted to justify Israel’s flattening of Gaza and mass killing of civilians, is feted by the government of Keir Starmer.

Yet Bresheeth was arrested for a speech in which he factually slammed Israel for its colonialism, racism and violence, including the mass murder of civilians including tens of thousands of children and eight hundred babies:

A Met Police spokeswoman, in a statement to Skwawkbox, claimed the force is engaged in “a constant balancing act” and that it was acting to “prevent intimidation and serious disruption to communities”. She confirmed that ‘one man’ – Bresheeth – had been arrested for supposedly supporting a proscribed organisation:

One man was arrested on suspicion of showing support for a proscribed organisation. This person had been a speaker at the demonstration. He has been released under investigation.

In fact, as a hearing of his speech immediately reveals, rather than supporting any group Bresheeth made the factual observation that Israel has proven unable to defeat Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – the first two have been proscribed by the British state – however many civilians it kills.

Bresheeth’s arrest forms part of a state campaign, which has escalated under Keir Starmer, of the abuse of anti-terror legislation to harry and attempt to intimidate British journalists and activists, many of them Jewish, who expose and oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has killed around two hundred thousand people and maimed many more, almost all of them civilians.

In October, police raided the home of journalist Asa Winstanley, seizing his electronic devices even though he was not arrested. In August, police detained journalist Richard Medhurst citing the Terrorism Act as his plane arrived in the UK, before stripping him of his electronic devices and forcing him to disclose passwords under threat of imprisonment – refusal to hand over logins or to answer any questions is an automatic offence under the legislation – and denying him access to legal advice and even water.

A week later, journalist Sarah Wilkinson was arrested as masked officers raided her home in the early hours of the morning, forced to hand over passwords, and police attempted to make her hand over details of her contacts in Palestine, a gross violation of journalistic privilege.

Before them,  Jewish activist and author Tony Greenstein, journalist Kit Klarenberg and journalist and former ambassador Craig Murray were also targeted for detention, arrest and harassment. Greenstein was told he was arrested for social media comments supporting Palestinian resistance, the right to which is firmly enshrined in international law. Greenstein succeeded last week in overturning abail condition banning him from attending anti-genocide protests in London.

Prof Bresheeth was released on Saturday morning after a night in custody, but remains under investigation.

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https://skwawkbox.org/2024/11/03/exclusive-video-see-jewish-professors-arrest-by-met-police-for-terrorism-of-condemning-israels-genocide/

Exclusive video: see Jewish professor’s arrest by Met Police for ‘terrorism’ of condemning Israel’s genocide

BySKWAWKBOX (SW)03/11/2024

Onlookers shout ‘Shame on you!’ as Prof Haim Bresheeth taken away by Met Police under Terrorism Act after anti-genocide speech

As Skwawkbox has reported, Professor Haim Bresheeth – an Israeli Jew – was arrested on Friday and is still under investigation, after being accused of hate speech under the Terrorism Act 2000 for a speech (video) to an anti-genocide demonstration outside the residence of far-right extremist ambassador Tzipi Hotovely.

Now Skwawkbox can exclusively reveal the arrest itself – part of a campaign of repression and intimidation of pro-Palestinian voices by the Starmer government – and the horror of onlookers, who compared it to the martial law imposed by Israel during the 1990s:

Professor Bresheeth, who is in his seventies, was released the following morning without charge but remains under investigation, according to the Metropolitan Police. Skwawkbox is trying to obtain footage of the arrest of a second man, which witnesses described as done with violence.

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https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/11/05/736653/UK-police-Jew-scholar-Bresheeth-pro-Palestine—

UK police detain Jewish scholar Haim Bresheeth following pro-Palestine address

Tuesday, 05 November 2024 6:53 AM  [ Last Update: Tuesday, 05 November 2024 6:53 AM ]   

Haim Bresheeth, an anti-Zionist activist delivers a speech in a pro-Palestine protest held in London on November 1, 2024. (Via screengrab)

A Jewish historian and retired professor has been arrested by London’s Metropolitan Police after delivering remarks at a weekly anti-genocide protest, where he said that Israel “cannot win against Hamas.”

Haim Bresheeth, an academic and filmmaker who established the Jewish Network for Palestine, was taken into custody during a protest outside the home of Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely in north London on Friday, only to be released the following day after his arrest.

“They cannot win against Hamas, they cannot win against Hezbollah, they cannot win against the Houthis. They cannot win against the united resistance to the genocide they have started,” Bresheeth said in his speech.

He has been charged with supporting a “proscribed organization,” as confirmed by a police spokesperson in a media statement, who also noted that he has been released pending further investigation.

The British government has classified the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements as proscribed.

A video capturing the arrest of the anti-Zionist and anti-racist activist reveals a police officer stating that he is being detained under the Terrorism Act 2000 for allegedly delivering a “hate speech.”

However, the content of Bresheeth’s speech criticized Israel’s actions, highlighting issues of colonialism, racism, and violence, which included the mass murder of numerous civilians, among them tens of thousands of children.

“Israel has not achieved any of its declared aims, either in Gaza in Lebanon in, in Iran or anywhere else,” Bresheeth said, adding that “they cannot fight the resistance, they have lost every single time.”

Bresheeth, a retired Jewish professor of the UK’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), is an author and filmmaker who, for the last few decades, has been a vocal critic of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.

Reports indicate that British authorities are increasingly utilizing anti-terrorism and anti-mafia legislation to detain and prosecute pro-Palestine activists and journalists.

Recent legislative changes, including the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2022(PCSC) and the Public Order Act 2023, have significantly expanded police powers and allowed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to curtail the rights of protesters.

The laws have made it easier for law enforcement to pursue harsher charges against demonstrators, while the Court of Appeal has removed essential defenses previously available to them, leading to increasingly severe penalties for those facing trial.

The situation has escalated to the point where counter-terrorism officers have executed search warrants against journalists, such as Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada, under the Terrorism Act, further illustrating the extent of the crackdown on dissent.

Pro-Palestine solidarity groups have raised alarms, viewing the crackdown as an attempt to silence dissenting voices and undermine their right to free expression.

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28.11.24
Editorial Note 

A few days ago, Koen Vanlaer, an associate professor of the Faculty of Business Economics at the University of Hasselt, Belgium, hosted an academic event, “Attacks on Academia in Palestine and beyond.” He introduced Israeli anthropologist Dr. Regev Nathansohn of Sapir College, who presented “his work on the Israeli occupation & reflect on academic freedom in Israel, where his anti-war stance ended his career.” This event is part of the series “Academic discussions on Educide and threats to academic freedom.” According to the invitation, “In this academic series which take place at Hasselt University, we will dig deeper into attacks on academia, academics and academic freedom amidst the ongoing genocide.” The event was organized by UHasselt Palestine Solidarity Network and the School of Social Sciences UHasselt (SSW).

IAM reported on Nathansohn before since he was a Kafiyah-wearing pro-Palestinian student at the University of Michigan.  

Nathansohn was also invited to speak at the European Parliament – Liaison Office in Belgium on behalf of Academia for Equality, a group calling to democratize Israel. In his speech, Nathansohn said, “I did not come here to talk about those Israeli Jews who seek revenge and brutally push for the expansion of their control, supremacy, and exclusivity in the land between the river and the sea, nor did I come here to talk about their countless victims. I came here to talk about Israelis who are considered liberals, those who you would expect to care about universal humanistic values and to stand against genocide, particularly those in Academia and in media, those who may see themselves as liberal democratic, as enlightened but in fact, they are privileging Jewish supremacy over rational reason, their facade of liberalism is maintained by a dual move, they may criticize the Israeli government on its anti-democratic moves against Jewish citizens, but at the same time, they silence critical voices against the war and genocide.” He discussed how he was dismissed from teaching after signing a petition “opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza.” 

He continued, “the Hamas-lead attack did not cloud my vision that there could not be a military solution. As evidence of atrocities from the Gaza strip came in, I signed several petitions, one of which was presented by academics from all over the world, calling on US President Biden to stop the transfer of all offensive arms and related funds to Israel, to stop the genocide deemed as plausible.”

He said that during his dismissal, “the vast majority of my colleagues in the department chose to keep silent, by doing so, they helped sweep the case under the rug and gave our students, soon-to-be journalists, a horrifying lesson on silence and silencing. To be honest, I, too, have refrained from speaking up on certain occasions. I did not say anything when the department took pride in lecturers wearing their reservist uniform while teaching journalism. I was also afraid to suggest that my department, the Department of Communication, would condemn the killing of about 100 journalists in Gaza.”

Nathansohn argued that all this is not new. “According to Academia for Equality, a members’ organization for the democratization of Israeli Academia and society, Palestinian and Jewish students and faculty experience a growing sense of fear and silencing, more than ever before. They self-censure and refrain from publicly expressing critical views because of the increasing potential of being sanctioned, called supporters of terrorism, or just considered a threat to campus community. This primarily affects Palestinian faculty and students, and it directly leads to a significant drop in the registration of Palestinian students in Israeli institutions. Their fear is based on concrete cases of suspension of students and faculty and even the dismissal of faculty members who were critical against the war. Things are not the way they seem under the liberal facade of Israeli academic institutions, there are impossible conditions for academic life if you are a Palestinian student or a faculty member with critical views regarding the ongoing war and genocide, under such conditions, there is almost no chance for change from within. Under such conditions, only International pressure can effectively save human lives from the river to the sea.”

Nathansohn is part of a larger group that recently signed a petition titled “Israeli citizens calling for true international pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.”  Some 3700 Israelis signed this petition, including many Israeli academics. 

The group briefly admits, “We have been horrified by the war crimes committed by Hamas and other organizations on October 7th.” 

Yet, they limit their criticism to Israel alone, stating how they are “horrified by the countless war crimes that Israel is committing. Unfortunately, the majority of Israelis support the continuation of the war and massacres, and a change from within is not currently feasible. The state of Israel is on a suicidal path and sows destruction and devastation that increase day by day. The government of Israel has abandoned its citizens who are hostages (and has killed some), it has neglected the residents of the south and north of Israel, and it has forsaken the fate and future of all of its citizens. Israel’s Palestinian citizens are persecuted and silenced by state authorities and by the wider public. It is our opinion that the repression, intimidation, and political persecution prevent many who share our views from joining this call. Every day that goes by further distances any possible horizon for a regional agreement and reconciliation, a future where Jewish Israelis can live with security in this place. Achieving these will require lengthy processes, but the constant massacres and destruction must be stopped immediately! The lack of true international pressure, the continuation of arms supplies to Israel, economic and security partnerships, and scientific and cultural collaborations, bring most Israelis to believe that Israel’s policies enjoy international support… Please, for our futures and the futures of all of the residents of Israel and the region, save us from ourselves, and use real pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.” 

The academic signatories include, Anat Matar, Yael Berda, Smadar Ben-Natan, Tamir Sorek, Shira Klein, Amos Goldberg, Menachem Klein, Oded Goldreich, Leena Dallasheh, Moshé Behar, Ilana Hammerman, Avner Giladi, Amiram Goldblum, Eran Tzidkiyahu, Yagil Levy, Rafi Greenberg, Asad Ghanem, Naama Farjoun, Idan Landau, Michal Ben-Naftali, Avner Ben Amos, Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Emmanuel Farjoun, Matan Kaminer, Lior Sternfeld, Rachel Elior, Lev Grinberg, Ofer Cassif, Ophira Gamliel, Hilla Dayan, Regev Nathansohn, Uri Hadar, Snait Gissis, Amalia Saar, Avishai Ehrlich, Efraim Davidi, Maya Rosenfeld, Avraham Oz, Ronnen Ben-Arie, Anat Biletzki, Hannan Hever, Orly Lubin, Raz Chen-Morris, Hannah Safran, Revital Madar,  Ilana Hairston, Tamar Hager, Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Noga Kadman, Diana Dolev, Yossef Schwartz, Jerome Bourdon, Erella Grassiani, Sinai Peter, Itamar Mann, Yosef Grodzinsky, Nomi Erteschik-Shir, Kobi Peterzil, Nitza Berkovitch, Dalit Simchai, Yuval Halperin, Tamar Barkay, Dudy Tzfati, Rona Sela, Orna Ben-Naftali, Yuval Yonay, Yigal Bronner, Daphna Golan Tamar Katriel, Micha Leshem, Gerardo Leibner, Tommy Dreyfus, Nomika Zion, Lee Mordechai, Neve Gordon,  Isaac Nevo, Edy Kaufman, Nir Gov, Outi Bat-El Foux, Haim Yacobi, Tamar Rapoport, Omer Bartov, Dov Baum, Arie Dubnov, Norma Musih, Noa Shaindlinger, Marcelo Svirsky, Nurit Peled Elhanan, Niza Yanay, Eilat Maoz, Joseph Zeira, Ran HaCohen, Ehud Shem Tov, Hagar Kotef, Liat Kozma, Tal Arbel, Roy Wagner, Uri Ram, Edith Zertal Charles Greenbaum, Efrat Ben-Zeev, Adi Ophir, Sigalit Landau, Hillel Schocken, José Brunner, Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani, Yair Wallach, Yoav Beirach, Chen Misgav, Yeela Raanan, Dana Ron, Itay Snir, Ofra Goldstein Gidoni, Yael Sternhell, Yali Hashash, Yoav Peled, Oren Yiftachel, Ruthie Ginsburg, Shlomo Sand, Hagit Borer, Catherine Rottenberg, and Ishai Menuchin. 

Long-time IAM readers would note that some of the signatories are veteran activists who are now retired.  Other petitioners, however, represent the younger generation of their followers who are equally misguided about how deterrence in international relations works. The group is urging international pressure on Israel alone, not on the belligerent Hezbollah, Hamas, or Iran.  Most troubling is their complaint about “The lack of true international pressure, the continuation of arms supplies to Israel, economic and security partnerships, and scientific and cultural collaborations, bring most Israelis to believe that Israel’s policies enjoy international support.”

These Israeli academics promote an anti-Israel agenda.

REFERENCES:

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1226928571751453

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1F4JpZnPkU/

אקדמיה לשוויון Academia for Equality أكاديميون من أجل ألمساواة

24 Nov 2024

Anthropologist Dr. Regev Nathansohn, Academy for Equality member, speaks in the European Parliament, as part of a discussion held by organizers of a petition of Israeli citizens calling for true international pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire. Regev tells how he was fired from Sapir College after signing a petition last year calling on the US president to stop the shipment of lethal weapons to Israel. He also shares data collected by Academy for Equality regarding the systematic persecution of students who oppose the war in Israeli academia. Link to the full video in bio and story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sbpBrj8F3E

Nov 22, 2024 EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT – LIAISON OFFICE IN BELGIUMAnthropologist Dr. Regev Nathansohn, Academy for Equality member, speaks in the European Parliament, as part of a discussion held by organizers of a petition of Israeli citizens calling for true international pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire. You can read more about the petition here: https://israelicitizensforin.live-website.com/english/
Israeli citizens calling for true international pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.

We, Israeli citizens residing in Israel and abroad, call on the international community – the UN and its institutions, the United States, the European Union, the League of Arab States, and all states around the world – to intervene immediately and implement every possible sanction towards achieving an immediate ceasefire between Israel and its neighbors, for the future of both peoples in Israel/Palestine and the peoples of the region, and for their rights to security and life.

Many of us are veteran activists against the occupation, for peace and mutual existence in this land. We are motivated by our love for the land and its residents, and we are concerned for their future. We have been horrified by the war crimes committed by Hamas and other organizations on October 7th, and we are horrified by the countless war crimes that Israel is committing. Unfortunately, the majority of Israelis support the continuation of the war and massacres, and a change from within is not currently feasible. The state of Israel is on a suicidal path and sows destruction and devastation that increase day by day.

The government of Israel has abandoned its citizens who are hostages (and has killed some), it has neglected the residents of the south and north of Israel, and it has forsaken the fate and future of all of its citizens. Israel’s Palestinian citizens are persecuted and silenced by state authorities and by the wider public. It is our opinion that the repression, intimidation, and political persecution prevent many who share our views from joining this call. 

Every day that goes by further distances any possible horizon for a regional agreement and reconciliation, a future where Jewish Israelis can live with security in this place. Achieving these will require lengthy processes, but the constant massacres and destruction must be stopped immediately!

The lack of true international pressure, the continuation of arms supplies to Israel , economic and security partnerships, and scientific and cultural collaborations, bring most Israelis to believe that Israel’s policies enjoy international support. The leaders of many countries make repeated statements about the horror they feel and verbally denounce Israel’s operations, but these condemnations are not backed by practical actions. We are replete with empty words and declarations.

Please, for our futures and the futures of all of the residents of Israel and the region, save us from ourselves, and use real pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.

https://israelicitizensforin.live-website.com/signatures/Israeli Citizens For International Pressure 3700 Signatures

 יעל לרר Yael Lerer ענת מטר Anat Matar רון נייולד Ron Naiweld יואב שמר-קונץ Yoav Shemer-Kunz יעל ברדה Yael Berda סמדר בן-נתן Smadar Ben-Natan תמיר שורק Tamir Sorek שירה קליין Shira Klein מיכל רז Michal Raz רות רוזנטל Ruth Rosental יעל פוגל Yael Foigel בני שוקרון Benny Chukrun אילה מצגר Ayala Metzger עמוס גולדברג Amos Goldberg עליזה שנהר Aliza Shenhar הרב משה יהודאי Rabbi Moshe Yehudai מיכאל בן יאיר Michael Benyair מנחם קליין Menachem Klein עודד גולדרייך Oded Goldreich אבי-רם צורף Avi-ram Tzoreff נהרה פלדמן Nehara Feldman יותם בן-דוד Yotam Ben-David לינא דלאשה Leena Dallasheh קרין לוי Karin Loevy אני אוחיון דקל Annie Ohayon Dekel משה בהר Moshé Behar אילנה המרמן Ilana Hammerman אבנר גלעדי Avner Giladi עמירם גולדבלום Amiram Goldblum ערן צדקיהו Eran Tzidkiyahu יגיל לוי Yagil Levy שמואל לדרמן Shmuel Lederman שירה חבקין Shira Havkin נעה פרימן Noa Friehmann רפי גרינברג Rafi Greenberg סהר בוסטוק Sahar Bostock אורית ברור בן דוד Orit Brawer Ben David מיכל בוסטוק Michal Bostock תמר ברגר Tamar Berger ורדית שלפי Vardit Shalfy דורי פרנס Dori Parnes יעל לביא Yael Lavi גלית ספורטה Galit Saporta איל שגיא ביזאוי Eyal Sagui Bizawe אסעד גאנם Asad Ghanem מיכל אביעד Michal Aviad יעל הדיה Yael Hedaya רעות בן יעקב Reut Ben Yaakov עינת ויצמן Einat Weitzman דוד ריב David Reeb אבי מוגרבי Avi Mograbi עמירה הס Amira Hass יאיר סטרשנוב Jair Straschnow זהר ינוביץ Zohar Ianovici עדי הגין Adi Hagin יובל חושן Yuval Hoshen רותם שטרן Rotem Stern נעמה פרג’ון Naama Farjoun עידן לנדו Idan Landau מיכל בן-נפתלי Michal Ben-Naftali אבנר בן-עמוס Avner Ben Amos סדרה דיקובן אזרחי Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi עמנואל פרגון Emmanuel Farjoun יונתן שפירא Yonatan Shapira דורון בן דוד Doron Ben David מאיה בן-מאיר Maya Ben-Meir שרון גורדון Sharon Gordon רותי לביא Ruti Lavi תלמה ברדין Talma Bar-Din רועי צורף Roei Tzoref רוני צורף Roni Tzoreff צביקה מרקוביץ Tzvi Markovitz נעם לוי ארז Noam Levi Erez תרצה פוסקלינסקי Tirtsa Posklinsky מתן קמינר Matan Kaminer נגה בליליוס Noga belilius אלון מרכוס Alon Marcus לירונה רוזנטל Lirona Rosenthal גיא הירשפלד Guy Hirschfeld ליאור קיי Lior Kay צביה חורש Tsvia Horesh מיה מוכמל Maya Mukamel עינב קפלן רז Einav Kaplan Raz דורית גורני Dorit Gurny מעיין צדקה Maayan Tsadka חמוטל צמיר Hamutal Tsamir לירון טל Liron Tal מרים להט Miriam lahat עמית פרלסון amiT Perelson נעמי ליפין Naomi Lippin דיתי תור Diti Tor אהרן כהן-ינאי Aaron Cohen-Yanay שהם סמיט Shoham Smith נופר שמעוני Nufar Shimony עינת יורקביץ Einat Jurkevitch ליאור שטרנפלד Lior Sternfeld תמר גוז’נסקי Tamar Gozansky אילנה ברנשטיין Ilana Bernstein רחל אליאור Rachel Elior לב גרינברג Lev Grinberg עופר כסיף Ofer Cassif לילי ליברזון סלפק Lili Libersohn Slepack עופר ניימן Ofer Neiman איריס רונן Iris Ronen אנה דובינסקי Anna Dubinsky עדינה איזנברג Adina Eisenberg טלי אקנין Tali Aknin טל הלפרן Tal Halpern קרן הרינג Keren Herin אשר פריד Asher Fried שירה ארד Shira Arad אופירה גמליאל Ophira Gamliel מיכל וינר Mikhal Weiner עידו ששון Ido Sasson דניאל דרבי Daniel Darby עומר נגב Omer Negev אורה מור Aura Mor אפי זיו Effi Ziv הילה דיין Hilla Dayan יפעה סהר Yifah Sahar יניב אידלשטיין Yaniv Eidelstein אלמוג שרביט Almog Sharvit דוד זונשין David Zonsheine טל שובל Tal Shuval ורד גמליאל Vered Gamliel עלמה גניהר Alma Ganihar נירית אורן שטרנברג Nirit Oren Sternberg בלהה גולן זונדרמן Bilha Golan Sündermann יובל ציגלר Yuval Ziegler שי גרינברג Shai Grunberg דנה מלצר Dana Melzer יובל אברהם Yuval Abraham לילך מרקמן lilah Markman דני רוזין Danny Rosin ריבה הוכרמן Riva Hocherman סופי קוק Sophie Cooke שירה שהמי Shira Shohami אבי ליברמן Avi Liberman תמר שניידר Tamar Schneider ירדן לויטל Yarden Levital חגית לוי בן נר Hagit Levi Ben Ner ליאורה הורביץ Liora Horwitz ארנונה זהבי Arnona Zahavi עדינה רינת Adina Rinat רגב נתנזון Regev Nathansohn יריב ויסוקר Yariv Visoker אמיר הלל Amir Hallel רחל אברמוביץ Rachel Abramovitz דני רשף Danny Reshef חני רבינוביץ Chani Rabinovich רוני תמרי Roni Tamari סמדר שרון smadar sharon רותי קנטור Ruti Kantor עינת ליכטינגר Einat Lichtinger לאה אבן חורב Leah Even Chorev מיה אובר Maya Ober אורי הדר Uri Hadar מיכל ורשבסקי Michal Warshavsky שירה ויזל Shira Vizel ענת גרינשטיין Anat Greenstein תמיר לויטל Tamir Levital איזדורה כהן Isadora Cohen חוה לרמן Hava Lerman נועה וודניצקי Noa Vodnizky רונית רובין Ronit Rubin דבי אילון Debbie Eylon הגר נטר Hagar Neter טלי לוין Tali Levin ליאורה גביעון Liora Gvion תמי קדיש Tammy Kadish סינדי כהן Cindy Cohen ערן טורבינר Eran Torbiner מיקי רוטר – פרי Miki Rotter Perry יובל תמרי Youval Tamari ענת לוין Anat Levin ערבה נבו Arava Nevo אסף רומאנו Assaf Romano דבורה קדם Dvora Kedem אוסי רון Ossi Ron מיתר אברהם Meitar Avraham הדר עירון Hadar Iron מאיה הרמן Maya Herman גל קובר Gal Kober סנאית גיסיס Snait Gissis עמליה סער Amalia Saar הודל אופיר Hodel Ophir רחלי בר-אור Racheli Bar-Or הדס גור Hadas Gur אבישי ארליך Avishai Ehrlich רות בן אשר Ruth Ben Asher גלית ארבלי Galit Arbeli אסתי שוחט רוזנפלד Esti Shohat Rozenfeld אירה קונטורובסקי Ira Kontorovsky אבי מזרחי Avi Mizrachi רובין איציקסון Robin Janson מלאני מייסון Melanie Mason ליאורה שילמן Liora Szylman מילי מאסס Mili Mass אפרים דוידי Efraim Davidi יעל מגנס Yael Magnes שי ווזנר Shai Wosner מאיה רוזנפלד Maya Rosenfeld ענבר חורש Inbar Horesh איתן ברונשטיין Eitan Bronstein ניר הראל Nir Harel משה קיים Moshe Kayam אהוד סיבוש Ehud Sivosh שאול עמיר Shaul Amir שירה חדד Shira Haddad משה אכר Moshe Ikar מרים פרנק Miriam Frank דורית ארגו Dorit Argo יעל שומרוני Yael Shomroni רוני קורקוס Roni Corcos נטע חממי טביב Neta Hamami Tabib שרה כרמלי Sara Carmeli לאה יעל לוי Leah Yael Levy רולי רוזן Rolly Rosen חיים ויטלי כהן Haim Vitali Cohen דניאל מעוז Danielle Maoz נעה פורט Noa Fort שירה בן שחר Shira Ben Shachar דניאל פלנקר Daniel Palenker אילה שני Ayala Shani יהודית אילני Yudit Ilany דניאל פרסאי Danielle Parsay רוני פדרמן Roni Federman רונית מריאן קדישאי Ronit Marian-Kadisgay אברהם עוז Avraham Oz רונן בן-אריה Ronnen Ben-Arie יצחק גולדברגר Itzik Goldberger לליב מלמד Laliv Melamed ניצן בויז Nitzan Boys מאיה לרמן Maya Lerman קיקי קרן-הוס Kiki Keren-Huss לילה מזל יינישן Laila Mazal Yenishen יהודית דבש Judith Debash תמר כהן Tamar Cohen עמית חברוני Amit Hevrony מיכל גרינבאום Michal Grynbaum שרון אסתריק Sharon Estrik עדי וינטר Adi winter איה זמיר Aya Zamir אורי לוי Ori Levy אסתי מיצנמכר Esti Micenmacher תמר להן Tamar Lehahn שרית רוזן Sarite Rosen לירון אחדות Liron Achdut אברהם ברמן Avi Berman תהילה אזרחי Tehila Ezrahi ים קדוש Yam Kadosh שרון לרנר גרבט Sharon Lerner Gerbat אור בן דוד Or Ben David קרן תורגמן Karen Tordjman עינת טוכמן Einat Tuchman רחל חגיגי Rachel Hagigi עדן מיצנמכר Eden Mitsenmacher יסמין שמעון ברונשטיין Yasmin Shimon Bronstein גד לוי Gad Levy סיגל גדי Sigal Gedi סיגל קוק אביבי Sigal Kook Avivi כרמל דדלי Carmel Dudley אסף אוזן Assaf Uzan הדס שינטל Hadas Shintel ענבר מרים שרייבר Inbar Miryam Schreiber ענת בילצקי Anat Biletzki איתמר סתת Itamar Satat לירון סטולר כוורי Liron Stoller Cavari להי שחר Lahi Shachar ג’ון סיימונס Jon Simons רות בן-נתן Ruth Ben-Natan אביגיל כספי Avigail Caspi שי גינזבורג Shai Ginsburg יובל פילבסקי Yuval Pilavsky אריק סגל Arik Segal אטילה עאבדי Attila Abdi עליזה דרור Aliza Dror סיון רג’ואן שטאנג Sivan Rajuan Shtang עודד כרמי Oded Carmi עוז שלח Oz Shelach דפנה סטרומזה Daphna Stroumsa רויטל מטר Rivital Matter רנן עמיר Renen Amir אריאל חיון Ariel Hayun דנה הורדס Donna Hordes מרב נוב Merav Nov חנן חבר Hannan Hever איתמר שוורץ Itamar Schwartz אורלי לובין Orly Lubin שרה הירש מידן Sarah Hirsh Meydan איתן אפרת Efrat Eitan רותם לוין Rotem Levin ביאנקה מורנו Bianca Moreno שירלי נדב Shirli Nadav אריקה סיגמון Erica Sigmon יונה קדרון שלו Yona Kidron Shalev מיה בן יאיר Maya Ben Yair אמירה סונדרס Amira Saunders יניב אדר Yaniv Adar אוריאנה וייך Oriana Weich נורית אביב Nurith Aviv אורנה גורלניק Orna Guralnik מרב דביר Merav Devere יעל ניב Yael Niv רז חן-מוריס Raz Chen-Morris חנה ספרן Hannah Safran דניאלה ליכטמן Daniela Lichtman נוני טל Nuni Tal קטי בר Katty Bar מריבן דוד Miriam Ben David שרון חבצלת Sharon Havatselet מרים מור Miriam Moore עתר שימל Atar Schimmel דן שאכטר Dan Schachter אנה מאי שמלה Anna May Chamalet אור סיני Or Sinay אור וינפלד Or Winfield אלי למדן Eli Lamdan שני פייס Shany Payes נירית פוטרמן Nirit Puterman נגה מרדוק Noga Murdoch עפרה טנא Ofra Tene נאוה טולדנו Nava Toledano גלי טאס שני Gali Tas Shani ליאור אלפנט Lior Elefant חדוה יערי Hedva Yaari רחל בן שטרית Rachel Ben-Shitrit תחיה יעקבסון Tchya Jacobson רוית כהן Ravit Cohen אנדריי בליצקי Andrei Belitski יעל אורן Yael Oren טלי ברומברג Tali Bromberg מיכל פומרנץ Michal Pomeranz דפנה ויס-רייזנר Daphna Weiss-Reisner רעיה שטייר Raya Shtaier שלומית ניצן Shlomit Nitzan איריס כץ Iris Katz רוויטל מדר Revital Madar איריס גור Iris Gur מאירה אשר Meira Asher יעל פתאל Yael Fattal אילנה הירסטון Ilana Hairston נתי מושקוביץ Naty Moskovich דבי ג’יואן dw Debbie Jivan גילי אופיר Gili Ofir מיכל בלומנטל Michal Blumenthal בקה סוזה Becca Sousa דגנית שץ Dganit Shats רועי שינמן Roy Sheinman אפרת שושן Efrat Shoshan אפרת לוי Efrat Levi ליהי יפה Lihi Joffe זהר רגב Zohar Regev תאיר קמינר גולדפיינר Tair Kaminer Goldfainer רות רגולנט לוי Ruth Regulant Levi סמדר שני Smadar Shani שירלי ערן Shirly Eran ג׳ואנה ג׳ונס Joanna Jones מאי אילון Mai Aylon נעה פרוידנטל Noa Freudenthal תמים אבו חיט Tamim Abukhait סהר ורדי Sahar Vardi שלומית סטרוטי Shlomit Strutti נגה ברונו Noga Bruno תמר ירון Tamar Yaron אייל מרכוס Eyal Marcus אפרת לוי Efrat Levy רעות מימון Reut Maimon אורלי אברהם Orly Avraham תמר סלבי Tamar Selby עלמה פוגל Alma Fogiel דרור קאופמן Dror Kaufman סיגל רוטמן Sigal Rotman ארנינה קשתן Arnina Kashtan יודית הופמן יהב Judy Hoffmann Yahav אסתי רכט Estee Recht אורי יואלי Uri Yoeli שולה לויטל Shula Levital ניצן אברמסון Nitsan Abramson אילונה פינטו Ilona Pinto הרבה מעין טורנר Rabbi Ma’ayan Turner עידית וינקלר Edith Winkler לילך צ’לנוב Lilach Tchlenov עירית חכים Irit Hakim תמר הגר Tamar Hager מיה ברבי Maya Barabi הרב דני דניאלי Rabbi Dani Danieli יעל דוידס Yael Davids ישראל וינקלר Israel Winkler גליה אנקורי Galia Ankori לאה דקל leah Dekel טליה סוויסה Talya Swissa שרה לוינטל Sarah Levinthal Shartal מירי אליאב-פלדון Miriam Eliav-Feldon חני סגל Hani Sagal זמיר חבקין Zamir Havkin לסלי מרקס Lesley Marks מיכל פלדון Michal Feldon נינה הלוי Nina Halevy יעל שניאורסון Yael Shneerson   פאולה פיטשני Paula Pitashny רותי הרבשטיין Ruth Herbstein רבקה ורשבסקי Rivka Warshawsky שמואל צמל Shmuel Tsemel אלישבע וינטראוב Elicheva Weintraub דנה כהן Dana Cohen מרים אביצור Miriam Avitsur תופאחה סאבא Tuffaha Saba רות פרסר Ruth Preser ורד הדיה Vered Hedaya אורי נוריאל Ori Nuriel שילה יערי Shilo Yaari אדוה מרגליות Adva Margaliot נגה חביון Noga Chevion עפרה הופמן Ofra Hoffman הדר שגיא Hadar Sagi יערה פרץ Ya’ara Peretz אפרת לוי Efrat Levy נגה קדמן Noga Kadman חנה שביב Hannah Shaviv קלייר אורן Oren Claire אמיר בולצמן Amir Bolzman הילה לרנאו Hila Lernau נילי לוגסי Nili lugasi עידית בלוך Idit Bloch רפי ליין אושרוב Lane Osherov רות שריר Ruth Sharir חנה גלפרין Hana Galperin אירית סגולי Irit Segoli שי כרמלי פולק Shai Carmeli Pollak נעמה שפירא Naama Shapira רויטל סלע Revital Sella יעל טל Yael Tal תום קלנר Tom Kellner אפרת בן שושן גזית Efrat Ben Shoshan Gazit הרבה נועה מזור Rabbi Noa Mazor אירית אופיר Irit Ofir הדר עמית Hadar Amit חדוה ישכר Hedva Isachar תום טליתמן זוטא Tom Talisman Zuta אמיל פיסקר Emil Pisker דפנה ברק Daphna Barak אסנת בר-אור Osnat Bar-Or יעל קאופמן Yael Kaufman אורית שלו Orit Shalev דוד פרנקל David Frenkel שרה מירון Sara Meron הדס רענן שחר Hadas Raanan Shachar יעקב אפסטין Jacob Epstein שחר שלוח Shahar Shiloach ויקטוריה טרקן Victoria Tarakan טובה בליי Tova Blay נוי כצמן Noy Katsman יעל סדן Yael Sadan תמר ירום Tamar Yarom אביגיל טלמור Avigail Talmor טלי הרכבי כרמלי Tali Harkavi Carmeli שמעון אזולאי Shimon Azulay אמנון לוטנברג Amnon Lotenberg אייל רצ׳קובסקי Eyal Ratzkovsky עדית קאופמן-סטרול Idit Kaufman-Strull עלמה כץ Alma Katz אורלי כהן Orly Cohen נעמה שושנה פוגל לוין Naama Shoshana Fogiel Lewin ארזה קוטנר Arza Kuttner כרמל גורני Carmel Gorni טל ברגלס Tal Berglas איה ארז Aya Erez נועה שובל Noa Shuval מרינה ארגס Marina Ergas עילם מורביץ להב Eylam Murvitz Lahav עמית לירז Amir Liraz אביגיל שזור Abigail Szor אלזה בונייה Elza Bugnet ויקי סקנדריון Vicky Skandarion אריאל גלזר Ariel Glazet מנחם פורת Menachem Porat דיאנה דולב Diana Dolev אדוה זכאי Adva Zakai עירית לבנון Irit Levanon יוסף שורץ Yossef Schwartz אמוץ גלעדי Amotz Giladi עמרי שפר Omri Sheffer ערן רזגור Eran Razgour שרון חפר-חייקין Sharon Heffer-Chaikin ישי גסנבאור Ychaï Gassenbauer הדרה אורן Hadara Oren חנה גילאי גינור Hana Gilaie Guinor אסתר בן חור Esther Ben Chur אמנון יובל Amnon Yuval דורית בורל גלבוע Dorit Boral Gilboa מאיה וייס Maya Weiss רועי סלק Royi Sellek יוסף דביר גרבר Joseph Gerber סירה פויגל ברוטמן Sirah Foighel Brutmann שרון אלפרט Sharon Alpert עפר סמילנסקי Ofer Smilansky חגית פינקוביץ Hagit Pincovici חמוטל ארבל Hamutal Arbel יובל לוטם Yuval Lotem תמר לוית Tamar Levit בת שבע רוס Batsheva Ross אנלין קיש Annelien Kisch אביטל ברק Avital Barak ענת מרנין Anat Marnin מאי זיסמן May Zisman אמנון סדובסקי Amnon Sadovsky דני איסלר Dani Issler רוני פרלמן Ronny Perlman דורית אלדר Dorit Eldar בלהה אהרוני Bilha Aharoni נטלי פיק Natalie Pik אפרת אנגרס אוולד Ephrat Angress Ewald שוקה גלוטמן Joshua Glotman רשף אגם-סגל Reshef Agam-Segal זהר איתן Zohar Eitan אריאל ויצמן Ariel Weizman צחי מיצנמכר Tsachi Mitsenmacher רמי חלד Rami Heled משה רובס Moshe Robes זירום בורדון Jerome Bourdon עידו בן יעקב Ido Ben Yaakov מיכל גולדמן ריב Michal Goldman Reeb אמירה גלבלום Amira Gelblum יולי ריב Yoli Reeb יהודית תמיר Judith Tamir עומר שריר Omer Sharir נעמי רינת Noomi Rinat ניצה גילת Nitsa Gilat אור גזל Or Gazal נעמה צרפתי Zarfaty Naama גיא גילאור Guy Gillor אמיר בורנשטיין Amir Borenstein עמית הרפז Amit Harpaz יהודית שפירא חביב Yehudit Shapira Habib איתמר גילן Itamar Gillan אורלי רות פלדהיים Orly Ruth Feldheim קרן ויינר Karen Wainer אילנה טייכר Ilana Teicher רוית בכור Ravit Bechor גאיה פלדהיים-שור Gaya Feldheim-Schorr ליאורה שאלתיאל הרפז Liora Shaltiel Harpaz אפרת אלוני Efrat Aloni ענת אברמוב Anat Abramov מאשה זוסמן Masha Zusman סימה ששון Sima Sason ליאור שחר Lior Shachar שרה גיל Gil sarah דלית בלוך Dalit Bloch נוה מיכאל Naveh Michael רם בן משה Ram Ben Moshe ורד איל-סלדינגר Vered Eyal-Saldinger ניר נגיד Nir Nagid טליה הופמן Thalia Hoffman אראלה גרסיאני Erella Grassiani דניאל מן Daniel Mann אסף שושן Assaf Shoshan עפרי עומר Ofri Omer ליאורה פוזנר Liora Posner עודד שכטר Oded Schechter עדי טולדנו Adi Toledano אהוד נויהאוז Ehud Neuhaus רותי כץ Ruti katz דלית רינת Dalit Rinat נורית כהן עברון Nurit Cohen Evron לילוּ אינשטיין Lilu Einstein דורית שיזף Dorit Sheizaf תמי של Tammy Shel טל ראובני Tal Reuveny לילי טראובמן Lily Traubmann מיכל ברייאר Michal Braier מיכאל צ׳רני Michael Charny ענבל וולפו Inbal Volpo טל בז Tal Baz שירה ברק Shira Barak מאיה שטיינמן Maya Steinman עידו הררי Ido Harari יאיר דברת Yair Dovrat תם סלע Tom Sela מאיה ידיד Maya Yadid אלדד יפה Eldad Joffe אסף אלדר Assaf Eldar אלי אושרוב Eli Osheroff מיכל ספיר Michal Sapir אורן לם Oren Lamm ענבל גוזס Inbal Gozes גיא גורביץ Guy Gurevich ליאת רותם Liat Rotem סיני פתר Sinai Peter רמה אשוח Rama Ashuach דליה הגר Dalia Hager טל כץ Tal Katz ברכה פליקוטו Bracha Flicoteaux מוטי לרנר Motti Lerner איתמר מן Itamar Mann רויטל בת עמי צחור Revital Batami Zahor נועה גיניגר Noa Giniger חגי פוזנר Hagai Posner נמרוד שפיר Nimrod Shapir איריס חפץ Iris Hefets   עדי גורבט Adi Gorbat מיה ורמן Maya Wahrman קרני סלע Karni Sela יוסף גרודזינסקי Yosef Grodzinsky תמר שוער Tamar Schoer שירה בנארי Shira Benarie נוגה בודנהיימר Noga Bodenhimer נעמי שיר Nomi Erteschik-Shir שיר כץ Shir Katz אור גורן Or Goren מירה תלם Mira Telem מיכה רחמן Micha Rachman שרון וולך Sharon Wallach רוני גוזס Rony Gozes אסנת הלוי בלבן Asnat Halevy Balaban ערין קאסם Areen Qassem איילת בן צבי Ayelet Ben Zvi ענת אלמוג Anat Almog קמינסקי נפתלי Naftali Kaminski מאיה אופיר María J.Ofir אוריאל קיטאי Uriel Kitay נעמה ארבל Naama Arbel קליין תום Tom Klein עפרי גרינבאום Ofri Grynbaum חמוטל שטיינדי אנדי Hamutal Steinde Ende מאיה קרני Maya Karni דורית וקסלר Dorit Wechsler גיל מועלם-דורון Gil Mualem-Doron מירב לוי ברקובסקי Merav Levy Bercowski הלל ברק Jerome Hillel Bark אביטל טוך בר-חיים Avital Toch Bar-Haim אסתי אור ים Esther Or Yam רותי רותם Ruthi Rotem קובי פטרזייל Kobi Peterzil מעיין אגמון Maayan Agmon אלה ברקובסקי Ela Bercowski אביגיל יעקבסון Abigail Jacobson אור חסון Or Hasson יעל כהן Yael Cohen ניצה ברקוביץ Nitza Berkovitch איתי ים רימר Etai Rimer בתי פרי Betty Perry ליהי פאול Lihi Paul דיאנה קליין Diana Klein קרן זק Karen Zack נטלי רוטמן Natalie Rothman מרב הררי Merav Manoach Harari נופך וסרטייל Nofech Wasserteil ערן שועלי Eran Shuali אבי גלזרמן Avi Glezerman איתי בן-משה Itay Ben-Moshe הילי כוכבי Hili Kohavi נעמה וייזל Naama Waisel יהודית אלקנה Yehudit Elkana דורית בנדק חביב Dorit Benedek Chaviv דלית שמחאי Dalit Simchai דב הראל Dov Harel אסתי שטיין Esti Stein קלואי פרין Chloe Perin יובל הלפרין Yuval Halperin רון כהן Ron Cohen טיאה לוי Tia Levi אלון גרבוז Alon Garbuz חנה סקולניק Chana Skolnik עמרי שלומוב מילסון Omri Shlomov Milson טליה עבו Talia Abu שני אבירם Shani Aviram דניאל סולומון Daniel Solomon עודד נעמן Oded Na’aman צפרה נמרוד Safra Nimrod גלית אילת Galit Eilat מרים גלאון Miriam Galon תרזה וייזל Tirza Waisel גלי גולד Gali Gold דהאמשה מנצור Dahamshy mansour מור סטולר Mor Stoler הגר יולזרי Hagar Yulzari עדי עדינה הררי כהן Adi Adina Cohen Harari עלמה בריגר Alma Bryger אילנה טרכטנברג Ilana Trachtenberg מיכל פנט פלג Michal Paneth Peleg ארנון הראל Arnon Harel תמר ברקאי Tamar Barkay עידא אלכסנדר אייל Ida Alexander Eyal דודי צפתי Dudy Tzfati רחל גוטגרץ Rachel Gutgarts נועה ראנצר Noa Ranzer בת’ עופר Beth Offer רונה סלע Rona Sela חנא סרור Hanna srour רומי חפץ Romi Hefetz סיאן תומס Siân Thomas אביטל שקולניק Avital Schkolnik עדינה טל Adina Tal ים וינברג Yam Weinberg רתם ברונו Rotem Bruno בתי לובינשטיין Bati Loewenstein דובי מורן Dubi Moran יונתן פסובסקי Yonatan Pasovsky אורי פליישמן Uri Fleishman מיכל רונאל Michal Ronel אשרה בר Oshra Bar איתי איל Itay Eyal נעם גולדשטיין Noam Goldstein אסף שטרן Assaf Stern יעל זליגמן Yael Zeligman אבשלום רוב Avshalom Rov שירה כסלו Shira Kislev יאיר ורדי Yair vardi רות בודור Ruth Bodor אסתי זיסמן Esti Zisman אסנת סנדלון Osnat Sandalon אבנר ניב Avner Niv הדסה גוטמן Guttmann Hadassah דניה קורן Danya Koren מיכל וקסלר Michal Vexler נאוה גלזר Nava Glazer אמיר ביתן Amir Bitan רחל לונדון כץ Rachel London Katz יואב הס Yoav Haas אייל הראובני Eyal Hareuveni שירה ביתן Shira Bitan מיאקו גליקו Mieko Galiko אודי אלוני Udi Aloni מיכל פלג Michal Peleg גילה אבני Gila Avni עדה בילו Ada Bilu רחל אלגזי Rachel Algazi נעה שוורץ פוירשטין Noa Schwartz Feuerstein גל לוי Gal Levy עירית הלביא Irit Halavy אבישי הלביא Avishay Halavy אילאיל לב כנען Ilil Lev Kenaan רבקה צביאלי Rivka Zvieli אביטל ארבל Avital Arbel ברברה וייס Barbara Weis יעל רוט-ברקאי Yael Roth-Barkai ריטה סבח Rita Sabah דב ברק Dov Barak אביגיל ספז Avigail Sfez אריאל רוסלר Ariel Rosler שרה הלמן Sara Hekman יפתח אלעזר Yiftah Elazar אורית גבירצמן Orit Gwirceman עינב גוז׳נסקי Einav Gozansky עידית ברמניס Idit Bermanis עפרי שטורמן טבנקין Ofri Sturman Tabenkin מנחם כץ Menachem Katz שירה גלמן Shira Ghelman תלמה דים Talma Dim יערי אלון שנדואן Yaari Alon Chandwan דניאל רועה Daniel Roe צחקי שריג Isaac Sarig ענת זהר Anat Zohar יורם ניסנבוים Yoram Nissenboim אלון לבני Alon Livny אדם סטריאר Adam Strier דפנה כהן Daphna Cohen עדנה ברג Edna Barg אליענה אמינוף Eliana Aminoff הרצל שוברט Herzl Schubert טובה בוקסבאום Tova Buksbaum מיריה רון Mirya Ron סיון כרמל שפירא Sivan carmel shapira ולרי מלכי Valerie Malki רונית רוזנטל Ronit Rosenthal ארנה בן-נפתלי Orna Ben-Naftali נירה פולטון Nira Fulton איתמר שחר Itamar Shachar יובל יונאי Yuval Yonay נורה אורלוב Norah Orlow אדם רפופורט-פלג Adam Rapoport-Peleg עמי הולנדר Ami Hollander מיכאל הלבר Michael Halber ארנה שחר Orna Shachar יורם בלומנקרנץ Yoram Blumenkranz פמלה אולמן Pam Ullman יונתן סטריאר Yonatan Strier טל הר נבו Tal Har nevo תומר רוזנטל Tomer Rosenthal תמר ורטה-זהבי Tamar Verete-Zahavi יגאל ברונר Yigal Bronner אמיר אוריין Amir Orian אלון גיל Alon Gil אביטל סדן Avital Sadan תמר מידן Tamar Meidan ניר גירון Nir Giron איריס מושקוביץ Iris Moshkovitz בתיה גיל מרגלית Batya Gil Margslit דפנה כרמלי Daphna Carmeli שלום גיל Shalom Gil דן גולדנבלט Dan Goldenblatt אילנה צברי Ilana Zabary איריס פריי Iris Fry אילת אלניר Ayelet Elnir דינה כהן-אור Dina Cohen-Or תמי גנות Tammy Gannot אביגיל אמיר Avigail Amir אמה שכוי פון שוורצה Emma Sechvi Von Schwarze יעל פרידמן Yael Friedman   רוני מרץ Roni Meretz שריקר צ’ריקר גולן Shriker Charikar Golan נורית פלזנטל ברגר Noorit Felsenthal Berger עדי רומח סרבניצקי Ady Romach Srebnitskiy ראשית חזקיה Reshit Hezkia דפנה גולן Daphna Golan דנה בר Dana Bar טלי רון Tali Ron תמה קסטל Tama Castel אלון שיריזלי Alon Shirizly יוחאי חקק Yohai Hakak תאודור בוגיצ’י Theodor Bughici תמר כתריאל Tamar Katriel גדי דורון Gadi Doron אליקה פלדמן Elika Feldman דנה שץ בראון Dana Shatz Brown דניאל שוורץ Daniel Schwartz קובי כהן-שגיא Kobbi Cohen-Sagi נעמי פינק Naomi Fink ציבי לינדר Zivi Linder נעמי עציון Naomi Etzion אהוד הורביץ Ehud Hourvitz עמוס גבירץ Amos Gvirtz עדי סיון Adi Sivan מיכל בן אהרן Michal Ben Aharon עמרו חטיב Amro Khatib עירית הדרי Irit Hadary נפתלי ספיר Naftali Sappir יניב שחר Yaniv Shachar ליאור לוי Lior Levy עלית וייל שפרן Alit Wiel Shafran עמי הרטשטיין Ami Hartsrein מיקי פישר Miky Fischer דורון עינבל Doron Inbal נחמה פרל Nehama Perel מירי סגל Miri Segal לילי אהרוני Lili Aharoni עדי מעוז Adi Maoz ברק הימן Barak Heymann אסיה לדיז’ינסקיה Assia Ladizhinskaya איתן דיאמונד Eitan Diamond תומר ברק Tomer Barak יעל וירני רויזנברג Yael Vierny Roisenberg איתן לרר Eitan Lerer שרון ליבנה Sharon Livne מיכאל ספיר Michael Sappir עלמה יצחקי Alma Itzhaky רונית ציטיאט Ronit Chitayat אביטל לוצקי Avital Lutzky קרן טובה רובינשטיין Keren Tova Rubinstein אורית בינדרמן פאר Orit Binderman Fehr ענת פיק Anat Pick נועה קאופמן Noa Kaufman נועה ממרוד Noa Mamrud שושנה לונדון ספיר Shoshana London Sappir עירית וולפנדיל Irit Wolfendale קוסטה בלאק Costa Black אליעד וגנר Eliad Wagner רחלי שוחט Rachel Shochat אורית מרום Orit Marom נעמה לשם Naama Leshem ענת לוטן Anat Lotan דפנה ליכטמן Dafna Lichtman צמרת הרשקו Zameret Hershco נטע טרם Neta Terem הדר ברנט Hadar Behrendt גילה מרוז טוט Gila Maroz Toth עלמה אבני Alma Avni קלה ספיר Kela Sappir גאיה סעאתי Gaia Saati גלילה ספרים Galila Spharim נינו אחי יובל Nino Ahi Yuval אורנה לביא Orna Lavi תמר משמר Tamar Mishmar ים ניר-בז’רנו Yam Nir-Bejerano אי.תמר בלדסו (I)tamar Bledsoe אורי שני Uri Shani ורד קופיץ Vered Kupits אורית לודן Urit luden טל גרניט Tal Granit עומר אבו חוסין Omar Abou Hossien אנדרה רוזנטל Andre Rosent יהודה גרניט Yehuda Granit דפנה איכילוב Dafna Ichilov פפה גולדמן Pepe Goldman ורד ברמן Vered Berman עדיה גודלבסקי Adaya Godlevsky טלי שפר Tali Schaefer דליה כץ Dalia Kats שמש צילה ברכה Tzila Shemesh Beraha רימון לביא Rimmon Lavi סימה קליימן Sima Kleiman דידי יצחקי Didi Izhaky אלכסנדר מרום Alexander Marom נדב דירקטור Nadav Direktor איתמר כהן Itamar Cohen מריאטה אופנהיימר Marietta Oppenheimer ניקול קפלן Nicole Kaplan סיון פלג Sivan Peleg בעז קורן Boaz Koren ימימה פינק Yemima Fink יהודה בשן Yuda Bashan תרצה בר חנין Tirza Bar Hanin אפרת פרידמן Efrat Friedman מיכה לשם Mich Leshem אברהם פרנק Avraham Frank יעקב גור Yacov Gur לב אובצ’קין Lev Ovechkin לילך טל-ניר Lilah Tal-Nir טל חמווי Tal Hamaoui רות זסלנסקי Ruth Zaslansky מירי וינגרטן Miri Weingarten מילי כ”ץ Mili Katz כדיה חזז Kadia Hazaz קרן רוס Karen Ross זואי גוטצייט Zoe Gutzeit יונתן שחם Yonatan Shaham אירית ורד רענן Irit Vered Ranan תמר בן דור Tamar Ben Dor חנה ארמן פינקלשטיין Hanna Ermann Finkelstein יהודית וייסרט Judith Weissert מרינה קגן Marina Kagan רוני מאירשטיין Roni Meyerstein זהר חרמון Zohar Hermon טלי כהן גרבוז Taly Cohen Garbuz שולה גלעד Shula Gilad איתן ברכמן Eitan Berechman עידו אבן פז Ido Even Paz גליה שרתיאל Galia Sartiel פרימה בוביס Frima Bubis עמית פיצר Amit Fitzer יסמין הלוי Yasmine Halevi נוא קדאח Nawa Qaddah ערן בר-עם Eran Bar-Am שחר ווקס Shachar Waks מורן זמיר Moran Zamir ראומה דה גרוט Reuma De-Groot רונן וולף Ronen Wolf יערה דגוני Yaara Dagoni קים יובל Kim Yuval מיכל גוטמן Michal Gutman חררדו לייבנר Gerardo Leibner אליצור גלוק Elitzur Gluck סופי שנפר Sophie Shnaper דליה חשמונאי Dalia Hashmonay עדי אביבי Adi Avivi ‏בנימין בן אמוץ Benjamin Ben Amotz נעמה פרייס Naama Preis אמנון קרן Amnon Keren זוהר אומברטו שם טוב Zohar Umberto Shem Tov גבי סילון Gaby Silon יונתן לבוביץ Jonathan Lebowitsch איתמר כהן Itamar Cohen מיכל וגה-לוונטל Michal Vega-Levental אלעזר אלחנן Elazar Elhanan תמנה פרץ Timna Perets איתמר כהן Itamar Cohen יואב בכר Yoav Becher הדס בר Hadas Bar רונית ריצ׳י Ronit Ricci יאני יובל Janni Yuval יובל מן Yuval Man לורי גולדמן Laurie Goldman קרן דניאל Keren Daniel צחי סלונים Tzachi Slonim יעלה רולנד Yaala Roland מיקה פולנקו Mieka Polanco מיכל פוקס Michal Fux ליאורה פרייס Liora preis אפרת עיני Efrat einey הדס דוידוב Hadas Davidov רות גדיש Ruth Gadish דפנה קדם Daphna Kedem הדרה גרמי Hadara Garmi רותי מרום Ruti Marom צפריר גת Tsafrir Gat רונה אבן מריל Rona Even Merrill ג’נה הנסון Jenna Hanson נעמי שאנן Naomi Shaanan נועה נבות Noa Navot נעם שורש Noam Shoresh נורמן מטאנס Norman Metanis איריס קבלרו אליאב Iris Cavallero Eliav מרק מרקוס Marc Marcus אוסקר עוזי וירני Oskar U. Vierny נח שמיר Noah Shamir יעל סלע Yael Sela עופר אשכנזי Ofer Ashkenazi יהב ארז Yahav Erez יעקב טנץ Yaakov Tench טומי דרייפוס Tommy Dreyfus סמדר בקר Smadar Becker סוזאן גבאלי Suzane Jabaly טליה אזרחי Talya Ezrahi פאתן ג׳טאס Faten Ghattas פאולה רובינק Paula Rubinek רותי מרגלית Ruti Margarit קרן אור קיצ׳ס Kerenor Kitches רפי דודזון Rafi Davidson נועה הראל Noa Harell   תולי פלינט Tuly Flint יעל מסר Yael Messer רחל בית אריה Rachel Beitarie הרב דובי אביגור Rabbi Dubi Avigur גלית כץ Galit Katz הלית גורן Goren Hilit ויילר Wijler עבד רדא Abed Reda דורית כפרי Dorit Kafri יעל דקל Yael Dekel הליה בר-מג Helya Bar-Mag הגר להב יצחקי Hagar Lahav Jizhaki אמי ספרד Emi Sfard סוהא טוויל קאדרי Suha Taweel Kadry יוס סטייבל Yoss Stybel דבי רוס Debbie Ross מוריה שלומות Moria Shlomot טדי פסברג Teddy Fassberg מיכל בראור Michal Baror נעמי קליין Naomi Klein אתי אלבז גריפיון Etty Elbaz Griffioen יואב גורפינקל Yoav Gurfinkel נעמיקה ציון Nomika Zion גיל הררי Gil Harari נירית וייגה Nirit Veiga ליאת גינזבורג Liat Ginzburg דיטה ביטרמן Dita Bitterman הילה בר און Hilla Bar On מיכל גולדברג Michal Goldberg אלי שטרן גילהר Ellie Stern Gilhar שחר בחור Shahar Bahur מיקאלה בנבנשתי Michaella Benvenisti עודד בכר Oded Bahar לינדה ילינסקי Linda Yelinski דניאל יהלום Daniel Yahalom גיא רפפורט Guy Rappaport עופר שור Ofer Shorr יהב זוהר Yahav Zohar שירלי מיכאלביץ Shirli Michalevicz הילית בן-אברהם Hilit Ben-Avraham עידית קורן Idit Koren אושרה שורץ רעים Oshra Schwartz Reim כליל טרופין Klil Troupin עידית טולידאנו Idit Toledano ענבר לביא Inbar Lavi דרור טפליצקי Dror Teplitzki רות בן אריה Ruth Ben Arie לירון מילשטיין Liron Milstein עידן מאיר Idan Meir נעם הופר Noam Hoffer רומי לוי Romy Levy שרה לי מאיר Sara Lee Meir עומר כץ Omer Katz רות אוניק Ruth Onik בן בלפר Ben Belfer שלי סגל-שקד Shelli Segal-Shaked גדי ניסנהולץ Gadi Nisenholz גד ברנע Gad Barnea אורי וורצברגר Uri Wertzbergher יעל פליישמן Elena Fleischman נירית אוליצור Nirit Ulitzur רונה קולבק Rona Kulback יונתן פקרמן Jonathan Peckerman גיא קשת Guy Keshet דבי לרמן Debby Lerman באסל טנוס Basel Tannous אור חנוך Or Hanoch יואב פילובסקי Yoav Pilowsky שרון רוט Sharon Roth דוד צימרמן David Zimerman סינטיה כראל Cynthia Carel מיה בירן Mia Biran דניאל גרינפטר Daniel Gruenpeter רוני רפאל Roni Refael חן אלון Chen Alon תלמה אדמון Talma Admon דויד קצין David Katzin אסף אהרונסון Asaf Aharonson שירה זילברפרב Shira Zilberfarb בן ציון אשל Ben Z. Eshel פנינה שטיינר Pnina Steiner מעין שנער Maayan Shinar יוסי רוזנמן Yossi Rozenman שביט סהר סלום Shavit Sahar Salom יונתן רגב Yonatan Regev נעמה ורדי Naama Vardy עפר לוי Ofer Levy קרן פרנקל Karen Frankl שירה לוי Shira Levy יובל יונג Yuval Yung עומר רז Omer Raz דניאלה שמגר Daniella Shamgar ים שניר Yaam Snir שרה פוסטק Sarah Postec גל יופה Gal Yoffe נטלי אדלר-אופנהיים Natalie Adler-Oppenheim אדם אלרט Adam Ellert שרון לוזון Sharon Luzon איתמר ירון Itamar Yaron עומר פרי Omer Peri סמיר איראני Samir L. Iranee מאוריסיו לפצ׳יק Mauricio Lapchik עינב אפק Einav Afek שלומית יפעת Shlomit Yifat תמר גרשוני Tamar Gershoni מיכאל ענברי Michael Anbary גליה בר- טל Galiya Bar-Tal מיכל שוקרון Michal Chukrun ירון קדם Yaron Kedem לילה בוברוביץ׳ Lila Bobrowicz נעמי לוטן מלכה Nomi Malca נילי גפנן Nili Gafnan תמרה טראובמן Tamara Traubmann לילי שיש Lily Shaish טל קמינר Tal Kaminer נדב קוניג Nadav Koenig אריאל ברנשטיין Ariel Bernstein יפתח רוזינר Iftach Roziner מנדי קרטנר Mandy Cartner אילנה בר Ilana Baer גל דגון Gal Dagon אורלי אופלטקה Orly Oplatka איתן בר-אדם Eitan Bar-Adam עתליה לוי Atalya Levy טלי קמינר Tali Kaminer חנוך בורנשטין Hanoch Borenstein סלים עבאס Salim Abbas סהר דמרי Sahar Damri נפתלי ישראלי Naftally Israeli סיון משגב Sivan Misgav תמר נוביק Tamar Novick אסתר דרמון Esther Darmon טדי בראודה Teddy Braude תומר פלח Tomer Falah מליק גוזובסקי Malik Gozovski גילי אבידור Gili Avidor ירון גרינברג Yaron Greenberg עודד פאפוריש Oded Paporisch אלינור בולג Elinor Bollag עופרה קורן Ofra Koren מתן הלמן Mattan Helman שאילה שלו Shelagh Shalev עפרה גולנד ארבטובה Ofra Goland Arbatova קרן גרליץ Keren Gerlitz עמרי אברם Omri Abram ברוך שליו Baruch Shalev אביגיל מטלון Avigail Matalon דינה הררי Dina Harari מיכל ורטהים Michal Wertheim גלית אדר Galit Adar לי מרדכי Lee Mordechai אייל צ’יובנו Eyal Ciobanu סיון הלוי Sivan Halevi ניב גורדון Neve Gordon נפתלי רוזנברג Naftali Rosenberg יצחק נבו Isaac Nevo דפנה הוט Daphna Hutt עפרה עמיקם Ofra Amikam נועה רותם Rotem Noa א. בר A. Ber ג’וד לימבורג Jude Liemburg ערגה נץ Erga Netz זיוה ויילר Ziva Wijler מרב קליין אשר Merav Klein Asher עמירה איתיאל Amira Ityel דוד אפל David Appel אור צוק Or Zuk שאדי זידאן שווירי Shadi Zeidan Shweiry יוסי סמית Yossi Smith אדי קאופמן Edy Kaufman נורית בדש Nurit Badash דניאל בלום Daniel Bloom רותי מרגולין Ruti Margolim דן קוזנצוב Dan Kuznetsov בתיה בר אפרת Batya Bar Efrat ליאם מילצ׳ן Liam Milchan ענבל ארזי Inbal Arazy רועי חקק Royi Hakak מיכל רוזנטל ארז Michal Rosenthal Erez קרין לדרמן Karin Lederman סיון איל Sivan Eyal אירית גוריון Irit Gurion רות ברקאי Ruth Barkai מרים רוט רון Myriam Roth Ron רות סופר-אלנקוה Ruth Soffer-Elnekave דניאלה אלון Daniela Alon בת אל אונגר Bathelle Ungar גפן גונן Gefen gonen דבורה ליס Devora Liss נועם הורוביץ Noam Horowitz גדעון לנדו Gidon Lando גלי מרגלית Gali Margalit שרה רגב Sarah Regev שירה קשת Shira Keshet יזהר בלייוייס Izhar Bleiweiss מיה שטראוס Maya Strauss אסתר שפיצר Ester Spitzer טלאל כחיל Talat Kahil אלה שיין Ella Shine רוחמה וייס Ruhama Weiss   עפרה ישועה-ליית Ofra Yeshua-Lyth הדר זיידנר Hadar Seidner עינת דטנר Einat Dattner בני קדם Benny Kedem תמר ירון Tamar Yaron גלית מס איידר Galit Mass Ader תמר שר שלום Tamar Sar Shalom ניר לוטטי Nir Lutati אידה גולדרינג Ida Golding אבי זילברשטיין Avi Zilberstein תמרה ניומן Tamara Newman מליאור סיני Malior Sinai שוש רייזמן Shosh Riseman אוריאן זכאי Orian Zakai חוה ברקאי Hava Barkai מיקי לוי Miki Levi מירב גבעוני הרושובסקי Merav Givoni Hrushovski ענת מאירי Anat Meiri מורן ברקאי Moran Barkai אימי יפה Imi Joffe זוהר אלון Zohar Alon מירה בלבן Mira Balaban זיוה חביליו Ziva Havilio מיכל פרמינגר Michal Preminger אמיר פיינסקי Amir Pansky טליה פריד Talia Fried מארק ויסמן Marek Wajsman שירת סיימון חזני Shirat Simon Hazani מאיה טפרברג Maya Tepperberg סופי עמר Sophie Amar עדנה דה-בר Edna deBeer לבנת קפקא Livnat Kafka תמר סנקר Tamar Sankar נועה לשם Noa Leshem עמוס איתיאל Amos Ityel מיכל כהן Michal Cohen מאיה זאוברמן Maya Zauberman עדו בן הרוש Ido Ben Harush ענר פרמינגר Aner Preminger רינה ויזר Rina Vizer נגה רובין Rubin Noga ת’אאר אבו ראס Thair Abu Ras מירונה אייזינגר Miruna Eisinger נועה אושרוב Noa Osheroff גיל מדובוי Gil Medovoy שי נוי Shai Noy דורית שיפין Dorit Shippin מיכל סלע Michal Sela טל אילן Tal Ilan דינה מגנס Dina Magnes קובי זוננשיין Cobi Sonnenschein רמה כ”ץ Rama Katz נאוה זוננשיין Nava Sonnenschein תמר פיטרברג Tamar Piterbarg דורית נעמן Dorit Naaman צוף בן ישי Tzuf Ben Ishay קורן פלדמן Coren Feldman עמי רזיאל Ami Raziel שרי כראל Sari Carel מיכל מוטרו Michal Motro חגית פלוגה Hagit Paloge אסף דבורי Asaf Dvori עוזי מוטרו Uzi Motro הגר דרור מליניאק Dror Maliniek Hagar בסמה נסראללה Basma Nasrallah אתי רוזנטל Etty Rosenthal יוסי חן Yossi Khen יולי נובק Yuli Novak נריה מרק Neriya Mark דניה מרינוב Dania Marinov יעל הררי Yael Harari יעל גיל Yael Gil אילנה הירש-לסקואיה Ilana Hirsch-Lescohier תמר גלזרמן Tamar Glezerman דוד בן הרא”ש David Benarroch שרית מיכאלי Sarit Michaeli ניר מעין Nir Mayan רות לייטנר Ruth Leitner נורית אגמון Nurit Agmon גרי קיימן Gary Kamen עדנה חכם-בסקין Edna Hakham-Baskin אדם יקותיאלי Addam Yekutieli מעין שטראוס Maayan Strauss רחל חיות Rachel Chayut יהודית קשת Yehudit Keshet דורוטה ויטן בן שאול Dorothee Witten Ben-Shaul למא אבו עגאג Lama Abo Ajaj נדב אמיר Nadav Amir אלון גבע Alon Geva ירון קליין Yaron Klein שיה בונשטיין Shaya Bonstein Jacob Serruya W. מלי לרמן Mely Lerman ענבל הללי בלס Inbal Haleli Blass נמרוד בן זאב Nimrod Ben Zeev אתי גורן Eti Goren אלה ברונו Ela Bruno חיה אשכנזי Chaia Ashkenazy תקווה מירון Tikva Meron אילת קאהאן Ayellet Kahan גלעד בן ארי Gilad Ben Ari נעמה אב-שלום Na’ama Av-Shalom יוהנה לרמן Yohanna Lerman חגי מטר Haggai Matar צליל צמת Tslil Tsemet אייל סיון Eyal Sivan אלי ברקת Eli Bareket נועה נעמן Noa Naaman חיה נח Haia Noach רותי ארז Ruthy Erez גילה סבירסקי Gila Svirsky דיאנה לם DeAnna Lam רונית בן שיר Ronit Ben Shir עדית שמר Idit Shemer ענת שרון Anat Sharon שירה פרבי Shira Farby אנו לוסקי Anu Luski רון אהרוני Ron Aharni אדוה גדות Adva Gadoth עמנואל אלמוסנינו Emmanuel Almosnino אורי בן נון Uri Binnun איהאב מסאלחה Aehab Massalha נעם בן מאיר Noam Ben Meir מיטל סטרול Maytal Strul תאיר לוין Tair Lewin נטע חן טוב Neta Chen Tov כרמל ישראלי Carmel Yisraeli גבי לחמן Gabi Lachman אורית לויטר Orit Loyter עינת קוכן Einat Kochan עינת פודחרני Einat Podjarny גיא אלחנן Guy Elhanan ראובן (רובי) ציגלר Reuven (Ruvi) Ziegler דני שרירא Dani Schrire נועה דולברג Noa Dolberg רימא עבוד Rima Abboud מנאל תותרי ג׳ובראן Manal Totry Jubran אריאלה אופנהיים Ariella Oppenheim רביד גרימברג Ravid Grimberg רוי בר Roy Barr רון עמיר Ron Amir ענת שולץ Anat Schultz פרננדו פרידמן Fernando Friedmann אסף אורון Assaf Oron ניר גוב Nir Gov אמיתי נצר Amitai Netser איתמר שפירא Itamar Shapira שיר חרמש Shir Hermeche הילית בן מאיר שטרן Hilit Ben Meir Stern טלי חיים Tali Haim רפי מרון Raphi Meron כרמל דור Carmel Dor מיכאל פיגנבאום Michael Feigenbaum נינה קון Nina Kon ג׳ניפר לוין Jenn Lewin ציפי רונן דברת Tsipi Ronnen Dovrat דניאל אורון Daniel Oron עדי אילת Adi Eilat ירון שטרן Yaron Stern עלמה אלברט Alma Albert אביעד אלברט Aviad Albert אורי לביאן Ori Lavian גלי ויסוקר Gali Visoker סיון מדיוני Sivan Medioni מיכל כהן Michal Cohen איל שני Eyal Shani נדב פרנקוביץ’ Nadav Frankovich שרון פרץ Sharon Peress נורית רובין Nurit Rubin לולא טאהא Lola Taha ניצן פרלמן Nitzan Perelman גיא דוידי Guy Davidi רון ברקאי Ron Barkai סיגל רונן Sigal Ronen מתן סקר Matan Seker תמר פליישמן Tamar Fleishman גיל גרטל Gil Gertel שחר גבאי Shahar Gabai סיגל נאור Sigal Naor יצחק אחאבן Itzhak Ahavan Jane Jeinson Peschin דפנה וסטרמן Daphna Westerman יואב רן Yoav Ran הרב ג’רמי מילגרום Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom יעל חבר Yael Hever תמר גולדשמיד Tamar Goldschmidt איה קניוק Aya Kaniuk שולי דיכטר Shuli Dichter אורלי אל-פלג Orly Elpeleg דינה הכט Dina Hecht ארנה מור Orna Mor נטע גולן Neta Golan אותי בת-אל פוקס Outi Bat-El Foux תמרה פרת Tamara Pratt אבי בלכרמן Avi Blecherman רחל פרץ Rachel Perets מייסא ארשיד Meisa Irshaid איילת בן-ישי Ayelet Ben-Yishai עודד שטיינברג Oded Steinberg שירה כהן Shira Cohen   תומר קוקס Tomer Cooks מירון רפופורט Meron Rapoport ענת הלפרן Anat Halpern לורה שוורץ Laura Schwartz לולי גינסברג Luli ginsberg שושי ענבר Shoshi Anbar שירה סתיו Shira Stav ליאורה איילון Liiora.Eilon סמדר נהב קמינר Smadar Nehab-Kaminer מעין הראל Maayan Harel יוסי וולפסון Yossi Wolfson מעוז ינון Maoz Inon שאול סתר Shaul Setter יאיר אורן Yair Oren דורית אלון Dorit Alon דלית זיו Dalit Ziv ירון הלוי Yaron Halevy זמיר שץ Zamir Shatz תום אלפיה Tom Alfia איתמר חמיאל Itamar Hamiel ג׳יזל שפירו Gisèle Sapiro יעל גולן Yael Gaulan יער דגן Yaar Dagan אלמה ביבלש סיני Alma Biblash Sinai אילן וולקוב Ilan Volkov ברק בן יוסף Barak Ben Yossef קרין כרנין Karin Khranin שמואל אזולאי Shmuel Azulay זהר פורת Porat Zohar אסתי צאל Esti Tsal גלעד פז Gilad Paz גרישא שכנס Grisha Shakhnes שניר קליין Snir Klein אורנה רינת Orna Rinnat אירית בן משה Irit Ben Moshe אייל רוזמרין Eyal Rozmarin כרמלה זייגר Carmela Zaiger נעם גרינברג Noam Greenberg נטע גושן Neta Goshen רותי גור Ruti Gur רועי אנג’ל Roey Angel שירי דוידוביץ Shiri Davidovitch ליאן רם Lian Ram גד אביחי נזרי Gad Avihai Nizri ויוי צורי Vivi Sury ד”ר אסף סטי אל-בר Assaf Sati El-Bar נטלי הוארד Natalie Howard עירית שמגר Irit Shamgar תמי ברקאי Tami Barkai עופר מתן Ofer Matan נאור בן-יהוידע Naor Ben-Yehoyada אלהיה אייל מור Ellaya Ayal Mor ענת אילון Anat Eylon רוני בן דוד Roni Ben David אפרת בן ברק Efrat Ben Barak יונתן עדן Yonatan Eden סנדיה בר-קמה Sandhya Bar-Kama חיים יעקובי Haim Yacobi רמי גודוביץ Rami Gudovitch בילי מוסקונה לרמן Bili Moncona Lerman נעה קורן אגוסטיני Noa Koren Agostini תמר רוטמן Tamar Rotman יוליה וולך Julia Volokh מאי רוזן May Rose נירית בן חורין Nirith Ben Horin איציק זוארץ Itsik Zuarets רגב גרוך Regev Baruch ליאת חדד Liat Hadad מיכל רון Michal Ron עידו גינת Ido Ginat שירה וילקוף Shira Wilkof אמיר נוחם Amir Noham מיכל רון Michal Ron דוד ברונשטיין David Bronstein גבי פימה Gaby Fhima רוחמה מרטון Ruchama Marton רותם בר Rotem Bar דרור נבו Dror Nevo גילה קפלן Gila Kaplan עופר גבאי Ofer Gabai איילת גרוס Ayelet Gross רן מירום Ron Merom רנא זינאלדין Rana Zenaldeen איילת לאונוב Ayelet Leonov מריה בולוס Maria Boulus עילי סקוטלסקי Ilay Skutelsky רנא פראן Rana Farran מאי קרני May Karny ערין דיאב Areen diab איריס הוד Iris Hod הרב דניאל בורשטיין Rabbi Daniel Burstyn בקה סטרובר Becca Strober יובל כלפון Yuval Halfon אסף לפיד Assaf Lapid ליויה פרנס Livia Parnes רייצ’ל דובי Rachell Duby אלעד לפידות Elad Lapidot נועה צדקה Noa Sadka רועי להב Roee Lahav שאול חנוכה Shaul Hanuka לין סגל Lynne Segal אור אסם Or Osem מיכל זק Michal Zak לורן שומן Laurent Schuman תמר רפופורט Tama Rapoport עינת ולטר Eiinat Walter עמר ברטוב Omer Bartov מיכל מרגליות Michal Margaliot היידי שטרן Heidi Stern רן שאולי Ran Shauli גיא שלו Guy Shalev אליה דרוקר Eliya Druker דן ואלפיש Dan Walfisch דליה קרשטיין Dalia Kerstein ליאור פרלמן lior Perelman יוסף כהן Yosef Cohen דב באום Dov Baum אהוד תגרי Ehud Tagari איילה לוין Ayala Levin ניר איל Nir Eyal אורלי רפמן Orly Rafman לי שיר Li Shir יפתח אסתריק Yiftach Estrik יועד אליעז Yoad Eliaz סמדר דרייפוס Smadar Dreyfus שמואל טופנו Samuele Tofano גבריאלה גינסברג-פלטשר Gabriella Ginsberg-Fletcher גלעד אסתריק Glad Estrik אורן עתני Oren Othnay שירה פנחס Shira Pinhas אריה דובנוב Arie Dubnov עילי מרטון Ilay Marton טלי קלגסברון Tali Klagsbrun אסף כץ Assaf Katz תהילה גדרון Tehila Gidron מיכל צרנוביצקי Michal Zernowitski עמרי איתן Omri Eytan איתי נבו Itai Nevo מיה פרלמוטר Mia Perelmuter מור מילר Mor Miller צ’יבי שיכמן Chibi Shichman נמרוד פלשנברג Nimrod Flaschenberg עינת עידן Einat Idan נגה איתן Noga Eitan עידן בודוני Idan Bodoni איתן נצ׳ין Etan Nechin נטע נעמן Netta Naaman נורמה מוסי Norma Musih אהוד סלומון Ehud Salomon יוסטין מקסימיליאן Justin Maximilian ויקי ברנדל Vikcy Brandel עופר פרס Ofer Peres מיכל לבטוב Michal Levertov ענר גורני Aner Gorni ישראל יאיר בוימל Yisrael Yair Baumol נועה שינדלינגר Noa Shaindlinger רננה סקלסקי Renana Skalsky חמו וייזל Hamu Waisel אורי ילינסקי Uri Jelinski מיכאל ספרד Michael Sfard לירון מור Liron Mor מיכל ג׳מילי Michal Gamily שלי נתיב Shelly Nativ עומר ויסברג Omer Weissberg יונתן סיסו Yonatan Sisso אליה גינתון Eliyah Ginton סיגל פורטס Sigal Fortus אוריה כהן Uriah Cohen נעם דובב Noam Dovev משה נחמן מירב Merav Moshe Nachman ליה תמיר Lia Tamir וסים מסרי Wasim Massri נעם בהט Noam Bahat גילה ריבק Gila Riback אסף טלגם Assaf Talgam עינת דוידי Einat Davidi אור שלונסקי Ur Shlonsky מינה גושן אשר Mina Goshen Asher עירית אברך Irit Avrech חדוה רדובניץ Hedva Radovanitz ליסה ולדבטום Lisa Waldbaum אביגיל גרץ Avigail Greatz מאיה מור Maya Mor רלה מזלי Rela Mazali יעל יצחק-עידן Yael Izhak Edan סופיה ברודסקי Sophia Brodsky יהל מורביץ להב Yahel Murvitz Lahav אסתי ברעד פורים Esti Barad Purim דבי פרבר Debby Farber תמר גומל Tamar Gomel נטע לוי Neta Levi איימי מדובוי Amy Medovoy נגה אשר Noga Asher נעמה בית אריה שלונסקי Naama Beit Arie Shlonsky מילאת ביברמן Milett Biberman חגית נרקיס Hagit Narkiss גילי לויתן Gili Liviatan אבי יעקובסון Avi Jacobson נטע לוי Neta levy דינה ר.ז. Dina R. Z.   נדב ליניאל Nadav Linial עדי שחטר Adi Shechter טוביה מצר Tuvia Metzer יטבת גבע משה Yotvat Geva Moshe גל חרמוני Gal Hermoni הדר יעקובסון Hadar Jacobson רמי רוטנברג Rami Rotenberg חיה ליבנה Haya Livne תמר גיא-חיים Tamar Guy-Haim נטע לוי Netta Loevy אלון תרלת Alon Tchelet אלנה רוסו Elena Russo עידו עילם Iddo Elam אורי ביתן Uri Bitan ערן אביבי Eran Avivi ליטל בוסתן Lital Bustan דניאל לשצ׳ינסקי Daniel Leshinski רן מלינה Ran Malina ניר חסון Nir Hasson שרון פידל Sharon Fidel איתמר פרידמן Itamar Friedman ג’וזף קמפ Joseph Kemp יואב קפשוק Yoav Kapshuk סטלה רוזנבאום Stella Rosenbaum אורי מור Uri Mor מרסלו סבירסקי Marcelo Svirsky ניקול סובוטניק Nicole Subbotnik שני ויסמן Shanie Weissman נורית פלד אלחנן Nurit Peled Elhanan רפי ניב Refael Niv רפרם חדד Rafram Chaddad גלעד אמיר Gilad Amir קאסי אריסון Cassie Arison שירה יהב Shira Yahav נעם ויזנברג Noam Wiesenberg נירית בן ארי Nirit Ben Ari יערה שחם Yaara Shaham תמי יקירה Tami Yakira ניצה ינאי Niza Yanay נעם וייס Noam Weiss מיכה קפלן Micha Kaplan עומר אלעד Omer Elad הגר אפריאט Hagar Afriat מיכל שוורץ Michal Schwartz טל וינוגרדוב Tal Vinogradov יואב גלאי Yoav Galai דניאל לוי Daniel Levy טלילה קייזר Talila Kaiser עומר נאור Omer Naor מיכל גינח Michal ginach שלומית קליינמן Shlomit Kleinman קרן הבר Karen Haber אביחי בטיטו Avihay Bettito אור ברט Or Barat אן ספיר Anne Sapir נטע שטהל Neta Stahl יאיר פרי Yair Perry מיה הבר Maya Haber אמיר לירון Amir Liron יואל ליאון Yoel Lion תום הנאור Tom Hanauer נדב נצרתי Nadav Nazarathy אריאל כץ Ariel Katz עתליה עומר Atalia Omer נועה לם Noa Lamm זואי רוז Zoe Rose גליה קציר Galia Katsir דוד ללום David Laloum אברהם רוזנברג Avraham Rosenberg עילם רון אליאס Elam Ron Elias לייזר פלס Leiser Peles יפעת קידר Ifat Keydar נעמה לייב Naama Leib חיים פרידמן Chaim Friedman אלכס ניסן Alex Nissen ארנון שחר Arnon Shachar שבט אילת Shvat Eilat מיכל אהרוני Michal Aharony ורד רקנטי Vered Rekanati רבקה ויס Rivka Weiss דנאי אילון Danae Elon דן וייל Dan Weil איבון דויטש Yvonne Deutsch דבורה נוטוביץ Devorah Nutovics גרשון בסקין Gershon Baskin עטרה מוסקוביץ’ Atara Moscovich אברהם מירון Avraham Merom מיכאל שלו Michael Shalev טל זליג Tal Zelig נטע עמיר Neta Amir אסף שץ Assaf Shatz שי דהן Shay Dahan עמוס נוי Amos Noy רוני הלוי Ronnie Halevy סיגל אופנהיים שחר Sigal Oppenhaim Shachar אורן אור Oren Or ינון דוכן Yinon Dukhan רוני כוגן Ronnie Cogan אפרת טל Efrat Tal טניה ג׳ונס Tanya Jones נעמי פלט Naomi Plat נורית ענבר Nurit Inbar אילת מעוז Eilat Maoz עוז מלול Oz Malul הילה לולו לינ פרח כפר בירעים Hila Lulu LIn Farah Kufer Birim הילה עמא״ר Hila Amar אסיה לשם Assia Leshem מייק דורון Mike Doron הלל זהבי Hillel Zehavi אייל רוזין Eyal Rosin שירי שני Shiri Shani לילך ליפין Lilah Lifin נקרויינקו טטיאנה Nekroenko Tatyana עדי ארגוב Adi Argov רנה סיון Renée Sivan נטע אלראי Neta Alroy רבקה ענבל Rivka Inbal עומר עשת Omer Eshet נטע כספין Neta Caspin ליאת פסברג Liat Allex Fassberg אנה רוטמן Anna Rutman שחר שרף Shahar Sherf לירון פייט Liron Feit שושנה הלפר Shoshana Halper שחר עמיר Shahar Amir מאי עומר Mai Omer מור לוינגר רון Mor Levinger Ron מיה האושנר רגב Maya Regev רותי פליסקין Ruthie Pliskin יוסף זעירא Joseph Zeira מיכל עמיר Michal Amir אור גרליץ Or Gerlitz צבי לשם Zvi Leshem גיל אליאסי רוטשילד Gil Elyassi Rothschild אלון מרום Alon Marom רחלי מרחב Merhav Racheli אביעד אגם Aviad Agam איה מרום Aya Marom אלון צל סלע Alon Tsal Sela הילה די קסטרו Hila Di Castro דניאל ונסה רייט Danielle Vanessa Wright נועם שמוחה Noam Smooha ג׳וש קדיש Josh Kadish ליאור ארז Lior Erez רעות פרקש Reut Farkash ניר ארטוב Nir Artov שרי טיטו Sherry Tito מרים כהנקה Myriam Cohenca דניאל סלוצקי Daniel Slutsky איבון מנסבך Ivonne Mansbach גיא גולדמן Guy Goldman דורון צחר Doron Zachar נעמי זוסמן Naomi Sussmann יעל רם-שלום Yael Ram Shalom טוליפ קורשנר Tulip Kurcshner מרים קובנר Miriam Kovner טלי אילן Tali Ilan יהודית גרין Judith Green יובל תירוש Yuval Tirosh מיקה רותם Mika Rotem גלית בן אשר זיתון Galit Ben Asher מענית שאנן Maanit Shaanan יעל פדן Yael Padan עידו טל Ido Tal סיגול אור Sigul Orr רון עמית Ron Amit אסתרינה טרכטנברג Estherina Trachtenberg דבורה תלמי Deborah Talmi אפרת זהבי Efrat Zehavi אנדרה לוי Andre Levy לאה זהבי Lea Zehavi דודי רוקח Dudi Rokach הולדנגרבר נעם Noam Holdengreber נועה וינשטין Noa Weinstein ארז ביתן Erez Bittan נילי כהן Nili Cohen רועי לבנה Roi Livne מורן קליסמן Moran Kalisman עמיר סגל Amir Segal נטע מוזס Neta Moses סטיבן ברזילי Steven Barzilay נדב פינק Nadav Fink בני שלביץ’ Beny Shlevich מוטי וייט Moti White ענת ווגמן Anat Vogman ליטל חדד Lital Haddad נורצ׳ה חרוטס חולטן Noortje Grootscholten יעל מנדל Yael Mendel דוד ישראלי David Israeli שירה הרפז Shira Harpaz ג׳ורדן ג׳ייקובס Jordyn Jacobs דנה מילס Dana Mills לירן רזינסקי Liran Razinsky שקד קטיה כהן Shakes Katia Cohen אריאלה לוי Ariella Levy רן הכהן Ran HaCohen קארין לוי – ווטרמן Carine Levi – Waterman אוריאל אברהם Uriel Avraham אורי שור Uri Schor אלי לוי Elly Levy   מאיה ג’ונסטון Maya Johnston שרון גימפל Sharon Gimpel אליפלט לביא Elifelet Lavie ענת מסינג מרקוס Anat Messing Marcus אילון וינטראוב Eilon Weintroub ארז משה עמית Erez Moshe Amit ג’ולין וישניה Jolyne Vishnia עידית ברסלאור Edith Breslauer רחל לאה ג׳ונס Rachel Leah Jones מתנאל רחמים Matanel Rahamim עיליי זלינגר Illay Zelinger יובל טל Yuval Tal אורי אריאל Ori Ariel עמוס אדלר Amos Adler שחף פולקוב Shachaf Polakow ענת פדן Anat Padan מיכל רוט Michal Roth איריס שטרן לוי Iris Stern Levi ניצן ויסמן Nizan Weisman אהוד שם טוב Ehud Shem Tov דניאלה מוניי Daniella Mooney לני גאונט Lenny Gaunt לאה הדר Leah Hadar בתאל נגר Batel Nagar חגית ברקוביץ Hagit Berkovich גילי אברהמי Gili Avrahami שושנה גבאי Shoshana Gabay כריסטין חשיבון Christeen Khshiboun אביאל לואיס Aviel Lewis תימור כהן Timor Cohen יורם ורטה Yoram Verete טל יעקובוביץ׳ Tal Jakubowiczova ורד קיסר Vered Keasar נאוה חברוני Nava Hevroni רותם פרי Rotem Perry אורי רום Ori Rom וויליאם אלדן William Elgan ענת נרקיס Anat Narkis יהל גזית Yahel Gazit עמרי נג’אד Omri Najad שי אלגרבלי Shai Elgrably מרים סגר-חסיד Miriam Sager נועה לוין Noa Levin פרנצ’סקה די צ’אולה Francesca di Ciaula אריאל ציפל Ariel Cypel שירית אופיר Shirit Ophir אליענה בן דוד Eliana Ben David שי רימון Shay Rimon הגר קוטף Hagar Kotef ליאת קוזמא Liat Kozma טל ארבל Tal Arbel כהן אבידן ערן Eran Cohen Avidan גליה הס Galla Hess דב הרצנברג Dov Bernard Hercenberg עדי זלמן Ady Zelman דניאל אושרי Daniel Oshri אמיר פרייברג Amir Fraiberg עומר הולנדר Omer Hollander בתיה קפלן Batya Kaplan נעה בכר-פופל Noa Bahar-poppel אורן ירמיה Oren Yirmiya שחף ויסבין Shahaf Weisbein גיל אלרואי Gil Alroy רונית שחר Ronit Shachar עמית עובדיה Amit Ovadia אביגיל כוכבי Avigail kochavy עמית כהן Amit Cohen מיכל קייזר ליבנה Michal Kaiser-Livne אבשלום סטולר-עזרא Avshalom Stoler-Ezra יאיר שמעוני Yair Shimony שי-אל גולדברג אנדרוס Shai-El Goldberg Andrews רונית ויסברוד Ronit Waisbrod נועה לוין Noa Lewin אבי לוי-סטיבנסון Avi Levy-Stevenson עופר דגן Ofer Dagan טליה גבעון Talia Givon רן גרינוולד Ran Greenwald יונתן ירון Yonatan Yaron אורי צמרת Ori Tsameret עדנה לשם Edna Leshem גני הלוי Gony Halevi יובל ינקו Yuval Yanko שחר צמרת Shahar Tsameret אחינעם ברגר Achinoam Berger נעה היינה Noa Heyne מירב כהן Meirav Cohen נעמי רומיה יצחקי Neomi Rumia izaky נטליה סעייד Natalia Saied תמר גבע Tamar Geva תמרה הולקנוב Tamara Holkenov עתליה ישראלי-נבו Atalia Israeli-Nevo נעמי עזריאל Naomi Azriel יהונתן צור Yehonatan Zur בן פריידקין Ben Freidkin קרן אסף Keren Assaf עקיבא עזריאל Akiva Azriel מני פורת Meni Porat מירי ברק Miri Barak ליאם אליאס Liam Elias רזיה אילן Rasia Ilan הלל מדיני Hillel Medini גבריאל וינגרד Gavriel Vinegrad שי שביט Shy Shavit מיכל לסר Michal Leser רועי וגנר Roy Wagner שמואל סרמונטה גרטל Shmuel Sermoneta Gertel אסנת לסק Osnat Lask יובל אילון Yuval Eylon מאיה דיין Maya Dayan נופר כהנא Nofar Kahana יבגני בורנשטיין Evgeny Borenstein נגה פיינגלרנט Noga Fainguelernt ענבל קצף Inbal Ketzef ענבל בן יהודה Inbal Ben Yehuda ליאורה שיאון Liora Sion סיון ברק Sivan Barak נעמי שור Naomi Schor ליאם פורברג Liam Forberg יעל שכנר Yael Schechner בן מרמרלי Ben Marmarelli ענת אלזם Anat Elzam נילי כספי ליטבק Nili Caspi Litvak אמיר דגן Amir Dagan קרן שמש Keren Shemesh ורד וסרמן Vered vaserman ענת דגן Anat Dagan תומר ברלינסקי Tomer Berlinski דני פוקס Danny Fox מיכל לואיס Michal Lewis ג’ון לורליי רבס June Lorelei Reves אן אליזבת פינק Ann Elizabeth Fink עודד סייר Oded Sayar מיה איפרגן Mia Ifergan בר מאייר Bar Mayer מג׳ד ותד Majd Watad נדב עשור Nadav Assor עידן ארז Idan Erez תמי בן-שאול Tammy Ben-Shaul רחל בנימין סילבר Rachel Benjamin Silver נעם וויסברוד Noam Waisbrod סופיה חייטין Sofia Haytin דריה נקרסוב Daria Nekrasov עמוס לאור Amos Laor ורד אנגלהרד Vered Engelhard נועה רועי Noa Roei אביטל גת Avital Gat יוסי זמיר Yossi Zamir שירה בהט Shira Bahat מיכל קידר Michal Keidar נתלי אירלנד Nathalie Irland נור שני טחן Nur Shani Tahan תמרה וולף Tamara Wolf דוד לוי David Levy ג’ניה מליי Jenya Maley רוני גלבוע Roni Gilboa יונת עפרון Yonat Efron אילה רוטשילד Ayala Rothschild ליאור מאלי Lior Mali קרין מיכאלי Karin Michaeli תמי נוצני Tami Nozani טרה תורן Tara Toren עמירם כתבן Amiram Katvan עמית קרן צבי Amit Keren Zvi נעמי רז Naomi Raz עינת ענבל Ainatte Inbal אור קורן Or Koren תומר גרדי Tomer Gardi מיכל אורית Michal Orit Noy נתנאל אוזנה Netanel Ouzana נועה רעי Noa Roei אופיר פינס Ophir Pines ליאור סוחוי Lior Suchoy יואב עציוני Yoav Etzioni גדעון רז Gidon Raz שלי אטקיו Shelley Etkin תמר צרפתי Tamar Sarfatti שולמית קירובסקי Shulamit Kirovsky עדי רבינוביץ Adi Rabinovici שגיא קרמן Sagi Kerman ליאור אשכנזי Lior Ashkenazy דוד רזבי David Rosby איתמר שטמלר Itamar Stamler גיל לדרמן Gil Lederman שירה רובינשטיין Shira Rubinshtein מעין בורץ Maayan Bortz משה חזן Moshe Hazan יורי אמינוב Yorai Aminov יסמין קלשטיין Yasmin Kalstein דניאל אברך Daniel Avrekh דפי אגם-סגל Dafi Agam-Segal הגר סידס Hagar Sides אלונה רבקה כהן Alona Rivka Cohen מיה קפלן Mya Kaplan ספיר צייכנר Sapir Zichner גלית אקסלרד Galit Axelrad אבישי עבו Avishai Abbo חוליאטה טייכר Julieta Taicher שקד מורג Shaqued Morag אליסה ברוק Alissa Brook אורן מדיקס Oren Medicks   עלמה בק Alma Beck סיון אפרת Sivan Efrat מעיין ספייר Maayan Spyer אורי ברגר Uri Berger יואב גוש Yoav Gosh יעל שגב Yael Seggev קרן שפי Keren Sheffi איל פרידמן Eyal Freedman תמי ליברמן Tami Liberman תמר עילם Tamar Eilam שיר הוכרמן Shir Hocherman יעל אשכנזי Yael Ashkenazi תמר הראבן Tamar Hareven ענבל סמין Inbal Samin טליה קרבסקי Talia Krevsky יעל ברתנא Yael Bartana אמיר סיני ויסגלס Amir Sinai Weisglass מאיה זק Maya Zack קרן כהן Keren Cohen ניר פרבר Nir Ferber עידו בלום Ido Blum שרון עמיר Sharon Amir נועה שיינברגר Noa Sheinberger איתמר הראל Itamar Harel אלונה וייס Alona Weiss ליאור מאירי Lior Meiri צביה דובר Zvia Dover דויד מרגלית David Margalit גיל לוז Gil Luz דניאל עוז Daniel Oz דניאל בקר Daniel Becker יונתן ישראל Yonatan Israel רם מנחם Ram Menachem ערן פלר Eran Feller עמי אורן Ami Oren ישראל לזבניק Yisroel Lazewnik גיא בן אהרן Guy Ben-Aharon הילה מס Hilla Mass ליאת דאשט Liat Dasht ענבל בדיחי קפלן Inbal Badihi Kaplan תומר צירקילביץ Tomer zirkilevech סילביה קון Silvia Cohn תומר לב Tomer Lev דורין לוסטיג Doreen Lustig עמית לבלנג Amit Leblang אורי רם Uri Ram אהוד לוי Ehud Levy אורי כוורי Uri Cavari נאוה שרייבר Nava Schreiber מיקי לרון Micky Laron לימור שחם Limor Schacham שרון רוזנר Sharon Rosner ערן פישר Eran Fisher איתי ספיר Itay Sapir אבנר גבריאלי Avner Gavrieli הרב מישא שולמן Rabbi Misha Shulman עדית זרטל Edith Zertal נועם גל Noam Gal אבנר בן שושן Avner Bensoussan נטע רודיך Neta Rudich שיר אלון Shir Alon ענת אלון Anat Alon גיא אליאב Guy eliav בנימין קורמן Benjamin Korman ילון פישביין Yalon Fishbein אבישג זיו Avishag ziv חנה יגר Hanna Jaeger רוני שני Ronny Shani מאיה דיקר Maya Dicker עמרי בללי Omry Baleli ראובן הרמלין Reuven Harmelin מיכל הוס Michal Huss שני לקס Shani Lax יפעת הרמלין Yfat Harmelin גיא דולב Guy Dolev גליה גור זאב Galia Gur Zeev מיכל בילצקי Michal Biletzki ורדה שיפר סבה Varda Shiffer Sebba דורי אנגל Dori Engel ליאורה מרג׳ן Liora Mrejen עינת ארנהיים Einat Arnheim אליאור דיקר Elior Dicker דור יעקובי Dor Yaccobi אלישבע גברא Elisheva Gavra שירן בוכריס Shiran Buchris צוקי רינגרט Zuki Ringart ענבל חבר Inbal Hever איב ריד Eve Reed לירז אקסלרד Liraz Axelrad חנה קדיש Hannah Kadish נועה רוט Noa Roth דני כהאן Des Kahn נעם גל Noam Gal רות מרוז Ruth Mayroz נגה רותם Noga Rotem טלי תמיר Tali Tamir רדא ענבוסי Reda Anbusi אריאל שוייצר Ariel Schweitzer שירה גפן Shira Geffen שלומי אלקבץ Shlomi Elkabetz עדן פלס Eden Peles מורן טל Moran Tal קטרין קאופמן Katherine Kaufman נגה ויסמן Noga Vaisman תום בעבור Tom Baavur רועי בקר Roi Becker ליעד שולרופר Liad Shulrufer עמר צנגוט Omer Zengut מרית שלם Marit Shalem שרה טל Sara Tal אילן ברקני Ilan Barkani נתאי הרדי Nitai Hardy גיא שובל Guy Shoval רותי מוס Ruti Moss מלי צנגוט Maly Zengut קרן טנא Keren Tene ויקטוריה ד Victoria D עידו נהרי Ido Nahari רחל פרוידנטל Rachel Freudenthal דפנה ברעם Daphna Baram סילבינה לנדסמן Silvina Landsmann עמית בנדל Amit Bendel איתי הכהן Ittai Hacohen חגית לבל חגאי Hagit Lobel Hagai ליאת טאוב Liat Taub אלכסנדרה בלטמן Alexandra Blatman אור ברקת Or Bareket נמרוד אסטרחן Nimrod Astarhan רז עפרון Raz Efron הרצליה אפרתי Herzlia Efrati מאיה רוס Maya Ross נמי פסי Nami Passi ענבל סיני Inbal Sinai אור ברקת Or Bareket איריס קמינסקי Iris Kaminski צרלס גרינבאום Charles Greenbaum אפרת בן-זאב Efrat Ben-Zeev אדוה זלצר Adva Selzer אילן שטייר Ilan Shtayer רוני עמיאל Roni Amiel גיא בן נר Guy Ben ner מיקי קרצמן Miki Kratsman קרן קינברג Keren Kuenberg ליאור צור Lior Zur עינת בן-אריה Einat Ben-Arie פיליפ בלאיש Philippe Bellaïche אנט פלד Annette Feld איריס גנור Iris Ganor שמואל גרואג Shmuel Groag שירלי קדר Shirley Kedar זהבה חן-לוי Zehava Chen-Levy נורית גיל Nurit Gil נטע שושני Neta Shoshani לירון גלעד Liron Gilad רומי גולן Romy Golan נגה נבו Noga Nevo ג’נבייב נאדו Geneviève Nadeau ליטל אלפון-לוין Lital Alfon-Levin ראובן שליב Reuven Shaliv ענת אבן Anat Even עירית הררי Irit Harari טל אניב-ברגמן Tal Aniv-Bregman סלינה רוזנבלום לפלם Celina Rozenblum Lefelman אופיר טל Ophir Tal עדי אבן Adi Even מיה קלר Maya Klar הדס צבר Hadas sabar טלי גילן Tali Gillan דוד מלובני David Malivni נעמה געתון Naama Gaathon תומר מוקד Tomer Moked נטליה ורשבסקי Natalia Warschawski ליאן רוזנטל Liane Rosenthal ליאור פרנקנשטיין Lior Frankenstain ג׳ני קננוב שעיו Jenny Kananov Shayo מתן רוזנשטראוך Matan Rosenstrauch שיר מורן Shir Moran שי יחזקאלי Shai Yehezkelli מעיין אליקים Maayan Elyakim יעל עזגד Yael Azgad נגה וולף Noga Wolff נעמה איתיאל Naama Ityel מיכל נבו Michal Nevo אסף ליבוביץ׳ Assaf Leibowitz אריאל מיאסטל Ariel Meistel אורי גבעתי Ori Givati יהודית ינהר Yehudit Yinhar רענן דוד Ra’anan David מיכאל ריד Michael Reed מירב חרסט Meirav Harsat רז בדו Raz Bdv הדר אהוביה Hadar Ahuvia נעים פאר Naim Far נטע טל Netta Tal אור גילת Or Guilat בתיה פלדמן Batya Feldman שי בן-דוד Shai Ben-David הדס פילובסקי רון Hadas Pilowsky Ron טליה אילן Talia Ilan עדי אופיר Adi Ofir   מורית ממן Morit Maman אדם בראון Adam Brown מירון אגר Meiron Egger שלומציון קינן Shlomzion Kenan אודי תמוז Ehud Tamuz בועז וייס Boaz Weisz ליאת רוזנברג Liat Rosenberg רותי שטרן Ruti Stern אביגיל ס Abigail S טלי ברעם Tali Baram עדו אילון Ido Ayalon איילת לנדאו Ayelet Landau שירי צור Shiri Tsur עינב גיל Einav Gil דודו מליניאק David Maliniek הלל שרייר Hallel Schreier יוסי וקסמן Yossi Waxman שולמית פרבר Shulamit Ferber סיגלית לנדאו Sigalit Landau יואב דומן Yoav Duman אברום בורג Avrum Burg תום גבעול Tom Givol גילי ברנע Gili Barnea אורלי פרידמן Orli Fridman רותי שוקן כץ Ruth Schocken Katz יואל טייב Yoel Taieb רוני הכהן Rony Hacohen איילת בכר Ayelet Bechar מקס גרצן Max Gertzen יואב קוקו Yoav Koko מאיה פרנקפורטר Maya Frankforter מרי שק Marie Shek קרן סגל Keren Segal תאבת יאסין Thabet Yassin תמרי סגל פרידברג Tamari Segal Fridberg גיל שמחון Gil Simhon דניאל פרידברג Daniel Fridberg תומר כהן Tomer Cohen יעל בוגן Yael Bogen ירון בן יהודה Yaron Ben-Yehuda אייל גרינברג Ayal Greenberg מירב פיק קיט Merav Pik Keet אנה אמטיר Anna Amtir מור בירון Mor Biron דניאל ברנשטיין Daniel Bernstein שרון בן-דור Sharon Ben-Dor אדם שניידר Adam Schneider זוהר שפיר Zohar Shafir ענת סרנה Anat sarna חן נדלר Chen Nadler טליה ברנשטיין Talia Bernstein אילה זוהר Ayala Zohar גיא מרגלית Guy Margalit קוני הקברט Connie Hackbarth מרב גרידינגר סלע Merav Greidinger Sela הלל שוקן Hillel Schocken שמואל פריד Sam Freed נועה הייזלר רובין Noah Hysler Rubin דורית אשור Dorit Ashur תמר אבני Tamar Avni שרה צ׳ליברטי Sara Celiberti מתן סגל Matan Segal עמרי צור Omri Zur דותן ברום Dotan Brom יבגני ויינשטוק Evgeny Vainshtok לולה פישביין Lola Fishbein ז’וזה ברונר José Brunner נועה באום Noa Baum נדב פינבוך Nadav Finebooch אדם הנדלזלץ Adam Handelzalts חיים רמיאל Haim Ramiel שמרית אלישר Shimrit Elisar מאריה וורגרה María Vergara נועה בוצ׳ן Noa Buchan רוסנה ברגהוף Rosana Berghoff דורון שי Doron Shay תָּמָר זמיר Tamar Samir נגה עמי רב Noga Ami Rav הדר קלונובר Hadar Klunover איליה גורובץ Ilia Gorovetz רגולה אלון Regula Alon נעמה יוסף Naama Yosef איריס ברנע Iris Barnea נועה מוגילנסקי Noa Moguillansky אורית טנא Orit Tenne איריס ויינטל Iris Weintal אסף סולומון Asaf Solomon נוגה אפרתי Noga Efrati תום יגיל Tom Yagil שחר פיינברג Shahar Fineberg אורי ערן Uri Eran הילה סגל-קליין Hilah Segal-Klein יעל קני Yael Kenny אורית יושינסקי Orit Yushinsky שרונה אפשטיין Sharona Eppstein עידן ליאב Idan Liav טל נבון Tal Navon שיר כהן Shit Cohen יואב קני Yoav Kenny עמית פוזננסקי Amit Poznansky יעקב גולדברג Yaacov Goldberg ענת הורה Anat Hora סוניה קזובסקי Sonia Kazovsky יעל סופר סמסון Yael Sofer Samson יהודה שנהב Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani אלה כהן Ella Cohen נורית אל-עד Nurit El-Ad אסתר הרטוך Esther Hertog יעל ראובני Yael Reuveny ויסאם אבו אחמד Wiessam Abu Ahmad דיאן ליאור Dianne Lior ניזאר אשקר Nizar Ashkar עמית דגים Amit Dagim ורדית גולדנר Vardit Goldner סיגל שביט Sigal Shavit קרן ברגמן Keren Bergman אירית מוגילבסקי Irit Mogilevsky ארנה עקד Akad Orna עדינה פרידמן Adina Friedman הדסיה זיו שחם Hadasya Ziv Shaham רונן סקלצקי Ronen Skaletzky אלונה עמרם Alona Amram עידו עקוב Ido Akov עפרה יפה Ofra yaffe ניבה שגב Niva Segev ורד אבידן Vered Avidan עמית גור Amit Gur מיכאל הרטוך-רז Michael Hertog-Raz עידו בן גל Ido Ben-Gal דוריאן וענונו Dorian Vanunu מיכל פרנק Michal Frank רננה מלר Renana Meller רני רוזנטל Rani Rosental אייל טלמור Eyal Talmor עירית וגר Irit Wager נסרין מורקוס Nisreen Morqus רוני ערן רייט Ronnie Eran Wright גיא סוירי Guy Sviry אילה גרינברג Ela Greenberg מאיה אורן Maya Oren דורון שמרלינג Doron Shmerling מתניה עסור Matan Asor שושי שמיר Shoshi Shamir נעם פרי Noam Perry אביתר נכון Eviatar Nahon אלכס קון Alex Cohn אלה קנטי Ella canetti דריה שושני Daria Shoshani סלעית ברקת Saleit Bareket יעל אבן אור Yael Even Or יפעת לברון Yifat Levron גל גווילי Gal Gvili יונתן גינזבורג Yonatan Ginzburg לרה פרוסין Lera Frossin עולא מחאג׳נה Ola Mahajne גיא רוני Guy Ronen ערן פסטרנק eran Pasternak שקד לוי Shaked Levy עוז פנחס Oz Pinhas איתי טלגם Itay Talgam אלה מאיר Ella Meir אור מאי Or Mai עדי ארבל Adi Arbel לירון רונדשטין סבג Liron Rundstein Sabbag דן חיוטין Dan Chyutin עירית כץ Irit Katz ירון מעוז Yaron Maoz נועה שי Noa Shai בן ציון הוברמן Ben Zion Huberman שון לוין Shaun Levin מיקי פורת Miki Port קלודי סקורטריו Claude Scortariu בן גולדשטיין Ben goldstein מיכאל דונייבסקי Michael Dunajevsky לאה אביר Leah Abir מאיה ס הולי Maya S Hooley טליה טיירי Talia Tayri שירה פנקס Shira Pinkas לילי אילן Lily Eilan שירן דודי Shiran Dudy נטשה דודינסקי Natasha Dudinski רוני מנדל Roni Mundel שירה מרק Shira Marek טלי רובינשטיין Tali Rubinstein נילי גורין Nily Gorin איתמר אליס Itamar Elis שרה בנינגה Sara Benninga רוני פורת Roni Porat יניב רונן Yaniv Ronen טל גלעד Tal Gilad אלה בן עמי Ella BenAmi שלי רייך Shelly Reich עמית זרצקי Amit Zaretsky שקד לוי Shaked Levy עומר חנש Omer Hannash יאיר ולך Yair Wallach נורית רז Nurit Raz פלג מיכאלי Peleg Michaeli עדן שגב Eden Segev עמית קוינט Amit Kvint   דרור בוימל Dror Boymel אבישי כהן Avishay Cohen יואב בירך Yoav Beirach צליל רגב פסקה Tslil Regev Paska כרמל קמינר Carmel Kaminer רענן שמש-פורשנר Raanan Shemesh-Forshner ברנקו ריכטמן Branko Rihtman ניצן טל Nitsan Tal נועה רגב Noa Reggev יעל שוחט Yael Shochat ענבל ארנון Inbal Arnon סיביל גולדפיינר Goldfiner Sybil אביגיל אלן Avigail Allan אילן בלומברג Ilan Blumberg דורית הלפרן Dorit Halpern ערן צלניק Eran Zelnik רוסלנה ליכטציאר Ruslana Lichtzier נטע הלפרין Neta Halperin ארי טפרברג Ari Teperberg קטיה בושנסקי Katia Bushanski מארק ארנשטיין Marc Arenstein אריאלה ליפשיץ Ariela Lifshitz נעה ברק Noa Barak תומר שור Tomer Shore נעמה גרשי Naama Gershy סטיבן פייוסון Stephen Feinson חנה מסר Chana Messer איל שגיב Eyal Sagiv אוולין דיאז ארקה Evelyne Diaz Araque עירית בירו Irit biran זוריה חדד Zuraya Hadad יפה מריץ Yaffa Maritz קרן שחר Keren Shahar יהונתן בראק Jonathan Brack אייל קטן Eyal Kattan שרון כהן Sharon Cohen עופר טיסר Ofer Tisser זוהר דביר Zohar Dvir גיל סקלצקי Gil Skaletzky שלי ליבר Shelly Lieber פרץ טורבינר Peretz Torbiner אלינור קמינר גולדפיינר Elinor Kaminer Goldfainer מנאר מימה Manar Memeh עדי לירז Adi Liraz אור יזהר Or Yizhar נינה איזקוב Nina Esakov רוזרה פרנק Rosara Frenk מאיה רגב Maya Reggev יעל פרלמן Yaël Perlman תמר לזר Tamar Lazare דנה עפר Dana Offer אירנה שופאניה Irena Shofaniyeh אלי אבידור Elie Avidor נורית לוטנר Nurit Lotner הגר עוזרי Hagar Ozri שני מיכאלי Shany michaely שרון להב פרייל Sharon Lahav Preyl רון דהאן Ron Dahan יולי כהן Yulie Cohen מעיין גוטמן Maayan Guttman נאוה כהן Nava Cohen רוני רביב Roni Raviv תום אלון Tom Alon שרון רוטברד Sharon Rotbard גון אלון Gon Alon סאי אלון Sai Alon רועי הדר Roy Hadar דן מילר Dan Miller אילה בנגד Ayala Bengad אורית בן דוד Orit Ben David דומיניק ליין אודרוב Dominique Lane Osherov עדית כסלו Idit Kislev דביר אביעם עזרא Dvir Aviam Ezra שרון כהן Sharon Cohen אודי אדיב Udi Adiv מירי הדר Miri Hadar הלל רומן Hillel Roman עדי מובדט Adi Movdat רקפת מיליקה Rakefet Milika קרין חממה Karin Hamama טל דה לנגה Tal de Lange ענת מיכאלי Anat Michaeli עזרא שורץ Ezra Schwartz אורית שורץ Orit Schwartz אלכסנדרה קליין-פרנקה Alexandra Klein-Franke נעם ברגמן Noam Bergman אלון הדר Alon Hadar אורי פרוסט Uri Frost מאיה פז Maya Paz נעמי ברונר Naomi Bronner ורד דריזין Vered Drazen לילה קלינגר Layla Klinger ניצן ויץ Nitzan weitz רומי קמינר Romi kaminer יעלי פוקס Yaeli Fuchs גל כהן Gal Cohen עידן סופר Idan Sofer אלעד ברמי Elad Brami אייל קוטנר Eyal Kuttner נטע בן פורת Neta Ben Porat אביב לירון Aviv Liron חן גליק Anna Glick יולי ציפין Yuli Tsypin גמא אלון Gome alon דורין גל Dorin Gal אתנה שוהם Athena shoham ג׳וליה שרר Julia Scherer רונית מטר Ronit Matar תמר כץ Tamar Katz אוריאל איזנר Oriel Eisner תומר סגל Tomer Segal דניאל עמיר Daniel Amir גל הרציג Gal Herzig ליאם ברנהיימר Liam Bernheimer ג’סיקה וויגודה Jessica Wygoda שיר גבעוני Shir Givoni קורט ארנסון Curt Arnson שרון אורשלימי Sharon Orshalimy דנה אקרפלד Dana Ackerfeld בשמת כוכב Bosmat Kohav קיארה יער גולן Chiara Yaar Golan נטליה ברליאנצ׳יק Natalia Berlianchik שירלי קרוואני Shirly Karavani יוליה פורשיק Yulia Furshik קמיל מאיר-בהר Camile Mair-Behar עלמה קלמס Alma Klemes גיא מלצר Guy Meltzer מאיה שטיינברג Maya Steinberg עמיחי לוי Amichai Levy עדן פוקס Eden Fuchs איתי פייטלסון Itai Feitelson בן אידלסון Ben Idelson אוריאל קיטרון Uriel Kitron רוני גכטמן Roni Gechtman משה שמואל Moshe Shmuel גיל קדרון Gil Kidron יובי קרביץ UV Kravitz חן משגב Chen Misgav מושון זר אביב Mushon Zer Aviv מאיה רימר Maya Rimer נועה אורבך Noa Urbach גבריאל לוין Gabriel Levin נחי אברהם-ראם Nachi Avraham-Re’em זאב מאור Ze’ev Maor נטלי קרטס Nathalie Kertesz הייקה ברייטנבך Heike Breitenbach רותי וישוגרוד Ruthie Wyshogrod ישראל עמנואל Israel Emmanuel הילה רצהבי Hila Ratzabi יוסף צרניק Joseph Zernik ליעד הולנדר Liad Hollender איל לוי Eyal Levy ראובן ריינינגר Ruben Reininger עליזה שטרובל Aleeza Strubel אייל כהן Eyal Cohen נועה גלזר Noa Glazer אור דוד Or David מור אברהם Mor Abraham עפרי כנעני Ofri Cnaani דן פרברוף Dan Farberoff טל סופיה Tal Sofia אורי כהן Uri Cohen מתן רודיס Matan Rudis אהרן (רוני) סגולי Aharon Segoly אמירה אופנהיימר Amira Oppenheimer יעלה זלאייט Yaela Zalait טל בן צבי Tal Ben ZVi אמנון זלאייט Amnon Zalait מרב פיקל Merav Pickel דודי נמיר David Namir רז לוטן Raz Lotan גילה טרמר Gila Tramer רותם ראובן פיק Rotem Reuven Pick אייל מאור Eyal Maor מיכאל אליאס Michael Elias אילת אופיר Ayelet Ophir ריקרדו שץ Ricardo Schatz תמר חכם Tamar Chuchem אלון ספיר Alon Sapir חגי כנען Hagi Kenaan לב פרוסק Lev Prusak איריס אפק Iris Afek איריס ידידיה Iris Yedidia מיכל קיבוביץ Michal Kibovich שמואל סטוצ’ינסקי Schmuel Stutschinsky יעל שחם Yael Shaham יותם פיק Yotam Pick עודד עידן Oded Idan שי שבתאי Shai Shabtai חיה מושקא לנדא Haya Mushka Landa חמוטל שדות Hamutal Sadot אלון סהר Alon Sahar מושון סלמונה Mushon Salmona קרן סדמינה Keren Sedmina מורן בריר Moran Barir מאיה יבין Maya Yavin ציביה ברקאי יעקב Tsivia Barkai Yacov נורית עפא Nuri ofer אורי כהן Uri Cohen מאיה יורקביץ Maya Jurkevitch   ניר ביטון Nir Bitton אסף צימר Asaf Zimmer אמיר נוימן אהוביה Amir Neuman Ahuvia רועי נגבי Roee Negby ליטל גנאל Lital Ganel שירי פרומקס Shiri Frumkes ניצן הדס Nitzan Hadas יעל גינוסר Yael Ginosar אורן אביטוב Oren Avitov אהד פישוף Ohad Fishof הרב מיכאל דיוויס Rabbi Michael Davis שקד ריינר Shaked Reiner שרון צוקרמן Sharon Zuckerman אביגיל פקלמן Avigail Pekelman נועה ברטפלד Noa Bartfeld יואב פקלמן Yoav Pekelman מקוה גלידאי Marva Glidai אור רוזנבוים Or Rosenboim ויקטור פליקשטיין Victor Flickstein עומר רשף Omer Reshef נדב רייס Nadav Reiss ניצן לונברג Nitzan Levenberg מעין אביגור Maayan Avigur הגר ליס Hagar Lis עודד ארז Oded Erez קרן מוססקו קריאל Keren Mosessco Kariel טל באומל Tal Baumel נעם אלון Noam Alon ינאי סנד Yanai Sened נורית נובל Nurit Nobel נורית עידו Nurit Idan יפעת בן משה Yifat Ben Moshe בתיה רוזן-גולדברג Bitya Rozen-Goldberg ענבל אמיתי Inbal Amitai ג׳רמי גינגס Jeremy Ginges ספיר סלוצקר עמראן Sapir Sluzker Amran רון רייכמן Ron Reichman נועה אסטרייכר Noa Osterreicher עדילי ליברמן Adili liberman עטרה לוין Atarah Levin נועה טן Noa Tann יעל פוליטי Yael Politi הלי אטיין Hally Etienne יונתן באום Jonathan Baum בועז ישראל לוי Boaz Israel Levy מגן ינון Magen Inon ענת בצר Anat Betzer מיה פלטשר אלון Mia Fletcher Alon קשת רונן Keshet Ronen סעוד קסאס Saud Kassas סיגל פרידריך Sigal Friedrich רקפת זלשיק Rakefet Zalashik אסתי דינור Esty Dinur רני מגידו Rani Megiddo עלמה אליעז Alma Eliaz גיל סימה Gil Sima רוני נצר Roni Netser איציק שטרן Itsik Stern קרן כרמלי Keren Carmeli איליה בר און Ilia Baron נטלי קרמר Natalie Kremer יעלה רענן Yeela Raanan מיכל רש Michal Rash נעה אלרן Noa Elran עירית נעמן Irit Naaman אסף רונאל Asaf Ronel מתנאל צ’כנובסקי Matanel Ciechanowski יערה כליף Yaara Kalif לאה ליאור Léa Lior יעל ארבל Yael Arbel רן פישר Ran Fisher דינה קסטל Dina Castelbolognesi דניאל מקס Daniel Max אלכס יונוביץ’ Alex Jonovic נהר זיק Nahar Zik הדר שפיגל Hadar Spiegel יונתן אורן Oren Yonatan יסמין דייויס Yasmin Davis חגי לבנר Hagai Lavner עמית שלום אטקס Amit Shalom Etkes דניאל יבין ארז Daniel Yavin Erez נוית בר Navit Bar תמר דמארי Tamar Damari נעה דגוני Noa Dagoni נועם אילן Noam Ilan איתן צלגוב Eitan Tzelgov אבישר אלון לב Avisar Alon Lev מוקי דגן Mooky Dagan שחר שילה Shahar Shillo אביגיל ניר Avigail Nir דניאלה גבעון Daniella Givon יהונתן עפרת Jhonathan Ofrath אילנה קופמן Ilana Kaufman נועה ילינק Noa Jelinek מור גלר Mor Geller גונן דורי-הכהן Gonen Dori-Hacohen דוד בהר David Behar לרה קליאוט Lara Kliot יונתן בן-ארצי Jonathan Ben-Artzi נעמי ליית Naomi lyth חנה בנדקובסקי Hana Bendcowsky הגר אפק לוי Hagar Afek Levy אביגייל גרין Avigail Green רועי בן-ציון Roy Ben-Zion דורון לוינסון Doron Levinson איל פונדק שגיא Eyal Pundik Sagie ורדה גולדבלט Varda Goldblat עמוס אורן Amos Oren זהר ברקת Zohar Bareket דנה לויד Dana Lloyd אילת בן אליהו Eilat Ben Eliyahu אריאל גורדון Arielle Gordon מג’ד אסדי Majd Asadi רותי בן-ארצי Ruth Ben-Artzi שחר יהלום Shahar yahalom נועם הרשקוביץ Noam Hershkovits נרי ברמן Neri Berman ליאור גלילי Lior Galili פול מוריס Paul Morris אביב קלעי Aviv Kalai נועה לוי Noa Levy איה פינר Aya Pinner אדם נוחי Adam Nuhi עמית לוי Amit Levy אביתר באך Eviatar Bach הדר כהן Hadar Cohen אמיר שניטמן Amir Schnitman דוד צמיר-גל David Tsamir-Gal יואב שמיר Yoav Shamir מאיר ברוכין Meir Baruchin טל מטלון Tal Matalon רן בר-און Rann Bar-On אסא דורון Assa Doron אפרת שיר Efrat Shir נטע צין Netta Tzin גילה השקס Gila Hashkes רוני שניאור Roni Shneior דרור שדות Dror Sadot אנה גוטגרץ Anna Gutgarts זאב מטלון Ze’ev Matalon מאור צ’סטר Maor Chester יגאל גודלר Yigal Godler מאיה דוניץ Maya Dunietz אודי גוברמן Udi Guberman שרית לסר Sarit Lesser נעמה פטינקין Naama Patinkin יעל לייטר Yael Leiter עלמה טויבר קנט Alma Toiber Kent אסף קידר Asaf Kedar ברק זמר Barak Zemer אמה שם-בה אילון Emma Sham-Ba Ayalon ארנון בן-יאיר Arnon Ben-Yair איילת צייט הצופה Ayellet Chait Hatzofe נועה מנדלס Noa Mendels ניצן Nitsan תומר ניימן Tomer Neumann נועה טל Noa Tal אילנה סמרס Elana Summers יותם שטיינבוק Yotam Steinbock יוסי אבנון Yossi Avnon תניה הרי Tania Hary מלי ברקאי Mali barkai אביטל יערן פיטם Avital Yaaran Pitem תמר נאמן Tamar Neeman טליה בק Talia Beck אביגיל ישראל טל Abigail Israel Tal אופיר וסלי Ophir Wesley שרון בר שאול Sharon Bar Shaul מרווה פניה סאם Marva Fanya Sam אורי נתן Uri Natan ארן זינר Aran Zinner ניר שגב Nir Segev תמר בכר Tamar Bahar אורנה אגמון Orna Agmon עמית לב Amit Lev מאיר עמור Meir Amor רועי פולק Roee Polak מאיה כליפה Mia Khalifa יעל ארבל Yael Arbell תם זנדמן Tom Zandman אביתר נאור Evyatar Naor איגנט אייזנברג Ignat Ayzenberg דנה זליגמן Dana Seligman ליאור בירן Lior Biran תמר פז תאני Tamar Paz Reeny מיכל שני Michal Shani לאורה קרומפטון Laura Crompton גד אקנפורה טורפרנקה Gad Acanfora Torrefranca חיה פדן Chaya Padan עדית נתן Idit Nathan שני קדר Shany Kedar הד ירון מאירסון Hed Yaron Meyerson אליענה אלמוג מושס Eliana Almog Moshes רותי בהט Ruti Bahat יובל קרסו Yuval Carasso נדב יחידי Nadav Yehidi פואד עקאד Fouad Akad לירי גופר Liri Gofer יעל טל-ברזילי Yael Tal-Barzilai מיכל ליאור Michal Leeor   תומר רפפורט Tomer Rapaport יעל טריידל Yael Treidel עפרה שלף Ofra Shelef אירמה קליין Irma Klein עפרה בן ארצי Ofra Ben Artzi עידו אמין Edo Amin יעל קורן Yael Koren אריה פרידסון Aryeh Freidson דניאל חיימוביץ׳ Daniel Haimovich רבקה אורבך Rebecca Urbach דניאל אילת Daniel Eilat ישי הלפר Yishai Halper נמרוד פיק Rod Pik טימופיי צ’יצ’קן Timophei Tchitchkan גלעד קינן Gilad Kenan אנג’לה גודפרי גולדשטיין Angela Godfrey-Goldstein עומר שוקרון Omer Shokron גיל מרקוביץ Gil Markovitz יוני קוזלובסקי Yonathan Kozlovsly יעל נביא Yael Navie דנה רון Dana Ron ערן ארליך Eran Ehrlich יעל אשרוב Yael osherov קטיה איזבל פילמוס Katya Izabel Filmus יגאל אראל yigal Erel גיל שילה Gil Shilo כרמל אואן Carmel Owen אינה מיכאלי Inna Michaeli שיר הנדלסמן Shir Handelsman יגאל עזרתי Igal Ezraty ורה רידר Vera Reider איילת מור Ayellet Moore יעקב ליפשיץ Yacob Lifshin נעה ארד יאירי Noa Arad Yairi איילת בלנק Ayelet Blanc אן פיזנטה Anne Pisante תום שלמוני Tom Shalmony אמיתי עבודי בריליאנט Amitai Aboody Brilliant כנרת אינוך Kineret Enoch רותי בנימיני Ruty Benjamini מאיה ויינברג Maya Weinberg מיכל אמזלק Michelle Amzalak רקפת אפרת לבקוביץ Rakefet Efrat Levkovich בן רונן Ben Ronen יעל רוזנס Yael Rozanes שלומית פנסו Shlomit Pensi דיתה איתן Dita Etan אביה הכהן Aviya Hacohen מורן סנדרוביץ Moran Sanderovich יער קורן Yaar Koren אסנת מיכאלי Osnat Michaeli שאשא דותן Shasha Dothan יונתן שוורץ Jonathan Szwarc קולו אור Kulu Orr הילה אלפרט Hila Alpert חגית לביא Hagit Lavi יונה פאובט Yona Faust אסף ברון Assaf Baron פרי טל Perry Tal לאה פורשטט Lea Forshtat רבקה קליין Rivka Klein רן שגב Ran Segev מאי יוחננוף May Johananoff לורה קירשנבאום Laura Kirshenbaum הראל שרייבר Harel Schreiber איריס שביט Shavit Iris עפר ינוב Ofer Inov שמוליק גרנשטיין Shmulik Gerenshtein סיביל היילברון Sibylle Heilbrunn אביהוא שאלתיאל Avihu Sha’altiel שלומית כהן Shlomit Cohen רום לבקוביץ׳ Romm Lewkowicz עמית שמרת Amit Shomrat הגר גדעוני Hagar gidony אלה יאשצ’וק Ella Yashchuk טל דרמון Tal Darmon ג׳וליה פגלמן Julia Fagelman זהר גנדלמן Zohar Gandelman ענן גיבסון Anan Gibson נועה ווס Noa Vos שירה מזוז Shira Mazuz ספי אקריש Sefi Akrisg אודליה מטר Odeliya Matter ליאן מלכי-שוברט Lian Malki Schubert אור גליקליך Or Glicklich רבקה ישוב פרלמן Rivka Yashuv Perlmann ליאור וכטל Lior Wachtel אסתר רפפורט Esther Rapoport ריבי מרקוס Rivi Marcus יפעת סוסקינד Yifat Susskind עפרה בן פורת – רם Ofra Ben Porat – Ram איתי שניר Itay Snir רוני בוגין Roni Bogin סמדר איל Smadar Eyal נוגה שלו Noga Shalev ניצן שושן Nitzan Shoshan עינה ניר Ayana Nir נטע מגדל Neta Migdal סאם סטיין Sam Stein גד ולן Gad Velan רומיה בן ארי Rumia Ben Ari נעמי טליתמן Nomi Talisman אור ידוב Orr Yidov נדיה שלייכר Nadia Schleicher לאני רבין Lani Ravin היילי פירקסר Haley Firkser דור חסון Dor Hasson דפנה גנור Daphna Ganor עופר אנגל Ofer Engel יצחק לאור Yitzhak Laor אלכס זיידמן Alex Zaidman כספי Caspi ירון רוזנבאום Yaron Rozenbaum אדורם שניידלדר Adoram Schneidleder יאיר גולדשמידט Yair Goldshmidt יהודה עתי Yehuda Atai יורי סולומון Yuri Solomon גיא אסיף Guy Assif רחביה ברמן Rechavia Berman אלה טולנאי Ella Tolnai אביב עדשי Aviv Adashi מנוחה סליגמן Menucha Seligman מיכל יון Michal Juhn רובין נדן Robin Nadan תמר בנין Tamar Benin לילה קמחי Lila Kimhi תאמר מוג’אהד Tamer Mujahed אורי סוכרי Ori Succary טל אנג’ל Tal Angel רוסמרי סולן Rosemary Solan יוני דגן Yonni Dagan חנה קרונפלד Chana Kronfeld דינה זיסרמן-ברודסקי Dina Zisserman-Brodsky מרדכי ברונשטיין Mordechai Braunstein בר לוי Bar Levy דניאלה שמר Daniela Shemer יעל קורן Yael Koren שירה סוזנה Shira Soussana מירב אתרוג בר Merav Etrog Bar אבנר שמש Avner Shemesh יואב ענר Yoav Aner יורי שבירב Yuri Shvyrev דקלה פרייברג רחמים Dikla Fraiberg Rahamim משה לוטם Moshe Lotem יונה קייטס Yona Kates אוהד פלינקר Ohad Flinker אלה קרן Ella Keren נעמה גידרון Naama Gidron רונית ערמוני Ronit Armoni ליאת כהן Liat Cohen מעין מדר Maayan Madar שרון גצ׳ינסקי Sharon Geczynski נעם מלכי Noam Melki עמית חפץ שתיל Amit Heffes Shatil ענבל גרבורג מזרחי Inbal Garburg Mizrahi אסף קלדרון Asaf Calderon טל פורשצ׳יק Tal Furshchik רוני זהבי-ברונר Roni Zahavi-Brunner דפנה טיר Daphna Thier דין סולומון Dean Solomon צבי לדין Zvi Ladin אלדד רפאלי Eldad Rafaeli רונית מילוא Ronit Milo גל הדר גיין Gal Hadar Gane ניב פוקס Niv Fux אלינור דיאמנט Eleanor Diamant אביה עתי Aviya Atai רינת אבסטדו Rinat Abastado רעות קריסטל Reut Crystal הינדה וייס Hinda Weiss גבע רכב Geva Rechav רונית שקד Ronit Shaked עדי גילת Adi Gilat ענבר תמרי Inbar Tamari יהושע מרגולין Joshua Margolin דן אליאב Dam Eliav רבקה (ריקה) ליכטמן Rika Lichtman ליאת ניקריטין Liat Nikritin מעין פרנקל Maayan Frenkel טליה רונן Talia Ronen אילת בן דור Ayelet Ben Dor אברהם אסקף Avraham Ascaf נטלי סמית Natalie Smith נריה סמית Neria Smith טל שני Tal Sani לילי ברחנא לורנד Lily Barhana Lorand קתרין דער Catherine Daar אילת השחר Ayelet Hashachar Wolf תומר גולדשטיין Tomer Goldstein אלונה פרבר Alona Ferber בת הר-פאר Bette Har-Peer דריה אפרת Darya Efrat אמיר אביטל Amir Avital קרן מילכברג Keren Milchberg ליאורה מדינה Liora Medina יעל מרוז Yael Meroz אביגיל לוי Avigail Levi אתל ניבורסקי Ethel Niborski יונתן עומר מזרחי Jonathan Omer Mizrahi דניאל פלקסר Daniel Flexer   טלי כהן Tali Cohen שרון שמואל Sharon Shmuel ליילה ברי Leila Bari ספיר ליברובסקי-שר Sapir Librowski-Sher שחף שחורי Shachaf Shchory יובל פוליאק Yuval Poliak הדס אמה קדר Hadas Emma Kedar נועה גופר Noa Gofer אנה ווילד Ana Wild יפתח דותן Yiftah Dotan דניאל גולדשטיין Daniel Goldstein ארז וול Erez Wohl דניאל רונן Danielle Ronen ברק אדורין Barak Adorian נועם אוזן Noam Uzan רונה כהן Rona Cohen ליהיא רבינוביץ’ Lihi Rabinovich נועה לי בנימיני Noali Binyamini נועה רחמים אליקים Noa Rahamimi Elyakim מורן קבסה Moran Cabbesa סיגלית גבעון Sigalit Givon אריה ארנון Arie Arnon ירון שויצר Yaron Schweizer רחל פקר Rachel Packer יונתן גירון Yonatan Geron רונית חיימוב זילברמן Ronit Haimoff Zilberman דניאלה רוה Daniella Raveh יעל מרוז Yael Meroz ליאת פרידמן Liat Friedman ישראל סייקס Israel Sykes עדי שטרייכמן Adi Strichman נועה ליבל Noa Leibel ליאור גילעד Lior Gilad מיכל ליבל Michal Leibel טלי גור Tally Gur דנה סגל לרנר Danna Segal Lerner עפרה גולדשטיין גדעוני Ofra Goldstein Gidoni כרמית זיו Carmit Ziv שלי חייט Shelly Hayat דנה אולמרט Dana Olmert ענבל לוסטיג Inbal Lustig ליבה נאמן Liba Neeman יעל קליסמן Yael Kalisman רותם גולדשמיד Rotem Goldshmid אור שרבליס הוד Ore Cherbelis Hod יעל ורטהיים סואן Yael Wertheim Soen מאי אבוקיה Mai Aboucaya רות בטלר Ruth Butler ענת אבוקיה Anat Aboucaya אילי בן יקיר illy Ben Yakir ענת אשר Anat Ascher מיכל רגב Michal Regev רון עופר Ron Ofer יעל וידן Yael Vidan יעל שטרנהל Yael Sternhell מורן קורנברג Morani Kornberg חיה צ׳רנובין Chaya czernowin עמית אורפלי Amit Orfali לינלי שמעת ליס LynleyShimat Lys יוסף טל Yosef Tal מיכל פרוכטמן Michal Fruchtman ג’ולי שלז Julie Shles דנה דקטור Dana Decktor רם שטייר Ram Staier נועה נוי Noa Noy עדי דגן Adi Dagan שי גולן Shayi Golan איתי לוין Itai Levin יאלי השש Yali Hashash רוני הניג Roni Henig נועה שטייר Noa Staier אביגיל מלכה Avigail Melka אפרת דוידוב Efrat Davidov רות אברהמסון Ruth Abrahamson לין בר-און Lynn Bar-On יובל נאור Yuval Naor זוהר וייס Zohar Weiss הילה שרון Hila Sharon אילנה מחובר Ilana Machover הרבה טליה גושן Rabbi Talia Goshen סומיה עבדול רחמן Sumaya Abdul-Rahman הילה וייס Hilla Weiss רונן לייבמן Ronen Leibman זהר עתי Zohar Atai מיקי קשתן Miki Kashtan סופי פרז Sophie Perez שני קגן Shani Kagan רויטל זלונקה Revital Zilonka הרבה אביגיל ח. שטיין Rabbi Abby C. Stein אורי לונדון Uri London שירה הייסלר Shira Heisler אודי אסף Udi Assaf סו שקטר Su Schachter נתנאל פלוטניצקי Netanel Plotnizky תמר בן עוזר Tamar Ben-Ozer שמואל ברקוביץ’ Shmuel Berkowitz אורי גולד Ori Gold רחמיל פישמן Rajmil Fischman לילי קולינר Lily Koliner אילנה טייב הגרטי Ilana Taieb Hagerty דניאל שחר Daniel Shachar נגה שרגאי Noga Shragai עקיבא ליבוביץ Akiva Leibowitz דניאלה רן Daniella Ran ארנינה קשתן Arnina Kashtan בת-שבע ינקו Bat-Sheva Jancu מאיה ערד Maya Arad דן מיינמר Dan Mainemer רחל פירסט Rachel Fuerst נעמי אילן Nami Eilan אן שלאי Anne Shlay גיל חיזי Gil Hizi יונתן קלעי Jonathan Kallay מישל וקסלר Michel Weksler שרית בר גיורא Sarit Bar Giora הדס אביתר Hadass Eviatar טל ירוס חקק Tal Jarus Hakak נעה מוסל Noa Mossel אסף קולינר Asaf Koliner גור ברזילי Gur Barzilai אור מירון אשר Or Miron asher לונה מזרחי Luna Mizrahi דוד מנדל David Mandel דוד וויימן David Waimann אילין סגל Elene Segal עפרי שובל Ofri Shoval יואב פלד Yoav Peled עידית זלטנרייך Idit Seltenreich אסנת כהן ליפשיץ Osnat Cohen Lifshitz גיא שוובל Guy Schwebel יניב מינצר Yaniv Mintzer יהודה להב Yehuda Lahav רונן פייטן Ronnen Paytan נועה הדיה Noa Hedaya ליסה קרונברג Lisa Kronberg בלה גונשורוביץ Bella Gonshorovitz גאנם גזאווי Ganim Gazawi הלל שנקר Hillel Schenker שלומית ורלי Shlomit Wehrli רתם הלר Rotem Haller גיא אברמוביץ’ Gai Abramovitch הרב דוד רוזן Rabbi David Rosen זאב דגני Zeev Degani מודי תאני Moddy Te’eni שרון נחומי Sharon Nahome דנה וינגרט Dana Weingart ירוסלב יוסים Iaroslav Youssim לבנת קונופני דקלב Livnat Konopny Decleve אודי אבני Udi Avni תמר בן דוד Tamar Ben David אוליאנה סתוי Uliana Stavi עמנואל רפאלי Imanuel Rafaeli אייל ברומברג Eyal Bromberg רונית שני Ronit Shany דניאל חקלאי Daniel Hacklai רננה נאמן Renana Ne’eman מעין גולדמן Maayan Goldman לי פרלמן Lee Perlman אסנת נצר Osnat Netzer מאיה אשל Maya Eshel רינה שליב Rina Shalimar אלינוער אלמגור Elinoar Almagor יעל שקד Yael Shaked רוני רגב Ronny Regev אבי גורפינקל Avi Girfinkel גלעד טנאי Gilad Tanay אילת דלומי Ayelet Dalumi נרי ליפשיץ Neri Life Choma סטפני פל Stephanie Pell שחר רהב Shakhar Rahav אילנה גולדברג Ilana Goldberg יעל לוין Yael Levin בר זוטרא Barr Zutra יובל דור Yuval Dor אהוד נתן Ehud Nathan דוד בירשפלד David Hirshfeld חנית הירשפלד Chanit Hirshfeld איתה שגב Ita Segev תומי נבו Tommy Nevo גילת פישר Gilat Fisher אורלי אלמי Orly Almi רעות פרץ Reut Peretz אבישי שלוש Avishai Chelouche שרון גולדברג Sharon Goldberg יעל דנון Yael Danon שיר גארצי Shir Gartsi שירלי פוטרמן Shirly Puterman גאיה פון שוורצה Gaya Von Schwarze ירדן מיכאלי Yarden Michaeli ענת שטיינדלר Anat Steindler אסף שהם Asaf Shoham מיכל שנדר Michal Schendar אריאל רוטנברג Ariel Rottenberg אביב רוטנברג Aviv Rottenberg תום סולוביציק Tom Soloveitzik מולי גלזר Muli Glezer יובל נורי שם-טוב Yuval Nuri Shem-Tov אורי ונטורה Ori Ventura מיכל תמרי Michal Tamari מעיין בן פורת Maayan Ben Porat   טל שטדלר Tal Stadler אפי ויס Effi Weiss נגה לויט Noga Levit טל ברסלר Tal Bresler דוד וולץ David Walz שי טופז Shai Topaz שמחה סטקלוב Simcha Stecklov ניל פרידלנדר Neil Friedlander זהר שחר Zohar Shachar ברק ואזן Barak Vazan יעל נצר Yael Netzer שיר משעל Shir Mishal רפאלה ברקאי Rafaela Barkay טליה מרקוס Talia Marcos עדי אליאן Adi Elian ניב גפני Niv Gafni רחל בנימין Rachel Benjamin ענבר יקואל Inbar Yekuel עדי בן דוד Adi Ben David טל געש Tal Gaosh צוף בן דוד Tzuf Ben David סאם ברוורמן Sam Braverman נטלי רדלר Nathalie Redler רועי רוזן Roee Rosen עודד ריטוב Oded Ritov אייל גלבוע Ayal Gilboa נעה קשת Noa Keshet בן ריבק Ben Riback עדי מרקוזה הס Addie Markuze Haas שרה ירושלמי Sara Jerushalmy רנן עומר-שרמן Ranen Omer-Sherman אורי סבח Uri Sabach אליינה סולומון Elena Solomon אלנה צ׳רמושניוק Elena Chermoshniuk נועם סולקאט ששון Noam Soulcat Sasson נורה גרינברג Nora Grinberg יעל קיים Yaelle Kayam רעות כהן Reut Cohen אנטוני פולטון Anthony Fulton דניאל דיסני Daniel Disegni נועה איטקין Noa Itkin טל נהרי Tal Nahari טליה ישי Talia Ishai טל לוין-רןטברג Tal Levin-Rotberg תלי מאיר Tali Meir אברי הרלינג Avri Herling יונתן אופיר Jonathan Ofir אלינור דרזי Elinore Darzi טל צפריר Tal Tsafrir עדי מאירוביץ Adi Meyerovitch אריאל קן Ariel Caine רועי בל Roii Ball ברנדון ריינולדס Brandon Reynolds ליביה לדרמן Livia Lederman רונית עדן Ronit Eden ניקולה לדרמן Nicole Lederman דנה הס צירקל Dana Haas Zirkel נטע לו Netta Lou רות לב Rut Lev רועי עמית Roei Amit חיים שבולת Chaim Shiboleth צילי גולדנברג Tsilli Goldenberg עירית ליברמן Irit Liberman שרה קרבינסקי Sarah Kravinsky רון גל Ron Gal גלית פרנק Galit Frank רועי מור Roi Mor צילי מור Tzili Mor כאמלי מצארוה Kamli Masarwa מרסלו וקסלר Marcelo Menahem Weksler אלה דורון מנדל Ella Doron Mandel יונתן חורש Yonatan Horesh יותם טרוים Yotam Troim קארין טובי Karin Tovi אשר קאופמן Asher Kaufman גל יאיר קמחי Gal Yair Kimhi דן ברנבלום טוב Dan Bernblum Tov סלומקה דונייבסקי Salome Dunaevsky גיל קרמר Gil Kremmer נטעלי בראון Netalie Braun אנאי סאלם Anai Salem מישה הדר Misha Hadar אליהו קלוז’ני Elijah Kalyuzhny שחר אייל Shachar Eyal טל גלזרמן Tal Glezerman יונת וקס Yonat Vaks עדי חלפין Adi Halfin מילאן שיף Milan Shiff בנימין רוטברג Benyamin Rotberg איתמר המרמן Itamar Hammerman רחל ראובינוף Rachel. Reubinoff נדב אבן חורב Nadav Even Chorev חיים קירשנברג Haim Kirshenberg תאי רונה Tai Rona אריה רוזן Arieh Rosen רבקה פרל אטקין Rivka Perel Etkin אלכס רוזנבאום Alex Rosenbaum יעקב כהן Yackov Cohen איריס לעאל Iris Leal ורד נבון Vered Navon מור כהן Mor Cohen אקסל אוולד Axel Ewald סייג׳ ברייס Sage Brice אילנה בן עמוס Ilana Ben Amos אסף רמון Asaf Ramon ענת שלו Anat Shalev עדי לם Adi Lam יובל פרנס־מדר Yuval Parnass-Mader דנה גולדשטיין Dana Goldstein מיקה פרימן Mika Friehmann נעמי קנטור Naomi Kantor מיכל לופט Michal Luft ורה מאיר Vera Mayer איתמר ציגלר Itamar Ziegler דניה גלזר Danya Glaser מירון גופר Miron Gofer מורן מנדלבאום Moran Mandelbaum אורי חנן ווייסברג Ori Hanan Weisberg נעמי לבארי Naomi Levari רני אבידן Rani Avidan מתן רדין Matan Radin דפנה קינן Daphna Keenan נעמי גזית Neomi Gazit ליאורה קצירי Katsiri Liora לי מאיר Lee Meir יערה גילן Yaara Gilan אורן יפתחאל Oren Yiftachel רומי פלדי Romy Paldi רפי סילבר Rafi Silver יונה הקט Yona Hackett מאיה במברגר Maya Bamberger ג’וש קורן Joshua Korn שירי ארגוב Shiri Argov פאני-מיכאלה רייזין Fanny-Michaela Reisin רות אורון Ruth Oron אבישג אמיר Avishag Amir מינה פריידקין Minna Freidkin עידן אייברי אברג’ל Idan Avery Abergel יאיר גור-לביא Yair GurLavi תמר רוזנטל Tamar Rosenthal מעין איתן Maayan Eitan נעמי בנזר Naomi Benzer יובל גל כהן Yuval Gal Cohen מאיה לנדאו Maya Landau עמנואל שחף Emanuel Shahaf נעה נוימן ספיבק Noa Neuman Spivak רפי קייזר Raffi Kaiser גידי מוריס Gidi Morris דניאל קנטור Daniel Kantor אדם אזארי Adam Azari טמרה קהלת Tamara Coheles מאשה דולב Masha Dolev P איתי רייטן Itay Raiten ראובן גרבר Reuven Gerber ניצן טל Nitzan Tal פאדי שביטה Fadi Shbita עודד וולקשטיין Oded Wolkstein עמית עזז Amit Azaz שירה שבולת באלי Shira Shibolet Bali רפאל בלאיש Raphael Bellaiche נילי פיינגלרנט Nili Fainguelernt לואיס פרנקנטלר Louis Frankenthaler גיל שגיא Gil Sagi הרבה איטה פר’דמן סירדסקי Rabbi Ita Friedman Sieradski דורון רונן Doron Ronen אביטל גרינפטר Avital Grünpeter איווי קפלן Ivy Kaplan אמילי זופר Emily Zoffer אלישבע הולזמן Elisheva Holzman לי רוטברט Lee Rotbart תום שגב Tom Segev עמנואלה סטבסקי Imanuela Stawski רננה נוימן Renana Neuman עדי אלקין Adi Elkin גל רוזנבלוט Gal Rosenbluth ענת לפידות Anat Lapidot נמרוד גולן Nimrod Golan דבי פרמן Debby Ferman עדה לוינסקי Ada Lewinski איריס גרנות Iris Granot רות גת דוברוב Ruth Gat Dubrov ליה עשת Lia Eshet ליקה ברוק Lika Bruk תמי שם טוב Tami Shem Tov עוזי דגן Uzi Dagan עמרי אופק Omri Ofek נוגה מרמור Noga Marmor שרה רביד Sara Ravid יפעת אהרוני Yifat Aharoni ארי צ׳ייס Ari Chais רפאל תורג׳מן Rephael Turdjman עדו רוט Edo Roth נעמה לנדאו Na’ama Landu רוני קרפ עמית Roni Karp Amit תום שלום חוברס Thom Shalom Chowers מיקה ע Mika A דוד אדיג’ס David Adizes גיורא קצין Giora Katzin רותם מרינוב Rotem Marinov מירי מרמור Miriam Marmur   מארק יוסף Mark Joseph גילה סלם Gila Sellam יעל שומר Yael Shomer מיכאל אדלר Michael Adler רונית קנו Ronit Kano נאוה שושני Nava Shoshani תמר שפריר Tamar Shafrir שני בירנבוים Shani Birenboim הלה יניב Hela Yaniv חנה ויסברגר Hanna Weissberger תמר לביא Tamar Lavy אריה לביא Arie Lavy דפנה שיפמן Dafna Shiffman חגי שודרון Hagai Shvadron שי סוסנובסקי Shay Sosnovsky דניאל צ’אצ’אשווילי Daniel Chachashvili יואב שדה Yoav Sadeh דנה הררי Dana Harari רומן לוין Roman Levin אביגיל סייץ Abby Seitz עמיר מינסקי Amir Minsky ג’קי פערל Jackie Pearl עדי סברן Adi Savran דלית זכאיים Dalit Zakaim תום קרסני Tom Krasny יערה עשת Yaara Eshet ליאור בן-צבי Lior Ben-Zvi דור גנות Dor Ganot בראיין אטינסקי Bryan Atinsky דניאל רוט Daniel Roth שלי שטיינברג Shelly Steinberg אינה איזנברג Inna Eizenberg טל לוי Tal Levy רפי ספיבק Rafi Spivak מרים מאיר Miriam Meir רותי גינזבורג Ruthie Ginsburg נעמה קולניק Naama Kolnik צבי אפרת Zvi Efrat אריאל ימיני Arielle Yemini יותם דוברין Yotam Dobrin רז דגן Raz Dagan דן טל Dan Tal איב יסינוב Yves yasinow טלי קושניר Tali Kushnir רחל גבעון Rachel Givon מעיין אגמון Ma’ayan Agmon מיכל ברזיס Mihal Brezis זיו גוטספלד Ziv Gottesfeld אמיר מזרחי Amir Mizrachy רומי פיקס Romi Fix אפרין בונשטיין Afrine Bonstein דוד פרידלנדר David Friedlander רובי קליין Rubi Klein רות אדמונדס Ruth Edmonds נגה אשכנזי Noga Ashkenazy גיא אורון Guy Oron אלון אולמן Allon Uhlmann מתי שמואלוף Mati Shemeolof ניב פבלו Niv Pablo יאיר דביר Yair Dvir הדר שריר Hadar Sharir נעם מזרחי Noam Mizrachi טל עומר Tal Omer גל צדיק Gal Zadick רמי בן-ארי Rami Ben-Ari סימונה סרמונטה Simona Sermoneta אורון אדר Oron Adar ליזי אפרת Lizie Efrat עירית לוריא Irit Lourie קייטי וקסברגר Katie Wachsberger מירי גרינשפון Miri Greenshpon אלון אברהם גינת Alon Avraham Ginatt שלמה שפירא Shlomo Shapira אליק הרפז Elik Harpaz יהודית זידנברג Yehudit Zaidenberg מרים ארז Miriam Erez מיכל פרידמן Michal Friedman יונתן בייליק Yonatan Belic רוני רוזנהיימר Roni Rosenheimer דוד רגב David Regev נדב טננבאום Nadav Tenenbaum שמרית בראון קמין Shimrit Braun Kamin בצלאל מנקין Bezalel Manekib אורלי אלון Orly Alon עדן גרבר Edden Gerber רוני ולך Ronny Wallach אביגיל חצור סיון Avigail Hatzor Sivan סמיח בדארנה Samih Badarny קרן טמיר Keren Tamir מור ארם Mor Aram עובדיה צור Ovadia Tzur סמדר גרינבאום Smadar Greenbaum רותי גורפיין Ruthi Gorfine רונית שי Shai Ronit אורלי סיתון Orli Setton ענבל הראל Inbal Harel אלה דבורקין Alla Dvorkin רותי עצמון Rutie Atsmon עודד הס Oded Haas שלמה זנד Shlomo Sand נועה גרינברג Noa Greenberg ג’יהאד חרב Jihad Harb דוניה ברודה Dunia Broude עופר שרעבי Offer Sharabi נועה אורון Noah Oron יעל דגן Yael Dagan אורי רביב Ori Raviv נועה דרבי Noa Darby רחל מנקין Rachel Manekin רבקה טרייבר Rebecca Treiber תמר בסן Tamar Bassan עמית אורגיל Amit Orgil הילה עמית Hila Amit גלי הר-גיל Gali Har-Gil סיטאר דניאל Sitar Daniel מדלן רביבו Madeleine Rebibo יעל אגמון Yael Agmon פלאור האריה Fleur Haarye מוסא חסדיה Mussa Hassdie יואב היינבך Yoav Hainebach שני גלסמן Shani Glassman רוני שן-דר Ronni Shendar מירה שרף Mira Sharf לידיה קנכט Lidia Knecht יוסי קומר Yossi Komar סופיה אקיס Sofiya Akis לי נבו Lee Nevo גדעון שלח-לביא Gideon Shelach-Lavi יעל שלח-לביא Yael Shelach-Lavi נילי לביא Nili Lavi מישל פרנקל Michelle Frankel חגית בורר Hagit Borer גילי שאנן שיין Gili Shaanan Shine שרית יצחק Sarit Yitzhak דורית זיג Dorit Zig תמר פורטונה Tamar Fortuna איה קנת Aya Kenat מעין ענר Maayan Aner יובל אונגר Yuval Ungar גמאל מגארי Jamal Mghary שלומית פלד Shlomit Peled דניאלה סגל Daniella Segal תמר גבע Tamar Geva שירי בר Shiri Barr ניר בורגר Nir Borger אשר בן ברוך Asher Ben Baruch יותם כוורי Yotam Cavari אילנה נעמן Ilana Naaman סער דוידוב Saar Davidov שלומית בן יון Shlomit Ben Yon נטע בן פורת Neta Ben-Porat ארז הוכמן Erez Hochman דרור זאבי Dror Zeevi רון זוננפלד Ron Sonnenfeld טלילה קוש Talila Kosh אודליה רון Odelia Ron טל עוזיאלי Tal Uziely נרגיס מורקוס Nargis Morkos רחלי הימן Racheli Heyman ענת הרבסט-דבי Anat Herbst-Debby הדסה שקד Hadassa Shaked אירית קליין Irit Klein עליזה קנר בצלאל Aliza Knner Bezalel אבי יהודאי Avi Yehoudai אבישי טל Avishay Tal אורית פרנקל Orit Frankel עפרה בק תירוש Ofra Bak Tiroah מירון רז קפמן Miron Raz Kafman קלאודיו אפשטיין Claudio Epstein צפורה קליינר Tzipporah Kliener אילה איל Ila Eyal אורי דב גלעד Ori Dov Gilad רתם תלם Rotem Tellem קרן סער Karen Saar צור שיזף Tsur Shezaf יובל לב Yuval Lev הדס מאור Hadas Maor שרון דראגץ׳ Sharon Dragich יובל אלבג Yuval Albag יצחק גורליק Itzik Gorelick ענת צמיר Anat Zamir עידן זונשיין Idan Zonshine שירה שמיר Shira Shamir קרן אדלמן Karin Adelman דורון אלון Doron Alon אוריאל משולם Uriel Meshoullam יובל רהט Yuval Rahat טליה זוהר Talia Zohar טל אלון-מן Tal Alon-Mann רחל מינסקי Rachel Minsky קתרין רוטנברג Catherine Rottenberg רלי דה פריס Relli De Vries אוֹרי גבאי Ori Gabai יואב אפרון Yoav Efron ניר סגל Nir Segal מתן אס. כהן Matan S. Cohen יהל מנור Yahel Manor אולגה שלי יעקובלבה Olga Shely Yakovleva רתם וגנר Rotem Wagner חוה רוזנברג Hava Rosenberg נמרוד אילי Nimrod Ayali ישי מנוחין Ishai Menuchin אראל פירר פרישר Erel Firer Frischer דנה לביא Dana Lavi רחל שחר Rachel Shajar אהוביה כהנא Ahuvia Kahane איירטון תויאנסק Airton Toyansk אסף יעקובוביץ’ Assaf Yacobovitz איתמר בלאיש Itamar Bellaïche אפרים בר Efraïm Bar מלכה כהן-זכאי Malka Cohen-Zakai חנן שליב Hanan Shaliv דורית אברמוביץ Droit Abramovich ג׳ול טרגן Jull Taragan עומר מנטין Omer Mantin יוסף בן משה Yosef Ben Moshe שחר מור Shahar Mor עמוס פלד Amos Peled מאיה הפנר Maya Heffner נועה מימן Noa Maiman אנה סומרשף Anna Somershaf ענת גוטמן Anat Gutman אורה סלונים Ora Slonim שריל נסטל Sheryl Nesyel אסיא אדר Asya Adar עליזה שר Aliza Scher נועם מור Noam Mor אנה דביר Anna Dvir ליאור קליין Lior Klein לוסי וולף Lucy Wolfe מריו-רמי סלמאן Mario-Rami Salman מרדכי פלאם Mordechai Flom עומרי בכרך Omri Bachrach רוני גרינשטיין Roni Grinstein בן בייז Ben Bayez יואב כהן Yoav Cohen סער יוגב Saar Yogev אורן בן נתן Oren Ben Natan מאי שרה דותן Mai Sara Dotan עומרי זילברנגל Omri Zilbernagel גל מרים עמית Gal Miriam Amit שבולת שכטר Shibboleth Shechter טום צמח Tom Zemach קארין אנגל Karin Engel מיכל ברודי ברקת Michal Brody Bareket עמוס פיאט Amos Fiat אורי אילון Uri Ayalon יסמין נסים Yasmin Nessim אביב קורנמן Aviv Korenman נועה איזנברג Noa Izenberg אשתר בת האדמה Ashtar Bat Haadama אלינור בן זיקרי Elinor Benzekry דנה אריאל Dana Ariel עדי אניס Adi Anais רינה ברנטל Rinah Bernthal להט מגלי Lahhat Magali דויד הרושובסקי David Hrushovski איילה לוינגר Ayala Levinger גילה ניימן Gila Neiman תום אלדר Tom Eldar שרה קיימן Sara Kamen יניב ארוש Yaniv Arush רבקה ג׳ונסון Rebecca Johnson ליעד קנטורוביץ׳ Liad Kantorowicz ג’ני פלדמן Jennie Feldman אילנה ברעם Ilana Baram בינה פינר Bina Finer רעיה כהן Raya Cohen טלי סילבר Tali Silver רותי ברקאי Ruthi Barkai קאי כרמי Kai Carmi עמיר בן יוסף Amir Ben Yoseph רעם דון Raam Don איילה לוי Ayala levi אנה גבריאלה וופנר Ana Gabriela Wapner טלי גרוסמן Tali Grossman ליבי קשת Libby Keshet גלי גרינפלד Gali Greenfeld אורן לידה Oren Lida אוהד מרומי Ohad Meromi אלדמע ברטוב Aldema Bartov אורקאי אברמוב OrrKai Avramov כרמית בר-לב Carmit Bar-lev יעל מיכאל Yael Michael יובל הראל Yuval Harel שושנה פנדל Shoshana Fendel מילי אני Mili Ani אביטל שמשוביץ Avital Shimshowitz ליאה טרשצ׳נסקי Lia Tarachansky אריאל גרשון Ariel Gershon קרן אייזיקס Karen Isaacs נועה גלעד Noa Gilad גבריאלה ריצארדס Gabrielle Richards קלייר וייסברג Claire Weisberg יערה מוקדי Yaara Mokady אניטרה לוריא Anitra Lourie סירין אבו פני Sereen Abu Fani טרי גרינבלט Terry Greenblatt מעין נייזנה Maayan Niezna דורית זמר Dorit Zemer רותם כרמי Rotem Carmi מיכל נוי Michal Noy הלל רוזנשיין Hillel Rosenshine מיכאל סמושי Michael Szamosi בעז בר-אדון Boaz Bar-Adon אור אביהוא Or Avihou זיו צפתי פרנק Ziv Tsfati Frank 

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Koen Van Laer

@Koen_VanLaerIn the 2nd part of our @uhasselt academic series “Attacks on Academia in Palestine and beyond” dr. Regev Nathansohn will present his work on the Israeli occupation & reflect on academic freedom in Israel, where his anti-war stance ended his career.  RSVP https://lnkd.in/eJeKAmEH

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeV73ndAd4fgySk413K8xRmpYN9DTHwav7YQ_CqSvVYyMU7Lg/viewform

Academic discussions on Educide and threats to academic freedom

Registrations:  Attacks on academia in Palestine and beyond

In this academic series which take place at Hasselt University, we will dig deeper into attacks on academia, academics and academic freedom amidst the ongoing genocide. 

Register here to attend one or more events in this series. 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sbpBrj8F3E

Transcript 

My name is Regev Nathansohn, and I’m an anthropologist. One of the first lessons in anthropology is, things are not the way they seem. I did not come here to talk about those Israeli Jews who seek revenge and brutally push for the expansion of their control, supremacy, and exclusivity in the land between the river and the sea, nor did I come here to talk about their countless victims. I came here to talk about Israelis who are considered liberals, those who you would expect to care about universal humanistic values and to stand against genocide, particularly those in Academia and in media, those who may see themselves as liberal Democratic, as enlightened but in fact, they are privileging Jewish Supremacy over rational reason their facade of liberalism is maintained by a dual move, they may criticize the Israeli government on its anti-democratic moves against Jewish citizens, but at the same time they silence critical voices against the war and genocide, voices that also expose the non liberal practices of these institutions. I know how it works, because I was a professor in the leading Department of Communication at Sapir College, where the next generation of journalists is trained, trained to silence. In late March the administration of my college tried to silence me after I signed a petition opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza, like many of my colleagues, it’s a college located 3 km from the Gaza Strip I knew personally some of the victims of October 7th, relatives of people who are dear to me have been kidnapped, others who I know well, have lost their families friends and homes but the depth of the grief following the Hamas-lead attack did not cloud my vision that there could not be a military solution. As evidence of atrocities from the Gaza strip came in I signed several petitions one of which was presented by academics from all over the world, calling on US President Biden to stop the transfer of all offensive arms and related funds to Israel, to stop the genocide deemed as plausible. Within days a campaign against the Israeli academics who signed the petition was launched and there were calls for my dismissal, in response the college released a misleading statement to the press, in which they, and I quote, ‘strongly condemn statements against IDF soldiers’ they also added that I could no longer use my academic affiliation in personal and political contexts. Following their response, the incitement against me grew stronger, even on the college’s social media platforms, at one point, the college itself hit a ‘like’ on a comment calling me a supporter of terrorism. I notified the administration that they had created a hostile work environment, one that prevented me from performing my academic duties and so I asked them to revise their public response and to actively protect freedom of speech and academic freedom so I could go back to teaching. Unfortunately, they rejected my request and immediately put me on unpaid leave for 6 months. In September, my unpaid leave ended and the administration announced that I de facto resigned. During all that time, the vast majority of my colleagues in the department chose to keep silent, by doing so, they helped sweep the case under the rug and gave our students, soon-to-be journalists, a horrifying lesson on silence and silencing. To be honest, I, too, have refrained from speaking up on certain occasions. I did not say anything when the department took pride in lecturers wearing their reservist uniform while teaching journalism. I was also afraid to suggest that my department, the Department of Communication, would condemn the killing of about 100 journalists in Gaza. The way they handled my case was not something new. Cases similar to mine clearly showed that the college saw student enrollment and satisfaction as contradictory to nurturing critical thinking. This has also been the case in other academic institutions in Israel. According to Academia for Equality, a members’ organization for the democratization of Israeli Academia and society, Palestinian and Jewish students and faculty experience a growing sense of fear and silencing, more than ever before. They self-censure and refrain from publicly expressing critical views because of the increasing potential of being sanctioned, called supporters of terrorism, or just considered a threat to campus community. This primarily affects Palestinian faculty and students, and it directly leads to a significant drop in the registration of Palestinian students to Israeli institutions. Their fear is based on concrete cases of suspension of students and faculty and even the dismissal of faculty members who were critical against the war. Things are not the way they seem under the liberal facade of Israeli academic institutions there are impossible conditions for academic life if you are a Palestinian student or a faculty member with critical views regarding the ongoing war and genocide, under such conditions, there is almost no chance for change from within. Under such conditions, only International pressure can effectively save human lives from the river to the sea. Thank you 6:48 [Applause]

21.11.24

Editorial Note

Earlier this month, Prof. Oded Goldreich, a Weizmann Institute computer scientist, published an article, “Lest We Forget: The Destruction of Gaza and What Followed Did not Start on October 7,” together with Prof. Assaf Kfoury, a Palestinian-Lebanese mathematician from Boston University. It appeared in Znetwork, a US media outlet that goes “beyond critique to explore and organize alternatives.” The authors identify with the war against Israel while rejecting Israel’s right to fight back.  

Znetwork has a reputation of being radically anti-Israel. For example, articles from this month include “Israel’s War on the World” and “Israel Will Eventually Pay the Price for Gaza Genocide.” Older articles from 2001 include “Israel’s Approved Ethnic Cleansing” Part 1, “Israel’s Approved Ethnic Cleansing” Part 2, and “Israel’s Approved Ethnic Cleansing” Part 3. 

Goldreich and Kfoury discuss the current war. They say, “This is a war driven by an Israeli government bent on exacting vengeful retribution on all its perceived enemies, unrestrained by its American benefactor and main purveyor of weapons.” 

For them, the circumstances that led to this war are “a covert decades-long war waged by Israel on the Palestinian people.”

The article discusses how “In 2021 and 2022, various human rights organizations issued scathing reports describing Israel as an apartheid state (see reports by  Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli B’Tselem). But Israeli officials would routinely dismiss them, with outraged accusations that they are antisemitic attempts to de-legitimize Israel.”

Meanwhile, not intentionally, Goldreich and Kfoury provide the two justifications as to why Israel’s staunch enemies started a war. They explain: First, “the Israeli economy was thriving, having weathered the pandemic better than most western countries, with Israel’s GDP growth rate exceeding that of the US and that of the EU in the three years preceding 2023.  It had also become more popular as a tourist destination with 4.9 million visitors in 2019, and a post-pandemic recovery to 2.5 million visitors in the first nine months of 2023.” 

Second, the “Once-hostile Arab governments seemed reconciled with – or even welcoming to – a strong Israeli state, largely perceived as a beachhead for the projection of American power in the Eastern Mediterranean.  Apart from occasional performative criticism of Israel to placate widespread pro-Palestinian sympathies among their masses, autocratic Arab rulers were lining up to sign accords with Israel, with American guidance and blessing. One of the extraordinary developments of the Abraham Accords, negotiated under American auspices at the end of 2020, was the steady stream of Israeli tourists and entrepreneurs heading to the rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf.”

According to Goldreich and Kfoury, “Israelis lulled into complacency, the days before October 7 probably gave a taste of an imagined world where all Palestinians are faceless or do not exist. Or, if they still worried about a Palestinian problem, they were probably comforting themselves with the fiction that it was permanently contained.”

Goldreich and Kfoury claim that “In March 2018, Palestinians in Gaza launched what they called the Great March of Return, an organized campaign of weekly protests near the fence enclosing Gaza… It was an accumulation of pent-up grievances, public indignities, and suppressed angers, over many years, which burst out on October 7, 2023. The foretold explosion occurred, though its shape and timing were unpredictable. Less an act of vengeance than an act of desperation, the Gazans broke out of their slow death strangulation. Chaotic beyond expectation to the Palestinians themselves, partly due to Israeli army units around Gaza collapsing in disarray, the events of that single day were abhorrent and horrific, spearheaded by Hamas and thereafter an assortment of other groups and individuals.” 

For Goldreich and Kfoury, “Then the events on every single day since October 7, 2023, have been abhorrent and horrific, perpetrated by the Israeli military, methodically and deliberately on explicit instructions from Netanyahu and his ministers… an unchecked orgy of manic violence and destruction – with the total tonnage of bombs thrown on Gaza and its two million inhabitants already surpassing the combined total thrown on Dresden, Hamburg, and London during the entire duration of World War II. This is the latest phase, more violent and devastating than all the preceding ones, in the century-long trajectory of ethnically transforming Palestine.”

Goldreich and Kfoury claim, “For the Israeli public at large, Palestinians have been dehumanized to such an extreme over decades of indoctrination that the destruction of Gaza is viewed as just and the Palestinians are viewed as deserving it!” It is not possible to give an account of what prevailed in recent decades leading to this very day without mentioning that American policy in the Middle East had combined unquestioned support for Israel and patronizing neglect for the Palestinians.”

They end by pleading, “It is high time that the US changes its policy and forces Israel to stop its incendiary rampage in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, and enter a fast process aimed at freeing Palestinians from oppressive Israeli rule.” Adding that “May this be a first step towards a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wider regional peace!”

According to Goldreich and Kfoury, it’s all Israel’s fault.

Coincidentally, last month, IAM discussed the renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, a radical left-wing political activist who traveled in 2006 to meet Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Lebanon. Chomsky was accompanied by Assaf Kfoury, who detailed his impressions of their visit.  Chomsky advised Nasrallah on how to influence the American public. He said, “If you can inform the public and get them to understand your position, they will put pressure on the politicians and hopefully prevent them from conducting their most destructive policies. Without internal public pressure, US policy is not likely to change significantly.”

Likewise, Goldreich is a longtime anti-Israel activist, which IAM covered on several occasions. He was a signatory of a petition in 2002 of 356 Israeli lecturers from all Israeli universities urging their students to refuse military service in the Palestinian territories. 

In 2005, Goldreich was among the signatories of a call to boycott Ariel University on the pages of the Guardian newspaper, stating, “One fact omitted from the anti-boycott advert in the Guardian (May 20) is that the boycott by the Association of University Teachers (AUT) of Bar-Ilan University is based on its support for Ariel College, an exclusively Jewish settlement constructed on illegally seized land in the occupied West Bank. Bar-Ilan supervises degree programs at Ariel. The AUT resolution, which we hope is upheld this week, states that a boycott of Bar-Ilan should persist ‘until it severs all academic links’ with Ariel. As the Israeli commentator Tom Segev pointed out in Ha’aretz, the boycott hurts only ‘those Israelis who support the perpetuation of the Israeli presence in the occupied territories’. We call on the British government and the EU to fall in line with the principled stance of the AUT. States must ensure that no Israeli institution that contributes to the violations of international law inherent in the land seizures and construction of illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories should qualify for any government or EU-sponsored assistance.”

Goldreich provoked a public storm in recent years when he won the prestigious Israel Prize. Two former ministers of education and other public figures protested against giving a reward to an academic activist who repeatedly besmirched Israel.  IAM reported on the case three times:  “BDS Activism Can Disqualify from Winning the Israel Prize: Oded Goldreich as a Case in Point” in March 2021, “Ending the Oded Goldreich Israel Prize Saga” in November 2021, and “The Oded Goldreich Israel Prize Saga not Ended” in January 2022. Despite public protest, in April 2022, Goldreich received the Israel Prize and donated the prize money to five organizations: Breaking the Silence, Standing Together, Worker’s Hotline, B’tselem, and Adalah.

Goldreich is yet another example of how activist scholars contribute to the Palestinian propaganda machine by misrepresenting history and twisting facts. Israel and Jews in the West are fighting an unprecedented wave of antisemitism on campuses. Goldreich’s writings help to fuel the flames.

REFERENCES

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/lest-we-forget-the-destruction-of-gaza-and-what-followed-did-not-start-on-october-7/

http://www.idcommunism.com/2024/11/the-destruction-of-gaza-and-what-followed-did-not-start-on-october-7.html

Lest We Forget: The destruction of Gaza and what followed did not start on October 7

By Oded Goldreich and Assaf Kfoury

November 2, 2024

Z Article

An incendiary war has been raging for more than a year in the Middle East.  It has been indescribably devastating on Gaza and has now extended to the West Bank, to northern Israel and Lebanon, with ominous signs of expanding further into a regional war. This is a war driven by an Israeli government bent on exacting vengeful retribution on all its perceived enemies, unrestrained by its American benefactor and main purveyor of weapons. While this war has been extensively covered by the media, what is mostly understated or forgotten are the circumstances that led to it – a covert decades-long war waged by Israel on the Palestinian people. 

For most Israelis, what prevailed in the years leading up to October 7, 2023, was a tolerable or even desirable status quo. A senior researcher, Tamar Herman at the Israel Democracy Institute was reported to have said “the issues of settlements or relations with Palestinians were off the table for years,” and went on to add that “Palestinians hardly caught the attention of Israeli Jews.”  That there was a Palestinian problem in their midst or nearby was something mostly ignored, or else slowly receding into a background of collective amnesia. 

In 2021 and 2022, various human rights organizations issued scathing reports describing Israel as an apartheid state (see reports by  Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli B’Tselem). But Israeli officials would routinely dismiss them, with outraged accusations that they are antisemitic attempts to de-legitimize Israel.

Meanwhile, the Israeli economy was thriving, having weathered the pandemic better than most western countries, with Israel’s GDP growth rate exceeding that of the US and that of the EU in the three years preceding 2023.  It had also become more popular as a tourist destination with 4.9 million visitors in 2019, and a post-pandemic recovery to 2.5 million visitors in the first nine months of 2023. 

But that was not all.  Once-hostile Arab governments seemed reconciled with – or even welcoming to – a strong Israeli state, largely perceived as a beachhead for the projection of American power in the Eastern Mediterranean.  Apart from occasional performative criticism of Israel to placate widespread pro-Palestinian sympathies among their masses, autocratic Arab rulers were lining up to sign accords with Israel, with American guidance and blessing. One of the extraordinary developments of the Abraham Accords, negotiated under American auspices at the end of 2020, was the steady stream of Israeli tourists and entrepreneurs heading to the rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

To Israelis lulled into complacency, the days before October 7 probably gave a taste of an imagined world where all Palestinians are faceless or do not exist. Or, if they still worried about a Palestinian problem, they were probably comforting themselves with the fiction that it was permanently contained – a fiction promoted by Prime Minister Netanyahu who, among other things, in his many devious ways, had spent years strengthening Hamas in Gaza against the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, to keep them apart and prevent them from uniting.  

Even when the “populist reform” launched by the Israeli government in January 2023 generated considerable opposition, which spanned the political spectrum of Israeli society from left to much of the right, the mainstream of this opposition failed to acknowledge the connection between this reform and the oppression of Palestinians under Israeli rule.

What about the Palestinians: What was in store for them in the years leading up to October 7, 2023? For them, what prevailed before October 7 was anything but a tolerable status quo: For those living in Israel, it meant continued discrimination, marginalization and exclusion. For those living in the West Bank, it meant continued subjection to arbitrary oppression, humiliation, and the danger of getting killed or wounded during some IDF operation. For those living in Gaza, it meant a continued indefinite de-facto imprisonment with no hope of parole.  

In Israel itself, Palestinians continued to suffer from increasing levels of direct and indirect institutional discrimination and faced rising racism.  While some Palestinians managed to improve their living conditions against all odds, they were still marginalized in Israeli society, especially in the political sphere. The process of exclusion is reflected in the Nation-State Law of 2018, which states that “The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious, and historical right to self-determination. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

In the West Bank, the biggest plagues threatening Palestinian existence were the expanding settlements and the Wall that was built to protect them. The “security measures” imposed by the Israeli occupation were cruel, humiliating, and deliberately intended to make Palestinians’ daily routine miserable and unbearable: the curfews, the targeted assassinations and their “collateral” victims, the extra-judicial imprisonments, the checkpoints, the withholding of fuel and food supplies, the house demolitions, the land grabs, the Israeli-only “bypass” roads, and other regular atrocities. While those conditions had been in the making for years and decades, they became all the more ominous and threatening with the latest Netanyahu government at the end of 2022, which included extremist far-right and openly racist ministers, people like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. 

As for Gaza, it became, in the words of the late Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, the “largest concentration camp ever exist.” It is worth noting that he made that statement back in 2003, when Gaza was not yet fully sealed off; it was only four years later, when Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, that a complete blockade was imposed on the enclave. In a fact sheet issued in 2018, the Norwegian Refugee Council called the narrow coastal strip “the world’s largest open-air prison.” The prison guard was Israel, and its complicit trusty was Egypt; the two countries could act with impunity because their American enabler would always protect them from accountability at the UN and other international forums.

In March 2018, Palestinians in Gaza launched what they called the Great March of Return, an organized campaign of weekly protests near the fence enclosing Gaza. Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza since 2007, allowed it to take place without leading it; it was a civilian unarmed initiative, as made clear in a UN Human Rights Commission report  at the time (March 18, 2019, pp. 68-69). The campaign’s demands were an end to Israel’s blockade and the right of return for the besieged Palestinian refugees to their villages and towns in what is now Israel. These unarmed protests were suppressed by Israel using unrestrained lethal force, as reflected by the casualties of this suppression: According to an Amnesty International report, dated March 2019, more than 195 Palestinians were killed and more than 28,939 injured, while on the Israeli side one soldier was killed and one was moderately injured. 

The Great March of Return fizzled out by the end of 2019, with no relief in sight of any kind for the besieged Gazans and with one more failure by the Palestinians at non-violent resistance. For older Palestinians, near and far, the Great March of Return was an echo from the First Intifada in the late 1980s and early 1990s – for its discipline and bravery, its organization and insistence on non-violent means – but also, bitterly, for its ultimate demise. 

It was an accumulation of pent-up grievances, public indignities, and suppressed angers, over many years, which burst out on October 7, 2023. The foretold explosion occurred, though its shape and timing were unpredictable. Less an act of vengeance than an act of desperation, the Gazans broke out of their slow death strangulation. Chaotic beyond expectation to the Palestinians themselves, partly due to Israeli army units around Gaza collapsing in disarray, the events of that single day were abhorrent and horrific, spearheaded by Hamas and thereafter an assortment of other groups and individuals. 

Three days after the October 7 attack, the ever-perceptive Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote: “In a few days, Israelis went through what Palestinians have experienced as a matter of routine for decades, and are still experiencing,” including “military incursions, death, cruelty, slain children, bodies piled up in the road, siege, fear, anxiety over loved ones, captivity […] and searing humiliation. […]  Ongoing oppression and injustice explode at unexpected times and places.” 

Then the events on every single day since October 7, 2023, have been abhorrent and horrific, perpetrated by the Israeli military, methodically and deliberately on explicit instructions from Netanyahu and his ministers. This has been more than a year as of this writing (October 20, 2024) with no end in sight – an unchecked orgy of manic violence and destruction – with the total tonnage of bombs thrown on Gaza and its two million inhabitants already surpassing the combined total thrown on Dresden, Hamburg, and London during the entire duration of World War II. 

This is the latest phase, more violent and devastating than all the preceding ones, in the century-long trajectory of ethnically transforming Palestine. For the Israeli public at large, Palestinians have been dehumanized to such an extreme over decades of indoctrination that the destruction of Gaza is viewed as just and the Palestinians are viewed as deserving it!

It is not possible to give an account of what prevailed in recent decades leading to this very day without mentioning that American policy in the Middle East had combined unquestioned support for Israel and patronizing neglect for the Palestinians.  The total disconnect between American policy and the reality on the ground is reflected by the article that National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, submitted to Foreign Affairs magazine on October 2, 2023. In it, he claimed that the Middle East “is quieter than it has been for decades” and that “we have de-escalated crises in Gaza.”  That article was submitted 5 days before October 7, and 17 days before its publication, coincidentally producing a written record and testimony of the utterly myopic and delusional views of the handful of people responsible for setting American foreign policy. 

It is high time that the US changes its policy and forces Israel to stop its incendiary rampage in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, and enter a fast process aimed at freeing Palestinians from oppressive Israeli rule.  May this be a first step towards a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wider regional peace!

* The article was published first by ZNetwork. Oded Goldreich is a professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute and an Israel Prize laureate (2021). He is a member of the Communist Party of Israel and advocates a political solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Assaf Kfouryis a mathematician and professor of computer science at Boston University. He is an Arab American political activist, of Lebanese and Palestinian background, who has worked on many issues related to events in Palestine/Israel and the wider Middle East

maki.org.il

13.11.24

Editorial Note

The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) has recently announced a vote on a motion concerning “collaborations with Israeli academic institutions in light of the ongoing systematic human rights violations in Palestine, Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and plausible genocide committed in the Gaza strip.” The ballot will take place during its next annual general meeting in July 2025.

EASA argues that “international intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations, have documented and verified Israel’s systematic annexation and colonization of Palestinian lands, massive violations of Palestinians’ human rights, a 17-year blockade of the Gaza strip, segregationist and discriminating policies, the ongoing massacres of civilians in Gaza as well as continuing violations of International Law with the International Court of Justice considering plausible a genocide, and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor acknowledging Israel’s responsibility in war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

EASA accuses Israel of “systematic violations, which include the destruction of all Gazan universities and the intentional obliteration of schools, teachers and students, characterized as ‘scholasticide’ by international law experts” and that “these systematic violations also include restricting freedom of movement for Palestinians; isolating, undermining, or otherwise attacking Palestinian educational institutions; harassing Palestinian professors, teachers, and students; harassing Israeli professors and students criticizing Israeli policies; destroying, confiscating, or otherwise rendering Palestinian archival material inaccessible; and maintaining inequality in educational resources between Palestinians and Israelis; considering that Israeli universities are imbricated in these systematic violations through their provision of direct assistance to the Israeli military and intelligence establishments, that they (Technion, Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University) hold joint programs with arms industries and that they actively contribute to the state’s military propaganda (a practice commonly known as hasbara).”

EASA also claims that “European governments have systematically shielded successive Israeli governments from being held accountable for such violations and facilitated them through unprecedented diplomatic, military, and economic support.” 

EASA ended the motion by stating it “recognizes the right of scholars to academic freedom and is committed to the defense and promotion of human rights, and that the need for immediate action using peaceful means has never been greater.”

The motion asks to resolve that EASA “Does not collaborate with Israeli academic institutions until Israel complies with International Law and International Humanitarian Law and ends the occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” That EASA “Directs the EASA Executive Committee to work in consultation with the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom to give effect to the spirit and intent of this motion, in a manner consistent with EASA’s bylaws as well as the relevant national laws of its members.” And that EASA “Encourages EASA members not to enter into institutional arrangements, e.g. through common research projects and grants, with Israeli academic institutions.” 

Signed by the EASA members who submitted the motion to the EASA’s General Assembly: Miriyam Aouragh, Roberto Beneduce, Yazid Ben Hounet, Marianna Betti, Véronique Bontemps, Heath Cabot, Ian Cook, Jane Cowan, Antonio De Lauri, Malay Firoz, Martin Fotta, Mattia Fumanti, Don Kalb, Nichola Khan, Shahram Khosravi, Heidi Mogstad, Alessandro Monsutti, Annelies Moors, Fiona Murphy, Yael Navaro, Carmeliza Rosario, Simona Taliani, Anna-Esther Younes. 

The organization is a long-time agitator against Israel. To recall, in October 2018, EASA passed a motion on “Israeli academic institutions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” when EASA voted online in “overwhelming numbers to express their solidarity with colleagues in occupied Palestinian territories… The motion called for EASA to express its own opposition to the establishment of academic institutions exclusively serving Israeli citizens, situated within occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and to pledge its own non-cooperation with these institutions; and to express its solidarity with Palestinian academics and students suffering the brunt of these discriminatory policies as well as with the Israeli colleagues of the Israeli Sociological Association and Israeli Anthropological association who oppose the same policies.” 

To recall, IAM reported that Dr. Matan Kaminer was behind the EASA motion in 2018 and that Dr. Nir Avieli the President of the Israeli Anthropological Association, thanked EASA for boycotting academic institutions such as Ariel University. Both he and Kaminer were not sanctioned, although it was illegal to support a boycott after the Knesset passed the Boycott Law in 2011. 

However, on the “About Us” page, EASA states it is registered as a charity in the UK. It says, “EASA is a self-governing democratic body. It is both registered with Companies House and with the Charity Commission. As such it is bound by its constitution, relevant laws and EASA adheres to guidance on proper governance.” 

IAM checked the charity governance code: “The board acts with Integrity. It adopts values, applies ethical principles to decisions and creates a welcoming and supportive culture which helps achieve the charity’s purposes. The board is aware of the significance of the public’s confidence and trust in charities.  It reflects the charity’s ethics and values in everything it does. Trustees undertake their duties with this in mind… Delivering the charity’s purposes for public benefit should be at the heart of everything the board does…Everyone who comes into contact with a charity should be treated with dignity and respect and feel that they are in a safe and supportive environment. Charity leaders should show the highest levels of personal integrity and conduct. To achieve this, trustees should create a culture that supports the charity’s values, adopt behaviors and policies in line with the values and set aside any personal interests or loyalties. The board should understand and address any inappropriate power dynamics to avoid damaging the charity’s reputation, public support for its work and delivery of its aims… The board acts in the best interests of the charity’s purposes and its beneficiaries, creating a safe, respectful and welcoming environment for those who come into contact with it. The board makes objective decisions about delivering the charity’s purposes. It is not unduly influenced by those who may have special or personal interests… Collectively, the board is independent in its decision making. No one person or group has undue power or influence in the charity.”

Clearly, the proposed EASA motion violates the charity governance code.

It should come as no surprise that the pro-Palestinian camp doubles its efforts to boycott Israel by all means. As IAM noted before, the pro-Palestinian camp hijacks professional associations, in this case through EASAmembers4Palestine, and turns them into a tool for bashing Israel.

REFERENCES:

https://easaonline.org/newsletter/86-0724/item2

2. Motion concerning collaborations with Israeli academic institutions

The Motion has been added to the AGM agenda and will be discussed in Barcelona.

The EASA executive committee has received a Motion concerning collaborations with Israeli academic institutions in light of the ongoing systematic human rights violations in Palestine, Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and plausible genocide committed in the Gaza strip. The Motion has been added to the AGM agenda and will be discussed in Barcelona. The Motion submitted to EASA can also be found on a EASAmembers4Palestine with more detailed information, FAQs, and endorsements from various EASA members. In particular the FAQ section is useful in preparing the debate on this Motion at the next AGM.

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https://easamembers4palestine.wordpress.com/

Motion

Motion concerning collaborations with Israeli academic institutions in light of the ongoing systematic human rights violations in Palestine, Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and plausible genocide committed in the Gaza strip.

Considering that the European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA) has on numerous occasions manifested its commitment to academic freedom and human rights; 

considering that in 2018 the Assembly voted a motion expressing its opposition to the establishment and regularization of Israeli academic institutions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and supported calls to end collaborations with such institutions; 

considering that international intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations, have documented and verified Israel’s systematic annexation and colonization of Palestinian lands, massive violations of Palestinians’ human rights, a 17-year blockade of the Gaza strip, segregationist and discriminating policies, the ongoing massacres of civilians in Gaza as well as continuing violations of International Law with the International Court of Justice considering plausible a genocide, and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor acknowledging Israel’s responsibility in war crimes and crimes against humanity; 

considering the systematic violations, which include the destruction of all Gazan universities and the intentional obliteration of schools, teachers and students, characterized as ‘scholasticide’ by international law experts; 

considering that these systematic violations also include restricting freedom of movement for Palestinians; isolating, undermining, or otherwise attacking Palestinian educational institutions; harassing Palestinian professors, teachers, and students; harassing Israeli professors and students criticizing Israeli policies; destroying, confiscating, or otherwise rendering Palestinian archival material inaccessible; and maintaining inequality in educational resources between Palestinians and Israelis; 

considering that Israeli universities are imbricated in these systematic violations through their provision of direct assistance to the Israeli military and intelligence establishments, that they (Technion, Hebrew University, Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University) hold joint programs with arms industries and that they actively contribute to the state’s military propaganda (a practice commonly known as hasbara); 

considering that European governments have systematically shielded successive Israeli governments from being held accountable for such violations and facilitated them through unprecedented diplomatic, military, and economic support; 

considering that EASA recognizes the right of scholars to academic freedom and is committed to the defense and promotion of human rights, and that the need for immediate action using peaceful means has never been greater; be it

Resolved, that the EASA:

1. Does not collaborate with Israeli academic institutions until Israel complies with International Law and International Humanitarian Law and ends the occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
2. Directs the EASA Executive Committee to work in consultation with the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom to give effect to the spirit and intent of this motion, in a manner consistent with EASA’s bylaws as well as the relevant national laws of its members.
3. Encourages EASA members not to enter into institutional arrangements, e.g. through common research projects and grants, with Israeli academic institutions.

Submitted to EASA’s General Assembly by:

Miriyam Aouragh, Roberto Beneduce, Yazid Ben Hounet, Marianna Betti, Véronique Bontemps, Heath Cabot, Ian Cook, Jane Cowan, Antonio De Lauri, Malay Firoz, Martin Fotta, Mattia Fumanti, Don Kalb, Nichola Khan, Shahram Khosravi, Heidi Mogstad, Alessandro Monsutti, Annelies Moors, Fiona Murphy, Yael Navaro, Carmeliza Rosario, Simona Taliani, Anna-Esther Younes.

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https://easaonline.org/newsletter/86-0724/item1

1. President’s Letter

President Ana Ivasiuc addresses the membership

Our mid-summer newsletter reaches you right before our most anticipated event: the EASA2024 conference. Many of you have already started tweeting and posting on upcoming events (remember to use the hashtag #EASA2024 on X!) and it is heartening to see so much enthusiasm building up to the conference.

Although understandably the highlight of this month is the EASA conference, I want to draw your attention to four topics of interest further detailed in this newsletter.

The first is the Motion that was submitted to EASA for debate at the next AGM on the topic of collaboration with Israeli academic institutions. The Motion builds on past debates and decisions taken by the EASA membership to curtail collaboration with Israeli academic institutions situated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Motion debated in 2018 in Stockholm) and recommends, in light of the current genocidal violence that the Israeli state is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, that our association takes appropriate measures to exert non-violent pressure on Israeli academic institutions to end the violation of human rights and the violence against Palestinians. We take this subject seriously and I urge all our members to consult EASAmembers4Palestineset up by the signatories of the motion, and to prepare for our debate during the AGM by going carefully through the FAQ section of the website.

The second news of interest is the constitution of the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom, which started its activity on the 1st of June. The group (on whom you can read more below), composed of Julie Billaud, Chandana Mathur, Ruba Salih, Helena Zohdi, and our executive committee liaison, Hayal Akarsu, is already active and its first task, decided during the group’s first meeting, is to monitor the debate within EASA on the Motion concerning EASA’s ties with Israeli academic institutions.

Another important initiative of the current executive committee is the setup of a mentorship program. Recognising the need for mentoring in the early stages of the academic career and taking stock of similar initiatives elsewhere, we are launching a call for mentees that will receive guidance and mentoring from a group of dedicated EASA members with a wide array of skills and expertise. My immense gratitude goes to those of you who have accepted to be mentors and are generously offering your time to pilot this initiative for the next academic year, and to my wonderful colleagues, Hege Høyer Leivestad and Hayal Akarsu for setting up the program.

Finally, many of you suggested over the last few years that a renewal of our website is long overdue. I am happy to let you know that we have started working on the complete overhaul of EASA’s website. After the first meetings with Juhani Juurik, a graphic designer trained as an anthropologist, and with our NomadIT colleagues, I can attest to how complex and time-consuming this task is. Nevertheless, we are aiming at delivering a new website – or at least a first version of it – by the beginning of December. To help us centre the needs of our membership regarding our website, we need your support with the member survey further described below.

And now very briefly again on the upcoming conference. The timetable, so carefully curated by the Local and the Scientific Committees, is brimming with incredible panels, round tables, and events that touch upon crucial issues of our time. We will debate, among other things, the kinds of public anthropology that EASA should embrace (the round table “EASA Voices in a Troubled World”, Tuesday 11.00-12.30, Room 304), the state of academic freedom and censorship around Palestine (the round table “Academic Freedom, Censorship and Palestine: Anthropology in Crisis Again”, Thursday 18.30-20.00, Museu Marítim de Barcelona), anthropological engagements with the confluence between the far-right and capitalism, the impact of precarity on anthropologists, and many more topics that demonstrate more than ever anthropology’s relevance in our worlds and times.

Our conference begins on Thursday, 18 July, with a rich online offering starting early in the morning and featuring no less than 140 panels, labs, round tables and events in a single day. A highlight on the schedule is The Mantas Kvedaravičius Film Award 2024, which we are honoured to continue from its first edition in 2022. The winning film will be screened to EASA members on the online day of the conference and followed by the award ceremony and a Q&A with the directors.

One of the things that makes me incredibly proud of our association and grateful to the Barcelona Local Committee for its work is the organisation, within EASA 2024, of events in Spanish and in Catalan. This reminds us that EASA was conceived as a multilingual association, and that amidst calls for decolonising anthropology, we should return to the polyphony afforded by our different languages. On this note, I am looking forward to wishing you Benvinguts i Benvingudes a Barcelona for #EASA2024.

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https://easamembers4palestine.wordpress.com/frequently-asked-questions/

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQs on the Motion to End Collaborations with Israeli Academic Institutions

Who is behind the motion?

A group of EASA members proposed the motion in response to Israel’s ongoing human rights violations in Palestine, including crimes against humanity and plausible genocide committed in Gaza. We can be reached at this email address: easamembers4palestine@gmail.com

You can follow us on X: @EASA4Palestine

What is the motion’s purpose?
The motion specifically targets Israeli academic institutions rather than individual scholars. It holds these institutions accountable for their complicity or involvement in Israel’s systematic violations of human rights and international law. Suspending collaborations with Israeli academic institutions is a non-violent means to pressure Israel into complying with international law and ending its unlawful assaults and occupation whilst showing solidarity with the Palestinian people, including fellow scholars and students.

Why should members of EASA support the motion?
As scholars and members of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), we are at a critical juncture that demands immediate action and a principled stance. This motion responds to several urgent issues, from academic complicity in human rights violations to the systematic destruction of Palestinian education. Below, we lay out the core reasons why members should support this motion and debunk some common myths. 

Addressing academic complicity
As members of a professional association, we have a particular responsibility to address academic complicity. Israeli universities are complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and human rights in Palestine through their provision of direct assistance to the Israeli military and intelligence establishments. Israeli universities have been involved in developing military technologies and strategies used in the occupation of Palestinian territories, conducting archaeological digs that displace Palestinian communities, and engaging in research that supports state policies of segregation and discrimination. Several research centres and universities hold joint programs with arms industries and actively contribute to the state’s military propaganda. Others are built on top of depopulated Palestinian villages or partially based in illegal settlements. The ideological and material contributions of these institutions, across numerous academic disciplines, have long been part of the expansion of the Zionist settler-colonial project and the expulsion of Palestinians from their land.

This motion urges Israeli academic and research institutions to consider their roles and responsibilities and make efforts to align their actions with universal principles of justice and human dignity. It also demonstrates the commitment of anthropologists associated with EASA to hold academic institutions ethically accountable. 

Addressing ‘scholasticide’
Israel’s violations include the destruction of all Gazan universities as well as the targeted assaults on schools, teachers and students. This has been characterised as ‘scholasticide’: the deliberate and systematic destruction of education and the annihilation of cultural heritage sites. As professionals who decry programme closures, constraints on academic freedom and funding cuts in other contexts, we have a responsibility to respond to this willful destruction of Palestinian education and knowledge systems. 

Solidarity with Palestinian Colleagues
Palestinian scholars and civil society have long been advocating for a halt in collaboration with Israeli academic institutions as a means to pressure Israel to stop violating Palestinian rights. This motion supports this effort and signals a commitment to solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues. 

Historical Responsibility
Anthropology as a discipline has an obligation to address racism, colonialism and oppression in all their forms. Supporting the motion aligns with the field’s commitment to decolonization, anti-colonialism, anti-racism, human rights, conflict resolution, anti-militarism and peace-making.

Commitment to Human Rights
EASA has a strong tradition of advocating human rights. This motion aligns with this long-held tradition and is aimed at Israeli academic institutions to enact internal reforms that ensure  adherence to international human rights standards and principles.

Research Ethics
Israeli academic research has been used to justify land seizures, the expulsion of Palestinians and violation of international law and research ethics. For example, the discourse and excavation practices of archaeology departments contribute to the erasure of Muslim/Arabic history. Law and criminology scholars have recast definitions of war crimes and labels such as ‘human shields’ to incite and justify destructive force on civilian infrastructures. This unethical misuse of research violates the basic ethical principle of ensuring that our research ‘does no harm’ and warrants ethical refusal and resistance from the anthropological community. The motion sends a clear message that EASA does not condone such unethical research misuse. 

European Complicity
The European Union and several European countries provide substantial support to Israel–diplomatically, militarily, and economically. Israeli universities are engaged in many partnerships with European universities and research institutions, even though many have recently moved to suspend their collaboration with Israeli institutions (for example here, here, here, here and here). Israel continues to receive substantial European research funding, such as through Horizon 2020. Many of these research projects involve the Israeli arms industry. EASA’s stance can help raise awareness about this and foster public discussion about European policies and funding schemes. 

Repression in European Academia
Over the past year,  the repression and silencing of Palestinian rights activism has intensified across European cities and universities. European academia is currently characterized by a  “spiral of silence” where scholars, particularly those in precarious positions, fear speaking out about Palestine due to potential repercussions. In different European contexts, executive boards of universities have sent in riot police in response to the poems, chants and speeches of their peaceful students and staff members. Silence and active repression stifle academic debate and hinder the pursuit of justice for everyone. This motion signifies a refusal to stay silent and may empower individual EASA members to speak out as part of a larger collective. 

Urgency
The rapid destruction of life and habitable spaces in Gaza demands immediate action.  Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, and its differential treatment of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship have long been happening with impunity, despite recognized as crimes of apartheid. In response to the current scale of devastation and racialized dehumanisation, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) deemed genocide by Israel ‘plausible’. 

As scholars and members of EASA, we are morally and politically obligated to speak out against the systematic eradication of an entire population, to support our colleagues and students, and to uphold the principles of academic freedom and human rights. Peaceful forms of protest, such as suspending further collaborations with implicated universities and research centres, are crucial to addressing our complicity, breaking silences, and advocating for meaningful, sustainable change.

Correcting Common Misconceptions

It is important to address and counter common myths about petitions to suspend collaborations with Israeli institutions to ensure that the debate is informed by accurate information and ethical considerations. Misconceptions can undermine legitimate political actions and distract from the real issues at hand, such as institutional complicity in human rights violations. By debunking these myths, we uphold the principles of academic freedom, human rights, and justice, ensuring that our actions are grounded in truth and moral responsibility.

Tale #1: Refusing to collaborate with Israeli academic institutions is antisemitic

• In actuality: The suspension of collaboration with Israeli academic institutions is a form of principled non-violent protest aimed at the state of Israel and the universities and research institutions complicit in its policies. This action targets their decisions and actions, not Jewish people, distinguishing it from antisemitism. Collaboration in academia involves partnerships underpinned by shared ethical standards and mutual respect for human rights. When institutions are found to be complicit—meaning that they actively support or are directly involved in actions that violate international law and human rights—suspending collaboration is a legitimate form of non-violent protest. Equating such acts of protest and criticism with antisemitism undermines academic freedom and distracts from the real issue of institutional complicity in oppression. 

Tale #2: The motion undermines academic freedom.

• In actuality: Academic freedom includes the right to engage in political activities and express views, including support for motions like this. The motion targets institutions, not individual scholars. Israeli scholars can continue attending conferences, publishing work, and collaborating with peers. The motion’s aim is to influence the policies of Israeli institutions complicit in human rights violations without restricting the academic freedom of individual scholars. Furthermore, Israeli policies violate the academic freedom of Palestinians by restricting access to education and international academic collaboration and through the destruction of Palestinian universities. Academic freedom for critical Israeli scholars is equally restrained. Research on sensitive themes such as the Nakba of 1948 is structurally undermined, whereas projects that further Israel’s military campaign and/or settlement practices are actively supported. This motion is a motion for academic freedom for all. 

Tale #3: The motion prevents Israeli and European academics from working together.

• In actuality: The motion targets institutions, not individual scholars. It does not prevent Israeli and European scholars from collaborating together. In fact, several Israeli organizations, such as Boycott from within and Academia for Equality, are also urging to address institutional complicity for similar reasons.  

Tale #4: Motions like this are purely symbolic and ineffective.

• In actuality: Discontinuing academic partnerships or suspending institutional  agreements and research projects help to expose institutional complicity in mass violence and raise international awareness of Palestinian struggles, thereby building pressure for change. Israel’s extensive efforts to counter such initiatives indicate their potential material and symbolic effectiveness. As a major European professional association of anthropologists, EASA can leverage its influence to advocate with others for Israel to end its abuses against Palestinians.

Tale #5: Academic pressure stifles debate and isolates Israeli anthropologists.

• In actuality: Academic freedom is a complex issue in Israeli institutions.Academics and students who critique state policies and speak out against the Israeli system of oppression are often forced into exile or subject to silencing, censorship, detention and persecution. Moreover, not a single university in Israel has spoken up against the grave human rights abuses in Gaza or has called for a cease-fire, since Israel’s incursion into Gaza. The motion advocates for dismantling these punitive restrictions and encouraging free and open discussion for all scholars.

Tale #6: Dialogue is a better way to support Palestinian rights 

• In actuality: Dialogue without substantive change entrenches the status quo. Moreover, academic pressure can have a material and immediate impact on complicit Israeli institutions, as evidenced in the historical case of South Africa. 

Tale #7: The end of all institutional collaboration unfairly singles out Israel.

• In actuality: EASA has taken positions on various human rights issues worldwide.  Publishing open letters or voting on resolutions on political issues has long been a practice of the EASA. This is in line with calls for public engagement of anthropologists on a wide range of issues such as threats to academic freedom or departmental closures. The motion is part of the discipline’s broader commitment to advocating against human rights violations.

Tale #8: Supporting the motion will divide and harm EASA.

• In actuality:  It is important for EASA to maintain its commitment to human rights and ethical academic practices. The motion will be debated within EASA, reflecting a democratic process that underscores the urgency of action. We believe that for most members of EASA, healthy debate and disagreements are normal and desirable. As exemplified by other scholarly associations that have adopted similar resolutions, such discussions will not be harmful for a professional association that encourages and embraces diversity of opinion. 

Further, this motion is not unprecedented. In 2018, the Assembly voted on a motion expressing its opposition to the establishment and regularization of Israeli academic institutions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and supported calls to end collaborations with such institutions. Four years prior, in 2014, another motion to end the culture of silence and condemn the ongoing war and blockade against the inhabitants of Gaza was proposed but not approved.

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https://easamembers4palestine.wordpress.com/endorsements-2/

Endorsements

If you would like to write an endorsement for us, send an email to: easamembers4palestine@gmail.com

“I come from a formerly colonized country whose independence was undermined by South Africa’s apartheid regime backing a murderous destabilizing war. The Palestinian plight, for me, is not just about humanism; it is a deeply felt pain born out of continuously reliving a trauma.”

Carmeliza Rosario, Postdoctoral Researcher, Chr Michelsen Institute

“As a scholar based in Switzerland, I have been profoundly disturbed by how contrasted were the statements by swissuniversities, the umbrella organisation of the national universities, on Ukraine and Gaza. In the first case, swissuniversities “call on European governments to take immediate action to protect the lives and careers of Ukrainian university staff, students, researchers, and civil society actors.” The statement proceeds noting that “the warlike developments will have serious consequences for Ukrainian universities. Swiss universities will do everything in their power to host teachers, researchers and students from Ukrainian universities.” In the second case, the tone is quite different: “In view of the evolution of the situation within certain Swiss higher education institutions, we would like to position ourselves … First, the attempt to exploit an institution for political purposes does not offer the basic conditions for constructive dialogue. Second, maintaining academic dialogue is essential. Higher education institutions cannot accept to exclude people or institutions who are part of the academic community. Third, universities are not political actors. Higher education institutions are mandated to fulfil academic missions of research and teaching.”
How is it possible that the umbrella organisation of academic institutions in Switzerland, a country that enshrines neutrality as the core principle of its foreign policy, adopts so unapologetically such a double standard? How can we make sense that the legitimate concern for Ukrainian teachers, researchers and students was not extended to Gazan teachers, researchers and students? Decades of public and academic debates on the legacy of colonialism seem suddenly wiped out. I could not help but recall the colonial matrix of power, originally formulated by Anibal Quijano and brought forward by Walter Mignolo to describe the darker side of Western modernity.”

Alessandro Monsutti, Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Geneva Graduate Institute

“What is our responsibility as anthropologists in the face of the risk of genocide, according to some, or proven genocide, according to serious reports (here and here), of the Palestinian people? What is our role in the face of scholasticide in Gaza? How can we continue to teach about colonialism, apartheid, human rights, democracy and the anthropologist’s position on these issues if we remain mute and inactive in the face of the annihilation of Palestine and its indigenous people? It’s up to European social anthropologists to show the way and take concrete action to alert our European governments, which are, for most of them, inactive and even complicit in the ongoing genocide. That’s what it means to be on the right side of history! I know this as a citizen and I know this as an anthropologist working on Algeria. To quote Frantz Fanon in a letter written to his friend Roger Taïeb short before his death (1961): “We are nothing on this earth if we are not first and foremost slaves to a cause: the cause of the peoples, the cause of justice and freedom” “.

Yazid Ben Hounet, Researcher at CNRS (Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale, EHESS)

“Cutting ties with Israeli universities is a blunt instrument to some anthropologists. It inevitably conjures up images of erasures, severs, and the impossibility of carrying on dialogues and collaborations, some of which may allow for redressing past and present injustices and inequities.  Some consider severing ties and collaborations as a futile or even counterproductive action driven by ideology; for others, this will go against what many see as the central tenet of our discipline, anthropology’s emphasis on complexity and nuance.

While I am all in favor of anthropology’s emphasis on finely engrained ethnographies, nuanced scholarship, and complex multivocal narratives, the events of the past eight months make it particularly compelling for anthropologists to heed the Palestinian civil society call for cutting ties with Israeli universities to pressure Israel into ending its occupation and apartheid policies and its current military campaign in Gaza, which the ICJ ruling considers at plausible risk of genocide against the Palestinian people. 

Many reports and publications by civil society organizations, journalists, and scholars have stressed how Israeli universities are major, willing, and persistent accomplices in Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid. Both Nick Riemer’s Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation and Maya Wind’s Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom illuminate how Israeli universities are central to Israel’s colonial project. Israeli universities, Riemer and Wind argue, are involved in developing weapon systems; they advise and support Israeli ethno-nationalist policies, justifying the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land; provide moral justification for extra-judicial killings and other human rights violations; and systematically discriminate against Palestinian students and staff. Moreover, as both Riemer and Wind show, Israeli universities support Israeli policies that undermine Palestinian education by intentionally crippling or dismantling all forms of Palestinian education. Indeed, since October, Israel’s targeted destruction of education in Gaza has intensified to new levels. With over 80% of schools destroyed, the damage and destruction of all universities in Gaza, and the killing of university lecturers, schoolteachers, and students, UN experts, scholars, and journalists have now called this unprecedented destruction of all aspects of education a ‘scholasticide‘ and ‘educide‘.

As a scholar of Namibia and Southern Africa, I am particularly sensitive to the themes of settler colonialism, oppression, and apartheid. The long history of the anti-colonial struggle and the contribution of transnational solidarity networks to it moves me deeply. In building on alliances between civil society and religious organizations, students, workers’ movements, and academics, these transnational networks supported and amplified the voices of colonial subjects fighting for their liberation. Organizations, like the Anti-Apartheid movement in Britain, were at the center of the international movement opposing the South African apartheid system. It is this rich history of solidarities across borders, to which many anthropologists contributed, that today has inspired many academic associations, student governments, and unions, as well as thousands of international academics across the world, to support cutting ties with Israeli universities and refuse to normalize oppression.

The proposal to cut ties with Israel’s academic institutions is not simply a moral position but the response to an organized movement within Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora that sees it as one of the many strategies to end Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism, forced displacement, dispossession, and apartheid. Palestinians themselves are directly asking the world for solidarity; as anthropologists, we should respond to this call and support the Palestinian people in their struggle.”

Mattia Fumanti, Senior Lecturer, The University of St Andrews

“The call for a full academic boycott of Israeli institutions was first made by PACBI in 2004. At the time, the need for international solidarity with the Palestinian people, those living under the scourge of a brutal colonial occupation, struggling against an internationally inoculated and western armed Israeli state, was deeply pressing. The academic boycott call asks us, the global scholastic community, to boycott Israel and its institutions that make up the apparatus of control that allows for Israel’s occupation to remain unchecked. It does so because it recognises the critical role that the Israeli academy plays in terms of providing the intellectual apparatus, and key research strategies that are required to continue the illegal occupation of Palestine, including; research into hydrology, arms and ammunitions, and architectures of oppression, to name but a few. 

Since the beginning of the genocide against the Palestinian population, with the focus being on Gaza, Israel has undertaken a systematic campaign to destroy the entire Palestinian education system. Thousands of students, school teachers and university professors have been martyred, and every university in Gaza has been partially or wholly destroyed. The Gaza Municipal Archive and hundreds of libraries, bookstores, and publishing houses are no more, in the blatant act of attempted settler colonial erasure. 

It is often argued that those who choose to boycott Israeli academic institutions are, in fact, limiting the opportunities to foster peaceful dialogue between adversaries. But we must be clear, and to borrow the words of Ghassan Kanafani, we cannot allow for a flawed conversation between the sword and the neck, all in the purported pursuit of ‘academic freedom’.

Moreover, arguments against the call for boycott fail to take into consideration the fact that Palestinian academics are routinely denied even the most basic access to the wider international academic community, with many scholars and students routinely denied the opportunity to travel by the Israeli occupation. Yet, far from an international outcry, the silence of the international community in this regard is deafening, and certainly stands in stark contrast to the clamour of those who scream ‘academic freedom’ when it comes to chastising the BDS demands.

In the face of ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, as western leaders continue to display almost complete inertia and unwillingness to reign in their genocidal ally, ignoring this call for boycott, as one of many forms of Palestinian resistance, would be a supreme act of negligence and a dereliction of our duty as scholars committed to social justice. 

If not now, when?”

Dr Brendan Ciarán Browne, Trinity College Dublin

“My 8-year-old daughter recently asked me, “What is the world going to do for Palestinian children?” I struggled to answer this. She has seen me leave the house on many Saturdays since last October to march in solidarity with friends seeking a ceasefire in Palestine. As careful as we are with media in our home, she has heard and seen snippets about the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Wise beyond her years, she worries about the world in ways that never bothered me as an 8-year-old. As a parent, I want to promise my daughter a world full of hope, fairness, and equality, but we are living in bleak times, so answers do not settle easily on the tip of the tongue.

In my work as an anthropologist, I engage with many different kinds of people with lived experience of conflict and forced displacement. I teach and chair an MA in Refugee Integration in Dublin City University.  For many of us in the university community that I work in (on the island of Ireland), the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people is not a distant issue; it is a mirror reflecting and connecting across historical trajectories and continuities of settler colonialism, conflict, and forced displacement. It is thus incumbent on us, because of the very nature of the work we do, to speak, to act, and to remain steadfast in our daily solidarity with those enduring conflict, violence, and forced displacement. This is not the time for weariness or despair but for advocacy, activism, and action.

Our students, from all corners of the globe, have reminded us of this with fierce bravery. In many universities, they have redefined their relationship with protest and solidarity (and indeed the neoliberal university) to recognise the interconnectedness of conflicts, violence, forced displacement, and the climate crisis on a global scale. Hannah Arendt, writing about the student protests of the 1960s, once asked, “Who are they, this new generation? Those who hear the ticking. And who are they who utterly deny them? Those who do not know, or who refuse to face, things as they really are.” Our present moment is a testament to this generational dynamic. The ticking is no longer a distant sound; it is a deafening alarm, demanding our attention and action, and so we must all act and not leave it only to our brave students.

The motion before us, addressing the suspension of collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, is more than a political stance; it is, for me at least, a moral imperative. The European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA) has always championed academic freedom and human rights. In my own time on the executive committee, I saw many letters and statements of solidarity written addressing different conflicts and crises in the world that we live in. In so doing, EASA has always attempted to weave a fabric of support and thick solidarity both between its members and many of the people and communities that we work with. This issue should be no different.

International organisations have thoroughly documented Israel’s systematic annexation and colonisation of Palestinian lands, the severe human rights violations, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and the segregationist/apartheid structures and policies that perpetuate violence and inequality. The International Court of Justice has returned a judgment of plausible genocide. The destruction of Gazan universities and the targeted attacks on schools, teachers, and students—termed ‘scholasticide’—are part of a broader assault on education and enlightenment. Palestinian institutions are not just under siege; they have been systematically annihilated. Meanwhile, Israeli universities, deeply intertwined with military and state propaganda efforts, continue to support these violations. Despite these grim realities, many European governments continue to provide diplomatic, military, and economic support to Israel, shielding them from accountability.

When my daughter next asks about the world’s actions for Palestinian children, I will tell her about our small attempts to shift the dial on what is happening in the world today. Supporting this motion is a vital step towards that. As Hannah Arendt once poignantly noted, “The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” By endorsing this motion, we make a conscious collective choice as a community of anthropologists to reject complicity and embrace our role as scholar-advocates for accountability and justice.”

Fiona Murphy, Assistant Professor in Refugee Studies, Dublin City University

I fully support the motion put forth by EASAmembers4Palestine to the European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA) to: cut ties with Israeli academic institutions; work with the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom to implement this motion; and encourage EASA members not to enter into institutional arrangements with Israeli academic institutions. 

If not now, when? After all, we are witness to Israel’s annihilation of the Palestinian people, its failure to comply with International Law and International Humanitarian Law, its operation of occupation, apartheid, and now, genocide.

I write as a long-time EASA member, as past president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), as an anthropologist, as a Jew, and as a concerned citizen of the world. In all those affiliations and identities, I understand my special obligation to consider the suffering of others. I also understand that safety and security can only come when all people are safe and secure; militarism, occupation, apartheid, and genocidal violence are obviously counter-productive to that goal. I am aware of the power structures that reproduce inequities and the social suffering that results, leading to a sense of responsibility to take action on behalf of those who are dehumanized, dispossessed, displaced, and murdered by state violence. 

Endorsing this motion is the least I can do. Passing this motion is the least we can do. To do otherwise is to be complicit with the silencing of the plight of Palestinians, leaving them isolated, lonely, abandoned, and invisible.

Alisse Waterston, Presidential Scholar and Professor of Anthropology Emerita, City University of New York, John Jay College

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https://easaonline.org/about/

EASA is a professional association open to all social anthropologists either qualified in, or else working in, Europe. It is a society of scholarship, founded on January 14th, 1989 at the “Inaugural General Assembly” in Castelgandolfo/Italy of twenty-one founder members from thirteen European countries and one from the US, supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. This meeting drafted the Constitution and elected the Association’s first Executive Committee (1989-90), chaired by Prof. Adam Kuper, Brunel University.

The Association seeks to advance anthropology in Europe by organizing biennial conferences, by editing its academic journal Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, its Newsletter and the two publication series. The Association further encourages and supports thematic networks.

EASA is a self-governing democratic body. It is both registered with Companies House and with the Charity Commission. As such it is bound by its constitution, relevant laws and EASA adheres to guidance on proper governance. No member may be elected to office more than twice in succession; the only exception are up to two members co-opted by the elected Executive so as to ensure the continuity of EASA’s administrative and publishing functions. The composition of the successive Executive Committees shows the pan-European character of EASA.

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https://www.charitygovernancecode.org/en/3-integrity

3. Integrity

Principle

The board acts with integrity. It adopts values, applies ethical principles to decisions and creates a welcoming and supportive culture which helps achieve the charity’s purposes. The board is aware of the significance of the public’s confidence and trust in charities.  It reflects the charity’s ethics and values in everything it does. Trustees undertake their duties with this in mind.

Rationale

Delivering the charity’s purposes for public benefit should be at the heart of everything the board does. This is true even when a board’s decision might be unpopular. Everyone who comes into contact with a charity should be treated with dignity and respect and feel that they are in a safe and supportive environment. Charity leaders should show the highest levels of personal integrity and conduct.

To achieve this, trustees should create a culture that supports the charity’s values, adopt behaviours and policies in line with the values and set aside any personal interests or loyalties. The board should understand and address any inappropriate power dynamics to avoid damaging the charity’s reputation, public support for its work and delivery of its aims.

Key outcomes

1. The board safeguards and promotes the charity’s reputation by living its values and by extension promotes public confidence in the wider sector.
2. Trustees and those working for or representing the charity are seen to act with honesty, trustworthiness and care, and support its values.
3. The board acts in the best interests of the charity’s purposes and its beneficiaries, creating a safe, respectful and welcoming environment for those who come into contact with it.
4. The board makes objective decisions about delivering the charity’s purposes. It is not unduly influenced by those who may have special or personal interests. This applies whether trustees are elected, nominated, or appointed. Collectively, the board is independent in its decision making.
5. No one person or group has undue power or influence in the charity. The board recognises how individual or organisational power can affect dealings with others.

07.11.24

Editorial Note

Last week, Prof. Idan Landau, a Tel Aviv University linguist, appeared on the pages of the left-wing British newspaper, The Guardian. He was referred to as a “political commentator,” and his blog, Don’t Die Stupid was referenced.  

The newspaper stated that questions are raised over whether the Israeli government’s “war aims include territorial expansion.” Because “suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from,” named the generals’ plan. which is “intended to depopulate northern Gaza.” The Guardian revealed that “The government insisted the plan had not been adopted, but some IDF soldiers in Gaza, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, say it is being implemented.” To prove their point, the Guardian cited Landau’s blog, which stated, “the ultimate goal of the plan is not military but political – resettling Gaza… All the signs indicate that Israel is not planning to let the displaced return… In this sense, the destruction in northern Gaza is unlike anything we have seen before.” According to the Guardian, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, publicly called to prevent “ethnic cleansing.” For the Guardian, “western allies of Israel have so far been reluctant to use the leverage of their arms supplies to influence policy.”

To recall, Landau was a member of Courage to Refuse, a group of radical left-wing political activists who called to refuse army service.  IAM reported on the role of academics in the refusal movement before, including in the 2021 post “The Nexus of Army Refusal and Israeli Academics.”

It’s easy to connect the dots. Landau was a favorite student of the Tel Aviv Linguist and the radical left-wing political activist Tanya Reinhart. Reinhart was a favorite student of the renowned linguist Noam Chomsky, a radical left-wing political activist. For example, Chomsky met with Nasrallah in Beirut in 2006 to show his support, where he advised Nasrallah on how to influence the American public. He said: “You need to reach the American public before American politicians. The public in the US is generally ahead of the politicians. Often public opinion conflicts with policies set in Washington. US politicians are usually elected by a minority of the population and represent two parties that are virtually indistinguishable on fundamental issues. If you can inform the public and get them to understand your position, they will put pressure on the politicians and hopefully prevent them from conducting their most destructive policies. Without internal public pressure, US policy is not likely to change significantly.”

The Guardian loves Landau because he is on the extreme end of the radical Israeli academics. 

In his recent article “Exterminate, Expel, Resettle: Israel’s Endgame In Northern Gaza,” Landau discussed “an extermination plan.” A plan by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, calling for, according to Landau, “collective punishment against the entire population of Gaza, for treating the enclave as if it were Nazi Germany, and for allowing disease to spread as a step that will ‘bring victory closer and reduce harm to IDF soldiers’… while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”

For Landau, “this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the “Siyag Plan” that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted.”

Landau argues, “The catastrophe in northern Gaza is growing… extermination of thousands of people inside the besieged area — is no longer beyond the realm of possibility… In view of this brutality, the Israeli propaganda machine spurred into action to offer a slew of excuses as to why civilians were not evacuating.” Landau accuses Israel of conducting “A policy of extermination.” He explains, “The extermination operation that is currently underway in northern Gaza should not come as a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to Israel’s war crimes over the past year, and the countless investigative reports that the world’s most respected media outlets have written about them.. these past atrocities show us what the Israeli army will continue to do if they’re not stopped… Israel, of course, deems every house and every alley in Gaza a potential threat and a legitimate target.”

Landau also accuses Israel of running “A policy of starvation… which appears to have been an intentional starvation policy… as clear a war crime as you’ll find, forming a significant part of the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.”

Landau then asks, “So what was the real motivation for the operation?” Israel is “Preparing to Settle Gaza… after cleansing the enclave of Palestinians.” For Landau, “Israelis have always united around the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.” For Landau, Eiland is “a full-blown advocate of ethnic cleansing… If the army expels them from there as well, this will be yet further evidence that the cleansing operation is not being guided by operational considerations. 

Landau blames the Israelis, “It was the reincarnation of an old fundamental Israeli theme: the eternal victims can never sin. It is the mindset that turned the trauma of October 7… seamlessly infusing the Hamas attack with Holocaust imagery.”

Landau dismisses the arguments “But what about Hamas’ charter?!” or “But, Iran!” and “But they’re barbarians!” For Landau, “None of this is relevant in the face of the genocide that our army is carrying out… How, exactly, does the massacre of October 7 justify the burning of schools and bakeries? What does Hamas’ charter have to do with denying medical equipment from entering Gaza, leading to wholesale death of wounded people?”

Then Landau attacks the center left. “We must also ignore the caricature that is ‘the opposition.’ The ‘alternative’ that Israel’s ‘center left’ offers lies between a ‘strategic occupation’ of more territory on the one hand, and a policy of ‘separation’ on the other that still allows the army complete freedom of action in the occupied territories or even contemplates a revival of the ‘Jordanian option’.”

Landau puts much of the blame on Israel, “It is a refusal to face our own actions, a refusal to claim responsibility for the catastrophe — for which Hamas indeed carries considerable blame, but we carry much more. And ultimately, a refusal to see Palestinians as humans, just like us.”

Landau even compares Israel to the Nazis, “I’ve spent countless hours reading testimonies from Gaza over the past year, and one phenomenon that struck me as particularly horrifying, even though it does not result in the most horrible crimes, is the way Israeli soldiers treat the Palestinians as if they were sheep or goats, herding them from one location to another. Like a flock of animals… Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

Landau blames the Israeli public, “The web of crimes described here is not so abstract — a vast part of the Israeli public takes part in them. Hundreds if not thousands recorded themselves in action, while many more called for extermination outright. The majority, however, is not so explicit or smug. Most just serve the military over hundreds of days of reserve duty ‘because we must protect our country.’ They commit crimes… we all bear the weight of responsibility for this, albeit some more than others.”

Landau ends by urging for an army refusal movement, “The army refusal movement arose too late and too slowly, yet it requires all encouragement and support and any voice it can be lent. The consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”  

Just like Chomsky who helped Nasrallah, Landau is protecting Hamas with the help of the Guardian, while bashing Israel. He ignores Hamas’ intentions to eradicate Israel, as evident in their slogan “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free.”

In 2017, IAM published an article in the Israeli media outlet Mako titled “The Useful Idiots of the Boycott Movement.” IAM reminded the readers how the “comparison to apartheid was rejected by the US Senate, which accused the UN of being obsessed with Israel.” IAM argued that “it is necessary to understand the beginning of the equation between Israel and apartheid.” When “pro-Palestinian activists toyed with the idea of a link between Israel and South Africa under apartheid, researchers from Israeli universities provided the academic legitimacy for the equation.”

IAM referred to several Israeli academics including Landau, who published an article in 2007 detailing the goals of the academic boycott of Israel. He wrote that “the issue of the academic boycott of Israel raises most practical questions. After peeling off the layers of insult, the victim’s rage, and the routine distraction exercises, there is not a single principled argument left in the words of the boycott opponents, challenging the moral validity of the academic boycott against the State of Israel and the apartheid regime it led in the territories.” 

IAM concluded that Israeli universities must recognize the central role of Israeli researchers in legitimizing the analogy of “Israel as an apartheid state,” which serves as an intellectual justification for the boycott movement. The Palestinian leaders of the boycott movement welcome this cooperation with Israeli researchers because they provide legitimacy to what is essentially an antisemitic campaign that uses false charges.  In this sense, Israeli academics serve as the contemporary incarnation of Lenin’s “useful idiots.”

The question is, why should any Israeli university employ Landau?

REFERENCES:

https://countercurrents.org/2024/11/exterminate-expel-resettle-israels-endgame-in-northern-gaza/

Exterminate, Expel, Resettle: Israel’s Endgame In Northern Gaza

by Idan Landau 

03/11/2024

Debates over the details of the ‘Generals’ Plan’ distract from the true brutality of Israel’s latest operation — one that drops the veneer of humanitarian considerations and lays the groundwork for settlements

Look at these two photos, which were both taken on Oct. 21, 2024. On the right, we see a long line of displaced people — or, more accurately, women and children — in the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip. Men over the age of 16 are separated, waving a white flag and holding up their ID cards. They are on their way out. 

On the left, we see a camp built by the settler organization Nachala just outside Gaza, as part of an event celebrating the festival of Sukkot. The event was attended by 21 right-wing ministers and Knesset members and several hundred other participants, all of whom were there to discuss plans for building new Jewish settlements in Gaza. They are on their way in.

Left: Israeli settlers gather at an event celebrating Sukkot near the Gaza Strip, calling for annexation and resettlement, October 21, 2024. (Oren Ziv) Right: Displaced Palestinians line up at gunpoint in the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten. Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the “Siyag Plan” that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them. 

But the story of what is happening right now, on either side of the Gaza fence, revolves around what has come to be known as the “Generals’ Plan” — and what it conceals.

The blueprint

The “Generals’ Plan,” published in early September, has a very simple goal: to empty the northern Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population. The plan itself estimated that about 300,000 people were still living north of the Netzarim Corridor — the Israeli-occupied zone that bisects Gaza — although the UN put the number closer to 400,000. 

During the first phase of the plan, the Israeli army would inform all of those people that they have a week to evacuate to the south through two “humanitarian corridors.” In the second phase, at the end of that week, the army would declare the whole area a closed military zone. Anyone who remained would  be considered an enemy combatant, and be killed if they didn’t surrender. A complete siege would be imposed on the territory, intensifying the hunger and health crisis — creating, as Prof. Uzi Rabi, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University, put it, “a process of starvation or extermination.”

According to the plan, providing the civilian population advance warning to evacuate guarantees compliance with the requirements of international humanitarian law. This is a lie. The first protocol of the Geneva Conventions clearly states that warning civilians to flee does not negate the protected status of those who remain, and therefore does not permit military forces to harm them; nor does a military siege negate the army’s obligation to allow the passage of humanitarian aid to civilians.

Besides, the lip service to humanitarian law falls flat when considering that the man spearheading the plan, Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, has spent the past year calling for collective punishment against the entire population of Gaza, for treating the enclave as if it were Nazi Germany, and for allowing disease to spread as a step that will “bring victory closer and reduce harm to IDF soldiers.” After rattling off like that for 10 months, he recognized an opportunity — in consultation with a number of shadow advisors, to whom we will return — to pilot an extermination plan in northern Gaza. He diligently delivered it to politicians and the media, disguised in a mask of lies about adhering to international law. 

The media and the politicians did what they always do: manufactured a distraction. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant hastened to deny, anonymous officials and soldiers in the field were already briefing the media that the plan was starting to be implemented.

The reality, however, is even more appalling. What the army has been implementing in northern Gaza since early October is not quite the “Generals’ Plan,” but an even more sinister and brutal version of it within a more concentrated area. One could even say that the plan itself and the intense international media and diplomatic storm it has created has helped keep everyone in the dark as to what is actually going on, and obscure the two ways in which the plan has already been redefined. 

The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward. The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one. 

Attention diverted

The catastrophe in northern Gaza is growing by the minute, and the confluence of circumstances means that the unimaginable — extermination of thousands of people inside the besieged area — is no longer beyond the realm of possibility.

The current military operation began in the early hours of Oct. 6. Residents of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, and Jabalia — the three localities north of Gaza City — were ordered to flee to the Al-Mawasi area in the south of the Strip through two “humanitarian corridors.” Israel presented the attack as a means to dismantle Hamas infrastructure after the group had reestablished itself in the area, and to prepare for the possibility of Israel taking over responsibility for acquiring, moving, and distributing humanitarian aid around the Strip — in other words, for the return of the Israeli Civil Administration that governed Gaza until the “disengagement” of 2005. The first cause was only partially true, and the second was no more than a smokescreen.

For Palestinians in those areas, things looked rather different. The army attacked residents in their homes and in shelters with airstrikes, artillery, and drones, while soldiers moved from street to street demolishing and setting fire to entire buildings to prevent residents from returning. Within a matter of days, Jabalia had turned into a vision of the apocalypse.

As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: anyone who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot by Israeli snipers or drones, including young children and those holding white flags. Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack, as well as journalists trying to document the events.

One particularly harrowing video, verified by The Washington Post, shows a child on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others. This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the “humanitarian zone.”

An IDF drone shows displaced Palestinians forced to evacuate Jabalia, October 21, 2024. (X/Avichay Adraee/used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

In view of this brutality, the Israeli propaganda machine spurred into action to offer a slew of excuses as to why civilians were not evacuating — primarily that Hamas was “beating with sticks” those who tried to leave. If Hamas did indeed stop civilians from evacuating, how can the army then claim that those who chose not to evacuate are terrorists condemned to be killed? But listening to the residents themselves, one could hear the same desperate cry repeatedly: “We cannot evacuate because the Israeli army is shooting at us.” 

On Oct. 20, the army circulated a photo of a long line of displaced Palestinians, beside a caption worded as mundanely and numbingly as a weather forecast: “The movement of Palestinian residents continues from the Jabalia area in the northern Gaza Strip. So far, more than 5,000 Palestinians have evacuated from the area.” 

Observant viewers would have noticed that all of the heads in the picture were covered: it is a line of women and children, who were not “evacuated” but forcibly uprooted. Where are the men? Taken away to unknown locations. We may yet hear of their time in Israeli detention camps a few months from now, describing the torture and abuse that have killed at least 60 Gazan prisoners since October 7. 

Unlike what was stated in the “Generals’ Plan,” civilians were not given a week to evacuate, as Eiland later acknowledged; from the get-go, the army treated the northern areas as a military zone in which any movement is met with deadly fire. This is the first way in which the plan has been used as a lightning rod to divert attention and criticism from a much more brutal reality than what it proffers.

A policy of extermination

Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed over 1,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping, slaughtering entire families in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on Oct. 24, rescue services announced that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.

Some of the most notable attacks include the bombing of a home in the Al-Fallujah area of Jabalia camp on Oct. 14, killing a family of 11 along with the doctor who came to treat them; an attack on the Abu Hussein School in Jabalia camp on Oct. 17 that killed 22 displaced people who were sheltering there; the killing of 33 people in three houses in Jabalia camp, among them 21 women, on Oct. 19; the leveling of several residential buildings in Beit Lahiya on the same day, killing 87 people; airstrikes on five residential buildings in Beit Lahiya on Oct. 26, which killed 40 people; and the massacre of 93 people in the bombing of a five-storey residential building in Beit Lahiya on Oct. 29.

The extermination operation that is currently underway in northern Gaza should not come as a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to Israel’s war crimes over the past year, and the countless investigative reports that the world’s most respected media outlets have written about them. From dropping 2,000-pound bombs where there are no military targets nearby to the regular killing of children by sniper fire to the head — these past atrocities show us what the Israeli army will continue to do if they’re not stopped. 

There are only three major medical facilities within the encircled area of northern Gaza, to which the hundreds of casualties of the past few weeks have been directed: the Indonesian Hospital and Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia. Yet the Israeli army has also subjected these hospitals to attacks, rendering them unable to treat the wounded. Reports by Doctors Without Borders and the UN have defined the situation as “immediately life threatening.”

At the start of the operation, the Israeli army ordered the three hospitals to evacuate within 24 hours, threatening to capture or kill anyone found inside them — not quite the “week of grace” stated in the “Generals’ Plan.” The army bombed Kamal Adwan and its surroundings in the early stages of the operation, before subjecting it to a three-day raid which removed it from service entirely and saw most of the doctors detained. 

The army has also repeatedly bombed both the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda. Two patients in the former died due to the resulting power outage, before the hospital stopped functioning altogether. This is the reason why even mild injuries often end in death — because medical teams simply do not have the resources necessary to treat them.   

Israel, of course, deems every house and every alley in Gaza a potential threat and a legitimate target. And what will be the excuse for denying six medical aid groups that work with the World Health Organization from entering Gaza? Most likely, it is a punishment for sending Western doctors to the Strip who later published testimonies about Israeli snipers targeting children. A UN report published shortly beforehand concluded that Israel is carrying out “a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza” as part of “the crime against humanity of extermination.” 

A policy of starvation

These attacks have been accompanied by a complete siege that has blocked all food and medical supplies from entering northern Gaza, which appears to have been an intentional starvation policy. According to the UN’s World Food Program, Israel began cutting off food on Oct. 1 — five days before the military operation.Palestinians queue for bread at the only open bakery in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

This fact received official, albeit indirect, acknowledgement in the form of a U.S. ultimatum on Oct. 15, demanding that Israel allow aid shipments to enter northern Gaza within 30 days or face a halt in U.S. weapons deliveries to Israel. This indicates, as humanitarian groups had warned, that no such aid was being allowed in before then. The 30-day grace period is laughable; as the EU’s foreign policy chief stated, within 30 days thousands of people might die of starvation.

Moreover, an exposé by Politico strengthened the feeling that like previous such “threats,” the latest demand from Washington was but an empty ceremonial gesture to reassure liberal consciences. Already in August, the top U.S. official working on the humanitarian situation in Gaza told aid organizations in an internal meeting that the United States would not countenance delaying or stopping weapon shipments to Israel to pressure it on humanitarian aid. As for the breaking of international humanitarian law, the sentiment expressed by the representative, according to one of the attendees, was that “the rules do not apply to Israel.”

Israel’s starvation policy in northern Gaza has not been limited to preventing the entry of food. On Oct. 10, the army bombed the only flour store in the area — as clear a war crime as you’ll find, forming a significant part of the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Four days later, the army bombed a UN food distribution center in Jabalia, killing 10 people. 

Aid agencies have provided urgent warnings about this escalating disaster, alerting as to their inability to fulfill their basic functions amid the impossible conditions Israel has created in northern Gaza. A new IPC report about hunger in Gaza predicts “catastrophic outcomes” of severe malnutrition, especially in the north.

On Oct. 16, Israeli media reported that following U.S. pressure, 100 aid trucks had entered northern Gaza. But journalists in the north were quick to correct the record: nothing at all had entered the besieged areas. On Oct. 20, Israel denied a further request by UN agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, and medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.

Since then, Israel claims to have allowed a trickle of aid trucks into northern Gaza — but without photographic evidence, it is very hard to know how many have reached their stated destination.

Winking at the right, feigning security justifications to the left

From the very start, the military rationale for such a drastic operation was questionable. Eiland spoke of “5,000 terrorists” hiding in the north, but anyone following the situation on the ground closely could see that encounters with Hamas operatives in these areas were few and far between.

Indeed, as Haaretz’s Yaniv Kubovich revealed, “commanders in the field … say that the decision to start operating in northern Gaza was made without detailed deliberations, and it seems that it was mainly intended to put pressure on the population of Gaza.” Military forces were told to prepare for the operation, the report continued, “even though there was no intelligence to justify it.” 

Furthermore, there was no unanimity among senior defense officials regarding the necessity of the maneuver, and there were plenty in both the army and the Shin Bet who thought it might endanger the lives of hostages. Sources who spoke to Haaretz testified that the soldiers who entered Jabalia “did not encounter terrorists face-to-face,” though at least 12 soldiers have since been killed in northern Gaza.

So what was the real motivation for the operation? To answer that question, we need look no further than the Sukkot event organized by settlers and their supporters on Oct. 21, titled “Preparing to Settle Gaza.” There, they laid out a vision for building Jewish settlements all across the Gaza Strip after cleansing the enclave of Palestinians. Gaza City, for example, would become “a Hebrew, technological, green city that would unite all parts of Israeli society.” And in this, at least, they are telling the truth: Israelis have always united around the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians. 

That event was only the latest to call for annexation and settlement of the Strip, coming after an ecstatic January conference in Jerusalem that was attended by thousands, including no fewer than 26 coalition members. And while only a quarter of the Israeli public supports resettling Gaza, the significant presence of ministers and supporters from Netanyahu’s Likud party shows that at the political level, it is growing increasingly mainstream.

Daniela Weiss’ Nachala movement has already drawn up the plans: six settlement groups, with 700 families waiting in line. All they need is a window of opportunity — one moment when national attention is distracted (in Lebanon, the West Bank, Iran), one moment of determination in Bezalel Smotrich’s “decisive” style, and the stake will be planted across the fence.

They will call it a “military outpost” or an “agricultural farm,” a time-tested strategy of winking at the right while feigning security justifications to the left. The army will never abandon them: these are our “finest boys,” the military is their flesh and blood. And so the return shall come to pass.

The brains behind the ‘Generals’ Plan’

The observant among us could see the way the wind was blowing from the very first week of the war. While most Israelis were still wrapping their heads around the magnitude of the disaster of October 7, the settlers were already drawing maps and sticking settlement pins on them.

The wound of the “disengagement,” when the military uprooted 8,000 settlers from the Strip, was left deliberately open, never allowed to heal: a “trauma” being re-lived and passed down year after year, bleeding its poison into the infamous Kohelet Policy Forum — a right-wing think tank responsible for much of the current government’s masterplans — and to a whole row of right-wing politicians imbued with hatred and an insatiable desire for revenge. 

It was the reincarnation of an old fundamental Israeli theme: the eternal victims can never sin. It is the mindset that turned the trauma of October 7, in the words of Naomi Klein, into “a weapon of war,” seamlessly infusing the Hamas attack with Holocaust imagery.

And of course, far-right minister Orit Strook knew it before anyone else, predicting in May 2023: “About [resettling] Gaza — I don’t think that the people of Israel are mentally there right now, so it won’t happen today or tomorrow morning. In the long-term, I suppose there will be no choice but to do it. It will happen when the people of Israel will be ready for it, and sadly we will pay for it in blood.” How sad she really was about it is hard to tell, since the very same Orit Strook, in the midst of the war, rejoiced at the surge of new settlements and outposts in the West Bank and described it as “a time of miracles.”

What is the connection between this overflowing cauldron of messianism and the “Generals’ Plan”? That was revealed earlier this month, when Omri Maniv of Channel 12 found that although the military generals are the face of the plan, the brains behind it is the right-wing organization Tzav 9 — the group responsible for setting humanitarian aid trucks on fire before they could enter Gaza, and which was consequently sanctioned by the United States along with its founder, Shlomo Sarid.

According to Maniv’s report, it was Sarid who connected Eiland with the Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters, which published the plan. Among the founders of the Forum is Maj. Gen. (res.) Gabi Siboni from the Misgav Institute, which was descended from the now defunct Zionist Strategy Institute, a front organization for — surprise, surprise — Kohelet.

Over the course of years, Kohelet has perfected the ability to significantly influence the public agenda in Israel through extensions and sub-branches operating under seemingly innocuous names, with its researchers sometimes even denying any relation to it. Sarid practically quoted Kohelet’s operating manual when he explained in an internal Zoom meeting of Tzav 9 members: “We’ve come up with a clever strategy here: taking a controversial core issue, and then as civilian organizations we come and offer the solution to the government. We come from all sides. We’ve offered solutions from both the right and the left.” 

Eiland was aware that Sarid and members of the Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters were striving to reestablish settlements in Gaza, but denied that his plan was intended to prepare the ground for it. This is what a denial by a useful idiot sounds like. 

Like any good commander in the IDF Central Command, who is sent to secure a religious celebration of settlers at Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, or to block the exits from the Palestinian villages of Kafr Qaddum and Beita, he will keep claiming that he merely provides “security” solutions that have nothing to do with the settlers’ agenda. “It’s not political,” they explain to us over and over again, while the messianists rejoice, shedding an occasional tear over “the bloody price to be paid.”But was he really a useful idiot? This week we learned that Israel’s political leadership is pressuring the military to prevent the residents of Jabalia from returning to their homes, “despite the fact that the objectives of the operation … have mostly been achieved.” Eiland now expects that for Palestinians, northern Gaza “will slowly turn into a distant dream. Like they have forgotten Ashkelon [Al-Majdal], they will forget that area too.” This is no longer the voice of a mindless military tactician but rather of a full-blown advocate of ethnic cleansing.

And so we have cut through all the layers of deception in the “Generals’ Plan”: contrary to what was stated, the plan itself is a war crime; the army did not provide any grace period for evacuating civilians; the military justification is questionable, and certainly in no way proportionate to the intensity of the drastic operation; and the ultimate goal of the plan is not military but political — resettling Gaza.

Israel’s window of opportunity

Right now, around 100,000 residents remain besieged in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia, starving and thirsty. Entire families are being massacred and entire neighborhoods flattened every day. Israel’s destruction of healthcare infrastructure and blocking of medical aid has rendered hospitals defunct, unable to care for the wounded. All the while, a partial communications blackout and the near total absence of journalists within the besieged areas keeps us largely in the dark.

Is it possible to foresee what comes next? Some will inevitably look to the United States for answers. In a few days, Americans will go to the polls in what is sure to be a close race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. If Trump wins, the Israeli leadership can breathe a sigh of relief. He will not stop any Israeli plan, however brutal — even for the simple reason that he is not clear on what the difference between Gaza and Israel is.

Harris, for her part, will not risk the final days of her campaign by making any strong statements. She certainly won’t jeopardize the Democrats’ Jewish vote by issuing Israel a real ultimatum — in fact she has already said so. And if she wins? There’s no rush. The new president will need to study the situation. “We are closely following what is happening in Gaza, and working with our allies toward a solution to this tragic situation,” she’ll be sure to say.

Europe has no levers of influence on Israel in the immediate future, and in any case the internal difference of opinions within the EU — and, first and foremost, Germany’s resolute support for Israel — thwart any drastic shift in policy. In The Hague, the mills of justice grind slowly. 

Salvation can only come from Washington, but Washington is busier every passing day with Trump’s latest scandalous statement. The poison machine of the American right, aided by Elon Musk, is already in high gear in the production of disinformation and fake news. The inevitable result will be that once again, no one will care about Palestinian bodies piling up.

All this provides Israel with a window of opportunity of a month or two, during which it can even intensify the extermination operation in northern Gaza. As far as I can see, nothing will stop it during this period, or probably even after. The intensifying war in Lebanon and Israel’s north also acts as a further smokescreen.

How many Palestinians will Israel exterminate in northern Gaza before then? The killing of over 1,000 in the four weeks since the current operation began may not sound like a lot compared to the numbers we saw at the beginning of the war, but we have to remember that the area currently under siege contains less than a fifth of Gaza’s population. Proportionally, then, this is equivalent to the record numbers in the first two months of the war, when the army killed an average of 250 people per day through incessant airstrikes. It is therefore no wonder that the residents of northern Gaza say the last few weeks have been the most difficult since the beginning of the war. 

Forced out, never to return?

Barring the possibility of mass annihilation by means not yet seen, Israel appears to be choosing something of a middle ground between extermination and transfer. The extermination was intended as a form of terror and intimidation, the army’s way of persuading the residents of northern Gaza to evacuate “voluntarily.” But even that was not enough. And so soldiers were sent to shelters to round up the refugees at gunpoint and send them south, after the men were separated and taken for questioning or arrest.

On Oct. 21, the Israeli public broadcaster, Kan, published drone footage of Palestinians being rounded up and forced southward. Kan titled it “Gazans leaving Jabalia.” They are “leaving” in the same way the residents of Lyd, Al-Majdal, and Manshiyya “left” in 1948. Gazan residents themselves testify: “Whoever does not follow orders is shot.” 

And so it is: women and children in one line, separated from men over the age of 16 holding up ID cards in another — a forced displacement captured by the cameras of the displacing force. In years to come, Israel will write in the history books: they left of their own accord.Displaced Palestinians line up at gunpoint in the ruins of Jabalia refugee camp.

And just as Israeli TV broadcasted images of this “calm departure,” journalists in Gaza reported on another bombing of a shelter in the very same refugee camp, in which 10 people were killed and 30 wounded. The testimony of a paramedic who was there reveals the horror: a drone announced from the air that residents of the compound had to evacuate, and no more than 10 minutes later, before most people had managed to leave, the site was blown up. 

The “Generals’ Plan,” is thus not only a deceit but also an operational flop. The threatened population was not inclined to voluntarily evacuate into the path of flying bullets and mortar shells, preferring familiar to unfamiliar horrors as is human nature (then again, who in the Israeli army is capable of perceiving Palestinians as human?). Even extermination as an instrument of terror was not enough to persuade the residents of northern Gaza to evacuate “voluntarily.” And so infantry forces were sent to the shelters to force the displaced, at gunpoint, to come out and start marching south (after the men were separated and taken for questioning or arrest).

All the signs indicate that Israel is not planning to let the displaced return. In this sense, the destruction in northern Gaza is unlike anything we have seen before. The army really does make sure to burn, destroy, and raze every building after the Palestinians leave — and sometimes while they’re still inside. Even the Americans and the Europeans can see the writing on the wall this time.

How long will it take to totally cleanse northern Gaza of its population? It is difficult to predict exactly, between the stamina of local residents to remain, the maximum daily death toll that the army allows itself based on its own considerations, and the international reaction. Certainly, it appears that the current assault will continue for weeks to come.

In the meantime, many of those displaced are not settling south of the Netzarim Corridor but rather on the outskirts of Gaza City, afraid that if they leave the north altogether, they may never be able to return. If the army expels them from there as well, this will be yet further evidence that the cleansing operation is not being guided by operational considerations.

A fight for life

What is left for us to do? Inside Israel, we are few who see the reality in front of us with clear eyes. But what little we can do, we must.

First of all, we must tune out the heckles from the peanut gallery: from “But what about Hamas’ charter?!” to “But, Iran!” and “But they’re barbarians!” None of this is relevant in the face of the genocide that our army is carrying out as you read these words (and I don’t choose that term hastily; here are four Israeli historians that reached this conclusion, who are greater experts than I). How, exactly, does the massacre of October 7 justify the burning of schools and bakeries? What does Hamas’ charter have to do with denying medical equipment from entering Gaza, leading to wholesale death of wounded people?Palestinians displaced from Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun shelter in tents at Al-Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City, November 1, 2024. (Omar Al-Qataa)

We must also ignore the caricature that is “the opposition.” The “alternative” that Israel’s “center left” offers lies between a “strategic occupation” of more territory on the one hand, and a policy of “separation” on the other that still allows the army complete freedom of action in the occupied territories or even contemplates a revival of the “Jordanian option.”

The incessant rambling about grand multilateral political arrangements only serves one purpose: an evasion from the bloody reality. It is a refusal to face our own actions, a refusal to claim responsibility for the catastrophe — for which Hamas indeed carries considerable blame, but we carry much more. And ultimately, a refusal to see Palestinians as humans, just like us. 

I’ve spent countless hours reading testimonies from Gaza over the past year, and one phenomenon that struck me as particularly horrifying, even though it does not result in the most horrible crimes, is the way Israeli soldiers treat the Palestinians as if they were sheep or goats, herding them from one location to another. Like a flock of animals, snipers and drones corral them, firing live ammunition at anyone who refuses to move or takes too long. Planes and drones deliver evacuation notices and then almost immediately bomb those who did not yet manage to escape. Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.

The web of crimes described here is not so abstract — a vast part of the Israeli public takes part in them. Hundreds if not thousands recorded themselves in action, while many more called for extermination outright. The majority, however, is not so explicit or smug. Most just serve the military over hundreds of days of reserve duty “because we must protect our country.” They commit crimes while giving it no thought, or half a thought, or only a silenced, trampled-upon thought.

They can come up with myriad excuses, but each one crumbles in the face of more than 16,000 dead children — over 3,000 of them under the age of 5 — who have all been identified by their name and ID numbers. And they crumble in the face of the destruction of all civilian infrastructure, which does not and cannot have a purely military purpose.

So we all bear the weight of responsibility for this, albeit some more than others. The army refusal movement arose too late and too slowly, yet it requires all encouragement and support and any voice it can be lent. The consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.  

Idan Landau is a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University and writes the political blog “Don’t Die Stupid.”

A version of this article first appeared in Hebrew on the author’s blog. It was translated into English for +972 by Gali Avatichi and Keren Hering.

Originally published in +972 Magazine

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/02/fears-grow-israel-plans-seize-land-gaza-siege-netanyahu-war-aims

‘Death is everywhere’: fears grow that Israel plans to seize land in GazaIncreasingly violent siege of north raises suspicions about Netanyahu’s war aims

Malak A Tantesh in Gaza and Julian Borger in Jerusalem

Israel has tightened its siege of northern Gaza in the face of warnings from the UN and other aid agencies that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives at are risk, raising questions over whether the Netanyahu government’s ultimate war aims include territorial expansion.

The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.

The plan, named after the retired senior officers promoting it, was intended to depopulate northern Gaza by giving the Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those that stayed as combatants, laying total siege.

The government insisted the plan had not been adopted, but some IDF soldiers in Gaza, as well as Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, say it is being implemented on a daily basis, but with a major difference: the Palestinians in northern Gaza were not given a realistic chance to evacuate. They are trapped.

“It is impossible for me to leave my house because I do not want to die out there. There are many people who lost their lives away from their homes, even in the south. Death is everywhere,” said Ramadan, a 19-year-old in Beit Lahiya whose family has been displaced seven times over the course of the 13-month war. “There is a lot of shooting and all kinds of bombing. Gatherings are being bombed, shelters are being bombed, and schools are being bombed. The area is overcrowded, so that even a small bomb kills and injures a lot of people.”

“Even if there are people who want to go south, they can’t because there is no safe road,” Ramadan said.

Israeli ground troops have laid siege to three areas – Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the Jabalia refugee camp – in the northern Gaza governorate, where there are estimated to be about 75,000 people. But the reality for almost all the 400,000 trapped across the northern half of Gaza is that there is no escape.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN relief agency Unrwa, made an emergency appeal on 22 October, calling for “an immediate truce, even for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area and reach safer places”.

There was no response from the Israeli authorities, whose official position is not to deal with Unrwa, by far the biggest aid agency in Gaza. “Nothing happened when we sent that SOS out,” said Unrwa spokesperson Juliette Touma. On Monday, the Knesset voted to ban Unrwa altogether within the next 90 days.

The amount of aid reaching north Gaza has been heavily restricted since the start of the war on 7 October last year. Now the quantities of relief supplies entering the whole strip have hit a new low, and barely anything is reaching the north.

The UN humanitarian affairs coordination agency, OCHA, reported that, as of Thursday, “no bakeries or public kitchens in north Gaza are operational, and only two of 20 health service points and two hospitals remain operational, albeit partially”.

“With no electricity or fuel allowed since 1 October, only two of eight water wells in Jabalia refugee camp remain functional, both of them partially,” OCHA said.

In an emergency statement on Friday, the heads of OCHA and 14 other UN and independent aid agencies raised the alarm that the area was at the brink of an abyss.

“The situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic,” the appeal said. “The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”

The residual health facilities inside the besieged zone, the Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals, have been targeted. The third wave of a polio vaccination campaign got under way on Saturday, but not for children trapped in that zone.

In the past week, Kamal Adwan was raided by the IDF, its medics detained, and then, after the soldiers withdrew, the hospital was bombed, destroying supplies recently delivered by the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Kamal Adwan hospital has been reduced from a hospital helping hundreds of patients, with dozens of health workers, to a shell of itself,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general.

The situation is hardly any better at al-Awda hospital. Mohammad Salha, its acting director, said: “There is a shortage of fuel, of medication, medical supplies and food. There is no healthy water in the north.”

Salha added: “There are no ambulances,. The people are bringing the injured from the field on donkeys and on their shoulders. Some are dying in the streets because no one can take care of them, or they are carrying them the wrong way.”

The beds in the inpatient, maternity and other wards are all full of patients injured by bombing, and there is just a single surgeon left. Al-Awda has no O-positive, O-negative, B-positive or B-negative blood units left, Salha said, “so if any cases come in and need these blood groups, they will die”.

“We are making a lot of appeals to the WHO, and we have a promise [of deliveries], but the Israelis refuse to allow a mission through to the hospital,” he said, adding: “We don’t know how to deal with this situation.”

The “generals’ plan” was presented as a means of using siege warfare to put pressure on Hamas to release its Israeli hostages. Defending it in an article in Haaretz on Friday, its principal author, the retired major general Giora Eiland, argued that siege was not a war crime if civilians were evacuated first, and that the occupation would be temporary, as a way of putting real pressure on Hamas.

“Had Hamas understood that not returning hostages means losing 35% of the strip’s territory, it would have compromised long ago,” Eiland wrote.

Other analysts argued that the plan made little military sense, as Hamas could reconstitute anywhere and return later.

For those under fire in northern Gaza, it does not seem like a counter-insurgency measure. “They kill all people without separating a civilian or a fighter,” said Ahlam al-Tlouli, a 33-year-old from Jabalia camp.

He said his father, stepmother and sister were killed by snipers and his brother had been missing since Ramadan. “We had opportunities to head south but refused because we know that the bombing is everywhere and there is no safe place.”

The ferocity of what is happening in northern Gaza has added to suspicions that there are more wide-reaching objectives at play. Idan Landau, a Tel Aviv University linguistics professor and political commentator, wrote on his blog, Don’t Die Stupid, that “the ultimate goal of the plan is not military but political – resettling Gaza”.

That is how it looks to Ramadan in Beit Lahiya. He said: “I am afraid that if we go, they will not let us return. They will take our lands and homes and annex them to Israel or turn them into settlements.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called on Wednesday for the international community to stand firm to prevent “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, but the US and other western allies of Israel have so far been reluctant to use the leverage of their arms supplies to influence policy.

On 21 October, the radical movement Nachala held a festival on the Sukkot holiday titled: “Preparing to Settle Gaza”. It was attended by senior members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet as well as representatives of his Likud party. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on his way to the event that the Gaza strip is “part of the land of Israel”, adding that settlements were the only true form of security.

“All the signs indicate that Israel is not planning to let the displaced return,’ Landau wrote on his blog, translated and republished by the +972 magazine. “In this sense, the destruction in northern Gaza is unlike anything we have seen before.”

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https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-scholar-northern-gazaIsraeli Scholar Lays Out ‘True Brutality’ of Ethnic Cleansing Now Underway in Gaza”Such dehumanization cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

JAKE JOHNSON Nov 01, 2024

Much alarm has been raised over the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” an ethnic cleansing proposal for northern Gazathat has reportedly garnered attention in the highest reaches of the Israeli government.

But Israeli scholar Idan Landau argued in a column published in English by +972 Magazine on Friday that what the Israeli military is actually doing in northern Gaza “is even more appalling” than the plan outlined by a group of retired generals. Landau argued that focus on the details of the Generals’ Plan has served to obscure the “true brutality” of Israel’s deadly operations in northern Gaza, which has been rendered a hellscape of death and destruction by the military assault and siege.

Landau, a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, opened his column—first published in Hebrew on his blog—by pointing to two photos: one showing a celebratory event at a camp built by an Israeli settler organization just outside of the Gaza Strip, and the other showing displaced Palestinians lined up at gunpoint amid the ruins of northern Gaza.

“These photos tell a story that is unfolding so rapidly that its harrowing details are already on the brink of being forgotten,” wrote Landau. “Yet this story could start from any point during the past 76 years: the Nakba of 1948, the ‘Siyag Plan‘ that followed it, the Naksa of 1967. On one side, displaced Palestinians with all the belongings they can carry, hungry, wounded, and exhausted; on the other, joyful Jewish settlers, sanctifying the new land that the army has cleared for them.”

The Israeli military’s dehumanization of the people of Gaza, Landau wrote, “cannot help but trigger our associations with scenes depicting the Nazis loading Jews into cattle cars.”

Landau wrote that what the Israeli army has been implementing in northern Gaza in recent weeks is “not quite” the Generals’ Plan, which entails giving Palestinians still in the region a week to leave before declaring the area a closed military zone—and designating everyone who remains a militant who can be denied humanitarian assistance and killed.

The actual strategy Israeli soldiers have been deploying in northern Gaza is “an even more sinister and brutal version” of the Generals’ Plan “within a more concentrated area.”

“The first, most immediate distinction is the abandoning of provisions for reducing harm to civilians, i.e. giving residents of northern Gaza a week to evacuate southward,” Landau wrote. “The second departure concerns the real purpose of emptying the area: while portraying the military operation as a security necessity, it was, in fact, an embodiment of the spirit of ethnic cleansing and resettlement from day one.”

“As opposed to the picture painted by the army, implying that residents in the northern areas were free to move south and get out of the danger zone, local testimonies presented a frightening reality: Anyone who so much as stepped out of their home risked being shot by Israeli snipers or drones, including young children and those holding white flags,” Landau noted. “Rescue crews trying to help the wounded also came under attack, as well as journalists trying to document the events.”

The scholar cites one “particularly harrowing video” in which a Palestinian child is seen “on the ground pleading for help after being wounded by an airstrike; when a crowd gathers to help him, they are suddenly hit by another airstrike, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.”

“This is the reality amid which the people of northern Gaza were supposed to walk, starved and exhausted, into the ‘humanitarian zone,” Landau wrote. “Since the Israeli army began its operation in northern Gaza, it has killed over 1,000 Palestinians. The Israeli Air Force usually bombs at night while the victims are sleeping, slaughtering entire families in their homes and making it more difficult to evacuate the wounded. And on October 24, rescue services announced that the intensity of the bombardment left them with no choice but to cease all operations in the besieged areas.”

The deadly military assault, Landau stressed, has been accompanied by a “starvation policy” that has severely hindered the flow of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.

The heads of prominent United Nations agencies and human rights organizations warned Friday that conditions on the ground in the region are “apocalyptic” and that “the entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and violence.”

Landau noted that on October 16, following pressure from the Biden administration, the Israeli government reportedly allowed 100 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza.

“But journalists in the north were quick to correct the record: Nothing at all had entered the besieged areas,” Landau wrote. “On October 20, Israel denied a further request by U.N. agencies to bring in food, fuel, blood, [and] medicines. Three days later, in response to a request for an interim order by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, the state admitted to the High Court that no humanitarian aid had been allowed into northern Gaza up to that point. By this time, we are already talking about a three-week-long food siege.”

Addressing the question of “what is left for us to do” in the face of such a catastrophe, Landau wrote that “the consensus concerning the war of extermination poisons Israeli society and blackens its future so profoundly that even small pockets of resistance can proliferate stamina and hope to those who have not yet been carried away by the currents of madness.”

“We can also look for partners in this fight abroad, where the critical lever of pressure is the pipeline of American weapons,” he added. “The struggle to end this intensifying war of extermination and transfer in Gaza, particularly in the north, is first and foremost a human fight. It is a fight for life, both in Gaza and Israel: for the very chance that life can continue to exist in this blood-soaked land. Nothing could be more patriotic.”

+972 Magazine published Landau’s column a day after Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, warned in a statement that “time is running out” to stop the far-right Israeli government’s attempt to “erase the Palestinians from their own land and allow Israel to fully annex Palestinian territory.”

“Genocide and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe are unfolding in front of us and in Gaza,” said Albanese. “I regret to see so many member states are avoiding acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people and instead look away.”

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http://www.mako.co.il/video-blogs-specials/Article-cfcc51608651c51006.htm

האידיוטים השימושיים של תנועת החרם

כאשר פעילים פרו-פלסטינים השתעשעו ברעיון לקשר בין ישראל ודרום אפריקה תחת האפרטהייד, חוקרים מאוניברסיטת בן גוריון היו אלו שהפיצו את המשוואה. האוניברסיטאות חייבות להכיר בתפקיד חוקריהם בהענקת ההצדקה האינטלקטואלית לחרם על ישראל

דנה ברנט | mako | פורסם 17/05/17 11:37 

סוף סוף הרוחות בעולם נושבות בכיוון אחר. דו”ח הוועדה הכלכלית-חברתית של האו”ם למערב אסיה (הכוללת 18 מדינות ערביות), המאשים את ישראל במדיניות אפרטהייד גזענית נגד הפלסטינים, הוסר מאתר הוועדה. דובר האו”ם הסביר ש”הדו”ח כפי שהוא אינו משקף את עמדת המזכיר הכללי”. ההשוואה לאפרטהייד גם נדחתה על ידי הסנאט האמריקאי שהאשים את האו”ם בעיסוק אובססיבי בישראל. יתכן והאו”ם יאמץ גישה מאוזנת יותר בעתיד, אולם יש צורך להבין את ראשית המשוואה בין ישראל לאפרטהייד.

כאשר פעילים פרו-פלסטינים השתעשעו ברעיון לקשר בין ישראל ודרום אפריקה תחת האפרטהייד, חוקרים מאוניברסיטת בן גוריון סיפקו את הלגיטימציה האקדמית למשוואה. בימים הקרובים, כשחבר הנאמנים של אוניברסיטת בן גוריון מתכנס לדון בהישגי האוניברסיטה, כדאי שידון גם ב”הישג” זה.

אורן יפתחאל, פרופסור במחלקת הגיאוגרפיה באוניברסיטת בן גוריון, הוא ללא ספק הארכיטקט האינטלקטואלי של המשוואה. בשנת 2002, כאשר שלח למגזין ”פוליטיקל ג’יאוגרפי” מאמר שתיאר את ישראל כ”מדינה שמתמקדת בהתרחבות ושליטה של קבוצה אתנית אחת” והגיע למסקנה שחברה כזו “אינה יכולה להיות מסווגת כדמוקרטיה”, הופתע כשמאמרו הוחזר עם הסבר לפיו המגזין לא יכול לקבל מאמרים מישראל. לאחר דיון ממושך, המגזין ניאות לקבל את המאמר בתנאי שיפתחאל יערוך “תיקונים משמעותיים” הכוללים השוואה בין ישראל והאפרטהייד בדרום אפריקה. יפתחאל הסכים, ומאז הוא רוכב על הצלחת חקר ה”אפרטהייד הישראלי” בדרך לתהילה בקרב קהילת הגאוגרפיה הפוליטית בעולם. מייקל קרייג הדסון, לשעבר מנהל המרכז ללימודי מדינות ערב באוניברסיטת ג’ורג’טאון וחוקר הידוע כאנטי-ישראלי, הוקיר תודה ליפתחאל על תרומתו והעניק לו מדליה ב-2012.

ניב גורדון, פרופסור במחלקה לפוליטיקה וממשל באוניברסיטת בן גוריון, הוא חוקר נוסף שהפיץ את אנלוגיית “האפרטהייד הישראלי”. גורדון הינו פעיל פוליטי במשך שנים רבות, שהחל את דרכו כמנהל “רופאים לזכויות אדם – ישראל”, ארגון אשר גונה על ידי מגן דוד אדום. ב-2004 גורדון עבד כחוקר אורח באוניברסיטת ברקלי במחלקה ללימודי המזה”ת, אשר ידועה כאנטי-ישראלית, וזו סיפקה לו תמיכה. שם הוא כתב את ספרו “הכיבוש הישראלי”. אליבא דגורדון, ניתן למצוא רק “הבדל קטן” בין ישראל למשטר האפרטהייד בדרום אפריקה, והוא “שבגדה המערבית לא נחקק חוק ליישום פרקטיקה זו, ולא אומצה החלטה רשמית של הממשלה”. ההיגיון של גורדון הביא אותו בשנת 2009 לפרסם מאמר שקורא לחרם נגד ישראל ב”לוס אנג’לס טיימס” בו הוא טען ש”הדרך המדויקת ביותר לתאר את מדינת ישראל היא  כמדינת אפרטהייד”. 

עידן לנדו, מרצה בחוג לספרות ובלשנות באוניברסיטת בן גוריון, פירסם בשנת 2007 מאמר שעוסק במטרות החרם האקדמי. הוא כתב כי “סוגיית החרם האקדמי על ישראל מעלה לכל היותר שאלות פרקטיות. לאחר שמקלפים את שכבות העלבון, הזעם הקורבני ותרגילי הסחת הדעת השגורים, לא נותר בדברי המתנגדים לחרם טיעון עקרוני אחד, המערער על תוקפה המוסרי של סנקציית החרם האקדמי נגד מדינת ישראל ומשטר האפרטהייד שהיא הנהיגה בשטחים”.

שרי אהרוני מהתכנית ללימודי מגדר באוניברסיטת בן גוריון כתבה מאמר משותף ב-2015 שתמך בחרם חלקי נגד ישראל, בו נטען כי “תנועת החרם שנשענת על שפה של חופש וצדק, ממסגרת את הכיבוש הישראלי כהצהרת שליטה של ציונות קולוניאליסטית אשר עם השנים הופכת למדיניות אפרטהייד ממוסדת הנסמכת על לאומנות ואפליה אתנית”. אולם עבור אהרוני ושות’, “חרם אקדמי הוא חרב פיפיות” משום ש”חרם יגרום לחוקרים בין-לאומיים להימנע משיתופי פעולה עם חוקרים ישראלים שמתנגדים לכיבוש”, שהרי אלה “עם הזמן מושתקים ומודרים בתוך האקדמיה הישראלית”. היא ושותפתה אף אישרו ש”אלה שתומכים בחרם אקדמי ותרבותי נגד ישראל טוענים שמוסדות להשכלה גבוהה משרתים את הכיבוש. זה כמובן נכון מבחינה כלכלית”.

אל מול התנהלות “האקטיביסטים” לא נשמעה התנגדות מצד הנהלת אוניברסיטת בן גוריון. אולם, כאשר ועדה בינלאומית מטעם המועצה להשכלה גבוהה דרשה מהאוניברסיטה לשים גבולות לסגל האקטיביסטי-רדיקלי ואיימה לסגור את המחלקה לפוליטיקה וממשל, נשיאת האוניברסיטה ודיקן הפקולטה למדעי הרוח גייסו את הקהילה האקדמית הבינלאומית למחאה. 

אוניברסיטת בן גוריון בפרט והאוניברסיטאות הישראליות בכלל חייבות להכיר בתפקידם המרכזי של חוקרים ישראלים בהענקת לגיטימציה לאנלוגיית “ישראל כמדינת אפרטהייד” המשמשת הצדקה אינטלקטואלית לתנועת החרם. ראשי תנועת החרם מברכים על שיתוף פעולה זה עם חוקרים ישראלים משום שאלה הודפים האשמות בדבר אנטישמיות. במובן זה, יפתחאל, גורדון ואחרים משמשים כגלגול העכשווי של “האידיוטים השימושיים” של לנין.

ד”ר דנה בָּרנֶט היא מנכ”לית ”מוניטור האקדמיה הישראלית”. המאמר מבוסס על מחקרה ”פוסט-ציונות והאוניברסיטאות הישראליות: הקשר האקדמי-פוליטי”.