Middle East Press On: Esther, Hamas, Ehud Olmert, Solidarity, Blackrock: New Age Islam's Selection, 24 May 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
24 May 2025
Why Israel And Saudi Arabia Must Pursue Normalisation Despite Tensions
Project Esther Has A Bold Strategy To Combat American Hamas Support
Israeli Society Is Veering Towards The Brink Of Collapse
Ehud Olmert's Gaza Statement Is More Media Spectacle Than Political Dissent
October 7 Has Been Israel’s Weapon. It Should Be Ours
Indonesia Cannot Claim Solidarity With Palestine While Partnering With Blackrock
Why The World Is Silent On Gaza Genocide, And Sometimes Worse When It Speaks
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Why Israel And Saudi Arabia Must Pursue Normalisation Despite Tensions
By Eran Lerman
May 24, 2025
There are plenty of reasons for Israel and Saudi Arabia to keep relations cool. The Saudis are demanding Israeli concessions to the Palestinians that Israel is not prepared to make right now, and US President Donald Trump sidelined Israel in his Mideast tour last week, while announcing that the US is selling Saudi Arabia a $142 billion arms package.
Full normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a historic turning point marking the end of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict – something Hamas considered so threatening that it inspired the terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, according to recovered documents reported by The Wall Street Journal this week.
But even if full normalization, as desirable as it may be, is not immediately on the horizon, Israel and Saudi Arabia should nonetheless be actively striving for strategic cooperation. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States all have much to gain.
Israel, as one of the region’s primary forces opposing totalitarian Islamism and a partner with Saudi Arabia in activities overseen by US Central Command (CENTCOM) in the context of combating this threat, can and should become a partner in a broader and more visible regional initiative for creating strategic cooperation. This would be a continuation of what we witnessed when Arab states directly helped thwart Iranian missile attacks in April and October 2024 and of the ongoing role played by the Saudis in intercepting Houthi launches.
Cultivating Israel-Saudi relations with the US
Across several fronts, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the US – as well as the United Arab Emirates – share common interests that can and should be translated into joint action.
• Preventing Iran from going nuclear: A decisive choice is approaching on whether to deny Iran the capability to obtain nuclear weapons through diplomatic or military means.
Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons is a threat to all members of the “stability camp” and a challenge to global peace, as it would ultimately collapse the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Coordinating a regional stance is crucial for effectively enforcing sanctions and, if necessary, using force with all the ensuing consequences.
• Working together against the Houthis in Yemen: Despite the Houthis’ hysterical declarations claiming that the United States has surrendered to their strength and their threats to continue attacking Israel, it would be unwise for Israel to act alone against this terror group as it has against Hezbollah.
Given the distance and the absence of detailed and long-standing intelligence and operational preparation that yielded results in Lebanon, a broader initiative is necessary. This initiative should strengthen the now weak and divided legitimate government in Yemen, enabling it to defeat the Houthis or at least force them to cease serving Iran’s interests. Achieving this requires detailed understandings with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
• Supporting the new Syrian leadership: The entire “stability camp” has a shared interest in curbing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman ambitions, as he sees himself as the founder of a new Islamic caliphate.
At the same time, this camp should offer alternative support to the new Syrian leadership, which is desperately seeking political legitimacy and economic reconstruction – provided that Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa adheres to the principles put forward to him by President Trump and takes into account the Israeli security concerns. Once again, the deeper the cooperation of Israel and the US with Saudi Arabia and the UAE in this arena, the better.
• Weakening Hezbollah’s grip on Lebanon: Saudi Arabia has already engaged in active involvement, helping to translate Hezbollah’s defeat into a new political reality, including the election of a president and prime minister who are neither to Hezbollah’s nor Iran’s liking. Proper use of resources could potentially weaken Hezbollah’s grip on the Shia community, which the group’s actions have devastated in recent years.
It could also strengthen the small but nevertheless significant voices in the Druze community speaking against Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt’s current stance opposing Druze cooperation with Israel in Syria. The Lebanese arena requires patient, long-term efforts, but here as well coordination with Saudi Arabia and the UAE is a diplomatic lever with strategic implications.
• Blocking the Muslim Brotherhood’s path to power in Egypt and Jordan: Both Jordan and Egypt face severe economic challenges and are clearly part of the stability camp. It is essential to bring the Saudis on board to a long-term commitment alongside the massive investments the UAE has already begun to implement in Egypt.
The shared interest is to block the Muslim Brotherhood’s path to power as Hamas is an integral branch of the terror movement, and its aspirations are supported by Turkey and Qatar as well. Still, a lack of resources added to the fear that they may be left to face the situation on their own may yet push both countries, especially Egypt, toward a more ambiguous stance vis-a-vis Turkey – and even into China’s embrace. That makes it crucial to establish conditions for joint strategic actions by Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE while neutralizing Qatar’s influence as much as possible.
Other issues that are vital to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the US, such as maritime security in the Red Sea and economic and technological collaboration, would greatly benefit from strategic cooperation, even without full normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
What’s at stake here is the entire regional balance of power.
Saudi-Israeli collaboration is critical, not only for Israel’s long-term security but also for a Middle East strategy that will harness military strength to diplomatic goals and increase stability across the Middle East.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-855124
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Project Esther Has A Bold Strategy To Combat American Hamas Support
By Tuly Weisz
May 24, 2025
The US Health and Human Services Department’s decision this week to terminate $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University for failing to address antisemitic harassment is a move that will finally stop Jew-hatred in its tracks. But this victory didn’t come out of nowhere. Behind the scenes, one institution deserves credit for this masterstroke against evil: the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther.
This groundbreaking initiative has redefined the way antisemitism is being fought in America, shifting from toothless outrage to unapologetic action.
According to Project Esther, “America’s virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American ‘pro-Palestinian movement’ is part of a global Hamas Support Network that is trying to compel the US government to abandon its long-standing support for Israel.” By holding the HSN accountable, Project Esther has launched the most powerful and effective counteroffensive to antisemitism for which the Jewish community must be grateful.
Named for the biblical heroine who stood up to genocidal forces in ancient Persia, the Heritage Foundation’s project is going after the campus radicals, progressive ideologues, and Islamist sympathizers who glorify Hamas and terrorize Jewish students. Launched on October 7, 2024, it has brilliantly devised a comprehensive plan that hits the HSN where it hurts: cutting their funding, revoking visas, purging antisemitic curricula, and removing terror apologists from university payrolls.
Jews cannot fight this battle alone
The plan’s authors, Victoria Coates and Daniel Flesch, are the perfect embodiment of the alliance we so desperately need: a religious Christian policy expert and a proud American Jew and former IDF lone soldier. Together, Coates and Flesch are offering a road map to deal with Hamas the way America once marginalized the KKK and al-Qaeda. And it’s working.
Yet, despite these heroic efforts, Project Esther has become the target of despicable slander. In a recent New York Times hit piece titled “The Christians Accusing US Jews of Antisemitism,” Michelle Goldberg engaged in fear-mongering and intellectual dishonesty. She vilifies the “perversity” of Project Esther for the fact that “ultra-Zionist gentiles get to lecture Jews about antisemitism even as they lay waste to the liberal culture that has allowed American Jews to thrive.”
She accuses Heritage of lecturing Jews while ignoring the fact that Project Esther was developed in consultation with numerous Jewish groups like the Coalition for Jewish Values, the Combat Antisemitism Movement, the Zionist Organization of America, and my own organization, Israel365.
While the Anti-Defamation League and other liberal Jewish groups have watched helplessly as antisemitism skyrocketed post-October 7, Project Esther is leading the fight with courage and conviction. Why? Because it understands the true nature of the radical threat. The growing Palestinian movement isn’t merely about “anti-Zionism” or student protests; it’s about a metastasizing danger that seeks the destruction of not only Israel but America itself.
Let’s be honest. With only 3,000 synagogues in America compared to over 300,000 churches, Jews simply don’t have the numbers to fight this battle alone. But when Americans, Jews and Christians alike, see the Hamas Support Network for what it truly is, an existential threat to all people of faith, our efforts and effectiveness become quite literally, 100 times more powerful.
The Jewish community must stop being suspicious of our Christian allies who understand better than we do that the mobs chanting “From the River to the Sea” are not just anti-Israel, they are anti-Christian and anti-American too.Instead of alienating our allies with misplaced cynicism or theological mistrust, we must embrace this historic moment. Never before have so many Christians stood in such firm solidarity with the Jewish people. In fact, we should be thanking our enemies for making it clear who our true friends are.
If Jews continue to insult or ignore our Christian friends, we risk losing them. That would not only be a self-fulfilling prophecy but a self-inflicted tragedy. One of the greatest miracles of Israel’s rebirth has been the unprecedented reconciliation between Jews and Christians. We must nurture this fragile alliance like never before.
What’s most inspiring about Project Esther is that it is more than a plan; it is a spiritual movement. As Victoria Coates rightly stated, “The biblical values on which our civilization rests have always promoted an alliance between Christians and Jews.”
She’s absolutely right. The same Judeo-Christian ideals that America was built upon, were conceived of in Israel. Our enemies understand this connection clearly, which is why they target the Saturday people and the Sunday people with equal hatred.
It’s time for us to recognize that the fight against antisemitism cannot be won by ourselves. The Jewish people are blessed to have an ally like the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther in our corner. They didn’t have to prioritize antisemitism, but they chose to.
Now it’s up to us to reciprocate that commitment. Every synagogue should find a church to partner with. Every rabbi should reach out to a local pastor. And every Jewish organization should support Project Esther, not just with words, but with action, “for such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14)
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-855102
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Israeli Society Is Veering Towards The Brink Of Collapse
By David Ben-Basat
May 23, 2025
For many years, the Israeli public grew accustomed to living with numerous crises and tensions: ultra-Orthodox and secular, Left and Right, Jews and Arabs. This mosaic was complex but functional. However, something fundamental has changed recently. What was once a plurality of opinions has turned into a war of identities. What used to be defined as a legitimate civil protest is now taking on the hallmarks of open conflict.
The flag protests, the judicial reform, demonstrations outside ministers’ and Knesset members’ homes, reserve duty refusals, road blockades, verbal and physical violence, none of these are isolated incidents. They are expressions of a deep fissure in the shared Israeli identity. The rift is not merely ideological; it is emotional, cultural, and, at times, existential.
Israeli society is splitting in two, and the bridges, if any still exist, are collapsing. Each side is convinced of its absolute moral righteousness and sees the other not merely as an opponent but as a threat to the state’s existence. Public discourse has been pushed to the extremes, and the center, where basic agreements once lived, is barely audible.
Former president Reuven “Ruvi” Rivlin spoke 10 years ago about four tribes comprising Israeli society: secular, religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Arab. Today, it seems that those tribes are more focused on fortifying their walls than building bridges. Separate education systems, separate media, even different languages and syntax –between the ultra-Orthodox and liberal-religious, between secular and yeshiva students– are not just gaps but chasms.
Stoking the flames that will burn us down
The writing was on the wall, but instead of putting out the fire, some have poured gasoline on it. Politicians, past and present, repeatedly choose to stoke flames, sow suspicion, and divide.
One prominent example is former prime minister Ehud Barak. The man who once led the Israeli government now allows himself to compare the actions of an elected government to regime coups and calls for civil disobedience. These are irresponsible statements that endanger the stability of Israeli society no less than external threats.
Nor is the other side of the political map free from inflammatory remarks. When religious and political leaders accuse their opponents of “betrayal,” “hatred of Judaism,” or “undermining the foundations of Zionism,” they are actively participating in mutual destruction. When the word “brother” is replaced by “traitor,” the entire nation is at risk.
The media, which could have served as a moderating force, has also succumbed to extremism. Shouting talk shows, scream-filled interviews, violent comment sections, and a preference for drama over truth dominate. Social media platforms, with algorithms that reward incitement and rage, have become a relentless battlefield where every tweet is a bullet tearing through the fabric of Israeli society.
Institutions that once anchored stability – the Supreme Court, the Knesset, the IDF, and the police – are losing broad public trust. There are no longer “judges in Jerusalem,” only “leftist judges.” No longer “IDF soldiers,” but “political officers.” Not a “government,” but a “regime.” Words change, and with them, so does reality.
There are those who encourage division and fragmentation, all while living abroad. Last month, the US House Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs launched an investigation into six Israeli and American NGOs that received federal funding during the Biden administration.
In letters sent to the organizations, Republican Congressmen Jim Jordan and Brian Mast allege that the Biden administration used government funding to “undermine the elected government of Israel.” As part of the inquiry, the committees are demanding that the organizations submit documents and correspondence related to funding requests and how the money was used by April 9 of that year, and freeze all data related to the grants received.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring academic institutions to properly report foreign funding sources, including the purpose of the funds, with the threat of losing federal funding in cases of noncompliance.
An in-depth investigative report published in February by Makor Rishon revealed that the Blue and White Future NGO raised an astonishing sum of approximately NIS 120 million in 2023.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-855110
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Ehud Olmert's Gaza Statement Is More Media Spectacle Than Political Dissent
By Jacob Schimmel
May 23, 2025
There are many ways to dissent in a democracy. That is our strength, but there are also lines – of responsibility, of timing, and of loyalty – and crossing those lines carries a cost.
This week, former prime minister Ehud Olmert crossed that line.
In an interview with the BBC, Olmert denounced Israel’s conduct in Gaza in sweeping, unrestrained terms: not in the Knesset, not in the Israeli press, and not to the people who live with the consequences. He spoke instead to an international broadcaster, eager for condemnation and slow to understand the context or the cost.
When Israeli leaders, past or present, choose to denounce their own country in the pages and studios of foreign media, it is no longer internal critique. It is a political act performed for an audience hungry for confirmation of its worst assumptions, quick to strip complexity and to amplify blame, and entirely free of responsibility.
The gap between protest and political ammunition
This is not about silencing disagreement. Israelis argue with passion, conviction, and pain. We protest. We publish. We fight over the soul of this country. That is our right and often our obligation. But dissent belongs inside the civic conversation, not handed over to those who will use it to harm us.
Olmert’s words were not a call to conscience. They were not a principled act of protest. They were the outsourcing of internal reckoning to those who bear none of its weight and will gladly weaponize his words.
I say this from experience. When I lived in London and had The Times or the International Herald Tribune delivered to my door, I saw how eagerly they seized every opportunity to run a caustic piece against Israel. It didn’t matter who was in power, Left, Right, moderate, or hardline.
It didn’t matter what the context was. If the criticism came from within Israel, especially from someone with stature, they’d rush to print it. Not to grapple with complexity, but to feed a narrative of Israeli wrongdoing, they were always hungry to serve.
You want to protest, protest. You want to write, write. But write here. Speak in Hebrew. Speak to the people whose fate is bound up with yours, not to those who cheer when our standing crumbles or those who read our grief as weakness and our struggle as failure.
This isn’t protest; it’s spectacle. And in Olmert’s case, it’s a spectacle that betrays more than it reveals.
This is not moral courage. It is civic abandonment. Because in moments like this, the question of where and who you speak to is not incidental; it is everything.
I came here from Britain eight years ago, not because I had answers, but because I couldn’t stand on the outside and speak as if I understood. I came because I believed that to carry the weight of this country, you have to live it, with all its pain and all its possibilities.
If you want to shape its future, you stay in the conversation, even when it’s hard. You speak to your own people, not over them, not past them, and not in places where your words become someone else’s weapon.
That is where responsibility begins, and that is where it must remain.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-855121
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October 7 Has Been Israel’s Weapon. It Should Be Ours
May 23, 2025
When Israel’s nearly eight-decade genocide of non-Jews river-to-sea shifted back into high gear after the Hamas “attack” of October 7 2023, so did UK popular resistance to the genocide. Marches, demonstrations, and vigils made plain the vast popular outrage at our government’s complicity. The UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and its associated anti-war organisations applied for permits for major Saturday marches, and permit after permit continues to be granted.
Yet whereas the government has closed major London thoroughfares and paid for hundreds of police on a surprisingly regular basis to enable many “pro-Palestine” demonstrations, it has all along imposed one Forbidden Fruit that would cost it nothing: the freedom to address the events of 7 October 2023 with even rudimentary intellectual integrity — the very events that have provided the carte blanche for Israel’s genocide. In a free society, unencumbered examination of what happened, and why it happened, would be not merely a right, but an obligation. In the UK, it will land you in prison.
This is because in theory, any honest reckoning with that day’s events would inescapably conclude that Hamas’s “attack” — referring specifically to its breaching of the Gaza “fence”, not the repeatedly-debunked atrocity propaganda used to give excuse to the Palestinians’ extermination — was in truth an attempt to liberate the concentration camp that is Gaza.
I say “in theory” (and this entire article must be read as “were one to say…”), because were this article actually to make that claim, it would run afoul of the UK’s Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, which designates Hamas a “proscribed organization”, for which it is a criminal act to “make clear expressions of support”. So, since Hamas is the sole force able to defend the people in Gaza, the UK has effectively criminalised their self-defence against genocide. Instead, Hamas’ role is cemented as the bogeyman in a good-versus-evil construct serving Western geo-political interests.
This is not to say that Hamas’s breaching of the barrier was wise — surely thousands of survivors in the enclave now wish only to have gone on with their lives under the old sadistic siege and slow genocide, rather than the open-throttle genocide to which October 7 gave opportunity.
Hamas did of course commit the crime of taking civilian hostages. But this is a separate discussion that can only be understood in context of Israel’s thousands of Palestinians hostages and the denial of any conventional means of Palestinian self-defence. Whatever one’s views on Hamas’ “attack” (and indeed of Hamas itself), we are blaming the rape victim who, having dared to fight back, was then killed by her attacker. The West would brand as terrorists any Palestinian leadership that challenged Israel.
Several peace activists and journalists in the UK have been arrested for suggesting that the people in Gaza have the right to resist their genocide, including the child of survivors of Auschwitz. Indeed one not even need give voice to this proscribed thought: people have been arrested under the Security Act merely for possession of a symbol of resistance, such as an image of a paraglider, or for wearing a green headband at a Palestine rally.
The Security Act safeguards the assumption that the ongoing carnage, if perhaps over-zealous, is nonetheless Israeli self-defence in response to October 7. Chained to this construct, the best that we, the opposition, can hope to achieve is eventually to return to the apartheid and slow genocide of pre-October 7.
In contrast, opening up the what and why of October 7 would completely change the public perception. It would expose Gaza as an Israeli internment camp for non-Jews, human beings locked up so that Israel can maintain its dream of racial purity in its settler state. Thus, any honest look at October 7, followed to its conclusion, would instead deprive Israel of its very alleged right to exist — that is, finally end this eight-decade horror. Instead, thousands die as we forever dodge the “yes, but Hamas…” bullet.
Those courageous individuals who refused to be muzzled, and paid the price, should not have had to act alone. It should be the responsibility of the organizations charged with furthering Palestinian human rights to unmuzzle us, principally the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Yes, PSC is trapped in an impossible balancing act — even maintaining a bank account is a challenge when the word Palestine is in your name — but by showing no imagination in circumventing the censorship on October 7, PSC and its affiliated organisations have limited the impact of their many and impressive marches.
Three separate inquiries by this writer to PSC asking their position in regard to the 2019 Security Act, and what “messages” it considers permissible on their demonstrations, remain unanswered, and nothing on their website addresses these issues. Its policies, however, can be surmised from its actions. On the day of the 2023 Hamas “attack”, PSC’s Manchester branch posted this straight-forward statement:
Palestinian freedom fighters from besieged Gaza broke Zionist colonial barriers and entered settlements built on stolen Palestinian land inside ‘48 Palestine.
Besieged /colonial /stolen are simple facts, and any quibble about the emotive “freedom fighters” is a distraction. But rather than challenging the Security Act, PSC implicitly obeyed: it expelled four of the branch’s officers. Nor is there any record of PSC coming to the defence of individuals whose uncensored anti-genocide signs, words, or symbols landed them in trouble.
There is surely untapped potential in the massive London demos. If neither PSC nor its affiliated anti-war organisations can be expected to go the route of mass civil disobedience, perhaps fresh, “out of the box” thinking can replace strategies born of habit. The media barely noticed even the half million people who marched for the 2025 Nakba anniversary. Might there be imaginative ways to force the media to pay attention, and get a forbidden message of truth circulated?
To cite one easy example, the thousands of signs printed by the sponsoring organizations could convey forbidden truths in a legal veneer, instead of the ubiquitous “Free Palestine” signs. A sea of such signs would be a Trojan horse: their “scandalous” (but legal) message would get the march into the media, the message with it.
At writing, Hamas has petitioned the UK government to be removed from the proscribed list. Even if that happens — which is highly doubtful until it is too late to matter — there will still be a firewall protecting the official mythology of the “conflict”. But they are ever-widening cracks in that firewall. Now is the time for us to take charge and crack it wide open, not to carry on trying to argue for Palestinian human rights within the parameters dictated to us. The goal must be to dismantle the Israeli state, finally, not return us to pre- October 7.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250523-october-7-has-been-israels-weapon-it-should-be-ours/
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Indonesia Cannot Claim Solidarity With Palestine While Partnering With Blackrock
By Dr. Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat
May 23, 2025
In a nation where political leaders proudly invoke the spirit of anti-colonialism, and where support for Palestine is a deeply held conviction across ideological lines, Indonesia now stands at a moral crossroads.
Recent reports confirm that the Indonesian sovereign wealth fund, Danantara, is courting cooperation with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, in what is described as a strategic partnership to bolster infrastructure, energy transition, and economic growth. CEO Rosan Roeslani’s visit to BlackRock headquarters in New York has already been hailed by some as a breakthrough for Indonesia’s economic aspirations.
But let us be clear: no amount of investment return can sanitize blood-soaked profits.
BlackRock is not just another multinational financial institution. It is a direct investor in the machinery of war—holding significant shares in Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX, all of which are central to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets, Northrop’s missile launchers, and RTX’s Iron Dome have all played pivotal roles in the ongoing onslaught that has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives in Palestine, including women, children, and journalists.
As of 2025, BlackRock owns a 7.4 per cent stake in Lockheed Martin—whose CEO recently boasted that wars in Ukraine and Gaza are key revenue drivers. These are not passive investments. They are political positions disguised as portfolio strategies.
For Indonesia—a country whose founding principles explicitly reject colonialism “in all its forms”—a partnership with BlackRock is a betrayal. It is a betrayal of the 1945 Constitution, a betrayal of our diplomatic legacy under Sukarno and Hatta, and above all, a betrayal of our people’s conscience.
The argument made by proponents of the partnership is predictable: investment is necessary, development is urgent, and BlackRock offers unmatched financial expertise. Legislators, such as the Prosperous Justice Party’s Muhammad Kholid, walk a careful line, acknowledging the need for foreign capital while urging “value alignment.” Yet such hedging amounts to moral evasion. The question is not whether BlackRock can help grow Indonesia’s economy. The question is: at what cost?
The cost, in this case, is complicity. Complicity in a war that much of the world now recognizes as genocidal in nature. While campuses across America are erupting in protest and European governments are reassessing ties with Israeli-linked entities, Indonesia is flirting with the financiers of occupation.
One cannot separate capital from conscience. BlackRock’s portfolio speaks louder than its public relations. Its investments directly empower a regime that has turned Gaza into a graveyard. It doesn’t matter if BlackRock’s funds are earmarked for digital infrastructure or renewable energy. Money is fungible, and partnership legitimizes. By shaking hands with BlackRock, Indonesia lends moral cover to an investor whose hands are already stained.
Defenders of the deal might argue that geopolitics requires pragmatism. But pragmatism should not mean moral paralysis. Our national development can be pursued without compromising on the values that define us. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has already signaled willingness to jointly invest $4 billion with Danantara. Why not deepen ties with ethical partners, rather than invite into our home a corporation that bankrolls bombs raining down on Gaza?
More importantly, such deals make a mockery of Indonesia’s global voice. President Prabowo Subianto has spoken out against the atrocities in Gaza. But words ring hollow if, in the same breath, Indonesia turns to the financiers of those very atrocities for economic salvation. Foreign policy and financial policy cannot operate on separate moral tracks.
Some might say Indonesia is too small to challenge the financial giants of the world. But history says otherwise. As the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, and a long-standing supporter of Palestinian self-determination, Indonesia has a moral capital that few nations possess. To waste it now, for a short-term infusion of capital, would be a grave mistake.
This is not about anti-Americanism or economic isolationism. It is about coherence. It is about refusing to look away while Gaza burns, simply because a lucrative opportunity knocks.
Danantara’s leaders must decide: Do they want Indonesia to be remembered as a nation that sold its conscience for capital? Or as a country that stood firm, even when compromise looked profitable?
The answer should be obvious to anyone who believes in the ideals etched into our Constitution and echoed in our mosques, our streets, and our foreign policy platforms.
Indonesia must walk away from BlackRock. Not because it’s easy. But because it’s right.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250523-indonesia-cannot-claim-solidarity-with-palestine-while-partnering-with-blackrock/
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Why The World Is Silent On Gaza Genocide, And Sometimes Worse When It Speaks
May 23, 2025
In his first Sunday address on May 11, Pope Leo XIV called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and expressed concern over escalating global warfare. Because he reiterated his predecessor’s support for Gaza, the Pope committed no acts of commission (active wrongdoing) nor did he perpetrate the more common acts of omission (failure to act when one is morally responsible to do so).
The same cannot be said for much of the world’s population. There, the sentiment runs from “individuals cannot change the world so why bother?” to “Israel has a right to defend itself against another terrorist attack.”
As for the former, individuals such as journalists, writers, and public commentators can certainly make a difference, while the rest could join an organization that works collectively to bring about global peace with justice.
Regarding the latter, which is possibly more pernicious, Israel, because it is the colonizer, does not have the legal right to commit genocide against the colonized. Because this misinformation is so rampant, it has led to the entity’s ability to commit mass murder with impunity.
While Israel continues to perform one atrocity after the next, each more horrific than the last, there seems to be very little action to stop it.
As Ramzy Baroud observes, these acts of omission are performed with “varying degrees of anger, helplessness, or total disregard.”
Even when some activists are not silent, either individually or as group policy, there is often much that is purposely omitted from their statements. As Amanda Gelender notes, it is “deeply disappoint(ing) and frankly unconscionable” that many of her fellow anti-Zionist Jews “still refuse to openly and unapologetically support the Palestinian armed resistance.”
“It is not your right as Jewish ‘anti-Zionists’ to sanitize and defang the struggle,” she continues. “by throwing the resistance under the bus to assuage the liberal sensibilities of your members, donors, families, and followers in a way that suits your philosophical debates, fragile egos, guilt, and comfort as well as the empty darkness of your own conceits.”
Her statement goes for all public officials, commentators and individuals, anti-Zionist or not, who claim to be opposed to Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, but fall short of calling it a genocide that harks back to the original Nakba.
For example, Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) is known as a progressive politician due to his support for national health care, raising the minimum wage, along with other social policies.
Despite being hailed for criticizing the entity’s “destruction of the Palestinian people,” his remarks are often drawn from the liberal Zionist playbook.
On May 8, 2025, Sanders delivered a speech chastising Congress for its silence on the “manmade nightmare” going on in Gaza.
After listing all of Gaza’s troubles, even calling out the Netanyahu cabinet for its war crimes, Sanders shifts to saying that Israel had a right to defend itself after “Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages.”
These remarks undo all of Sanders’ good intentions because most of this statement was used first by Israel to justify the genocide now on its 591st day, plus his words are a twisting of the facts.
While international law gives the occupied the right to resist its occupation, it does not give the occupier the same accord. Moreover, much of the killing took place by Israel itself, as its soldiers were shooting wildly in the confusion of the moment.
‘There was crazy hysteria, and decisions started being made without verified information,” Yaniv Kubovich writes. Moreover, documents and testimonies garnered by Haaretz show that Israeli soldiers employed the Hannibal operational order, which allows the military to use force to prevent soldiers from being taken into captivity by the enemy.
Finally, Sanders takes October 7 out of context, as so many people do. Specifically, he fails to mention the Nakba (catastrophe), which took place in 1948 but has been ongoing ever since.
“One of the tactics used by the West and Israel has been to almost succeed in decontextualizing October 7 so that it appears to have come out of the blue,” explains legal expert Richard Falk in an interview with Palestine Chronicle.
In these ways, Sanders demonizes the resistance, which he labels a terrorist organization responsible for this “terrible war,” thus not only taking October 7th out of context, but also removing it from the history of anti-colonial struggle that continues to this day.
“Progressive” politicians such as Sanders seem more comfortable sharing pictures of starving children than they are allowing Palestinians their full humanity, which would require seeing their struggle as a legitimate response to decades of occupation. Instead, they see the occupied as merely victims, which of course they are, but they are also courageous freedom fighters who resist as the only moral option.
“Decolonization is currently playing out by the resistance on the battlefield,” writes Gelender, “not at the US ballot box.”
“What’s at stake is the sovereignty of narrative itself,” writes Mohamed L. Mokhtar, “who defines justice, who controls meaning, who decides what is visible and what remains hidden.”
In a review of Peter Beinart’s book on “Genocide, Trauma, and Jewish Identity,” as the article is titled, Paul Von Blum agrees with Beinart’s call for a new Jewish narrative, “one that is based on equality rather than supremacy.”
Nevertheless, Von Blum, and by default Peter Beinart, are unclear how to go from committing genocide to living in a state of co-existence.
From here, Beinart and his reviewer revert to the standard trope of conflating resistance with terrorist acts, “both-sidesing” that erases the call for a new narrative that includes what came before.
“Beinart understands perfectly the trauma that Hamas’s October 7 attack wrought for Jews in Israel and elsewhere, Von Blum writes, thus providing cover for Israel’s disproportionate response.
To his credit, Beinart points out the historical oppression of Palestinians, Von Blum notes, but the reviewer goes on to write that this “in no way absolves Hamas for its carnage.”
In this way, both writers provide an ahistorical account of Palestinian resistance. As did Sanders, they fail to note that October 7th is yet another chapter in the long history of freedom struggles—Nat Turner’s revolt, Wounded Knee, Vietnam, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and Land Back, to name a few.
Indeed, when a group of people is kept in bondage over a significant amount of time, their victimizers live with the fear that there might be at any moment an uprising by the victimized themselves. This was certainly true on slave plantations in the American South, where the owners of enslaved people knew that their “property” wanted to be freed.
As a Jewish person, I don’t feel this kind of fear, at least not from Palestinians. What does concern me are Zionist groups that are increasingly vocal in their efforts to, at the very least, intimidate anti-Zionist organizations, especially their fellow Jews.
Rather than focusing on Jewish trauma, as Beinart seems to do, it might be better to discuss efforts like Project Esther that are aimed at branding pro-Palestinian groups as terrorist organizations so that members can be more easily “deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized and otherwise excluded from what it considered ‘open society.’”
Having been the target of these policies myself, it feels, at times, surreal that Jewish people, who experienced their own Holocaust, sometimes only second or third generation removed, are now being threatened for protesting another genocide. This time it is not Jewish blood, but rather Palestinian, that is being bled.
“Amidst the relentless depravity of this holocaust,” concludes Gelender, “resistance is the only antidote to despair. Never capitulating, never kneeling, fighting against all odds, until victory.”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/why-the-world-is-silent-on-gaza-genocide-and-sometimes-worse-when-it-speaks/
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