Middle East Press On: Genocide, Gaza, Mamdani, NYC, Herzog: New Age Islam's Selection, 2 December 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
2 December 2025
The West Funds Genocide In Gaza While Policing The Truth
Mamdani’s Win In NYC Mayoral Election Illuminates Hostility To Israel, Jews
The Jerusalem Post Marks 93 Years As A Link To Israel And The Jewish World
Israel's Self-Declared Gatekeepers Should Be Locked Out Or Locked Up
Netanyahu's Pardon Request Throws Herzog Into Thick Of Israel’s Political Divides
Gaza Cannot Wait For A Roadmap To Peace
In Paradigm-Changing Case, South African Court Case Targets Mercenaries Fighting In Palestine
Palestine Solidarity And The Songs Of Sheikh Imam: The Culture And Politics Show
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The West Funds Genocide In Gaza While Policing The Truth
Ramzy Baroud
December 01, 2025
First, let’s dissect this puzzle.
On Feb. 29, 2024, then-US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent shock waves when he informed lawmakers in the House Armed Services Committee that more than 25,000 Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel in Gaza up to that date. By doing so, Austin, the military chief of the Biden administration, delivered a fact that immediately subverted his own government’s rhetoric.
The announcement was shocking for two main reasons. First, Austin himself had orchestrated the relentless flow of US arms to Israel, directly enabling the very campaign that liquidated those innocent people. Second, the figure provided was noticeably higher than the casualty tally reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza for the same period — 22,000 women and children in the first 146 days of the war.
The crux of the contradiction, however, was that Austin’s detailed account of the US-funded Israeli atrocities in Gaza directly subverted the official narrative regularly disseminated by the White House.
In fact, as early as Oct. 25, 2023 — barely two weeks into the war — President Joe Biden himself began doubting the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s death toll estimates. “(I have) no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” he flatly declared.
Naturally, Austin’s declaration neither eroded his unwavering endorsement of Israel nor softened Biden’s patronizing attitude toward the Palestinians. On the contrary, US military and political backing for Israel surged exponentially after that congressional hearing. US military and financial support in the first year of the Israeli genocide was estimated to be at least $17.9 billion.
But these apparent contradictions are not inconsistencies at all, but a perfectly calibrated, deliberate policy. Historically, this approach granted the US license to consistently flout its own declared principles. For example, Iraq was invaded, at a horrific cost of life and societal destruction, under the banner of “good intentions:” democracy, human rights and the like. Afghanistan’s protracted agony of war and instability endured for two decades in the name of fighting terror, exporting democracy and women's rights.
The operational part of the equation satisfies military and political strategists. Meanwhile, the hollow rhetoric of democracy and human rights keeps intellectuals, both on the right and the left, mired in a protracted, perpetually unproductive debate that serves to conceal rather than influence policy.
While the US government may have perfected the craft of deliberate contradictions, it is not the original architect. In modern history, this phenomenon has been owned almost entirely by the West: colonialism was advanced as a solution to slavery and forced conversions were brazenly justified as civilizing missions.
The West’s stance on the Israeli genocide in Gaza offers the most blatant and current example of this deliberate contradiction. A concise examination of Germany’s conduct in the last two years illustrates the point.
Germany is the world’s second-largest supplier of weapons to Israel, after the US. Not only did it refuse to accept the genocide definition recognized by many countries, and eventually by the International Court of Justice, but it also fought ferociously to shield Israel from the mere accusation.
Domestically, it brutally suppressed pro-Palestinian protests, detained countless activists and outlawed the use of the Palestinian flag, among numerous other draconian measures. Yet, in the same breath, Germany continued to champion freedom of speech and democracy, criticizing Global South nations that allegedly curtailed these same values.
Predictably, Germany continued to arm Israel, concocting every conceivable justification for its support of Tel Aviv, even after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders, accusing them of the crime of extermination in Gaza. Only under immense pressure did Berlin finally yield and in August it agreed to stop approving weapons exports to Israel.
Fast forward to recent days. The BBC, among other outlets, reported last month that Germany would reinstate its weapons exports to Israel, rationalizing the decision with the October announcement of a Gaza ceasefire — one that Israel has flagrantly violated hundreds of times.
“Germany’s decision to lift its partial suspension of weapons shipments to Israel is reckless, unlawful and sends entirely the wrong message to Israel,” Amnesty International declared in a press release — a condemnation that, naturally, was utterly ignored.
A week later, new research conducted by two highly regarded academic institutions showed that the number of Palestinians killed as a result of the Israeli genocide is substantially higher than the Gaza Ministry of Health figures. Worse, life expectancy in Gaza has plummeted by nearly half because of the Israeli war.
One of the two institutions, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, is German. The world-leading research organization is largely funded by public money directly from the federal government — the very entity that ships the weapons that, along with US support, have fueled Gaza’s escalating death toll.
In all these scenarios, the West serves as the simultaneous judge and executioner, the honest researcher and the weapons manufacturer, the violator and the self-appointed defender of human rights.
But the rest of us in the Global South must not simply yield to the role of the victim, whose lives are taken but precisely counted. To reclaim our collective agency, we must begin with a unified realization that the West’s calculated contradictions are specifically engineered to perpetuate the iniquitous relationship between Western powers and the rest of us for as long as possible.
Only by rigorously exposing and forcefully rejecting this hypocrisy can we finally liberate ourselves from the historic delusion that the solution to our problem is a Western one.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2624622
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Mamdani’s Win In NYC Mayoral Election Illuminates Hostility To Israel, Jews
By Micah Halpern
December 2, 2025
There is no doubt in my mind that Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on November 4, 2025, because of the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023.
The world has changed. And it changed because of the brutal, heinous, unconscionable acts perpetrated on October 7. It changed in ways that Israelis, Jews living outside of Israel, and lovers of Jews have yet to fully comprehend.
The ripple effects are dramatic.
We are only now beginning to reel from some of those effects. Israeli academics are being shunned in universities around the world. Israelis are being told they are not welcome in countries where they once enjoyed leisurely vacations.
Being Jewish has become a liability. The city reputed to be home to more Jews than any other city in the world will now be governed by a man who publicly, openly, undeniably, hates them.
He is a man who not only hates Jews but also just as publicly, as openly, and as undeniably, supports Hamas. Mamdani’s ascension to political power did not happen in a vacuum. His ascension was the most visible aftershock of the Oct 7 massacre.
New York’s mayoral election lit up the political arena. Brighter than the lights of Broadway, Mamdani’s election illuminated the open hostility toward Israel and Jews and the simultaneous warm embrace much of the world is giving Israel’s enemies.
It is no longer a political liability to openly show disdain for Israel and Jews; it is an asset.
For too long, the focus of the impact of October 7 has been internal. The focus was the effect on Israel – and, at first, understandably so: on soldiers, on families, on the economy, and on the Arab and Muslim world.
What Israeli leadership missed, or ignored, was the impact October 7 had on the Diaspora.
Yes, Israel has managed to resuscitate its military reputation, severely damaged by October 7. The Jewish state has managed to reverse the glee of so many in the Arab world who immediately rejoiced in Hamas’s undoing of the image of Israel the invincible.
Across the Muslim world, those pundits who said, “Look at what Hamas did; Israel can be defeated,” have now been silenced.
It took beeper and walkie-talkie attacks and targeted assassinations and attacks against Iran – but those voices are no longer heard. Israel is once again the superpower of the Middle East.
The rise of mainstream Jew-hatred
The voices that are heard, loud and clear, are coming from Jew-haters not in the Middle East, but in the liberal West.
No one is talking about the damage that was done to the many Jewish communities in the West by October 7. Attention was placed on pro-Hamas disorder on campuses and pro-Hamas demonstrations on city streets across the US and Europe.
Events were brushed off as one-offs. As teenagers in a few elite schools and their extremist faculty. As bored Americans with the need to find a cause. As disenfranchised youth happy to be part of a group, even if that group were keffiyeh-wearing hoodlums.
Yet these events are not simply a show of dwindling support for Israel. They are an outright rejection of the Jewish state. This movement is the public embrace of Hamas and their ideology of destroying Israel and Jews. For them, both are synonymous.
I cannot underscore this more. What has emerged is mainstream justification of the destruction of Israel and the hatred of Jews. This new philosophy is presented as a moral justification for destroying Israel and those who support it.
Hamas and Hamas supporters justify their murder and violence as moral resistance against Israel because they see it as an illegitimate state.
The election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City proves that Jew/Israel-hatred is not a fringe outlier on campaigns at elite campuses – it is a serious phenomenon.
The unease caused by The Squad of Jew-haters in the USA pre-Mamdani pales compared to the reality of Jew/Israel hate post his election.
Before Mamdani, these ideas were considered quirky and extremist. They were disregarded as marginal. October 7 thrust Mamdani and his marginal ideals into the mainstream, where they were well received.
The man who sought to be mayor did not distance himself from anti-Jewish, anti-Israel points of view. He rode the wave, and that wave translated into overwhelming support.
The eradication of Israel has become the new status quo among a significant part of the electorate. Its supporters reject the old status quo – they now embrace a new worldview that positions Israel as an abusive, colonial, Western power.
A view that is in perfect step with the Democratic Socialists of America. A view that is, in its own forms, spreading throughout Europe.
Pre-October 7, these attitudes about Jews and Israel would have been toxic. But not anymore. For the growing numbers of those who hate Israel and support Hamas – Gaza and the Palestinians have become the epicentre of the moral world.
That is why they do not veil their hatred.
Israeli and Diaspora leadership must work quickly to stem this tide before the movement gets even stronger, jeopardizing and endangering more Jewish communities.
After October 7, Israel restored its military prowess. Now Israel must restore its public reputation and the Jewish state’s moral prowess.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-876811
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The Jerusalem Post Marks 93 Years As A Link To Israel And The Jewish World
By Jpost Editorial
December 1, 2025
Ninety-three years after its first issue, The Jerusalem Post is still, at heart, a letter from home for Jews and friends of Israel across the world.
What began in 1932 as The Palestine Post, a modest English-language paper printed in a small Jerusalem office, has grown into something far larger than its founders could have imagined: a global conversation, a daily heartbeat of the Jewish world.
In its early years, the paper served a small community of diplomats, journalists, and new immigrants who needed reliable news in English from Mandatory Palestine.
It reported on the struggles of a people seeking self-determination and on the painful battles that marked Israel’s birth. For those who arrived from London, New York, Johannesburg, or Melbourne, unfolding the paper was a way of understanding their new home.
After 1948, The Palestine Post became The Jerusalem Post, reflecting the transformation of the Yishuv into the sovereign State of Israel. That change of name signaled that the paper saw itself as an institution bound up with the story of the Jewish state. Today, most of our readers are not in Israel at all. They are Jews and friends of Israel in Los Angeles and London, Paris and Panama, Johannesburg, Sydney, Buenos Aires, and small communities where there is no longer a robust local Jewish press.
For them, The Jerusalem Post has become not only an Israeli newspaper in English but a kind of global town square, a place where the arguments, anxieties, hopes, and achievements of the Jewish people are reported, debated, and preserved.
That role has grown as the landscape of Jewish journalism has shrunk. Many local Jewish weeklies have merged, gone digital in name only, or disappeared altogether. Newsrooms have been hollowed out, investigative reporting has become rare, and too many communities rely on social media feeds or partisan newsletters instead of independent journalism.
In that void, there is a real danger that Jewish life will be documented only in fragments, press releases, viral posts, and angry threads, rather than with context, memory, and a sense of responsibility to the historical record.
Therefore, we cover Knesset debates and coalition crises, but we also cover antisemitism in Europe and North America, campus battles, the rebirth of communities in the Gulf, and debates inside Jewish organizations
When a synagogue in the United States is attacked, when a Jewish school in Europe is threatened, or when Jews in Latin America wrestle with political turmoil, our readers rightly expect to find those stories on our pages.
Today's world bears little resemblance to that of the 'Post's founding
The world in which we publish bears little resemblance to the one our founder, Gershon Agron, knew. The smell of fresh ink on morning papers has been supplemented, and in many places replaced, by the glow of screens.
JPost.com now reaches readers in every time zone. Many of them never touch the printed paper, yet they feel the same emotional connection that earlier generations felt when the paper landed on their doorstep.
That continuity is not an accident. The Jerusalem Post is still written and produced by editors, reporters, photographers, and designers who love Israel and tie their fate to that of the country and the Jewish people.
In a media ecosystem saturated with noise and instant reactions, a 93-year-old newspaper could easily have become a relic. Instead, the Post has reinvented itself again and again.
We are a website, a newspaper, a podcast platform, a conference host, and a digital library. We cover politics and diplomacy, but also technology, culture, Jewish thought, health, and the everyday lives of Israelis and Jews abroad.
Anniversaries are not only a reason for pride; they are also a moment for self-reflection. Have we always gotten it right? Of course not. We have made mistakes, learned from them, and moved on. Readers expect us to be fair, to be tough on those in power regardless of party, and to make room for a range of voices in our opinion pages.
At 93, we are grateful for the trust our readers place in us, and we know that trust must be earned anew every day. For us, and we hope for you, it will remain what it has always tried to be – a letter from home and the beating heart of a global Jewish conversation.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-876862
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Israel's Self-Declared Gatekeepers Should Be Locked Out Or Locked Up
By Yisrael Medad
December 1, 2025
The political media adviser Mark McKinnon has been quoted as saying, “Hypocrisy is the scarlet letter in politics.”
Since I am not sure he is that familiar with Israel’s politics, I wonder if he’d be surprised to learn that his epigram would not seem to apply in this country, as hypocritical behavior is fairly standard. It is practiced in the hallways, committee rooms, and plenum chamber of the Knesset, as well as by activists in the streets and in their declarations to the media.
For example, on November 24, Yair Golan, leader of The Democrats Party, at a press conference in the Knesset, was asked by news reporter Yehuda Schlesinger about the activities of Mordechai David.
David recently has been blocking cars of various anti-government protesters and, most recently, that of Guy Peleg, Channel 12’s judicial reporter, in a campaign to give them “some of their own medicine.”
The medicine he was referring to is the behavior of the anti-judicial reform protests these past few years. Roads, junctions, sidewalks, and approach paths have been blocked by those opposing the government’s policies, most specifically altering elements of Israel’s judiciary.
This country has always seen such protests on a variety of issues over the years, but since Shikma Bressler first hit the road, sponsored by Ehud Barak’s Black Flags group in March 2020, seeking to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the number of such acts of interfering with the public going about its business, calling for “days of disruption,” has been unique.
Schlesinger, in his question to Golan, had noted the behavior of Nava Rozolyo who, likewise, has adopted obstructionism and harassment as a method of protesting on behalf of the Kaplan Street activists, as well as targeting individuals. He also reminded Golan of his own involvement in the infamous March 2023 siege of the Tel Aviv hairdresser salon when Sara Netanyahu was trapped inside, with Golan famously calling on his supporters to gather outside.
This exchange, of course, had a background. That background was the pronouncement of the attorney-general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to the ministers attending a cabinet meeting on July 9, 2023. On the agenda was the matter of those unruly blockages. Baharav-Miara refused to allow a more aggressive approach, saying, “There is no effective protest without a disturbance of the public order.”
What was Golan’s response? Golan explained that, quite simply, David’s actions were “not the same things” as those of Rozolyo. And why? “We must stop with the false claim of a ‘holy equality.’ One who seeks to defend democracy cannot be compared to one who wishes to destroy democracy. One employs violence while the other opposes it completely.”
Needless to point out, but Golan’s assertion of a ‘purity of arms’ practiced by the opposition protesters cannot be accepted. The verbal violence, the hitting and pushing of MKs and even ministers from the coalition parties, as well as illegal entrances to lecture halls and offices of pro-government NGOs are a matter of record.
Channel 12 news reporter Amit Segal exposed, back in 2023, opposition leader Yair Lapid’s hypocrisy when he hosted him on his show. He quoted from an article Lapid wrote in 2005 about Israelis protesting against the Disengagement. That article in Yediot Aharonot demanded that protesters should absolutely not be permitted to block streets, due to the danger it posed to those who may need to travel to the hospital for treatment.
Asked by Segal why he’s now one of the leaders of the current protests, which have closed down major highways across Israel, Lapid pre-echoed Golan. His answer was, “What I said in 2005, in different circumstances altogether, isn’t relevant.... It’s a different situation because it’s different people, a different world.”
When oversight becomes power
The position of attorney-general is called that of a gatekeeper. Shimon Nataf, a Kohelet Policy Forum research associate, has written that the term is new. It first appeared in a 1991 High Court of Justice decision and in another 1995 decision referring to the court itself. Since then, it has been expanded progressively. It is now “gatekeeper of democracy,” and includes many more institutions and functionaries.
This now brings us back to Baharav-Miara. She has been, it would seem, at the center of most of the happenings within Israel’s body politic as much as Prime Minister Netanyahu, although some think more frequently hampering matters rather than solving them. Her instrument has been declaring persons involved in controversial issues as being in a state of a conflict of interest.
This, however, is beginning to appear a bit hypocritical on her own part. Even a fraud element has popped up.After David Zini replaced Ronen Bar as head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), we discovered that Military Advocate-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi herself was the source of the infamous leaking of the tape of supposed criminal actions by IDF soldiers at a detention facility. Then we were apprised Baharav-Miara herself became involved, ordering Lahav 433 – The National Crime Unit to assume authority. Guy Peleg, who aired the tape, was never investigated.
The sluice then opened. The head of Lahav 443 vouched for Baharav-Miara to the High Court that she was “not at all connected to the incident” of the Sde Teiman investigation, though it appears she was. We found out the brother of Tomer-Yerushalmi, Assaf, was employed by the Justice Ministry as a prosecutor. The approval came from none other than Baharav-Miara.
We also know that Baharav-Miara’s son was not tried for stealing a fellow reservist’s ceramic vest. Was Tomer-Yerushalmi pressed into service in this matter by the attorney-general? Are these improper relationships? Are there others?
In 2011, US television host Joe Scarborough wrote, “Self-righteousness is a dangerous vice. It breeds arrogance and moral blind spots for those who come to believe they are superior to those who share different worldviews.” Have we come to this point here in Israel?
Should, perhaps, some of our self-declared gatekeepers be either locked out or maybe even locked up?
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-876851
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Netanyahu's Pardon Request Throws Herzog Into Thick Of Israel’s Political Divides
By Dana Blander
December 1, 2025
The request submitted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President Isaac Herzog for a pardon, while the prime minister’s criminal trial is ongoing, places the president in an unprecedented and difficult situation.
Under Israel’s Basic Law: The President of the State, the president’s authority to issue pardons is quite broad. The president may pardon, cancel, or ease sentencing.
Over the years a clear practice has developed in Israel: pardons are granted after the completion of the legal process, and they are usually based on exceptional personal circumstances, health conditions, claims of rehabilitation, or harm created as a result of circumstances that changed over time.
The pardon mechanism was never intended to serve as an alternative to a criminal trial. It is intended to allow for forgiveness, correction, or rehabilitation – not deeming someone guilty or innocent.
A full pardon even erases the conviction and the criminal record, but this does not nullify the very existence of the judgment that was rendered. In other words: the pardon is an act of grace, not of exoneration.
The legal and political stakes of Netanyahu’s request
Netanyahu’s request is exceptional in every sense: seeking a pardon before a verdict – particularly when the defendant is the prime minister – creates an extraordinary situation that could destabilize the relations between the branches of government and undermine the principles of the rule of law and equality under the law.
It is true that the pardon authority is broad, and there is no explicit legal prohibition on granting a pardon before a final judgment is rendered.
However, the accepted practice whereby a pardon comes only after the court has spoken is intended to distinguish between a legal proceeding entrusted to the law-enforcement authorities and the court, and the pardon process, which is unique and involves considerations of a different nature.
A well-known exception worth mentioning here is the Bus 300 affair, a 1984 incident involving members of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) who took down Palestinian bus hijackers after they were apprehended.
There, then-president Chaim Herzog, father of the current president, granted a pardon to the Shin Bet personnel involved in the affair before they were put on trial.
However, these were extreme circumstances involving a complex security situation. Those pardoned had admitted guilt, and the head of the Shin Bet at the time had agreed to resign before the pardons were issued.
The High Court affirmed the legality of the pardon by majority opinion but stressed that it was an “exceptional authority that must be exercised only as a safety valve.” Even then, the decision was controversial.
As to the question of admitting guilt, in Netanyahu’s request there is no such admission – quite the opposite. True, the law does not require an admission of guilt as a condition for a pardon, just as the law does not set other conditions for a pardon.
However, it stands to reason that an offender who does not admit guilt or take responsibility for their actions reduces their chances of receiving a pardon.
Some have floated the idea of conditioning the pardon on Netanyahu retiring from political life – it does not appear this is the route being pursued.
According to the prime minister’s pardon request, it is in fact intended to allow for his continued involvement in political life.
In public discourse, some float the idea of a pardon as part of a political deal (e.g., in exchange for agreeing to the establishment of a state commission of inquiry).
A quid pro quo of this nature, however, could undermine both sides of the deal – the legal authorities whose protection was “purchased” and the findings of the inquiry once it is established.
Herzog’s dilemma: weighing justice, politics, and public trust
Herzog has an unprecedented decision before him that throws him into the thick of Israel’s political divides.
His dilemma is threefold: first, from a legal standpoint, granting the pardon would be an intervention in the legal process and a deviation from the practice according to which the pardon comes only after conviction.
Second, in terms of the balance of powers between the branches of government, a pardon of this nature could destabilize the fabric of the relationship between the branches.
But the third aspect, the most important of all, is what message such a pardon would convey to the public regarding the rule of law and equality before the law.
Therefore, although the pardon request is personal, it will affect not only Netanyahu’s fate but also the fate of the State of Israel.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-876821
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Gaza Cannot Wait For A Roadmap To Peace
Hani Hazaimeh
December 01, 2025
More than a month after the ceasefire came into effect, Gaza remains suspended between devastation and despair. The bombs may have stopped falling but nothing has truly stopped dying — not the health system, not the education sector, not the economy, not the social fabric, and certainly not the hope of 2 million Palestinians, who have endured a level of destruction that would break any society. Gaza is not recovering; it is barely breathing. And yet the world behaves as though time is on its side.
The truth is simple and brutal: without a comprehensive, enforceable, UN-sponsored roadmap, Gaza will not heal. It will collapse.
The suffering of Gaza’s civilians is not confined to hospital corridors — though those remain harrowing. It is woven into every aspect of daily life. Homes remain uninhabitable, water systems shattered, families displaced, schools destroyed and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble. This is not a crisis that can be patched together with scattered humanitarian convoys or occasional political statements. This is a society that needs a full reconstruction plan — political, social, economic and institutional — guided by international guarantees and implemented without obstruction.
Politically, Gaza remains trapped in limbo. Palestinians have no clarity about governance, reconstruction authority or the long-term vision for their future. This vacuum is dangerous. It invites fragmentation, fuels instability and ensures that recovery is impossible. A UN roadmap must define a political horizon, backed by international consensus, that respects Palestinian rights and ensures that Gaza’s civilians never again become collateral in geopolitical bargaining. Without political clarity, every humanitarian initiative will be temporary, every reform fragile and every reconstruction effort reversible.
The humanitarian picture is equally desperate. Yes, hospitals lack medicine. But households also lack clean water, electricity, heating, sanitation and food security. Families still sleep in tents. Children navigate sewage-filled streets. Vulnerable groups — the elderly, the disabled, women and children — face unimaginable hardship. Gaza cannot rebuild its society if aid trickles in unpredictably, if fuel is rationed, if water systems remain broken or if the international community continues to make exceptions, rather than commitments.
Socially, the fabric of society has been shredded. Families are separated. Trauma is universal. Parents watch their children struggle with nightmares, fear and hunger. Communities that once relied on extended family networks and neighborhood solidarity now survive in scattered, overcrowded shelters. A roadmap must prioritize mental health support, social services, trauma rehabilitation and community rebuilding. War destroys buildings, but it also fractures hearts — and those wounds require long-term care.
The education sector, a lifeline for Gaza’s youth, is in ruins. Schools have been flattened, teachers displaced or killed, and students have lost months — in some cases years — of learning. Gaza’s children already faced enormous psychological and social pressures; now they face the possibility of losing their entire future. A roadmap must immediately restore schooling, rebuild educational infrastructure and invest in psychosocial support for students and educators. Without this, an entire generation risks being left behind — a loss not only for Gaza but for humanity.
Economically, Gaza is paralyzed. Businesses destroyed, livelihoods lost, markets disrupted and infrastructure gutted. No society can stand on international aid alone. Gaza needs a path toward self-sufficiency — the reopening of trade routes, the revival of agriculture, the rebuilding of industry and the restoration of employment. A roadmap must address the economic dimension with urgency because, without economic recovery, poverty and instability will deepen, making lasting peace impossible.
All these crises intersect. A child who cannot attend school today will face limited opportunities tomorrow. A parent who cannot work will struggle to provide food or medicine. A community without clean water will face disease outbreaks that overwhelm hospitals. A society without political clarity will remain vulnerable to endless cycles of conflict. This is why focusing on one sector — even the crucial health sector — is insufficient. Gaza needs a full, multilayered recovery plan that addresses the totality of destruction and the totality of human need.
Most importantly, Gaza needs this plan now. Not after diplomatic committees deliberate. Not after geopolitical powers weigh strategic interests. Not after more families lose loved ones to preventable causes like hunger, disease or despair. Every day of delay adds to the death toll, the trauma, the uncertainty and the collapse. Every day without a roadmap pushes Gaza deeper into irreversible decline.
The international community must stop pretending that time will heal Gaza. Time cannot heal wounds that continue to bleed. Only action — decisive, unified and principled action — can offer Palestinians a path out of this humanitarian abyss. The ceasefire may have created a pause, but pauses are not solutions. They are opportunities. And so far, the world is wasting this one.
A UN-sponsored roadmap is not merely a bureaucratic exercise. It is the only way to restore dignity, security, stability and hope to a population that has suffered enough for several lifetimes. It must guarantee unrestricted humanitarian aid, political clarity, educational renewal, economic reconstruction and social healing — all under international protection and enforcement.
Gaza’s civilians are not asking for miracles. They are asking for life — a life where they can rebuild their homes, return to school, seek medical care, restore their livelihoods and dream without fear.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2624625
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In Paradigm-Changing Case, South African Court Case Targets Mercenaries Fighting in Palestine
December 2, 2025
By Iqbal JassatAt the core of what promises to be a paradigm-changing legal case filed at Pretoria’s High Court is a body of evidence on illegal mercenary activities among occupation forces in Palestine, demanding accountability from the South African government.
A press release issued by the applicant’s attorney, Ziyaad Patel, confirmed that voluminous bundles of over 12,200 pages of law and evidence have been served on the presidency, respective government ministries, South African investigative and prosecutorial authorities, the National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), the South African Police Services, and others. The core demand revolves around the nagging question: where are the prosecutions of South Africans fighting as members of the Israeli occupation forces?
Irrefutable evidence, much of which exists in the public domain via boastful posts by South African citizens engaged in illegal military services in the Israeli army, has been apparently ignored to date by South African authorities. But a D-day for accountability is approaching.
Investigations conducted so far have confirmed that not a single South African citizen has been authorized nor granted permission to bear arms against Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of occupied Palestine.
An executive summary of the case references several elements of the litigation. Pertinent to it is comprehensive evidence of unlawful recruitment, financing and participation in the settler colonial regime’s army of killers, in direct violation of South Africa’s security laws.
Apart from the fact that South African nationals are thus far unhindered in providing foreign military service in the occupation – and seemingly “condoned” by relevant state institutions due to their failure to criminalize and stamp it out – the impunity whereby apartheid Israel’s local Zionist lobbyists facilitate it is outrageous.
The context for this overdue and groundbreaking case stems from a series of criminal complaints filed against South African citizens, who are alleged to have joined and militarily served in the Israeli army.
Applicants Safoodien Bester and Attorney Ziyaad Patel correctly contend that such military service is unlawful under South African law and undermines both domestic security and South Africa’s credibility as a champion of international justice. As expected, the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act (RFMAA), which strictly prohibits South African nationals and citizens from providing military assistance to foreign states without applying for explicit authorization, has been cited as a central plank in the case.
Both the record of evidence submitted through engagement with the specialized organs of the National Prosecuting Authority Service over the years and the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC) have confirmed that no such authorizations have been granted to South Africans serving in the Zionist occupation between the period of Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon to its present wars and military operations in Gaza and beyond since 2023.
In addition, it is important to note that the latest findings against Israel under the Convention Against Torture treaty record severe violations of Palestinian political prisoners. Criminal conduct by the Zionist regime includes various forms of torture, including repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, waterboarding, prolonged stress positions, rape and sexual violence, humiliation such as being forced to act like animals or being urinated on, denial of medical care, excessive restraints causing amputations, surgery without anesthetic, and exposure to extreme temperatures.
In the specific case of torture, it is important to establish how many of the South Africans among the occupation forces are directly complicit in these horrific acts. Military duty imposes many obligations on the recruits. Engaging in intelligence gathering operations is thus not excluded. But despite the strict regulations of the Convention Against Torture, assessments of Israeli state conduct have established widespread abuse. So, while active mercenary deployment in the Israeli army is prohibited in South Africa and punishable as a serious criminal offense, being complicit in the torture of Palestinians compounds the crime.
Nevertheless, the present High Court application raises serious questions about the apparent disconnect in the enforcement of South African law, the country’s constitutional obligations, and its international responsibilities. The Applicants contend that:
In direct contrast to South African mercenary activities in Palestine and the absence of any high-level intervention on it, President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered an investigation into the circumstances that led to the recruitment into seemingly mercenary activities in the case of Russia and Ukraine. In sharp contrast to his silence on Israeli recruitment of South African mercenaries, Ramaphosa has ordered an investigation into the circumstances that led to the recruitment of 17 young men into suspected mercenary activities in the war-torn region of Donbas.
Such a disconnect does suggest that if South Africans are deployed as mercenaries in Ukraine, the highest office of state will intervene, but not in the case of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This critique does not in any way take away the strides made on the question of Gaza by the Ramaphosa administration at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. However, by failing to discharge SA’s domestic legal obligations, it unwittingly provides Israel and its local agents with unprecedented impunity to breach the provisions of the RFMAA.
In October 2024, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation concluded:
By not charging South African mercenaries in the courts, along with their funders and recruiters, the criminal justice system will continue facing accusations of hypocrisy and double standards.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/in-paradigm-changing-case-south-african-court-case-targets-mercenaries-fighting-in-palestine/
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Palestine Solidarity and the Songs of Sheikh Imam: The Culture and Politics Show
By Palestine Chronicle
December 1, 2025
Introducing the new series, Palestine Chronicle editor Louis Brehony offers a musical tour de force, exploring Sheikh Imam’s unique contribution to Egyptian and regional protest singing. In particular, he focuses on examples from the many occasions on which Imam sang for the Palestinian cause, foregrounding resistance and leaving an indelible mark on music-making in Palestine.
This episode of the Culture and Politics Show explores key themes in Imam’s music and its adoption by the masses. Singing to the “children of Salahiddin,” Imam and lyricist Ahmad Fuad Negm centered Palestine as a cornerstone of Arab solidarity. Critiquing compliant rulers and exposing the threads connecting them to imperialism, the pair called for “workers, peasants and students” to realize that “our time has come” and to fight back.
“Oh Palestinians”
rehony’s opening snapshot of Sheikh Imam introduces the revolutionary politics of the Egyptian singer. We hear clips of the iconic Ya Falastiniyya (Oh Palestinians), where Imam sang:
From such evocative poetry from Negm, Imam goes on to promise to fight alongside the Palestinian people, “fire in hand.” Here and in other examples of his musical contribution – including Negm’s elegy to Ho Chi Minh – Imam conjures up the example of Vietnam. Having been victorious over French and then US colonialism during the period of the Sheikh’s artistry, the song tells Palestinians that “Vietnam is your guide.” There are similarities here with the call of Ghassan Kanafani for liberated “Arab Hanois.”
Including material from the prison writings of Palestinian leftist Wisam Rafeedie, Brehony goes on to discuss the use of Sheikh Imam songs on the streets of Palestine and in the prison cells of the occupation. He retells the story of how Rafeedie and his comrades sang Dur Ya Kalam ‘Ala Kefak Dur (Turn, oh words, however you like) during the 1970s protests. “Rafeedie and his comrades even adopted the lyrics to their situation,” Brehony explains.
The episode points to examples of where Palestinian musicians have used Sheikh Imam’s songs, either performing powerful cover versions or taking inspiration for their own songs. In an example of the latter, Brehony highlights intifada singer Walid Abdelsalam, composer of the anthem Nzilna ‘Ala al-Shawarya (We went down to the streets): Abdelsalam “even traveled to Egypt to learn from the master.” We also see footage of a partnership between radical Egyptian band Eskanderella and Palestinian group Yalalan, who recorded Sheikh Imam songs together in 2018.
Exposing Normalization
With an excerpt from the song Sharraft Ya Nixon Baba (Welcome Daddy Nixon), the podcast shows how activists mocked then US president Richard Nixon’s 1974 visit to Egypt. With characteristic humor, “Imam laughed in the faces of normalizing Arab bourgeoisies and their imperialist sponsors.” On another occasion, Negm’s lyrics satirized a French official visit, imagining cars spewing “perfume instead of petrol.”
Targeting Arab normalization and mass poverty under capitalism, Imam and Negm were imprisoned frequently by the Egyptian state. As shown in archive film and photo footage, the Palestinian resistance movement of the post-1967 period sometimes found its counterpart in movements for social justice, including the 1977 intifada of bread across Egypt. Regimes closening to western capital and favoring “coexistence” with the Zionist state faced their own internal rebellions. In the devastatingly relevant Shayyid Qusurak (Fortify your castles), we hear Imam sing of “the path of no return,” proclaiming with revolutionary optimism that “victory is within reach.”
“Onwards in Struggle”
The episode concludes with reflections on the connectedness between Palestine and struggles across the region and internationally. Asking “What of Egypt?” Brehony points to the recent repression of pro-Palestine activism by a regime that has lined up to support Trump’s plan to colonise Gaza. At the same time, we see footage hinting at green shoots of popular consciousness. Showing hundreds of youths singing Imam’s fiercest material and waving Palestinian flags, we hear that:
“Here in Moaz Street in historic Cairo, the musicians perform without microphones and the lead singers are audience members participating in a unique form of musical activism.”
When these youths sing of Tel al-Zaatar and other massacres, while pledging to rise up for Palestine, Brehony tells us, “They are quite clearly singing about Gaza.”
Though the rebellion of young Egyptians has been so far limited, this heritage of resistance singing keeps alive the conscious connections of regional solidarity. Brehony leaves the “final word” to Imam and Negm, with the song lyrics: “Onwards in struggle, with poem or weapon.”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/palestine-solidarity-and-the-songs-of-sheikh-imam-the-culture-and-politics-show/
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