Middle East Press On: Israel, Hamas, West Bank, Netanyahu, Canada, Tel Aviv, and Gaza, New Age Islam's Selection, 21 February 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
21 February 2025
1. How world media did the opposite of Israeli press
2. Israeli hearts have been shattered, but the nation is still breathing
3. A national day of mourning—and a national resolve to destroy Hamas
4. Netanyahu takes aim at West Bank after bus explosions near Tel Aviv
5. Canada faces lawsuit over delays in Gaza visa programme
6. Criminalising dissent against 7 October narrative, Israel takes another turn towards authoritarianism
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How World Media Did The Opposite Of Israeli Press
By Rachel O'donoghue
February 20, 2025
The grim Hamas hostage release performances reached a harrowing peak Thursday with the return of Shiri Bibas and her two flame-haired sons.
Four black coffins.
One each for Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, and for Oded Lifshitz, who had also been kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023.
Behind them, the macabre scene was complete: an anti-Semitic mural, crudely depicting Israel’s prime minister as a blood-sucking vampire, loomed over the stage. The final indignity, as Hamas desecrated even the bodies of its most defenceless victims.
While Israeli networks refuse to broadcast these grotesque propaganda displays, Western outlets continue to oblige. It is difficult to imagine these same outlets uncritically airing the staged performances of any other terrorist group banned in their own countries. But when Israel is the victim of terrorism, double standards always seem to apply.
Calling out media for drawing false moral equivalency
For weeks, Honest Reporting has called out the media’s insistence on drawing a false moral equivalency between Israeli hostages—civilians kidnapped during Hamas’ massacre—and Palestinian prisoners released as part of the ceasefire agreement. Most of these prisoners are convicted terrorists, serving multiple life sentences for mass-casualty attacks stretching back to before the Second Intifada.
The worst offenders have been Sky News, CNN, and the BBC. On Thursday, Sky News stayed true to form, referring to the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz as having been held in “Hamas custody.” As though an 85-year-old man, a mother, and her two children had been detained under some form of legitimate due process. This, just days after Sky referred to Palestinian prisoners—many of them convicted terrorists—as “hostages."
But this time, it was what the media didn’t say that was most revealing.
In past hostage-prisoner exchanges, major media outlets have not been shy about indulging Hamas’ propaganda. CNN reported that Hamas had gifted hostages’ families “memorabilia,” including an hourglass ominously meant for the mother of a hostage still held in Gaza—an implicit threat on his life. The New York Times, for its part, described Hamas’ weekly ritual of torturing and humiliating Israeli captives as mere “theatrics” and even claimed the group had “toned down” its cruelty in the last exchange.
This time, the NYT refrained from suggesting Hamas had toned down its performance. Instead, like so many other publications, it failed to acknowledge the full horror of what unfolded on Thursday morning.
Thousands of Palestinian civilians gathered to witness the scene. Men perched on plastic lawn chairs, smoking hookah pipes. Families—mothers in headscarves, fathers cradling toddlers—watched from the crowd. There was music. There was singing.
Four coffins
It was not just the presence of the four coffins that made the spectacle an echo of the savagery of October 7. It was the festive atmosphere—the casual, almost celebratory way a community gathered to watch a terrorist group display the bodies of murdered Jews. A society so desensitized to terroristic violence that even the sight of coffins holding two dead babies did not shock. Did not horrify.
Quite the opposite. It was a cause for celebration.
The mothers and fathers of Gaza brought their children to watch. To gawk. To clap. At the sight of dead Jews.
Mainstream media outlets barely acknowledged the sheer depravity of Thursday morning’s spectacle, offering only the most muted references to the macabre show in Khan Yunis.
Sky News, for instance, summarized the scene with an almost clinical detachment: “Four black coffins were displayed on a stage” before being “put into vehicles and driven away as masked members of Hamas and other factions looked on.” A bizarrely sanitized description for what was, in reality, a horrifying public exhibition of murdered civilians.
CNN at least had the journalistic integrity to acknowledge the “propaganda backdrop with slogans in Arabic, Hebrew, and English”—but conspicuously failed to mention the crude mural of Netanyahu as a blood-sucking vampire looming over the coffins. ABC News cropped its accompanying photo so that only one Hamas terrorist remained in the frame, reducing the entire event to just two paragraphs—one of which described a Red Cross official “signing documents” as part of the so-called handover.
References to the crowd were fleeting. If mentioned at all, it was merely as “crowds gathered,” with no photographs to accompany the words. One of the most honest assessments came from an AFP report, but even then, it was buried in the final paragraph:
“Large speakers blasted chants, as children and youth pressed themselves around a table where fighters displayed a large automatic rifle and its long ammunition belt, as well as anti-tank mines.”
Yet not a single major news outlet thought it relevant to report that Hamas had invited families to watch—and that they eagerly did, gathering with music and celebration. Not a single journalist spoke of the carnivalesque atmosphere. Not a single reporter noted the chilling detail that all four coffins were the same size, as though a child-sized casket would have made the heartbreak too explicit.
Israel has been repeatedly criticized for its supposed lack of a “day-after” plan for Gaza, for failing to put forward a roadmap that would lead to Palestinian statehood.
But Thursday morning’s gruesome display provides the most unflinching answer to that demand:
Israel cannot be expected to solve what is clearly a deep-rooted, generational problem in a society that treats the murder of its civilians as family entertainment.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-843097
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Israeli Hearts Have Been Shattered, But The Nation Is Still Breathing
By Herb Keinon
February 20, 2025
Thus began Nathan Alterman’s iconic poem, Magash HaKesef (The Silver Platter), which was written in 1947 following the UN vote on the partition of Palestine.
The poem portrays a sombre and reverent moment when a young man and woman soldier appear before the nation.
Then a nation in tears and amazement will ask: “Who are you?” continues the poem.
Watching the sombre procession of vans carrying the bodies of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were nine months and four years old when they were kidnapped, their mother, Shiri Silberman Bibas (32), and Oded Lifshitz (85), one could not help but think of Alterman’s words and their message: the establishment and survival of the Jewish state comes at an often unbearable cost.
What was true in 1947 is true in 2025.
The deaths of these hostages – especially the Bibas babies – represent a heartbreaking extension of the sacrifice the Jewish people continue to pay to live in their homeland.
Their deaths are emblematic of the ongoing price Israel’s sons and daughters, parents, and even grandparents and great-grandparents pay for the country’s existence.
Part of a collective story of the Jewish people
Their deaths are part of the collective story of sacrifice that defines Israel’s history and identity. As Alterman wrote in the last line of his poem: “And the rest will be told in the chronicles of Israel.”
Among “the rest” that will be told in those chronicles is how an entire nation stopped on Thursday to pay homage to the hostages – hostages most had long feared were killed by the end of 2023, yet, clinging to the faintest hope, could not bring themselves to say so out loud.
What will be told in those chronicles is the sacrifice some 850 soldiers paid with their lives trying to bring the hostages home.
What will be told is that the country was willing to pay an exorbitant price to bring the hostages home – living and dead – because of a sense of solidarity, mutual responsibility, and those mystic bonds of brotherhood that animate this people and is a pillar of Israel’s strength.
And what, from Thursday’s heart-wrenching day, will be remembered in the “chronicles of Gaza”?
That a ghoulish show was put on where men, women, and children gathered in the remains of a city square – to celebratory music – to watch masked murderers parade around with coffins of a nine-month-old baby, a four-year-old boy, and an 85-year-old man who spent much of his life working for coexistence with those who would later kidnap and murder him.
That Hamas pasted graffiti on the coffins, gave the International Committee of the Red Cross keys for locks on the coffins that didn’t fit, and that children at the ceremony took selfish with recently released terrorist murderers.
Israel’s television stations, all five of them, did well in not broadcasting this “ceremony.” What would be the point? With this show, as well as those over the past month and those still to come, Hamas is hoping to break the country’s spirit. There is no reason to aid and abet them.
Images from that ceremony, however, were broadcast around the world, and in one split-screen moment, the world saw the pictures that the two different societies wanted to project.
On one side of the screen was Hamas’s grotesque terror theatre. It is important to note that this show was carefully choreographed.
Hamas did not want to hide the fact that they kidnapped and then traded in the bodies of babies and the elderly; rather, they brought their own children to watch and to cheer.
Hamas prefers to celebrate
This is the image they wanted to project. They didn’t want to hide this – they wanted to celebrate it.
On the other screen were images of thousands of Israelis lining streets and overpasses to pay final respects to people they never met or heard of before October 7 but for whom they felt a tremendous degree of solidarity.
The world saw images of a nation bowing its head and weeping for the lives of their innocents lost. No one, however, should confuse those tears for weakness or those bowed heads for a nation whose spirit is broken.
As Alterman wrote: “torn at heart but breathing.”
Breathing because for Israel and for the Jewish people, grief is never the final word.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-843070
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A National Day Of Mourning—And A National Resolve To Destroy Hamas
By Stewart Weiss
February 20, 2025
Despite all the tears, trauma, and terror we have experienced over the last year and a half, though we knew that the terrorists were baby killers who had slaughtered and tortured countless children on October 7, we were not emotionally prepared for this.
All the foreboding, all the advance, ominous warnings we had received - even from the terrorists themselves – could not cushion the shock we felt at hearing of the murders of Shiri, Ariel, and baby Kfir.
Their very names had given us hope; hope that we would sing again a (ital)Shir of joy at their freedom; hope that we would celebrate the bravery of these young lions who had descended into Hell and emerged once again into the light.
But it was not to be; there would be no “mother and child reunion” to give our nation the spiritual lift we so desperately anticipated.
By murdering these holy hostages in cold blood – and let no one believe for a moment that anyone but Hamas caused their deaths – the enemy has confirmed what we already knew on the first day of the war – it is either them, or us.
'Ill-fated' hostage deal
Ever since the ill-fated hostage deal began, we had perhaps deluded ourselves into thinking that we could reach some form of “accommodation” with Hamas that we could meet on some kind of humanitarian, moral “turf.”
But we were wrong, and the Bibas atrocity confirms it. The Hamas terrorists are not like other creatures; they are sub-human – both literally and figuratively. They crave death – first and foremost ours - and, almost gleefully – they will sacrifice their own lives and certainly those of their fellow Palestinians in order to destroy us (ital all) ”Aym al banim,” mother and child together. We have learned in the hardest way possible that Hamas cannot be babied, bought off, and bargained with.
What will we do now, and where can we go from here? Will we shrug our collective shoulders and helplessly “move on?” Will we free even more murderous killers, thus assuring the continuity of their genocidal campaign for generations to come?
Every terrorist who is freed is not only an insult to the families they destroyed and the heroic soldiers who died capturing them, but it is creating another machine gun aimed at our innocents, another suicide bomb waiting to detonate in our streets and cafes.
Most frightening of all, the Bibas killing forces us to confront an essential, existential question that cuts right to the core: Do we have what it takes to survive in the brutal, show-no-mercy Middle East?
How can we avenge the slaying of the Bibas family members and honour their memory? What good can somehow emerge from this terrible crime? I suggest we first hold a National Day of Mourning for all those murdered over the last 500-plus days, seeking forgiveness for anything we did – or did not do – that may have contributed to their demise. But that is not enough. Even as we cry for their loss, we must at the same time rise up in righteous fury.
We have to gather up our courage and dedicate ourselves to eradicating the evil called Hamas, no matter what or how long it takes.
We will – we must - search deep within ourselves for inner strength and pledge that come what may, surrender is not an option. With God’s help and fierce determination, we must win this battle for our survival.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-842940
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Netanyahu Takes Aim At West Bank After Bus Explosions Near Tel Aviv
21 Feb 2025
Israel is gearing up for an “intensive” operation in the occupied West Bank after bombs detonated on three empty buses in a central Israel parking depot.
Israeli security services say the bombings on Thursday evening, which caused no casualties, were the work of armed groups, according to Israeli media.
“Following the attempt to perpetrate a chain of mass bus bombings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just completed a security assessment,” the office of the Israeli prime minister said on social media.
“The Prime Minister has ordered the [military] to carry out an intensive operation against centres of terrorism in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank]. The Prime Minister also ordered the Israel Police and the ISA [Israeli Security Agency] to increase preventative activity against additional attacks in Israeli cities,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Some parts of the West Bank were immediately sealed off and further restrictions have been imposed on the movement of Palestinians. Citing unnamed security officials, The Jerusalem Post reported that the explosives had been linked to “terrorist infrastructure” in the West Bank.
The Israeli military later announced that it had deployed three extra units to its “Central Command”, which is responsible for Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, in preparation for expanding its weeks-long offensive against Palestinian communities.
“The [Israeli military] continues to conduct an ongoing situation assessment and prepares to expand offensive activity,” the military said.
The bombs destroyed three empty buses parked in depots around Bat Yam, a city south of Tel Aviv, while two additional undetonated bombs were found in the area by police.
The investigation has been passed on to Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency.
According to police, the explosives were likely intended to go off on Friday morning when people were on their way to work, describing the devices as identical to others used in the West Bank, but no further details were provided.
“We need to determine if a single suspect placed explosives on a number of buses, or if there were multiple suspects,” police spokesman Haim Sargrof told Israeli media.
Al Jazeera’s correspondent Nour Odeh said Palestinians in the West Bank are living in further fear following the “announcements of stepped-up Israeli military action” following the explosions.
“The occupied West Bank, especially in the north in Tulkarem and Jenin, have been going through an unprecedented military assault, resulting in the mass forced displacement of more than 40,000,” Odeh said.
Israeli forces have set up hundreds of checkpoints across the occupied West Bank since the start of their offensive on January 21, and at least 70 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military during that time.
There has also been widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure in local communities by Israeli troops.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/21/netanyahu-takes-aim-at-west-bank-after-bus-explosions-near-tel-aviv
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Canada Faces Lawsuit Over Delays In Gaza Visa Programme
By Jillian Kestler-D'amours
20 Feb 2025
Montreal, Canada – Palestinian families are suing the Canadian government over delays in the issuance of visas meant to allow them to escape Israel’s deadly war in Gaza and receive temporary protection in Canada.
Filed in the Federal Court of Canada this month, on behalf of 53 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with family members in Canada, the lawsuit alleges that the country’s special visa programme has been plagued by inefficiencies.
Hana Marku, a Toronto lawyer representing the families, said all of her clients submitted a form expressing interest in the visas within the first month of the scheme’s launch in January 2024.
However, none have received the unique reference codes needed to move to the next stage of the process, which is the submission of their relatives’ Canadian visa applications.
The prolonged delay has left their Gaza-based relatives open to “life-threatening and inhumane conditions” in the Palestinian territory, where Israel has bombarded cities, neighbourhoods and refugee camps for 15 months, the lawsuit states.
“There’s no rhyme or reason to how the codes are being rolled out, and the fact that there’s no transparency here is — it’s emotional torture, frankly,” Marku told Al Jazeera.
“It’s emotional torture for the Canadian family members who put in a financial undertaking in the belief that this would create the chance of getting their loved ones out of Gaza.”
Canada launched the special Gaza visa programme on January 9, 2024, a few months into Israel’s attacks on the coastal Palestinian enclave.
The scheme allowed Canadian citizens and permanent residents to apply to bring extended family members from Gaza to the country amid the war. If approved, successful applicants would receive temporary residency for up to three years.
But from the start, families and immigration lawyers said the process was confusing and included invasive questions that went beyond what is typically required, including inquiries about any scars or injuries that required medical attention.
They also said Canada did not explain why some Palestinian families received codes to submit their applications while others did not.
A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) — the federal immigration department — told Al Jazeera that it was reviewing a “large volume” of first-stage submissions and that processing times vary according to each case.
As of January 28, the government had accepted 4,873 Gaza visa applications into processing, the department said.
By that same date, 1,093 people who exited Gaza without any help from the Canadian authorities were approved to come to Canada. Of that, 645 people have arrived in the country.
The programme will close once 5,000 applications have reached the processing stage or upon a final cut-off date of April 22.
“Movement out of Gaza remains extremely challenging due to factors outside of Canada’s control. This continues to be the primary issue in how quickly we can process applications from Gazans,” the IRCC spokesperson said.
But Marku, the Toronto lawyer, said her clients are not asking for assistance in leaving Gaza or for a positive decision on their relatives’ visa requests; they just want the chance to be allowed to submit the applications.
“They can’t continue to the next step in this process — they can’t even fill out the application forms — without being given unique reference codes,” she said.
“We’re just asking for an order from the Federal Court to compel the federal government to give these people unique reference codes. This is what we’ve had to litigate.”
Asked about the lawsuit, IRCC told Al Jazeera that the government could not comment on specific cases due to privacy concerns.
One of the Canada-based family members involved in the lawsuit, who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity due to a fear of retribution, said the visa scheme appears to have been “designed to fail and not to evacuate people” from Gaza.
“They’re not serious about the process,” the person said of the Canadian government. “They don’t have a structured system. It’s just a bad system. You have to figure out things on your own, it doesn’t make any sense.”
The relatives they were hoping to bring to Canada remain in Gaza, which has been decimated.
A total of 48,319 Palestinians have been confirmed dead, though the Government Media Office in Gaza has said the total may be as high as 61,709, given the bodies yet to be found under the rubble.
A shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, implemented last month, has provided a brief reprieve from widespread bombings, but the enclave is in ruins, and Palestinians face a dire humanitarian crisis, with shortages of food and other basic supplies.
The relative in Canada said watching the destruction from afar while struggling to access the Canadian visas has taken a mental toll. “I never … in my entire life [had] to experience such a thing, the pressure like this,” they added.
Meanwhile, Marku said the lawyers are “working against the clock” to try to receive the application codes before the programme closes in April.
The Canadian government has 30 days from when the lawsuit was filed on February 6 to submit its response, and Marku said her team is hoping the Federal Court will then agree to their arguments on an expedited basis.
“Leaving people in limbo, I think, is almost worse than flat-out refusing them,” Marku told Al Jazeera. “In this situation, it’s just cruel to do this to people.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/20/canada-faces-lawsuit-over-delays-to-gaza-visa-programme
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Criminalising Dissent against 7 October Narrative, Israel Takes another Turn towards Authoritarianism
February 20, 2025
By Nasim Ahmed
Israel has passed a new bill which criminalises the questioning of the official narrative regarding 7 October 2023. The law, passed without opposition, bars non-Israeli citizens from entering or residing in the country if they or the organisations they represent deny the 7 October attack, question the Holocaust, or support the prosecution at international courts of Israeli security personnel for war crimes. It also expands a controversial 2017 amendment that prohibited visas for individuals associated with groups supporting the peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
One of the most controversial aspects has been the army’s use of the Hannibal Directive, a military protocol that permits Israeli forces to kill their own soldiers or civilians to prevent their capture by enemy forces. Israel’s own defence minister has acknowledged that the directive was issued on 7 October, resulting in Israeli forces killing a substantial number of their own civilians in efforts to prevent them from being taken hostage.
Moreover, many of the most shocking allegations about the Hamas-led cross-border incursion, which critics say were used subsequently to manufacture consent for the Gaza genocide, have since been debunked. Claims that Hamas beheaded 40 babies have turned out to be false, as have allegations that rape was used as a systematic weapon of war. Despite this, the new la w places the questioning of the official 7 October narrative on the same level as Holocaust denial, an atrocity which Israel and Zionist organisations insist is a unique event in history.
As reported in Haaretz, the bill was submitted originally by Michel Buskila MK of the New Hope-United Right party and initiated by his colleague, Zeev Elkin MK. The bill’s explanatory notes claim that it is meant to combat “hostile elements” seeking to harm Israel’s interests. However, critics argue that its real purpose is to criminalise dissent and prevent scrutiny of Israeli military actions, particularly in Gaza.
By denying entry to those who support legal action against Israeli officials being investigated for genocide, the law undermines the ability of international bodies and human rights organisations to hold Israel accountable for potential war crimes. Haaretz notes that this measure fits into a broader strategy of shielding the Israeli military from international legal scrutiny. The move to prohibit cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) is particularly revealing, as it threatens individuals with up to five years in prison for providing the court with information.
The bill is expected to hinder significantly the work of human rights groups operating in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly those working with the ICC and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to document and present evidence of genocide. It also reflects a broader trend towards authoritarian government in Israel. Over the past decade, the government has implemented a series of draconian measures designed to silence critics, both domestically and internationally.
In 2017, for instance, the anti-BDS law allowed the regime to deny visas to individuals affiliated with groups calling for a boycott of Israel. The latest bill expands that authority significantly, allowing the government to bar entry to anyone advocating accountability for Israeli war crimes. The new provisions essentially allow the government to decide who may or may not challenge its policies, further eroding the country’s democratic pretensions.
Israel’s use of legal measures to stifle dissent has been cited as part of a broader shift towards authoritarianism. Political analysts see Israel as an example of how states can weaponise their legal and political systems to suppress populations it deems to be a threat and tighten control over the lives of millions. Around the world, governments have increasingly introduced laws under the pretext of national security, only to wield them as tools to suppress opposition. In the US, for example, scholars have observed a rise in what has been termed “competitive authoritarianism,” marked by efforts to undermine judicial independence and manipulate state institutions to serve the interests of the ruling party.
Political analysts Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way have argued that modern autocracies often maintain a facade of democracy while steadily eroding its core principles. Instead of outright banning political activity, leaders use legal mechanisms to suppress opposition. Israel’s latest law follows this model by leveraging legislation to delegitimise criticism. The move to criminalise cooperation with the ICC mirrors tactics commonly employed by authoritarian regimes, where governments pass laws to obstruct domestic and foreign oversight and suppress independent investigations into their actions.
This approach is not new. Israel has consistently refused to recognise the ICC’s jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territories. However, the move to actively criminalise cooperation with the court represents a significant escalation of impunity, shielding its actions from international legal accountability. It signals a clear intent to block any attempt to hold Israeli officials accountable for their actions in the illegally-occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank. Israel has been lobbying Western allies to undermine the ICC’s legitimacy, and this latest law is a continuation of that effort.
The government’s growing hostility towards dissent, both domestic and international, reflects a further shift towards authoritarian rule. The passage of this law without opposition illustrates how deeply entrenched this shift has become.
Increasingly, Israel’s government has relied on legal and political mechanisms to suppress opposition. Crackdowns on Palestinian civil society organisations, surveillance of activists and restrictions on protests have curtailed political freedoms severely. The latest law, which bars entry to those who challenge Israeli policies and criminalises cooperation with international legal institutions, is yet another step towards silencing dissent and shielding the state from accountability. Beyond restricting critics, it creates further barriers to investigating and addressing potential war crimes.
This measure is not an isolated development but part of a systematic effort to eliminate legal scrutiny of Israel’s actions in the besieged Gaza Strip and the illegally occupied West Bank. By criminalising engagement with international legal bodies, the government is consolidating its control while making accountability increasingly difficult.
Failure to oppose these repressive measures will only embolden Israel’s sense of impunity. If democracy and human rights are to retain their significance, Israel’s allies must confront this escalating assault on free expression and legal oversight rather than enabling its continuation.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250220-criminalising-dissent-against-7-october-narrative-israel-takes-another-turn-towards-authoritarianism/
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