Middle East Press On: Israel Cheats, Ceasefire, Hamas, Zionist Racism: New Age Islam's Selection, 22 October 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
22 October 2025
Israel Cheats On The Ceasefire And Jails A Nation
How Israel Killed Its Own Soldiers, Blamed Hamas And Violated The Ceasefire Again
No Peace without Justice: Disarming Hamas Means Disarming the Palestinian Cause
Growing International Criticism Of German Anti-Palestinian Repression
Options Before Hamas On The Question Of Disarmament
Trump Keeps Netanyahu Tethered To Gaza Deal — For Now
Canadian Taxpayers Subsidize Zionist Racism at Montreal Jewish School
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Israel Cheats On The Ceasefire And Jails A Nation
by Ranjan Solomon
October 21, 2025
Israel cheats on ceasefires as it cheats on the very notion of peace. No truce holds, because Israel never intends one to hold. Even as the world headlines declare “ceasefire in Gaza,” Israeli warplanes circle overhead and soldiers continue their raids. The guns never fall silent. Ceasefires, in Israel’s doctrine, are not about peace, they are a pause to reload, a break to deceive international opinion while tightening the siege on a population already shattered beyond repair.
According to Al Jazeera and the Gaza media office, Israel has violated the truce dozens of times since early March 2025 — at least 116 Palestinians killed and nearly 500 wounded since the supposed “pause.” The total toll since October 2023 now exceeds 68,000 Palestinians killed and more than 179,000 injured. These are not numbers. They are people buried under rubble, hospitals bombed, aid convoys blocked, and children found lifeless in their mothers’ arms.
And yet, the United States remains silent, the silence of the enabler, not the neutral. Across European capitals, governments that once claimed moral leadership now speak only of “Israel’s right to defend itself.” They cannot utter the words “Palestinian right to live.” The West’s conscience is buried under military contracts and political lobbying.
Washington’s silence is not ignorance. Rather, it carries with it the power that enables the politics of silence It is protection money paid to its own politics. Israel’s global impunity is buttressed by a powerful web of influence – AIPAC and other lobbies that have turned the US Congress into an echo chamber of Zionist propaganda. Presidents come and go, but the money remains constant. And that money ensures that every Israeli violation is shielded, every massacre justified, and every dissenting voice in America crushed as “antisemitic.”
This is not Jewish power – it is political corruption wrapped in religious symbolism. To be even altogether, here is Zionism at its pinnacle. It shames the Jewish prophetic tradition of justice and truth. Israel’s wealth, much of it extracted from US taxpayers and international complicity, sustains a war economy. An apartheid sustained by the dollar, blessed by silence, and justified by fear.
When Israel violates a ceasefire, it distracts the world with emotional images of hostage releases. The narrative is carefully curated: Israeli captives are embraced by families, and cameras flash as “humanity” is restored. But hidden behind this theatre lies a cruel arithmetic. For every Israeli hostage released, Israel arrests fifteen Palestinians, according to field data reported by EU Keeps Sanctions on Israel ‘on the Table’ Despite Gaza Ceasefire
The European Union has not ruled out imposing sanctions on Israel, despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza, EU foreign policy chief Kaya Kallas said on Monday. Speaking after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Kallas emphasised that while the ceasefire had shifted the political context, the bloc would maintain pressure on Israel to ensure the truce is upheld and humanitarian conditions improve.
“The ceasefire has changed the context—that is very clear to everyone,” Kallas said. “However, unless we see real and sustainable change on the ground, including more aid reaching Gaza, the threat of sanctions will remain.”
Prior to the ceasefire deal brokered by US President Donald Trump, Brussels had discussed potential punitive measures against Israel, including the blacklisting of senior Israeli officials and restrictions on trade relations. “We are not taking these measures now, but we are not taking them off the table either, because the situation is fragile,” Kallas added.
EU officials have repeatedly urged Israel to facilitate unrestricted humanitarian access to Gaza and warned that any backsliding on ceasefire commitments could reignite instability across the region. Al Jazeera and prisoner support groups – indeed the hostage illusion, to put it mildly.
Israel currently holds over 11,100 Palestinian prisoners. That’s double the number before October 2023. Among them are 3,577 under “administrative detention”, meaning they are imprisoned without charge or trial, often on “secret evidence” that neither they nor their lawyers can access.
Administrative detention is one of Israel’s most abusive legal weapons. Under this system, detainees can be held indefinitely, their detention renewed every six months, based on vague “security” claims. The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association calls it “a measure of political control masquerading as law.” It stands in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids mass internment without due process.
There are 400 Palestinian children behind Israeli bars, some actually not even in their teens. They’re as young as twelve. Around 40 women are detained, many subjected to psychological and sexual humiliation. About 2,600 detainees are labelled “unlawful combatants,” a legal loophole that strips them of Geneva protections and allows Israel to hold them indefinitely.
In April 2024, Palestinian human rights monitors reported over 21,000 detainees, far beyond the carrying capacity of Israel’s prisons. Many are held in tent camps hastily built in the Negev Desert, without adequate food, medical care, or sanitation. Prisoners describe being beaten, stripped, and forced to chant pro-Israel slogans. Torture is not incidental, rather it is institutional.
Israel defends its detentions as “preventive security measures – another way of saying it is the Law that isn’t Law. But under international law, they are war crimes. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights explicitly prohibits arbitrary detention. Article 78 of the Fourth Geneva Convention allows internment of civilians only as a last resort, under judicial review. Israel ignores these provisions with impunity, citing its own military orders that supersede the Geneva Conventions. This, in itself, is a legal monstrosity by any democratic standard.
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has repeatedly condemned Israel’s use of administrative detention as “a practice of collective punishment.” Yet, there are no sanctions, no tribunals, no accountability. The International Criminal Court remains hesitant, fearing Western backlash. The result: impunity elevated to the level of diplomacy.
Israel is the only country in the world that systematically tries children in military courts. The usual thoughtless charge: throwing stones at soldiers. What’s worse, it is an “offence” that can carry a sentence of up to 20 years. In other words, children who face 20 years in prison have lost their childhood, education, and capacity to cope socially in ways that are typical.
Since 1967, over one million Palestinians have been imprisoned at some point — one in every four men in the occupied territories. For many families, prison has become a rite of passage, not because they are criminals, but because they live under occupation. This is how Israel maintains control: through the fear of disappearance, the constant threat of the knock at night, the knowledge that anyone, a student, a poet, a farmer can be caged without cause.
Human rights groups such as B’Tselem and Defence for Children International-Palestine have documented cases of minors beaten, blindfolded, and interrogated without parents or lawyers. One 14-year-old from Hebron recounted being forced to sign a confession in Hebrew, a language he could not read. Another, from Jenin, said soldiers threatened to kill his family if he didn’t cooperate. This is the machinery of a state that calls itself democratic.
Mass imprisonment is not an accident. It is policy and Israel’s chosen system of control. When you cannot erase a people, you incarcerate them. When you cannot defeat their spirit, you criminalize their existence. Prisons have replaced the open-air camps of the Nakba. The architecture of control has evolved — walls, watchtowers, drones, algorithms, and detention orders that strip human beings of the right to hope.
The Gaza Strip, under blockade since 2007, is itself the largest prison in the world. There are two million people locked behind fences, deprived of electricity, water, and movement. Israel may release a few hostages to appease its citizens, but the entire Palestinian nation remains hostage to its colonial logic.
The question now is no longer about proof. The world knows. The evidence is overwhelming, broadcast daily through the rubble of Gaza and the wails from Israeli prisons. Yet, no nation dares to act. The Arab world is divided; Europe is compromised; the United States is owned. Even the United Nations, the supposed guardian of peace, issues “concerned statements” and retreats into bureaucratic silence.
So, who will bell the cat? Who will tell Israel that its democracy is a façade, its morality bankrupt, its law a weapon of occupation? Everyone knows, but wont dare to speak up. Because Israel rules the USA and the USA is the world’s bully.
Israel’s legitimacy must now be measured not by its elections, but by its crimes. It has forfeited global trust. It can no longer claim the moral inheritance of the Holocaust while perpetrating another in Gaza. Those who remain silent are no less guilty. History will remember their cowardice alongside Israel’s cruelty.
For every child behind bars, every family wiped out by bombs, every farmer denied his land — the world owes more than sympathy. It owes action, accountability, and justice. Until that day comes, Palestinians will resist, because resistance is all that remains when the world conspires against freedom.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251021-israel-cheats-on-the-ceasefire-and-jails-a-nation/
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How Israel Killed Its Own Soldiers, Blamed Hamas And Violated The Ceasefire Again
By Robert Inlakesh
October 21, 2025
After routinely violating the Gaza ceasefire on a daily basis since its implementation, killing dozens of civilians in the process, this Sunday, Israel decided to temporarily abandon the agreement altogether, before later deciding to re-implement it. Despite the entire incident being Israel’s design, the Western corporate media labeled the Israeli violations as a “test”.
This Sunday, reports suddenly emerged that a group of Israeli soldiers had been ambushed by Palestinian fighters in Rafah, located behind what is being called the “Yellow Line,” where the Israeli army is refusing to withdraw from. The incident almost immediately triggered Israel to begin launching a new wave of intense air raids across the besieged coastal enclave.
In total, it was declared that at least 100 airstrikes were committed against Gaza. Israel’s Walla News and others had reported on the “collapse” of the ceasefire at the time, claiming that the occupying military decided to attack tunnel infrastructure previously untouched throughout the two-year-long genocide.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on to boast about dropping “153 tons of bombs” on sites throughout Gaza, which had killed at least 44 civilians. He also announced the closure of all entry points to the besieged territory and total blocking of humanitarian aid, before suddenly reversing these measures. All of this supposedly in response to the deaths of two Israeli soldiers.
Yet, reports from on the ground suggesting a very different picture from what Israel has presented had emerged throughout the day on Sunday. Initially, Hamas had released a statement denying any involvement in the killing of the Israeli soldiers.
Then, a range of Israeli, Palestinian, and American journalists, all citing their own sources, began reporting that what had actually occurred was that the two Israeli soldiers who were killed had accidentally run over an unexploded ordnance. It was admitted that at least three other Israelis were injured in the incident, one whose condition was considered serious.
As of now, it is unclear whether the unexploded ordnance had been repurposed as an IED and previously left behind by Palestinian fighters, or if it was one of tens of thousands of such bombs that had failed to explode upon impact when it was initially dropped. On Israel’s part, its “military censor” has placed a gag order on reporting about the incident internally, only releasing the names of the two soldiers killed in the incident.
According to Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi, the reason for such tight censorship over the incident was due to the remaining injured Israelis being non-military and, instead, civilian contractors stationed in the Israeli-controlled portion of Gaza in order to help carry out demolition work. The Israeli authorities, therefore, want to cover this up.
Tirawi’s assessment, based upon his own anonymous sources, would indeed align with the facts on the ground.
Although the issue has gone largely under-reported, the Israeli Defense Ministry has enlisted private contractors to aid in their demolition efforts in what was previously referred to as Israel’s Gaza buffer zone. Ads posted on Facebook had even advertised jobs to Israelis that pay up to $882 per day to drive bulldozers and aid in the demolition efforts. The Israeli military is also working alongside Israeli companies to hire their heavy excavation equipment.
Haaretz News previously reported that this new demolition industry costs at least 30 million dollars per month. In other words, and considering that some 60,000 businesses have closed, Israel’s tourism industry – especially in the north and south – has taken significant hits, the demolition industry is actually serving as a lucrative business for many Israelis.
Combine this with the evidence posted to social media by Israeli soldiers continuing to demolish remaining civilian infrastructure on their side of the Yellow Line, and it would make sense that civilian contractors are still being used to carry out demolition work. Evidently, this represents not only a violation of the ceasefire, of which the Gaza government’s media office has reported 80 so far, but also a clear issue in terms of the Israeli military actively paying its own people danger money to carry out such operations, putting their lives in danger.
Nevertheless, the Israeli narrative remains that Hamas was responsible for the incident and that they “responded”, despite Israeli media outlets admitting that Israel was the first to violate the ceasefire agreement. As for the claims of the Israeli military that it struck tunnel infrastructure that it had not previously targeted over the past two years, there is no evidence for this, and it appears unlikely, to say the least.
In addition to this, Israel’s Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, spoke to Channel 14 News in order to advocate for “opening the gates of hell” on Gaza after receiving the rest of their captives. This aligns with the rhetoric coming from various other officials who see the return of their prisoners from Gaza as a green light to strike the besieged coastal territory with more force than ever.
Meanwhile, the mainstream Western corporate media demonstrated again that it is nothing more than a contingent of stenographers for their wealthy Zionist funders and Israel’s foreign ministry. The Associated Press even published a story entitled “Israel strikes Gaza in first major test of ceasefire”.
While this may be simply dismissed after two years of similarly atrocious reports on the Gaza genocide, from outlets across the corporate media spectrum, it is important to continue highlighting the racist double standards employed. The Associated Press must be forced to answer for its dreadfully biased reporting.
Israeli soldiers should not have been demolishing Palestinian civilian infrastructure during a ceasefire. If they were not continuing to order their soldiers to carry out such missions and truly adhered to the ceasefire, two of their men would not have died. Then, knowing full well that Hamas had not ordered an attack, it proceeded to violate the ceasefire in a major way, which Israeli media interpreted as a return to war itself. This is not a “test”.
Such violations of the Gaza ceasefire should not come as any surprise. After all, Israel has committed over 5,000 violations of its Lebanon ceasefire agreement and began violating it from the first day it was adopted by the Lebanese side.
Now, nearly a year later, Israel is refusing to leave southern Lebanon, instead deciding to expand the zone it illegally occupies. In neighboring Syria, it also abandoned its previous ceasefire agreement and is currently continuing to occupy more territory there, too.
While both Palestinian and Israeli media have their evident biases – inherent in all media, as objectivity is not a possible standard – the Western corporate media is in a class of its own in terms of public deception.
These corporate media outlets do not represent a Palestinian or an Israeli perspective. They curate a fictional depiction of what is going on that is slanted to deliberately deceive Western audiences by publishing content tailor-made to convince them that Israel is correct.
These media outlets present Israel as both the eternal victim, while also being the hero. In this work of collective fiction, representing a parallel universe, this hero sometimes does wrong, but is always the authority, always deserves the benefit of the doubt and is never capable of being the instigator of war.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/how-israel-killed-its-own-soldiers-blamed-hamas-and-violated-the-ceasefire-again/
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No Peace without Justice: Disarming Hamas Means Disarming the Palestinian Cause
By Ranjan Solomon
October 21, 2025
“Justice first. Then peace. Never the other way around.”
Each time a ceasefire is announced, the same refrain echoes from Washington and Tel Aviv: Hamas must disarm, Hamas must be dismantled.
It is the chorus of the colonizer, now joined by self-styled peacemakers who pretend that laying down arms will deliver peace. But peace without justice is the silence of the grave. To demand Hamas’ disarmament before ending the occupation is not to build peace – it is to entrench apartheid under a different name.
The truth that the world refuses to confront is simple: Hamas exists because occupation exists. End the occupation, and armed resistance will lose its rationale. But, until then, asking Palestinians to give up their means of struggle is asking them to accept permanent subjugation.
It is worth holding fast to the conviction that the Occupation is the original Violence. Before a single rocket was ever fired from Gaza, Israel’s colonial project had already displaced and dispossessed millions. The Nakba of 1948 created 750,000 refugees and destroyed over 500 villages. The 1967 war extended Israeli control over the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. For nearly six decades now, these territories have lived under a brutal military occupation that denies Palestinians their land, water, mobility, and dignity.
Gaza itself has been under blockade since 2007 – an open-air prison where two million people live in ruins, without clean water, electricity, or hope. Israel controls its airspace, coastline, imports, exports, and even the calorie count of food entering the Strip. This is collective punishment at an industrial scale, a slow violence that kills not only people but possibilities. To speak of “terrorism” divorced from this context is intellectual dishonesty. Violence did not begin with Hamas. It began with colonization.
Resistance is a legal and moral Right and International law is unambiguous on this. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 37/43 of 1982 affirms the right of peoples under colonial and foreign domination to resist occupation “by all available means, including armed struggle.” This principle was invoked in support of liberation movements in Algeria, South Africa, and Namibia. Why should Palestine be treated differently?
Every colonized nation has had to resist by force when diplomacy failed. The ANC had Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Algerians had the FLN, and the Vietnamese fought foreign armies for decades. The West glorifies these movements in hindsight but condemns Palestinians for doing precisely the same.
What Israel and its allies call “terrorism” is, in fact, a desperate assertion of existence. Palestinians have learned that international law is only invoked to protect the powerful. The right to resist is the only right they can still exercise without permission.
The same Western powers now demanding Hamas’ surrender cheer Ukraine’s armed resistance against Russia. European governments rush weapons to Kyiv, hailing Ukrainians as freedom fighters defending sovereignty. But when Palestinians resist, they are branded terrorists. The message is unmistakable: White resistance is legitimate, brown resistance is barbaric. This racial hypocrisy exposes the moral bankruptcy of Western diplomacy. It is not resistance that they object to – it is who resists. And behind this bias lies a deeper complicity: Israel remains the West’s military outpost in the Arab world, the guardian of Western interests, and the recipient of unending financial and diplomatic protection.
That is why, when Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu preach “peace” through Hamas’ surrender, they must be told to shut up. Their version of peace is the peace of apartheid – an enforced quiet over the ruins of a people’s freedom.
Let us be clear: the call to “dismantle Hamas” is not about eliminating violence. The bald truth is that disarming Hamas implies neutralizing the Palestinian cause. It is about eliminating resistance. A disarmed Hamas would pave the way for Israeli control over Gaza, reconstruction under Western contracts, and a new class of Palestinian collaborators. That is why Washington and Tel Aviv are eager for a “post-Hamas Gaza” – one that will obey orders, not demand rights.
Disarming Hamas would mean erasing the political core of Palestinian nationalism in Gaza. It would convert a liberation movement into a humanitarian crisis, to be managed by aid agencies and donors. This is what Israel and its Western backers want: a Palestine reduced to charity, not sovereignty. But resistance cannot be erased by decree. As long as occupation remains, new forms of resistance will arise, with or without Hamas. The colonizer’s problem is not Hamas – it is the existence of a people who refuse to disappear.
The only route to lasting peace is justice. Justice begins with ending the occupation, dismantling all settlements built on stolen Palestinian land, and restoring the 1973 borders. The illegal outposts across the West Bank must be torn down, and Jerusalem restored as the shared capital of a truly free Palestine. These are not radical demands – they are the minimum requirements of international law. The 1973 borders (the pre-1967 lines) were the basis of every credible peace formula ever proposed. Israel has flouted them with impunity, expanding settlements in defiance of countless UN resolutions.
A genuine peace process must, therefore, begin with accountability. The ICC must prosecute war crimes, the ICJ must enforce its rulings, and global sanctions must follow if Israel refuses to comply. Anything less will only perpetuate apartheid under a new vocabulary.
More Oslo-type deceptions can only postpone a settlement and further punish the Palestinians. Palestinians have been deceived before. The Oslo Accords of 1993 were sold as a roadmap to peace. In reality, they entrenched Israeli control through economic dependency and security coordination. Oslo fragmented the Palestinian territories, allowed settlements to multiply, and created a Palestinian Authority more accountable to Israel than to its own people.
There must be no repetition of such half-baked, pro-Israel arrangements. Any new agreement must address the root causes – occupation, dispossession, and apartheid – not merely the symptoms. There must be a complete lifting of the Gaza blockade, the release of political prisoners, the right of return for refugees, and international guarantees for Palestinian sovereignty. Without these, peace will remain a mirage.
Some believe the two-state solution is dead. In reality, it was never alive. The geography of occupation – settlements, walls, checkpoints has shredded the map beyond repair. A truly democratic and just future may now require a different imagination: a unitary state, with equal rights for Jews and Arabs, built on justice rather than segregation. The resistance to such an idea will come from racist-colonialists who are implementing apartheid with a viciousness unheard of before. South Africans have, quite seriously, referred to the apartheid they underwent as a ‘tea party’ compared to the Israeli version!
The transition to a Unitary State will not be immediate. It will demand a transitional process – agreements on demilitarization, restitution, constitutional guarantees, and truth commissions. But the principle must be clear: equality for all, supremacy for none. A shared state cannot be built on denial. It must begin by acknowledging the crimes of colonization and committing to redress them. Only then can Jews and Arabs co-exist as citizens, not occupiers and occupied.
The international community’s mantra of “both sides must stop fighting” obscures the asymmetry of power. Israel is a nuclear-armed state with US backing and an economy built on occupation. Hamas is a movement born out of siege and desperation. To equate the two is to erase history and morality.
The demand for Hamas’ disarmament is, in truth, a demand for Palestinian surrender. The demand that colonization end is a demand for justice. Between the two lies the entire moral geography of the conflict. Peace without justice is a lie.
Peace will not come by silencing the oppressed. It will come when occupation ends, when refugees return, when settlements are dismantled, and when every Palestinian child grows up free from siege. Until then, the right to resist remains not only legal, but sacred.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/disarming-hamas-means-disarming-the-palestinian-cause/
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Growing International Criticism Of German Anti-Palestinian Repression
by Leon Wystrychowski
October 21, 2025
For several years now, the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany has faced severe repression. Yet after 7 October 2023, this harassment reached new levels: In the first weeks following the Gaza uprising and the beginning of the genocide, demonstrations were broadly banned in a number of German cities – especially in the capital, Berlin. Both Hamas and the international prisoner solidarity network “Samidoun” were declared illegal by executive order, and the slogan “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” was classified as a prohibited “symbol” of Hamas.
To this day, censorship, criminal charges and brutal police violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators remain commonplace. Events are regularly cancelled – even UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, was denied access to university venues in Munich in February 2025. Repeatedly, police have conducted house searches because individuals “liked” posts online, used the phrase “From the river to the sea…”, compared Israel’s actions to Nazi crimes, or accused German politicians of complicity in war crimes.
According to estimates, police have opened around 10,000 criminal investigations related to Palestine solidarity over the past 24 months. In May 2024, the Berlin Palestine Congress was forcibly shut down by authorities; internationally recognised guests were denied entry to Germany. Six months after the bans on Samidoun and Hamas, the group “Palästina Solidarität Duisburg“ (Palestine Solidarity Duisburg) was outlawed as well, and further bans are reportedly being prepared by German authorities, including against the international BDS movement. Since the beginning of this year, there have also been multiple deportations of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian foreign nationals. The legal aid organisation “3ezwa” estimates that several thousand people across Germany are currently at acute risk of expulsion or deportation.
Criticism from NGOs, the EU and the UN
This campaign to suppress freedom of expression – which is openly racist and particularly targets Arab and Muslim communities – is drawing increasing international attention. As early as late October 2023, Human Rights Watch (HRW) raised the alarm, criticising, among other things, the handling of pro-Palestine demonstrations by German authorities. Soon after, criticism also came from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). In mid-May 2025, the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) launched the “first available database on anti-Palestinian repression in Germany”. At that time, the database already documented 766 cases of censorship, surveillance, bans on demonstrations, arrests, workplace and financial repression, relevant laws and resolutions, intimidation, and migration-related reprisals.
In June, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights felt compelled to send a letter to the German Interior Minister. In it, he referred to “reports of excessive use of force by police against protesters, including minors,” expressed “concern” that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition “has been interpreted by some German authorities in ways which lead to the blanket classification of criticism of Israel as antisemitic,” and “recalled” that EU member states “have both an obligation to refrain from undue interference with human rights and also positive obligations to safeguard these rights by securing their effective enjoyment for everyone.”
Last week, the United Nations intervened again. Six independent experts called on Germany “to halt criminalisation and police violence against Palestinian solidarity activism.” They, too, focused on police brutality, but also explicitly criticised the criminalisation of the slogan “From the River to the Sea Palestine will be free.” Their concluding statement declared: “Germany must support, not suppress, actions aiming to stop atrocity crimes and genocide.”
What is going on with Germany?
International media now report regularly on the state-driven anti-Palestinian repression and violence in Germany. Images of police officers beating peaceful demonstrators with their fists circulate around the world. Journalists and analysts attempt to explain to a bewildered international audience why a state that so often invokes human rights, freedom of expression and the rule of law acts in such a repressive and inhumane way. Frequently, reference is made to Germany’s “special historical responsibility” arising from the Holocaust. But this explanation is part of the myth.
In reality, the issue has always been about power and money: After the Second World War, West Germany had to rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the Western public. The Federal Republic was built by men who, only yesterday, had been committed Nazis – politicians, bureaucrats, judges, officers, police and intelligence agents who had all taken part in the crimes of the fascist regime, including mass murder and world war. The focus on the genocide of the Jews – the second-largest group of victims after the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe (who were, however, the enemy during the Cold War) – coincided with Israel’s emergence as an outpost of Western imperialism. The so-called “reparations payments”, which went not to Holocaust survivors or their descendants but to the “Jewish state”, in fact served as a programme for the economic development and militarisation of the Zionist regime in Palestine. The phrase “historical responsibility” thus functions as a euphemism, much like the colonial “protection treaties” and “protectorates”.
What Germany has created through its “ideology of guilt” is unique: instead of denying or relativising its own crimes, it has singularised, dehistoricised and fetishised them. Germany is perhaps the only country that does not deny a genocide it itself committed, but rather invokes it to justify its imperial foreign policy – even to the point of supporting another genocide.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251021-growing-international-criticism-of-german-anti-palestinian-repression/
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Options Before Hamas On The Question Of Disarmament
By Mahmoud Hassan
October 21, 2025
The issue of disarming the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, has emerged as one of the most complex and sensitive files under discussion in the second phase of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.
The issue has imposed itself on both regional and international agendas. It is far from simple, and not a card that can easily be set aside — especially at a time when the Israeli occupation army has committed 80 violations of the agreement, resulting in the deaths of 97 Palestinians and injuries to 230 others since the ceasefire was declared, according to a statement by the Gaza Government Media Office.
The entire matter could turn into a ticking mine capable of blowing up the fragile agreement between the two sides. It may also remain a persistent headache for the Israeli government, potentially dragging everyone into a deep impasse — and taking Gaza back to square one yet again.
Hamas’s arsenal
Some Israeli, Western and Arab quarters are keen to exaggerate Hamas’s capabilities — yet its military stockpile lacks fighter jets, tanks, long-range missiles, bunker-busting ordnance, smart robotic systems and other precision-guided weapons that the Israeli military possesses.
Hamas possesses short-range rockets, locally made gliders and drones, a home-grown air-defence system, and an assortment of shells, rifles and older weapons upgraded by the movement’s engineers.
According to Egyptian military expert and armament specialist Brigadier General Samir Ragheb, Hamas has managed to manufacture its weapons using simple metals, fibreglass, and uncomplicated engines taken from motorbikes or car spare parts permitted by Israel to enter Gaza — along with guidance devices, some of which, he told the BBC, are repurposed from children’s toys.
Over the past two years, Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, has depleted much of its stockpile of weaponry. During the launch of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” offensive on 7 October 2023, it fired more than 5,000 rockets at Israeli sites, airports and settlements. But that arsenal has since dwindled significantly, with rocket fire dropping in recent months to as few as three to five missiles at a time.
The tightened blockade and the widespread destruction that has wiped out more than 90 per cent of Gaza’s infrastructure have severely undermined the group’s armament capabilities. Many of its tunnels and manufacturing workshops have been destroyed, forcing it to recycle remnants of Israeli weapons and unexploded ordnance, as well as parts from destroyed tanks and vehicles. These now serve as a primary source of raw materials to offset the acute shortage of conventional supplies faced by its fighters.
Disarmament
A few days ago, US President Donald Trump said the second phase of the Gaza agreement has now begun and that Hamas will relinquish its weapons, warning: ‘If it does not, we will take care of it.’ He insisted the group’s disarmament would happen swiftly — and possibly violently, in his words.
To date, the Trump administration has not specified the mechanisms it would use to disarm Hamas — how it would first locate and inventory the group’s stockpiles, where those caches are held, or how it would compel other Palestinian factions to meet the US-Israeli demand.
Saying that Hamas will lay down its weapons is easy; carrying it out, however, would be far more difficult, former US National Security Adviser Michael Faivel told Al Jazeera.
The issue is highly complex for several reasons. First, successive Israeli breaches of the ceasefire agreement make it difficult to persuade the movement to surrender its weapons.
Second, there is a growing demand for arms to quell disorder and impose order inside the Strip.
Third, the prisoners’ card has lost much of its value following the hostage exchanges, narrowing Hamas’s leverage and leaving few bargaining chips — most notably the weapons issue.
European officials have put forward a document outlining a potential role for EU member states in “assessing and exploring ways to finance and provide the expertise needed for disarmament in Gaza.” The proposal also includes redeploying a monitoring mission at the Rafah border crossing and assisting in training a police force within the Strip.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has outlined his vision for Hamas’s disarmament phase, citing his country’s experience in persuading the Irish Republican Army to give up its weapons in Northern Ireland under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. That deal was part of a comprehensive settlement that offered political and security gains, confidence-building measures, and power-sharing with formerly armed groups. Analysts, however, argue that such a model does not suit the Palestinian context — Gaza is not Belfast, they say, and even Tel Aviv would never agree to such an approach.
Peter McLoughlin, Professor of Political Science at Queen’s University Belfast, commented: “Hamas is excluded from the political process, yet it is being asked to give up its weapons. I’m not sure how realistic that is,” he told AFP.
An Egyptian proposal
Egyptian circles have been discussing a proposal under which Cairo would take possession of Hamas’s weapons or oversee the disarmament process through an independent committee. However, journalist Diaa Rashwan, head of Egypt’s State Information Service, revealed a different idea during an appearance on Al Arabiya’s Out of the Box programme: Hamas, he said, has agreed to “freeze its weapons” rather than surrender them outright, as part of a long-term truce that could last up to ten years.
According to Rashwan, Hamas’s weapons would not be handed over to Israel or the United States, and the agreement does not specify who would take possession of them. Instead, it refers to an independent committee — which, he said, could be Egyptian, Egyptian-Arab, or Egyptian-Arab-Palestinian.
Egyptian political analyst Mohamed Gamal told Middle East Monitor that a complete surrender of weapons is unlikely. However, he said Hamas might agree to relinquish its heavy, offensive arms — but not its defensive ones — given that it considers itself engaged in the defence of occupied territory. He added that several Palestinian factions reject the idea outright.
Hamas’s options
Faced with this dilemma, Hamas appears cornered amid American, European and Arab pressure, and Israeli threats to resume the war on Gaza if it refuses to hand over its weapons. Yet a senior Hamas official, who asked not to be named, told AFP a few days ago that “the question of surrendering weapons is not up for discussion and is out of the question.”
However, senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk struck a more pragmatic and astute tone, telling Al Jazeera that “the movement is ready to hand over its weapons on the day a fully sovereign Palestinian state is established.”
Alongside an outright refusal to disarm, the movement—seasoned in the arts of warfare and led by shrewd commanders—could conceal what remains of its arsenal in deep tunnels and secret bunkers, or transfer stockpiles to another Palestinian faction, such as Islamic Jihad. The two movements already run a joint operations room to coordinate military activity among the armed factions.
Hamas could manoeuvre by agreeing to a partial handover — for example surrendering rockets to appease Trump — while keeping defensive weapons; or by transferring some arms to an Arab or international peacekeeping force; or by handing them over to a recognised legitimate authority, such as an elected national government.
American pragmatism
American pragmatism could well resurface — as it did when Washington engaged in direct talks with Hamas to broker the end of the war. Under pressure from mediators, the US administration might be willing to accept the removal of some, rather than all, of Hamas’s weapons, according to political analyst Shehab al-Masri.
During their visit to Israel this week, US Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner could help repair the cracks that have quickly appeared in the agreement — and rein in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who seems eager to undermine the ceasefire deal.
For its part, Hamas is working to re-establish its footing in Gaza — politically, militarily and on the ground — while awaiting what the coming weeks and months will bring. The movement is determined to maintain security control over the Strip to prevent lawlessness, the spread of armed chaos or a collapse of the agreement — outcomes neither Washington nor the regional mediators wish to see.
The Palestinian resistance remains the primary party called on to answer questions about the fate of its weapons — but an equally urgent question is this: what has the other side offered to persuade the victim to forgo the right to self-defence?
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251021-options-before-hamas-on-the-question-of-disarmament/
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Trump Keeps Netanyahu Tethered To Gaza Deal — For Now
Osama Al-Sharif
October 21, 2025
The Gaza ceasefire is shaky but is holding despite some serious violations by Israel. Since the truce came into effect, Israel has killed tens of Palestinians in Gaza, carrying out multiple airstrikes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to resume the war and peddled excuses to block the delivery of aid and keep the Rafah crossing point closed. But he is facing pressure from Israel’s closest ally: Donald Trump.
The US president and his team of interlocutors have made it clear to Netanyahu that he should not think of endangering the plan that Trump committed to in front of world leaders at Sharm El-Sheikh. The message to Netanyahu is clear: the war has ended.
And while the US is keeping Netanyahu at bay, Trump has also threatened Hamas with dire consequences if it does not keep its side of the bargain. So far, the militant movement has shown that it is committed to the 20-point plan, at least delivering on its obligations under the first phase.
But Trump and his team are weary of Netanyahu. The president sent his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, back to Israel ahead of Vice President J.D. Vance’s crucial visit to Tel Aviv. Vance’s main mission is to shore up the Gaza truce and prevent Netanyahu from collapsing the fragile ceasefire.
In an interview this week, Kushner and Witkoff discussed the Trump plan, with the former making it clear that Hamas was acting “in good faith” in delivering on its obligations so far. Both have underlined Trump’s personal commitment to ending the war. They made it clear they would like to move to the second phase of the plan as soon as possible.
But while Netanyahu appears to be cornered at this point in time, he is hoping to complicate the enforcement of the many vague points related to the second phase, including the process of disarming Hamas and the formation of an international stabilizing force that will be deployed in Gaza. Also, a bone of contention will be the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
Netanyahu is hoping that the issue of demilitarizing Gaza will create so many obstacles that it will test Trump’s patience and may allow the Israeli PM to loosen his commitment to Israel’s obligations under the plan. Another issue on which Netanyahu will prevaricate is the presence of an international force in Gaza. He has already objected to Turkish participation in both the proposed force and the recovery and salvaging operations. Turkiye is a signatory to the ceasefire plan. Netanyahu is also objecting to Ankara’s role in Gaza reconstruction efforts. Turkiye’s inclusion in the international stabilization force, according to Israeli media, is a “red line” for Netanyahu.
In fact, Netanyahu and his far-right partners are against any form of international peacekeeping in Gaza. They see it as a dangerous precedent — the fact that such a force is on Palestinian territory could one day be replicated in the West Bank.
It is likely that Netanyahu will continue to raise objections regarding the implementation of Trump’s plan, hoping to frustrate the US president and his team. He is already doing his best to delay the delivery of aid, putting conditions on what is allowed to go in and what is not. He will probably do the same with reconstruction.
While his hands are largely tied in Gaza, Netanyahu has unleashed a wave of terror and death in the West Bank. Trump has warned that he will not allow Israel to annex the territory. Still, Netanyahu, seeking to keep his coalition alive, is allowing armed settlers to go on the rampage. He is also considering enforcing Israeli law on the settlements; a symbolic but serious move that could only be interpreted as annexation.
A majority of the Israeli public supports Trump’s plan, particularly the part that guarantees the return of all captives alive and dead. Netanyahu is aware that he is being blamed for failing to embrace previous plans that would have allowed the return of the captives months ago. He is also cognizant that voices are now being raised in Israel to form an independent commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, in which his role and those of other senior government and army officials will be investigated.
This is the primary reason why Netanyahu resisted pressure, even from his own army, to end the war. He knows that his political career could be over once the war ends and the long and painful process of digging into the past begins. In addition to the war ending, he would have no excuse to further postpone his ongoing corruption trial. This may be why he announced on Saturday that he will be seeking reelection in the November 2026 polls, when he will be aged 77. He added that he expected to win.
While looking for ways to derail the Gaza deal, Netanyahu has shifted attention back to Lebanon. Israel has repeatedly violated the ceasefire agreement with Lebanon that was reached last November. It has refused to withdraw from five military outposts it created in south Lebanon and has prevented displaced Lebanese from returning to their destroyed villages close to the border.
Netanyahu is also putting pressure on the US envoy to Syria and Lebanon, Tom Barrack, to threaten the Lebanese government that if it does not disarm Hezbollah, Israel will renew its attacks. In a lengthy post on X this week, Barrack wrote: “If Beirut fails to act, Hezbollah’s military arm will inevitably face major confrontation with Israel at a moment of Israel’s strength and Iran-backed Hezbollah’s weakest point.”
The Israeli PM will see such threats as a green light to escalate the attacks on Lebanon, whose government finds itself in a difficult position, since Hezbollah has so far refused to hand over its weapons.
Netanyahu wants to keep Israel in perpetual war to stay in power for as long as possible. So far, Trump is committed to keeping the Gaza truce alive. However, Netanyahu knows that the road to full implementation of the plan is long and complex, and he hopes that Trump will soon lose interest.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2619681
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Canadian Taxpayers Subsidize Zionist Racism at Montreal Jewish School
By Yves Engler
October 21, 2025
“Harvard is an Islamist outpost”, explained a Wall Street Journal op-ed penned by Ruth Wisse. The prominent Montrealer’s racism was instilled by one of the city’s many Jewish supremacist schools.
In an article published last week in the Wall Street Journal, the founder of McGill University’s Jewish studies program wrote, “On Sept. 11, 2001, the Islamists of al Qaeda attacked the US in a suicide mission that used American planes as their instruments of destruction. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas Islamists exploited Israel’s openness by invading the country, massacring civilians and kidnapping others. Jihadists use these new forms of warfare against those they can’t conquer by force. What concerns us here is their capture of elite American schools as outposts.”
According to Wisse, Muslim donors have captured the elite school where she taught Yiddish literature from 1993 to 2014. “As long as other institutions took Muslim money and ignored the war against the Jews, why should Harvard be holier than the pope?” she noted. But did not billionaire Jewish donors oust the University’s first-ever Black president? Would it not be more credible to say, “Jewish money” is responsible for Harvard’s “war against the Palestinians”?
Wisse’s racist, authoritarian rants have been making the rounds online. It is important to recognize that her Jewish supremacist views did not just drop from the sky. They reflect a Zionist infrastructure almost no one is discussing, let alone systematically confronting.
Wisse attended Canada’s oldest Jewish day school, which is now known as the Jewish People’s and Peretz Schools (JPPS-Bialik). It was created by members and supporters of the Labor Zionist (Poale Zion) movement in 1914. In the 1950s, explained a Tablet article on “The Jewish People’s School of Montreal”, its “animating philosophy was Zionism. We were infused with an appreciation for the heroism of the early settlers of the State of Israel; we sang songs in praise of the bravery and industry of the chalutzim [early colonialists]. We collected money for Histadrut and for planting trees in Israel. We knew that the Israelis had made the desert bloom.”
Today, an Israeli flag flies outside the school, and its gym is painted in the colors of that country. A teenage Israeli Shinshinim volunteer is seconded to JPPS-Bialik and, in 2018, the Canadian Jewish News published a story about the school “introducing what its creator says may be the first formal course on Israel conducted entirely in Hebrew at a Jewish day school.”
During the past 18 months of genocide, its Facebook page has reported on the school participating in the March for Israel in Washington DC and a March for Jerusalem and Israel Day rally in Montreal. Students have also raised money for an Israel Relief Fund and arch-Zionists Neil Oberman, Loay Alshareef and Shabbos Kestenbaum have spoken to students.
While largely funded by Canadian and Quebec taxpayers, the school’s Facebook page describes “honoring” Israeli soldiers who defend “our homeland” and “our beloved homeland of Israel.” The school also brings in former Israeli soldiers to speak to students in what may be a bid to “induce” graduates to join a foreign military.
As with most private schools in Quebec, JPPS-Bialik receives over $5,000 per student in education ministry funding. The school is also a registered charity so donations to its foundation are subsidized and the registered charity, Combined Jewish Appeal Montreal, subsidizes many students’ tuition.
According to a La Presse investigation on Jewish schools benefiting from tax credits for “religious” (heavily Zionist) instruction, JPPS-Bialik is a leading beneficiary of this questionable subsidy. The paper’s analysis suggests the school receives at least $5 million in public funds annually.
This is outrageous. The public should not give a cent to this school. Moreover, it needs to be investigated for promoting racism and violating Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act.
To stop Israel from killing more Palestinian children, we need to upend an education system in this country that promotes genocidal Jewish supremacy.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/canadian-taxpayers-subsidize-zionist-racism-at-montreal-jewish-school/
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/middle-east-press/israel-cheats-ceasefire-hamas-zionist-racism/d/137340
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