Middle East Press On: Amnesia, Genocide, Gaza, Palestinian Zionist Literature: New Age Islam's Selection, 5 December 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
5 December 2025
Calculated Amnesia: Funding Genocide In Gaza While Policing Truth
How Did We Get Here? Palestine And The Mandates Of Deception
The Power Of Truth Against Fiction: Comparing Palestinian And Zionist Literature
Beware: Blood Diamonds Are Funding Israel’s War Crimes
Editor's Notes: What The Next Mossad Chief Tells Us About Israel’s New Elite
Germany Knows That Erasing Israel From Various Platforms Does Nothing For Peace
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Calculated Amnesia: Funding Genocide in Gaza While Policing Truth
By Ramzy Baroud
December 4, 2025
First, let’s dissect this puzzle.
On February 29, 2024, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent shockwaves when he informed lawmakers in the House Armed Services Committee that over 25,000 Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel in Gaza up to that date. 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, is 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 October 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. To the contrary, US military and political backing for Israel surged exponentially after that congressional hearing. US military and financial support for the Israeli genocide during the Biden administration in the first year of the war is estimated to be at least $17.9 billion.
These apparent contradictions, however, are not inconsistencies at all, but a perfectly calibrated, deliberate policy. Historically, this approach grants the US license to consistently flout its own declared principles. 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, however, offers the most blatant and current example of this deliberate contradiction. A concise examination of Germany’s conduct in the last two years suffices to illustrate 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 (ICJ), 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, and criticize 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 (ICC) issued arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders for the crime of extermination in Gaza. Only under immense pressure did Berlin finally yield and agree to stop approving weapons exports to Israel.
Fast forward to recent days. The BBC, among other outlets, reported on November 17 that Germany would reinstate its weapons exports to Israel, rationalizing the decision with the October 10 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 top, 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.
Of the two institutions, the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) is German. The globally leading research organization is largely funded by public money coming 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, however, 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.palestinechronicle.com/calculated-amnesia-funding-genocide-in-gaza-while-policing-truth/
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How Did We Get Here? Palestine and the Mandates of Deception
By Dr. M. Reza Behnam
December 4, 2025
Each day, we learn of Israel’s theft of yet another slice of Palestine. Piece by piece, acre by acre, the Palestinian nation has been seized by Zionist offensive forces and carved up for colonization in contravention of all treaties, accords, “peace” agreements, and the like. Meanwhile, the occupation remains accountable to no laws, treaties, or global organizations. It kills, destroys, pillages, imprisons, rapes, and tortures because it has been allowed to.
It is important to understand how the Zionist state’s wantonness and lawlessness unfolded, especially as the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) recently delegated trusteeship (authority) of Gaza to the Trump administration, essentially handing the US an internationally sanctioned “mandate” of the enclave.
It is the shameful story of the manner in which the League of Nations, created by the British and other imperialist powers, “gave” itself the “mandate” of Palestine in 1920; how 28 years later, the UN authorized a partition plan; and how in 2025 the US empire has sought, in collaboration with Israel, to assume “trusteeship” over Palestinian land in Gaza.
The Imperialist Mandate System
The British and French empires learned, through the horrors of World War I, that they
could further their colonial interests in the Middle East within the “legal” framework of international institutions, allied to their violence.
The League of Nations served that purpose when, in 1919, after the First World War, the victorious allied powers established the mandate system – traditional colonialism disguised as benevolence. The mandates, meant to be temporary, served to legalize British and French imperial gains over former Ottoman Empire colonies in the Arab Middle East.
Underlying the mandate system was the imperious racist assumption that the people who had lived for thousands of years on the land were incapable of governing themselves, and that they needed the “tutelage of an advanced nation” before achieving independence – an attitude that has yet to change.
The text of the 1919 League of Nations Covenant (Article 22) reveals the inherent racism of the imperialist powers. It stated:
“To those colonies and territories… which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant….”
The British Mandate of Palestine
Betrayal of the Palestinian nation began in 1920 when the League assigned the role of mandatory power in Palestine to the British government. The Mandate of Palestine (1922-1948) laid the foundation for the atrocities and colonial wars waged thereafter by Britain, Israel, and the US.
In total disregard for the political rights of the indigenous Arab majority (90% at that time), the British government included the text of the 1917 Balfour Declaration in its mandate, pledging to support a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
By formally approving the mandate in 1922, the League gave legitimacy under international law—law defined by the same imperial powers —to the Zionist project, as well as the green light to continue their aggressive expansionist pursuits. There was nothing in the mandate that gave Britain the right to give away a land that had been inhabited by another people for thousands of years. Instead of decolonization and independence as required, the British government callously handed Palestine to European colonizers.
UN Mandate of Palestine
Palestine was, once again, betrayed when the disdainful “trusteeship” of the League of Nations was replaced with its political invalidation by the United Nations in 1947. Like its colonial predecessor, the UN—created largely by the United States—was structured to institutionalize the dominance and further the interests of major imperial powers. After the devastation of the Second World War, the US assumed that autocratic power.
With the establishment of the UN in 1945 and the dissolution of the League of Nations in 1946, Britain transferred all of its mandate territories except Palestine to a UN Trusteeship system. Despite the rising cycle of violence and unrest, Britain continued its “trusteeship” until 1947 when it officially ceded its mandate, described as a “wasp’s nest,” to the UN. It should be noted that all of the League of Nations mandates were ostensibly “guided” toward independence—except Palestine.
The UN solution to the Palestine “problem” was the adoption in 1947 of Resolution 181, recommending its partition into two unequal states, one Arab and one Jewish, with Jerusalem under international administration. Although General Assembly resolutions are largely symbolic and are not legally binding on member states, Zionist leaders declared statehood in May 1948. Resolution 181 did, consequently, sow the seeds of further Palestinian anti-colonial resistance and perpetual regional conflict and discord.
The Proposed US Mandate of Gaza
Like all previous imperial actions, the US has sought to obtain global legitimacy from international institutions to shield the Zionist colony and to impose control over the land of Palestine and the entire region. By protecting Israel, the US has sided with powers that exist in a liminal space, outside the law, no matter how dastardly their behavior.
The most recent act of US-initiated deception against the Palestinians came with the adoption by the UNSC of Resolution 2803, the so-called “Trump Gaza peace plan.” In so doing, it gave international credibility to his proposal and in effect, handed the United States a colonizing mandate over Gaza, passing the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians from Tel Aviv to Washington.
The US “guardianship” plan mirrors the legacy of colonial land theft in Palestine – seizure repackaged and rebranded as peaceful resolution. Once again, plunder and dispossession have been shrouded in the guise of diplomatic “solutions.” By systematically sidelining the Palestinians, denying their voice, their right to self-determination and their very existence, the US is continuing the colonial dynamic—imperial policies and racism—that began with the Balfour Declaration and British mandate of Palestine. It has not and will not succeed.
The Palestinian people and leaders cannot be fooled. Interactions and transactions, with their adversaries, forged over decades, have fostered a keen understanding of them. Despite unimaginable hardships and extreme duress, they have refused to surrender and to give up their struggle for national liberation.
Conclusion: Partnership, Not Obstruction
The historical manipulation of international organizations by powerful states cleared the way for the betrayal of the Palestinians and facilitated Zionism’s horrors and lawlessness. Although the UN has, since its birth, created a comprehensive body of international treaties, laws, condemnations, and countless reports, as well as multinational bodies, like the International Court of Justice, to provide legal interpretation and rulings, it has yet to insure justice for Palestine and its people.
What the Security Council has done, however, is allow the genocidal and rogue Zionist colony of Israel to remain a member of the world body and unaccountable for its 78-year war on Palestine. Mirroring the US, the Council’s failure to impose restraints or consequences has cultivated within the Zionist state a sense of absolute entitlement and belief that, since October 7, 2023, it has unmitigated impunity to commit genocide, sow discord and wreak havoc across the region.
If it is to have any credibility now and in the future, the UN must take measures to redress more than a half-century of failure to fulfill its obligations and to correct the life-altering injustice it wrought with the passage of Resolution 181. One of the first steps it could and should take to restrain Israeli terrorism is to enact UNGA Resolution 377(V), “Uniting for Peace” (adopted in 1950). The resolution empowers the General Assembly to use armed force if the Security Council fails to exercise its primary responsibility of maintaining global peace and security. Text of Section A on the “use of armed force” resolves:
“that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Unquestionably, Israel is a regional and global threat, warring on Gaza, the West Bank, on its Arab neighbors and provoking confrontation with Iran. Given that the UNSC has failed its primary responsibilities of preventing genocide, maintaining peace and security, it is time for the majority—the 193 members of the General Assembly—to exert authority (two-thirds majority vote required).
In addition, the UN needs to state unequivocally that resisting occupation is a fundamental human right; it isn’t terrorism, it is survival; and that Palestinian resistance, including armed struggle, is legally reinforced under international law. Also, given Israel’s refusal to adhere to international and humanitarian law, as well as the principles of the UN Charter, the UN should determine that the Zionist colony lacks standing within the international community and should be expelled from the world body.
The Middle East and the global community are at a crossroads, and Palestine and its people are at its heart. The need for benign international intervention on behalf of the Palestinians is long overdue. The UN must acknowledge, however belatedly, its role in one of the greatest deceptions of history. And, if it is to live up to its charter and conventions, it has an obligation to work toward the liberation and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and ultimately to the restoration of their homeland.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/how-did-we-get-here-palestine-and-the-mandates-a-of-deception/
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The Power of Truth Against Fiction: Comparing Palestinian and Zionist Literature
By Peren Birsaygılı Mut
December 4, 2025
When the first Jewish settlers set foot on Palestinian lands around 150 years ago, the First Zionist Congress (1897) was still years away. In other words, while Zionism had not yet emerged as an organized political force, the wave of immigration to Palestine had already begun.
When Theodor Herzl convened the congress, his task was not as difficult as it might seem. The ingredients of the meal had already been prepared and placed in the pot – all he had to do was light the stove. Those who entered the “kitchen” before him were none other than a group of early Zionist writers and poets.
Early Zionist Literature: Lies Constructed Against the Truth
With the British Mandate occupation that followed World War I, Palestinian literature gained a distinctly resistant identity, telling the world the story of a people whose very existence was denied by their enemies for over a century. It guarded an identity threatened with erasure. Looking back over the century, we see that Palestinian writers fought on multiple fronts simultaneously.
Their struggle was not limited to the British Mandate authorities nor Zionist militias such as the Haganah, which began operating shortly after. Palestinians also faced a literary enemy – an army of Zionist poets and writers living across the world, whose works were filled with dramatic elements. Some lived in England, some in France, some in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, some in Russia; some were even non-Jewish. Standing against their texts was as challenging as dealing with an arrogant British military governor or a ruthless member of a Zionist militia.
Zionist literature, which sought to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine and promote the idea of colonization through novels, short stories, poetry, and plays, completely disregarded reality and reconstructed the Palestinian lands in the imagination. According to The Wondrous Tale of Alroy (1833) by Benjamin Disraeli, the Jews could regain their former power only by acquiring Palestinian lands. Before it was even published, this novel had five hundred pre-orders from aristocratic circles in London and was soon translated into Russian, French, and German.
Another early Zionist novel, Daniel Deronda, by the non-Jewish English writer George Eliot, featured a protagonist experiencing an identity crisis. Deronda was a young Englishman who later discovered his Jewish heritage. Published on a rainy September day in 1876, the novel suggested that the path to overcoming all hardships and crises lay in returning to Jewish roots and to the land of Palestine. Those who did so would suddenly become both mentally and physically strong and whole.
One of the main strategies employed by these writers, who skillfully used literature to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine and turn it into a powerful propaganda tool, was to portray those who migrated as strong, independent, and capable people, while depicting those who stayed behind as weak and pitiful. Andre Spire, the most prominent representative of the Zionist revival in French poetry, thus addressed the Jews in one of his poems:
Another recurring theme was the connection to land and agriculture. These texts idealized the establishment of a life based on agriculture in Palestine and the revitalization of the land. Yet the most striking aspect was their depiction of Palestine as entirely empty. In 1847, Mark Twain traveled to Palestine with Christian pilgrims and later described the land as barren and desolate in his travelogue Innocents Abroad; The New Pilgrims’ Progress, which would later become a bestseller in the U.S. This text became one of the key works that ignited the Zionist imagination.
Two different representations emerged: a completely empty Palestine, “a land without a people,” and others who acknowledged some “wilderness” in Palestine. These texts also chronicled Jews’ resistance and self-defense against these “wild” inhabitants, portraying them as a nation rising to survive in Palestine. Such writings would later help legitimize the actions of Zionist terror groups which would carry out numerous massacres in Palestinian towns and villages in the years to come.
Zionist Literature Before the Nakba
In 1927, a poem published in Palestine instantly created a sensation and became a manifesto for the Zionist occupiers. The poem was titled Masada: A Historical Epic. According to Jewish legend, the Masada Fortress was besieged by the Romans in 73 CE and the Jewish defenders inside chose mass suicide over surrender. The poet likened the life-and-death struggle in the fortress to the struggle of the invading Jewish settlers arriving in Palestinian lands.
In the poem’s refrain, Zionist settler Yitzak Lamdan declared: Masada lo tipol shuv (Masada will never fall again). In other words, Masada was now in Palestine—but this time, instead of committing suicide, they would fight. The poem had a profound impact on the Zionist movement and accelerated the massacres carried out by Zionist militias. Yet it was inspired by an earlier work: the poem The City of the Massacre, composed by Hayim Nahman Bialik after the 1903 pogrom against Jews in Russia. Bialik wrote:
The City of the Massacre resonated deeply, serving as a manifesto that reinforced Zionist claims of self-defense and, more importantly, of having a national homeland. Many young Russian Jews who read the poem began to organize around Zionism to ensure they would never be defenseless against such attacks again. They first joined underground groups resisting the Russian Tsar and, after the October 1917 Revolution to Palestine to join the Zionist paramilitary Haganah. In short, one of the most crucial factors enabling Zionist militias to recruit so many people was Zionist literature itself.
Palestinian Literature: The Dignity of the Pen
Zionist writers and poets continued to skillfully cover up the truth in all the texts they produced. After the signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, their arrogance grew even bolder. The British Mandate, which began soon after in Palestine, offered Zionist writers unprecedented freedom. They no longer had to remain exiled; they could go to Palestine and freely publish magazines and newspapers. On June 1, 1925, the first Hebrew newspaper in Palestine, Davar-Iton Poalei Eretz Yisrael (Davar – The Newspaper of the Workers of the Land of Israel), began publication. A large portion of its pages was dedicated to culture and arts news, as well as poems and stories by Zionist writers.
Yet there was one thing they had not accounted for. From the very moment the British Mandate and Zionist immigration began, Palestinian writers and poets were present in the public sphere. Unlike the narrative in Zionist literary texts, Palestinian writers defended their cities with an ancient heritage, a living population, a strong faith, and deeply rooted culture, upholding the dignity of the pen. Palestine stood resilient.
In 1920, unrest erupted at the Nabi Musa shrine near Jerusalem; in 1923, massive protests occurred across Palestinian cities. In 1929, the Buraq uprising took place around Al-Aqsa Mosque and the 1936 general strike was followed by the three-year-long Great Palestinian Revolt.
From Syria, Izzeddin al-Qassam arrived in Haifa in 1920, carried out a decade of extensive Islamic educational and in early 1930, the first Qassam Brigades were established. Throughout these social movements, Palestinian writers and poets were always at the forefront, standing on the podium. Even among the fighters of martyr al-Qassam, there were poets.
Born in 1888, Izzat Darwaza was better known in our region for his Quranic exegesis but became one of the most important pre-Nakba Palestinian authors. He had written numerous plays from an early period. A leader of the Palestinian National Movement, Darwaza’s first plays focused on the Zionist agents attempting to steal Palestinian lands and exposed many of the lies propagated by Zionist writers.
Among the first fighters of the Qassam Brigades, Haifa-born poet Nuh Ibrahim wrote poetry by day and carried out raids against British forces and Zionist settlements by night. On October 18, 1938, he was ambushed and martyred by the British, just like his commander al-Qassam. Another martyred poet was Abdürrahim Mahmud from Tulkarem, who was beheaded and thrown into a well by the British and Zionist militias in 1948. He had composed dozens of poems emphasizing the strong Islamic identity in Palestine.
Fadwa Tuqan, born the same year the Balfour Declaration was issued, became the greatest female poet of the Palestinian resistance. Not only did she wield a highly educated and powerful pen, but her profound knowledge of Arab music aided her single-handed rebuttal of the savage image depicted in Zionist texts.
Literary Battles After the Nakba
She was called Palestine
and she is still called Palestine
– Mahmoud Darwish
Palestinian literature, building on its rich preexisting legacy, fully embraced a resistant identity after the Nakba. The newly established State of Israel had named streets and schools after Zionist poets and writers, and in some places erected their statues. Those still alive were invited to live in the state. Many Palestinian writers were however forced to live in exile, mostly in neighboring Arab countries, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.
Wherever they were, they continued to write with extraordinary determination. Just as before the Nakba, poetry remained at the forefront of literary production afterwards. It was easy to memorize and, when necessary, could even be reproduced by hand. What becomes strikingly evident here is the immense pressure placed on Palestinian poets and writers despite the strong international support enjoyed by the new generation of Zionist literary figures. This pressure did not come solely from the Zionist state; in many cases, they were also subjected to close surveillance in the Arab countries where they lived.
Shortly after Zionist writer Shmuel Yosef Agnon received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War broke out, and Israel more than tripled the territory under its control. While Zionist writers were hosted in elegant ballrooms in London, Paris, New York, and other Western cities, Palestinian poets and writers were condemned to live in refugee camps under tents that moved with the shifting winds.
While Agnon wrote in comfort in occupied Jerusalem streets closed to traffic during working hours, the founding chronicler of Palestinian resistance fiction, Ghassan Kanafani, wrote his masterpiece Men in the Sun in secrecy, hiding from Lebanese police. Born in the Austro-Hungarian town of Buchach, Agnon would die in his warm bed in Jerusalem, while Kanafani would be martyred in Beirut by a 300-kilogram bomb.
Kanafani’s body was blown apart, his limbs so scattered that it was difficult to assemble them for burial. That Kanafani, who could have been killed by a single blast, was martyred in such a manner was entirely symbolic: it was meant to send a message that any Palestinian writer who continued to write could face the same fate.
Palestinian Writers Targeted in Gaza Genocide
Since October 7, 2023, during the ongoing genocide in Gaza, writers and artists have been among the first targets. This is because they do not merely document what is happening in Gaza – they also amplify the voice of their people to the entire world. As a result, attacks against them aim not just to kill an individual writer or artist, but to erase Palestine’s memory, intellectual output, and stories made to be passed down to future generations.
Since October 2023, the Zionist state has killed more than 50 Palestinian writers and artists. Despite their immense courage, these Palestinians departed with a striking humility. They refused to leave their homes in Gaza despite numerous threats, defying death in the process. They dared death to bear witness to the Gazan people: the children who fearlessly confront the occupiers; the doctors performing surgeries without anaesthesia; the parents burying their children with their own hands.
In death, their calm, resolute confrontation left the strongest message to the world. They valued completing the stories of their people over their own lives, departing this world with half-finished notebooks of poetry and novels, and unfinished paintings. This is what the Israeli occupation continues to overlook: how every unfinished sentence for Palestine has become the first line of a new sentence yet to be written. No fiction, no matter how powerful, could ever hide the truth forever.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-power-of-truth-against-fiction-comparing-palestinian-and-zionist-literature/
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Beware: Blood Diamonds Are Funding Israel’s War Crimes
By Sean Clinton
December 4, 2025
Last week the 2025 chair of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, Ahmed Bin Sulayem, had an article published extolling the benefits of the scheme. He must have had his tongue firmly planted in his cheek when he sent the article for publication.
Despite the bullish headline, integrity was missing from the outset.
If, as the article claimed, the Kimberley Process (KP) is “arguably the most successful attempt to govern the entire commodity supply chain” then that “success” should be measured against the death toll in Gaza where Kimberley Process certified diamonds have funded a genocide that has killed at least 70,000, and could be 126,000 or higher, defenceless, besieged and deliberately starved Palestinian, men, women and children. For the people of Gaza, the KP has been a weapon of mass annihilation.
Ahmed Bin Sulayem, who worked quietly behind the scenes for years before the signing of the Abrahams accords to develop diamond trade links with the genocidal, fascist and apartheid regime in Israel, was never likely to say anything that might endanger the booming trade in Israeli blood diamonds which are laundered through the Diamond Exchange in the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre.
To claim that the KP attempts to govern the entire diamond supply chain is grossly misleading, intentionally so in my opinion. That claim forms the basis of the scam which legitimises the trade in blood diamonds that fall outside the remit of the KP which only bans rough diamonds that fund rebel violence.
While the KP was created to solve a very particular problem – rough diamond-funded rebel violence – the World Diamond Council (WDC) latched on to this to claim that it solved problems across the entire supply chain from mine to market. The WDC introduced the bogus System of Warranties to claim polished diamonds, that aren’t regulated by the KP, are conflict free even when they generate revenue used to fund genocide as is the case with diamonds processed in Israel.
There is no argument about the objective of the original, very limited, mandate of the KP. But what is at issue is the fact that rather than ending the trade in diamonds linked to grave human rights violations KP certification is being used to legitimise blood diamonds that fund human rights violations by groups other than rebel factions including governments guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the industry has repeatedly refused to correct this.
The claim that the diamond industry voluntarily adheres to both OECD Guidance is also not factual as I have explained previously.
Compliance with OECD Guidance means companies must commit to refraining from “any action which contributes to the financing of conflict” and “immediately suspend or discontinue engagement with upstream suppliers where we identify a reasonable risk that they are sourcing from, or linked to, any party committing war crimes or other serious violations of international humanitarian law, crimes against humanity or genocide.”
Despite decades of Israeli conflict with the occupied, besieged Palestinians not a single diamond company has recognised Israel as a “conflict affected and high-risk area” and so, by turning a blind eye to the conflict, they evade having to comply with the terms of the OECD Guidance and falsely claim compliance.
The diamond industry trumpets KP certification and the bogus System of Warranties to create the illusion of ethical diamonds while continuing to profit from the trade in diamonds that fund the crime of all crimes – the genocide in Gaza.
The article claims that the limitations of the KP are a “political mandate challenge” rather than a “structural design flaw” but this is another misleading statement as the definition of a “conflict diamond” was a designed choice, one which the WDC supported. As the WDC alluded to previously, “It was the industry that provided the blueprint for the certification system”.
The KP is captured by the very industry that it is supposed to regulate. It is a system of self-regulation that is rubber stamped by vested governments all with a veto to block changes that threaten their interests. KP member governments are the only ones with voting rights and they are guided by what the WDC recommends. The Civil Society Coalition is similarly influenced by their government and WDC paymasters who sponsor their participation.
In light of the repeated failure of the KP to ban trade in all blood diamonds members of the public should think carefully before purchasing diamonds.
The KP’s narrow “conflict diamond” definition provides a gaping loophole for blood diamonds linked to human rights violations by governments to bypass regulations and be designated “conflict free” in accordance with the bogus warranty scheme promoted by the jewellery industry.
While Russian diamonds are banned by the G7 and the EU there are no restrictions on diamonds processed in Israel which account for one fifth of the global market share in value terms.
A statement by the EU representative, Anitta Hipper, regretted that the plenary meeting In Dubai was unable to discuss Russian blood diamonds but she made no mention of Israel’s blood diamonds which are a far more significant source of funding for grave human rights violations.
The diamond industry channels $billions of rough diamonds from countries in Africa, Canada and Russia to Israel for processing and polishing. The fact that African countries which suffered long under the yoke of colonialism and apartheid allow their diamonds to be sent to Israel where the industry is a significant source of funding for the genocidal fascist and apartheid Zionist project in Palestine is shameful to say the least.
Anglo American shareholder-activists exposed De Beers diamond supply chain links to Israeli war crimes and pressured the Board to cut ties with the Israeli diamond industry. Days after the 2024 AGM Anglo American announced it would “divest” De Beers but so far has been unable to off-load the blood-drenched subsidiary.
Botswana and Angola are vying to buy or share ownership of De Beers which is critically important to the Israeli diamond industry and by default the Israeli economy – the main source of funding for the genocidal regime.
Neither the government of Botswana or Angola have not made any comment about De Beers value chain links to the Israel genocide or indicated if they will continue to send diamonds to Israel if they succeed in acquiring control of De Beers.
The Israeli diamond industry centered in Ramat Gan is one of the world’s major trading and polishing centers. While most diamonds are cut and polished in India, Israel specialises in cutting and polishing larger, more valuable diamonds.
The silence of the jewellery industry as leading brands continue to sell Israeli blood diamonds and tell patrons they’re conflict free is a very deliberate choice, one taken despite the legal, financial and reputational risk to the entire industry.
Preserving profits for their shareholders is deemed more important than preserving the lives, dignity and inalienable rights of defenseless Palestinian families bombarded, burned, starved and besieged in Gaza.
Those who consider diamonds objects of romance and desire should consider how they have come to believe that these pieces of polished carbon are so different to any other polished stone.
Are they truly valuable or is it the myth that they represent something special because De Beers has spent $millions promoting the diamond brand image causing people to believe this without a second thought?
If challenged to distinguish between a cubic zirconia, moissanite or diamond most people, including many jewellers, would be unable to tell which is which. Therefore, it’s not the appearance that renders them valuable, it is the story they have been repeatedly told by the diamond industry and when that story claims diamonds are conflict free it is a lie.
Diamonds processed in Israel fund war crimes, they are not objects of desire, they are objects of shame, the bloodiest of blood diamonds.
As a genocide continues in Gaza, we all need to consider the wider impact of the purchases we make, especially so for luxury goods like diamonds. Despite the spin from the industry diamonds are not conflict free, they remain indelibly tarnished by Israeli bloodshed and violence.
As the Kimberley Process failure demonstrated, vested interests refuse to end the trade in all blood diamonds and won’t do so voluntarily. Consumers must, therefore, force change by refusing to accept goods tarnished with the blood of Palestinian children.
Nobody wants to see bloody genocide gems this Christmas.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251204-beware-blood-diamonds-are-funding-israels-war-crimes/
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What The Next Mossad Chief Tells Us About Israel’s New Elite
By Zvika Klein
December 4, 2025
Roman Gofman’s name was first floated as the next Mossad director in the usual way, via anonymous security sources and cautious headlines. The debate that followed also sounded familiar: Is he experienced enough inside the building? Did he climb the right internal ladders? Will the rank and file accept him?
But that narrow argument misses the point. Gofman’s appointment is not just about who will sit in the director’s office of Israel’s most secretive institution. It is part of a quiet story about who now sits at the top of Israel’s entire power pyramid, and what kind of Torah, nationalism, and identity they bring with them.
On paper, Gofman looks like a classic product of the security establishment. A decorated officer, a long record, someone who knows the map of threats from Tehran to Beirut. The criticism that he did not “grow up” in the Mossad is easy to understand but historically shaky.
Gofman stands apart in his studies
Many of the agency’s most powerful leaders arrived as outsiders who had to learn its internal culture: Meir Amit, Zvi Zamir, and Yitzhak Hofi came as major-generals from the IDF, Danny Yatom from the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, and Meir Dagan from the operations world.
The idea that only someone socialized from day one inside the Mossad can lead it is more myth than rule.
What sets Gofman apart is not where he did not serve, but where he did study.
Like Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) Director David Zini, he comes from a certain spiritual universe. Both men are, in different ways, products of the beit midrash (study hall) shaped by the national-religious teachings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook and his son, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the founding thinkers of modern religious Zionism.
Gofman does not define himself as religious. He is not seen putting on tefillin for the cameras or quoted by rabbis as “one of us.” Yet when he was juggling university studies and military service, he chose to spend two years in the Bnei David academy in Eli, in its beit midrash for army veterans.
Bnei David is not just another yeshiva (religious seminary). It is the flagship national-religious paramilitary academy, which has quietly filled entire IDF brigades with officers who wear knitted kippot and speak about sovereignty with the language of prophecy.
A senior figure at Eli described Gofman to me in terms that sound almost like a character reference in a rabbinic court.
“He was like a student here while he was at the university,” the source said. “He is not observant, but he is very close. Everywhere he goes, he says he is a graduate of Bnei David. He loves the place, knows it well, is in touch with some of the rabbis, and feels connected to Rabbi Kook’s Torah. He speaks about the academy in Eli wherever he goes. He is very serious and a great blessing for the people of Israel.”
For decades, the Israeli security elite looked different. The classic Mossad director or IDF general was a secular Ashkenazi man, often with roots in the Labor movement or the kibbutz. Religious Zionists existed on the margins – the polite cousins who served loyally, built settlements, and were sometimes invited into the room, but rarely put at the head of the table.
Bnei David helped produce a new type of graduate. Not the old National Religious Party model that saw itself as a bridge between secular Israel and the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) world, but something more ambitious.
These were young men who believed that they, and not the old socialist elite, were the rightful heirs to the leadership of the Jewish state. Not a neutral “state of all its citizens,” and not a formal halachic state, but a Jewish state whose deepest code should be drawn from Torah.
Unlike the haredi position, which often keeps a careful distance from the organs of the state, the Eli model wants to be inside the cockpit. Its alumni seek battalion commands, senior prosecutor roles, slots in the civil service, seats in the Knesset, and now, apparently, the director’s chair in the Mossad. The goal is not to stand outside and protest, but to reshape the ethos of the state from within.
To understand what that might look like at the level of a Mossad chief, it helps to listen to the ideological language that has grown around this camp. Over the years, supporters and critics have described a set of principles that guide at least part of the religious-Zionist project in the state.
The first is the idea that “the Torah is the DNA.” Torah here is not a private spiritual resource. It is the operating code of the Jewish state. Legislation and state policy are expected to “fit” Jewish religious values, and the Knesset’s sovereignty is implicitly limited by a higher, unwritten religious constitution.
The phrase “state of all its citizens” is treated with suspicion, as something that blurs the state’s Jewish essence. Liberal Israelis see this as a direct threat to substantive democracy, because it weakens the promise of equal citizenship for those who live outside that religious framework.
A second principle is often called the “responsibility of monarchy.” In this picture, the Chief Rabbinate and religious institutions are not just service providers. They are a parallel sovereignty, a kind of spiritual General Staff.
They keep a monopoly over personal status and kashrut (dietary supervision), and they see public space as a place where religious norms should be actively enforced. Critics warn that this slowly pushes Israel toward a de facto theocracy.
The third pillar is “intentional integration.” Premilitary academies, yeshivot, and community networks work to channel talented and committed young people into centers of influence: the IDF, the legal system, the media, and public administration. Once there, they maintain tight, values-based circles that reinforce a shared worldview.
Admirers see this as a long-overdue correction of historic exclusion. Detractors talk about a “hostile takeover,” a shift from professional independence toward sectoral loyalty.
The final principle is sometimes described as “identifying spirits.” Change, in this view, must be paced. It should be introduced gradually at a level the wider public can absorb, what critics call the “salami method.”
Crises, such as wars or waves of terrorism, are read as openings to speak more openly about faith and destiny, and to secure changes that would be difficult in quieter times. Liberals compare this to “boiling the frog,” arguing that many secular Israelis do not understand the cumulative effect until it is too late.
Roman Gofman is not a rosh yeshiva. He will be judged, like every Mossad chief before him, by the quality of operations, the intelligence his agency brings to the cabinet table, the quiet successes nobody can write about, and the failures that sometimes explode into the headlines.
Yet it would be naïve to pretend that the beit midrash where he once sat, or the Torah he says he feels connected to, will have no influence on how he reads the role of the Mossad in a Jewish state. Those formative years in Eli are part of the story, just as the kibbutz dining halls were part of his predecessors’ story.
For Israelis who still imagine the country as being run by the old secular aristocracy, this is an unsettling moment. For religious Zionists who spent decades feeling locked out of the real levers of power, it looks like vindication. For everyone else, it is an invitation to take a clear-eyed look at who is running Israel’s most sensitive institutions and what inner map they carry with them.
The appointment of a Mossad director from Eli will not, by itself, decide whether Israel can be both deeply Jewish in its leadership ethos and fully democratic in its treatment of all its citizens.
It does, however, force the question. That this question is now being asked about the Mossad, of all places, is perhaps the strongest sign that the country’s elites have already changed.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-879254
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Germany Knows That Erasing Israel From Various Platforms Does Nothing For Peace
By Jpost Editorial
December 4, 2025
We are about to enter 2026, a decade since the year Donald Trump was first elected president of the United States.
Throughout that decade, too many of my fellow strong supporters of Israel in America have warned that Trump was about to turn against the Jewish state.
And, as I predicted to the doomsayers, every time, President Trump has proven them absolutely wrong. They should not expect that their current concerns will meet a different fate, yet their consistent kvetching continues.
Why did the president have a positive meetingOpens link in new window. with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and praise him? Doesn’t that mean that he will abandon New York Jews? Why did he greet Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa? Doesn’t that mean that he has abandoned Israel? Why did the president give a hero’s welcome to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? Doesn’t that mean that he sacrificed Israel for Saudi investments in the United States?
Is the president creating a Palestinian state? Is he being manipulated by Turkey? Is he surrendering to QatarOpens link in new window.? The list goes on.
No, Trump is not sacrificing Israel
The answer to all the questions is a rather obvious absolutely not.
President Trump will always support Israel, just like he will always do the right thing for his own country, because he rightly believes that preventing harm to Israel helps America.
That can be seen from every step Trump has taken since he first got elected, from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to moving the US embassy there, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, closing the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, and ending the nuclear deal with Iran. And that was just the tip of the iceberg in his first term.
In less than a year in office in this term, President Trump freed every live hostage in Gaza and, at the time of this writing, all the dead Jewish hostages except two. He bombed the most fortified Iranian nuclear facilities with the bunker-busting bombs Israel lacked. And he is ending the war on terms so favourable to Israel that the naysayers could not have dreamed possible.
He even tried to get Arab and European countries to absorb the population of Gaza during its reconstruction while he builds a riviera on the Gaza beachOpens link in new window..
Now, he is outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood. as a foreign terrorist organization and fighting emerging right-wing antisemitism.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first world leader Trump welcomed in Washington after returning to power, and he has been invited three times since – more than any other world leader – ensuring there is no daylight between the two leaders.
Can anyone imagine any of those positive steps being taken by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or, frankly, almost any other potential Democratic president of the United States?
And yet the doomsayers continue with their doubts.
Addressing the doomsayers' claims about Donald Trump
LET’S ADDRESS them concretely:
Trump held a surprisingly cordial meeting with Mayor-elect Mamdani, but he still considers him a vile anti-Semite and, as he has called him, a “lunatic,” “radical,” “communist,” and “not very smart.”
The president, who is very smart, does not want to see New York harmed, and when Mamdani does harm the city, he doesn’t want the White House to get the blame. What matters most is that Trump will not let Mamdani arrest Netanyahu or do anything to hurt Israel.
The Syrian leader came to Washington and got a spritz of Trump’s cologne. Did he get Israel out of any of what was Syrian sovereign territory before 2024 or 1967? No.
Relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are gradually getting back on track to be normalized after they were understandably harmed by the war. Israel’s qualitative military advantage will be maintained, and official normalization between the Saudis and the Jewish state will be finalized long before any American fighter jet is delivered to Riyadh.
No, Trump is not creating a Palestinian state. There are plenty of conditions on the way to the “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” in United Nations Resolution 2803 that I know – and the president knows – have no chance of being met.
Meanwhile, the International Stabilization Force being created in Gaza will have soldiers from Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Italy. You don’t see Turkey or Qatar on that list because Israel vetoed their participation, and the US accepted its requests.
The United Arab Emirates will play a positive role in Gaza’s rehabilitation Opens link in new window., helping implement the Abraham Accords educational curriculum that teaches tolerance and not hate, while the corrupt United Nations Relief and Works Agency will play no role at all.
Yes, President Trump has maintained positive relationships with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which helped him bring the Israeli hostages home. But the president knows how to tell them no.
There are only three years left of President Trump’s term in office. Supporters of Israel must cherish this time, the golden years of US-Israel relations, and the doomsayers of Donald must desist.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-879112
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