Middle East Press On: Antisemitism, Humanity, Gaza, Judaism: New Age Islam's Selection, 30 July 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
30 July 2025
Antisemitism: Humanity’s Totalitarian Swamp
The Subject Was Gaza, But Stewart And Beinart Had A Whole Lot To Say About Judaism
The Elderly: Israel’s Quiet Front Line
Iran’s Water Crisis: Will It Bring Down The Regime?
The International Community Turns To The Humanitarian Paradigm To Save Itself, Not Gaza
The Palestinian Authority And The ‘Boiling Frog’ Theory
‘Sport Changes Everything’ – Brazilians Building Palestinian Solidarity
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Antisemitism: Humanity’s Totalitarian Swamp
By Gil Troy
JULY 30, 2025
Decades ago, when we commemorated Tisha B’Av at Young Judaea’s Camp Tel Yehudah, we related to the long list of Jewish traumas as historical events that afflicted our unfortunate ancestors, forever ago, in ghettoized galaxies far, far away. Born into the post-Auschwitz covenant, we considered Jew-hatred passé, doomed, like racism. Alas, today, it’s surging.
Jew-hatred spikes when societies are under stress and totalitarian thinking spreads, Left and Right. Antisemitism is humanity’s totalitarian swamp thing. This creature thrives when people start mistrusting one another, thinking in all-or-nothing terms, seeking scapegoats, or being stirred by demagogues.
Over centuries, this swamp creature acquired certain characteristics; that’s why Jews keep getting accused of being devilish, committing the most hated acts of the moment, seeking power and money. While each bigoted act is uniquely despicable, Jew-bashers often build on slurs festering in the swamp. That makes antisemitism particularly useful to haters: from this foundation of familiar lies, it can be constantly updated – as we see with today’s anti-Zionist antisemitism abroad, and Jew-hating, anti-Zionism against Israelis.
In my forthcoming book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and Jew-Hatred, I define antisemitism as an obsessive hatred exaggerating the centrality and supposed wickedness of Jews and anything Jewish – the Jewish people, Jewish tradition and values, Jewish institutions, and Israel, the Jewish state. The disproportionate hatred is often expressed through demonization, delegitimisation, and double standards – Natan Sharansky’s “3 Ds.”
Since October 7, 2023, I have added the word “obsessive.” Millions are preoccupied, exaggerating one country’s alleged sins, while leftists and rightists each find much to hate in the Jewish state or the Jews. I also now distinguish between “Jew-hatred,” when bullies beat Jews, versus “antisemitism” the obsessive conspiracy-minded ideology that even lovely professors embrace, perpetually lambasting the Jew or the Jewish state.
A history of tragedy
The many calamities Jews endured on Tisha B’av, the ninth day of the month of Av, reveal antisemitism to be the longest hatred and the most plastic hatred – moldable, artificial, often toxic. When the fast starts this Saturday night, Jews will time-travel throughout bloody centuries, while noting today’s hostilities too.
Putting Jewish tragedy in perspective, the First Temple’s destruction in 586 BCE was devastating, but it probably wasn’t “anti-Semitic.” The Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar conquered Israel. Destroying the Temple hurt the Jewish religion, but other conquered nation-states endured similar fates.
A rapacious empire also destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE. But the Romans escalated their war against Judea into a pagan war against Judaism and the Jews, reflected in their obsession with defiling the Holy Temple.
After the Romans crushed Bar Kochba’s revolt – on Tisha B’av, 132 CE – they committed “historicide,” trying to kill the Jews’ ties to Israel by renaming Judea, “Syria Palaestina.” One year later, on the ninth of Av, Turnus Rufus plowed over the destroyed Temple’s site as the Romans christened Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina.”
During the chaos, a monotheistic rival to Judaism formed – Christianity. In spreading throughout the empire before Rome fell in 476, distancing themselves from their Jewish roots but still enmeshed in Roman pagan power-plays, some Christians honed a new anti-Jewish, theologically based bigotry.
As the Catholic Church dominated key monarchies, and Jews settled in Christian Europe, Jews became the favorited scapegoat. In 1095, when Pope Urban II declared the first Crusade on Tisha B’av, the murder of 10,000 Jews symbolized the growing intensity of the medieval church’s Jew-hatred.
Such bloodiness, from the Crusades through the Holocaust, fed a myth that Islam was not anti-Semitic. If the only mode of bigotry is mass murder, Muslims rarely descended that low – until recently, alas. But Islamic law deemed Jews, “Dhimmis,” like Christians, born inferior. And as Jews lived for centuries in North Africa and the Middle East, including in Ottoman-era Palestine, they suffered periodic riots and ongoing oppression.
On Tisha B’Av 1290, the Jews’ expulsion from England added another dimension to antisemitism. The haters seized the Jews’ books and property. Increasingly, greed, sometimes economic jealousy when Jews prospered, intensified the theologically based hatred. Although Arabs attacked Jews increasingly as Zionism flourished, Arabs rioted with particular intensity when Jews prayed at the Western Wall on Tisha B’av, 1929. Now, Islamist Jew-hatred fed by nationalist venom spawned Arab Jew-hatred, today’s bloodiest form of antisemitism.
The Nazis updated their antisemitism by adding pseudo-scientific “racial” dimensions.
Targeting Jewish bloodlines, they persecuted German Lutherans raised by Protestant parents, if even one grandparent was Jewish. On Tisha B’Av 1942, the Nazis killed their first Jews in Treblinka. By year’s end, they murdered 713,555 people there, making it the second deadliest death camp, following Auschwitz.
In 1994, Hezbollah terrorists, trained by Iran’s anti-Zionist Revolutionary Guards, blew up the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. By murdering 86 people and wounding 300 others, they blurred Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism, as haters so often do today.
Antisemitism is the longest hatred partly by sheer longevity; Jews have survived since ancient times, to be targeted still. But the plasticity of antisemitism, far Left to far Right, among pro-Trump white supremacists and progressive universalists, among monotheistic Islamists and atheistic Marxists, is more vexing. Although constituting only a sliver of the world’s population, Jews are prominent enough to be hated for standing out and fitting in. That made them excellent targets, then and now.
Contemplating this Tisha B’av litany, it’s easy to despair. Instead, learn from some religious Jews in Jerusalem. They stop fasting at 5 p.m., and read quotations from the prophets envisioning a time when children, laughter, and light will return to Jerusalem’s streets… because we’re living that dream now!
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-862600
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The Subject Was Gaza, But Stewart And Beinart Had A Whole Lot To Say About Judaism
By Andrew Silow-Carroll/Jta
JULY 30, 2025
Jon Stewart hosted writer Peter Beinart on “The Daily Show” Monday night, for a conversation in which the two Jewish liberals agreed that the war in Gaza was “horrific” and that Israel bore near exclusive blame for the suffering endured by Palestinians in the 22 months since the Oct. 7 attacks.
While the two discussed US and Israeli policy, condemning both, the conversation was perhaps more significant for the way in which two American Jewish near-contemporaries (Beinart is 52, Stewart is 64) wrestled with the lessons of their Jewish upbringings on a popular late night TV show.
Picking up on a theme in Beinart’s latest book, “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning,” Stewart and his guest challenged the narrative of Jewish victimhood in justifying Israeli actions, and urged fellow Jews to acknowledge both Jewish history and Palestinian experiences.
“All of our holidays, the entire ethos for me of being Jewish - and I don’t doubt that there are people that have a radically different interpretation than I do - but it’s all about, like, we were about to be wiped out,” said Stewart, suggesting that the lessons of Hanukkah and Purim were being misused to justify a war that he called “so self-evidently inhumane and horrific.”
Beinart, an observant Jew, agreed, referring both to the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.
“Part of recognizing us as human, as Jews, as fully human, is recognizing that we are capable of [being] the victims and … victimizers, and we have to recognize that in order to prevent us from falling into the trap of thinking that every single situation is the equivalent of what was happening in the Soviet Union, Czarist Russia or in Nazi Germany,” said Beinart, an editor-at-large at the leftist Jewish Currents magazine and a professor at CUNY’s Newmark School of Journalism.
For Israelis and Palestinians, he said, “the power dynamic is reversed. In Israel-Palestine, it’s Jews who all enjoy legal supremacy and citizenship, and Palestinians who are denied basic rights. And we have to recognize that that’s possible, and we have to fight against it for our own sake and for the sake of our honor.”
In the course of the 18-minute discussion, Stewart seemed more agitated about the sorry state of Jewish discourse around the war, while Beinart returned repeatedly to the theme that Israel and the United States have failed to reward Palestinians who, over the years, offered nonviolence and a negotiated settlement as an alternative to violence.
No discussion of Israelis or their vulnerabilities
Missing from the conversation, as some viewers pointed out, was any discussion of Israelis themselves, or the vulnerability they have felt before and especially since Oct. 7.
“At no point do we hear from either one a need to hear the voices, the pain, fears and anger of their Israeli peers, the vulnerability, what leads 35-year-old men to show for reserve duty and do the things they do,” wrote J.J. Goldberg, the former editor of The Forward, on Facebook.
But the segment represented a kind of Jewish soul-searching rare on such public platforms, as Goldberg also pointed out. And in veering into the internal divides among Jews — between those who have been clamoring both for the war’s end and a political change in Israel, and those who insist Israel is doing what it must to eliminate Hamas and ensure the future safety of Israelis — the conversation captured the kind of anguish and discord acted out around Shabbat tables and in social media chats over the past two years.
Stewart complained that he has been “told that I have to shut up because I risk the Jewish state by speaking out.”
“I would say the opposite,” he said, referring to uncritical defenders of the war. “I think they’re putting the likelihood of a surviving Jewish state much more at risk with this type of action. I think they’re the ones that are being antisemitic.”
At another point he said, “I feel like I don’t know how to talk to even friends of mine that have gone there, and I imagine they feel the same way.”
In turn, Beinart suggested that American Jews have betrayed their own democratic and Jewish values by not considering the Palestinian side of the story.
“It’s a problem in our community that Palestinians are not invited to speak in synagogues, the kids aren’t given books by Palestinians in Jewish schools and Jewish camps,” he said, “because when you listen to Palestinians … you realize how brutal [their] experience has been.”
The audience applauded wildly throughout the conversation, especially when the two agreed that the United States should intervene and stop the fighting. And the comments on the YouTube page were largely positive — no doubt reflecting a consensus among Stewart’s self-selecting liberal audience.
Defenders of Israel and the war were understandably put off by the segment. Wrote one Israeli activist on Facebook: “I see two people blind to the reality of Israel’s existential struggle against radical Islam and generations of Palestinian recidivism high on their own self regard.” HonestReporting, the pro-Israel watchdog, called it “18 minutes of finger-pointing. No Israeli voices. No accountability for Hamas. Just two self-righteous men tokenizing themselves on national TV.”
The “Daily Show” segment and the reaction thus became a mass media illustration of Ezra Klein’s recent New York Times essay, “Why American Jews No Longer Understand One Another” — while refuting Klein’s thesis that the Jewish divide over Israel is largely a generational one.
Last week friends on Facebook were discussing why we should pay attention to celebrities who weigh in on Israel. (The subject was Mandy Patinkin, who gave an interview to The New York Times complaining, like Stewart, that he had been harangued by fellow Jews for criticizing the war and the Israeli government.)
I responded as a journalist, but also as someone who tries to understand, as my employer likes to say, all sides of the Jewish story: The issue is not caring about what a celebrity has to say, but whether we care about how Jews are thinking and talking about the war, Israel, and the Palestinians.
Stewart has always been an avatar for a certain kind of highly assimilated, secular Jew who makes his Jewish identity a prominent part of his public persona. Right or wrong, he, no less than a pro-Israel influencer, is representative of a Jewish cohort that is engaged with Israel, even if to criticize it. If we listen only to the people we agree with, we’ll fail to fully understand who we are and what we’ve become.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-862666
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The Elderly: Israel’s Quiet Front Line
By Bat-El Daniel
JULY 30, 2025
Every time our routine is shattered, whether by war, a pandemic, or an economic crisis, there’s a tendency to assume that the elderly will retreat inward. That we’ll find them under a blanket, glued to the television, waiting for the storm to pass. Sometimes, we even worry about them more than we ask ourselves how they might help others. But reality keeps surprising us, time and time again.
In moments of emergency, Israel’s elderly rediscover their role not as a vulnerable population but as a strong, stable link in the social chain. They carry the collective memory of past wars, waves of immigration, loss, and rebuilding. They understand that in the most turbulent times, what’s needed is a calm, sensitive, and steady presence. Yet our society still struggles to see them as a meaningful force.
In public space, older adults are often viewed as people who have “already given their part.” This perception, which seeps into their sense of identity, usually creates feelings of uselessness, detachment, or even irrelevance. But what happens when we offer them a platform?
What happens when we see them not as “pensioners” but as senior citizens in the fullest sense of the term, citizens with a role, with ability, with a sense of purpose?
At the Mediterranean Towers senior living network, we discovered that when you open the door, they don’t just walk through; they bring hammers and nails to build, pots and pans to cook, comforting cakes to share, and initiate conversations. They also form support teams and launch performances and exhibits to raise awareness about pressing issues. That’s exactly what happened during the war.
When sirens tore through the air and bomb shelters became temporary living spaces, something different happened among the residents of Mediterranean Towers. Emotional spaces opened, and initiatives began.
First, residents organized peer support groups, coffee-and-cake gatherings for neighbors, daily phone check-ins with friends, and small cultural projects to preserve routine. One resident in Beit Nordia, Micha Ankori, a retired psychologist, founded a “listening team” with fellow residents to provide emotional support to others – listening, encouraging, and simply being present.
The main reinforced shelter, originally designed for protection, quickly transformed into a vibrant cultural centre. It hosted short lectures, sing-alongs, and even seated Pilates classes, all in line with the network’s motto: “It’s interesting to live here.” Beyond what happened within the community’s walls, many residents also found ways to contribute outwardly to the broader community, to the soldiers, to the home front.
What defined these residents-led initiatives was that no one waited to be asked. They simply acted even in the smallest ways. Instead of asking “What’s needed?” they asked, “What can I do?” Three women in their 70s and 80s packed warm meals for soldiers and volunteered to sew fleece neck-warmers out of concern for their comfort.
In Ramat Hasharon, a small food truck started by residents became a gathering point for soldiers, offering hot drinks, homemade pastries, and heartfelt embraces. The volunteers made sure to talk to the soldiers, check in on them, and truly see them.
Aging looks different today
This approach invites us to think bigger and ask: What does aging look like today?
The world is changing. Life expectancy is rising. The gap between biological age and functional ability is widening. Which compels us to ask: What is active aging? Is it just Sudoku and a cup of tea, or does it include participation, initiative, and community leadership?
One example comes from the daughter of an 81-year-old resident. She was deeply concerned about her mother’s well-being during the war. But in a brief conversation with staff, it turned out her mother was busier than ever. She was part of the “listening team,” doing Pilates in the reinforced room, and baking cakes for the staff. She felt more purposeful than ever.
The drive to help, even when the world is shaking, was also evident during the recent tragedy in Bat Yam. Following a direct missile strike that led to extensive damage, casualties, and the evacuation of over 1,500 people, residents of Mediterranean Towers in the city responded as they know best: with open hearts, homemade food, and a deep sense of mission.
Six residents went together to a minimarket, bought supplies, planned who would cook what, and found recipes in their cookbooks and online. When the fire truck pulled up to their building, the residents were already waiting excitedly and ready to welcome their guests. The exhausted, hungry firefighters were greeted with hugs, home-cooked meals, and songs. The residents broke into “1,000 Firefighters,” eyes gleaming with emotion.
Alongside those moving moments of support were moments of remembrance. On a wall of a packing house in Moshav Tekuma, which had become a refreshment stop for soldiers, a graffiti art event was held in memory of the fallen soldier Tal Lahat, may his memory be blessed, who died in Gaza in July 2024. A graffiti artist led the project, joined by Tal’s friends from his unit and Mediterranean Towers residents’ grandparents aged 60 to 100, who climbed ladders with paintbrushes and created a touching mural in his honor.
However, the residents didn’t stop helping in the field; they also thought about those left behind. They especially focused on the wives of reservists, initiating special events for them. Three gatherings were held for new mothers, offering rich breakfasts and diverse experiential workshops led by professionals, musical experiences, babywearing dance, and infant massage. Alongside these activities, the senior residents offered guidance, practical tips, emotional support, and most importantly, a warm, calming atmosphere where these young mothers could take a moment for themselves.
Empowering the elderly
It's important to say not everyone must act this way, and not everyone can. But the very possibility of doing so is what makes the difference. When that sense of agency disappears, people begin to forget that they have it at all.
During this tense and chaotic time, the elderly among us have shown a different reflection. They didn’t deny their fears; they softened them with action. They didn’t wait for the instructions; they created them. They showed us that resilience isn’t about age, it’s about belonging.
The conclusion is clear: The elderly are not on the sidelines of society; they are its core. As the CEO of this home, I witness every day how an engaged senior community can become a leading force of mutual responsibility. Instead of isolation, they choose initiative. Instead of feeling irrelevant, they inspire.
We must keep building frameworks that invite older adults to take part, not just as volunteers but as true partners. We should listen to their ideas, value their experience, and enable them to contribute in their way, in their own time, and from their motivation.
The strength shown by the residents of Mediterranean Towers should not be taken for granted. At a time when so many young people are grappling with burnout, anxiety, and loneliness, it is the older generation that holds on to their humanity and passes it forward.
Most importantly, let us remember: The heart, even at an advanced age, remains open. If we leave the door open, they will come in. Quietly, gently, with a cake in hand and hope in their hearts.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-862616
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Iran’s Water Crisis: Will It Bring Down The Regime?
By Dana Sameah
JULY 30, 2025
Since the end of the recent conflict with Iran, Israelis have been focused on rebuilding and restoring life to what it was before. Understandably, this is the natural aspiration of any people emerging from a painful war.
But in Iran, citizens have found themselves facing a different kind of battlefield – a daily struggle against a regime that has failed them for decades. Years of corrupt and negligent governance have led to a situation where even basic services like electricity, water, and gas are rationed, and once again, it is the people who bear the heavy cost.
Over the past week, Iranian social media has been flooded with images and videos of desperate farmers and business owners across the country, crying out over the loss of their livelihoods. A record-breaking heatwave has only deepened the crisis. Tons of food have rotted and been discarded, livestock raised for food have perished in the extreme heat, and vital services have ground to a halt.
Without electricity and water, the economy is simply shutting down. In some areas, water is now sold in plastic bags and containers. The depth of the suffering is magnified as inflation continues to skyrocket and the Iranian toman plunges in value.
But basic services aren’t the only aspect of life deteriorating in Iran. In Tehran, for example, air pollution has been classified as toxic for various age groups for years. During the recent war with Israel, citizens shared a startling observation: for the first time in a long while, the air felt clean – the result of mass evacuations from the capital.So, can all of this bring about regime change?
Iranians are asking increasingly difficult questions:
Why is the regime spending billions on foreign proxies when there is no bread in the shops and no water in the villages?
Why are our sons sent to die for an ideology that grows ever more distant from the people?
Why is the regime so quick to execute and imprison, often in inhumane detention centers?
Alongside these questions, anonymous footage of uniformed officers expressing frustration with the regime’s conduct has recently surfaced online. The younger generation – including the children of senior regime officials – is also speaking out openly against the government on social media. The erosion of public trust has reached across all sectors of society. Even moderate conservatives and religious leaders acknowledge that while the ship may not be sinking, it is already taking on water.
Regime change in sight?
Is this the moment?
It’s still too early to say. As of now, there is no organized political force capable of leading a full-scale revolution. The regime maintains firm control over its mechanisms of suppression. The “big brother” state watches from above with cameras, surveillance, arrests, and executions. But even the strongest regimes are not immune to internal collapse.
All it takes is a chain of events – economic freefall, high-profile defections, or paralyzing international sanctions – to accelerate processes of change already underway.
The future of Iran will be shaped by those who dare, even after 46 years, to dream of another life. A regime that sells water in plastic bags to its own citizens knows deep down that its time is running out.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-862604
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The International Community Turns To The Humanitarian Paradigm To Save Itself, Not Gaza
by Ramona Wadi
July 29, 2025
Had the international community decided to take a unified stance against the initial implemented plans to starve Gaza’s population, by now Israel would have nowhere to turn to. It took the atrocities committed at the distribution sites coordinated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Palestinians dying of starvation and, more recently, a photo of a Palestinian boy held by his mother, to prompt rising condemnations against Israel’s policy of starvation which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still dismisses.
Of course, the unequivocal condemnations will ultimately still serve Israel’s interests. The genocide in Gaza has been left to fester for too long. Nothing the international community says now can undo Israel’s process of colonising Gaza, unless it steps in to prevent both genocide and colonisation. Which of course, will not happen. The international human rights system is rooted in racism, hence the cycle of begging former colonial powers for rights, while the same powers back the last-remaining settler-colonial project serving Western interests.
Latching on belatedly to the masses’ cries to stop starvation in Gaza is a political ploy. There was no need for the photo to make rounds on social media for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to state that he shared “the distress that people around the world would feel when they look at young Mohammed, 1 year old.” People around the world have been distressed at the genocide since it started; they needed no photographic evidence of a starved child to feel distress. Politicians, though, function differently. They need a photo of macabre aesthetic quality to feel distress.
And while Israel has disputed the veracity of the photo, there are more photos of starved Palestinian children that failed to make as much of an impact. So when Israel denies starvation exists, does it deny this based on one photo, all photos, or the entire experience of what has become Gaza’s existence?
What about the international community’s sudden clamour to recognise starvation in Gaza but not genocide? Are world leaders pretending they had nothing to do with starvation, just because they called for humanitarian pauses and lamented the termination of UNRWA’s operations in the occupied Palestinian territories? The level of destruction caused by Israel’s bombing of Gaza never elicited such reactions, because there is far more visible complicity in that part of genocide. The international community believes that the humanitarian paradigm can still protect its creators. Hence speaking out against starvation, particularly when embellished by photos of the same people the international community helped Israel bomb, is a much easier ordeal.
But this should not be about diplomatic strategy. The focus is, after all, Palestinians experiencing genocide in Gaza as the latest step in Israel’s colonial strategy. Starvation is part of Israel’s genocidal strategy, and diplomats are implementing strategic steps to enable Israel to fulfil its territorial ambitions at the expense of Palestinian lives, which should matter according to international law, but don’t matter in terms of diplomacy. So, what is the international community trying to protect here? Palestinians from dying of starvation, or itself from visible complicity in genocide?
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250729-the-international-community-turns-to-the-humanitarian-paradigm-to-save-itself-not-gaza/
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The Palestinian Authority and the ‘Boiling Frog’ Theory
By Ahmed Al-Atawneh
July 29, 2025
On 23, the Israeli Knesset voted to impose Sovereignty over the West Bank. This vote also re-emphasized its rejection of any form of Palestinian political entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This marks the first time since the 1993 Oslo Accords that the Israeli Knesset has taken legal steps to annex West Bank territories. This effectively re-confirms the formal, not just practical, disregard for the Oslo Agreement.
This move is not isolated. It’s part of a long-standing policy to alter the reality on the ground in the West Bank. The pace of these measures has significantly increased with the current fascist government in Tel Aviv, composed of right-wing and far-right elements, taking power. What demands attention is the behavior of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – both leadership and institutions – towards the reality imposed by the occupation.
The ‘Boiling Frog’
This behavior brings to mind the popular “boiling frog” theory. A frog in a pot of water fails to recognize, or tries to deny, the gradual change in the water’s temperature. It continues to adapt until the water reaches boiling point, which it cannot tolerate, leading to its death from an inability to jump out due to collapsed strength. Had it sensed the danger of rising temperature from the start, it might have jumped out and saved itself.
What the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah calls “the policy of removing pretexts” is merely self-delusion. They believe survival is possible by adapting to continuous change. The series of measures taken by successive Israeli governments will inevitably undermine not only a political solution and the two-state solution but also eliminate the PA and the Palestinian political institutions. Some believe these institutions died long ago, killed by the occupation, but are kept from burial to distract Palestinians and parts of the international community, perpetuating self-deception.
The Palestinian political leadership, at various levels, suffers from a set of issues that have led to overall weakness in its role and performance. This has also facilitated the occupation government’s implementation of extreme policies and the imposition of facts on the ground.
Aging is a primary characteristic of the political establishment; most of its political leaders are in their twilight years. Institutions have not renewed their legitimacy or composition for decades. In some cases, political leaders, faction cadres, and even the Palestinian people are unaware of the number or identities of their members. Any leadership changes or creation of new positions within the “political system” are often driven by external demands or the hope of attracting financial support, rather than genuine development or change. The extent of external dictates has been evident in several recent changes.
This institutional and leadership aging has led to an inability to perform even minimal administrative and functional duties, let alone political and national ones. This includes an inability to pay employee salaries and a reduction of working hours in PA institutions to a minimum. There is general confusion in the performance of national and private sector institutions, bringing the Palestinian administrative and institutional situation to the brink of complete collapse.
Perhaps the most dangerous outcome of this leadership state is the profound inability to engage with major and pressing national issues. One rarely sees a serious stance or presence of the political leadership regarding the genocide, destruction, and starvation in the Gaza Strip. The practices of the occupation and settlers in the West Bank confirm the political and field absence of the PA and its various institutions. This performance has likely contributed to the increasing regional and international political marginalization of the Palestinian leadership, even on issues related to the Palestinian cause and its developments. It has become common for the Palestinian file to be discussed in regional and international meetings without Palestinian involvement.
‘Clinical Death’
This “clinical death” and all indicators of incapacitation and weakness come at a boiling point for all aspects and files of the Palestinian cause. The PA’s behavior once again recalls the frog settling in boiling water. How can the PA and its leadership fail to grasp the lethal nature of the occupation’s policies and actions on the ground?
Many facts should have raised the temperature of the Palestinian political environment, triggered a red light, and called for fundamental and strategic solutions to the existing reality, rather than waiting until action becomes impossible under the guise of removing pretexts and dealing with the status quo:
1. Settlement Expansion: Settlement activity has swelled, with approximately 180 settlements and 215 outposts (candidates for conversion into settlements) recently. Tens of thousands of new housing units are under construction, and large areas of land continue to be confiscated for various roads. Government plans aim to double the number of settlers in the West Bank, with the current government working to settle an additional one million, potentially raising the total to two million within years. This means the number of Zionist settlers and Palestinian citizens in the West Bank could become nearly equal.
2. Legal and Administrative Measures: Tel Aviv’s government has enacted a series of legal and administrative measures to consolidate its legal control over the West Bank. These include abolishing the Civil Administration’s authority over settlements, canceling the classification of Area B, and transferring administrative and security powers to the occupation authorities. The powers of the “Coordinator” have been expanded, making him the de facto ruler of the West Bank, allowing citizens to deal directly with him on all matters. All land survey and classification (Tabu) procedures carried out by the PA have been canceled, with responsibility transferred to the occupation government. Many other measures reinforce the occupation’s direct presence and undermine the PA’s limited functions.
3. Two-State Solution Abandonment: The internal Zionist debate on the two-state solution and the idea of establishing any Palestinian political entity has been settled. This was achieved through two Knesset votes: one, by an overwhelming majority, rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state on the borders of June 4. The second affirmed “the right of the entity” to impose its sovereignty over all Palestinian territory, including the West Bank, and called on the government to take necessary measures to impose sovereignty. This signifies the complete end of the Oslo political approach and the non-existence of any significant Israeli party that could be a partner in a political process or settlement.
4. Economic Strangulation: The occupation practices economic strangulation against the PA, pushing it into economic deficit. This prevents it from paying employee salaries or undertaking any economic or developmental projects. Israel currently withholds the equivalent of $2.7 billion of PA funds and floods the market with Shekels without allowing exchange for foreign currencies, causing multifaceted economic crises.
5. Erosion of National Image: The PA’s national image is being shattered by its forced compliance with steps considered unpatriotic and rejected by the vast majority of the Palestinian people. These include halting salaries for prisoners and martyrs’ families, accepting changes to Palestinian curricula that contain national constants and concepts rejected by the occupation, and intensifying “security coordination” and pursuing resistance fighters in the West, even extending to joint field operations as seen in Jenin and Tulkarm. All of this, combined with the significant decline in the PA’s national role and its growing impotence against the occupation’s arrogance and crimes, has put the PA’s national standing at stake.
6. Assault on Sanctities and Values: The occupation has deeply shed Palestinian blood, committing an ongoing genocide for the past two years. Tens of thousands have been brutalized in prisons using unprecedented methods of repression and torture. It has also overstepped all boundaries in dealing with holy sites, especially Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Ibrahimi Mosque.
7. Undermining UN Role: Efforts are underway to undermine the UN’s role in the Palestinian issue, particularly in the occupied territories. The occupation waged a real war on the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), restricting its activities in the West Bank and Gaza. It attempted to damage its professional reputation in an effort, with US support, to end the agency’s role as a UN tool witnessing one of the most critical Palestinian issues and a symbol of its justice: the refugee issue. In the same context, it systematically destroyed refugee camps and attempted to empty them of their residents, citing resistance as a pretext. This led to the destruction of Jenin and Tulkarm camps and the displacement of many of their inhabitants.
A Call for Unity, Action
All these measures, among others, are taking place before the eyes of the world without anyone taking action. Crucially, they are happening under the gaze of the PA. This leads observers to believe that the Palestinian political leadership and the PA are either deceiving themselves, hoping for safety based on removing pretexts and coexisting with reality, no matter how bad, or they are unaware of the reality and what is happening around them, in which case the disaster is even greater.
It is imperative to sense the temperature of the surrounding environment and deal seriously with the complex and challenging reality, especially after the war of extermination in Gaza. There must be an immediate move towards the various Palestinian components, both political and societal, to formulate a responsible and serious national plan to confront this reality and open an opportunity for the Palestinian people to face these challenges united.
The Palestinian people are experienced and resilient, needing only a believing and capable leadership. This will help galvanize remaining allies and friends of the Palestinian people to stand with them against this arrogant and fascist enemy, because waiting will benefit no one and only serve the occupation and its policies.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-palestinian-authority-and-the-boiling-frog-theory/
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‘Sport Changes Everything’ – Brazilians Building Palestinian Solidarity
By Enrico Di Gregorio
July 29, 2025
Celtic FC’s Green Brigade supporters launched the “Show Israel the Red Card” campaign in March this year. The initiative captivated fans of teams such as Osasuna (Spain), Livorno (Italy), Palestino (Chile), Terengganu (Malaysia), Atromitos FC (Greece), Deportivo Alavés (Spain), Pisa SC (Italy), Lecce (Italy) and Independente (Brazil).
In May, two months after the launch, fans decided to mobilize beyond the borders of their own countries and go on a solidarity trip to the Palestinian territories.
Representing Brazil, the president of São Paulo’s Independente fan club, who is also a member of the “Bonde do Che” collective, and Matheus Marcelo, a member of the same fan club, were part of the delegation. Bonde do Che (Che’s Gang, a reference to the Latin-American revolutionary Che Guevara) is a group that acts inside the Independente.
“The goal of the trip is to learn about the reality of the Palestinian people, how the Zionist occupation works and what they go through on a daily basis,” Marcelo said, in an interview for the Brazilian newspaper A Nova Democracia.
The trip was also intended “to learn about their project with Lajee Celtic in the Aida refugee camp, and the other refugee camps around Palestine, so that we can help.”
The invitation from the Green Brigade came because of Independente’s actions in and outside of stadiums in Brazil.
The club frequently shows Palestine flags during matches, with many pro-Palestine banners made by the supporters. The two fan clubs were already talking with the help of the Antifa Hooligans Brazil, but things became easier when a member of the Che’s Gang living in Scotland talked with members of the Green Brigade.
Daily Struggles
“We visited Tulkarem, Hebron, Jenin and Aida,” Marcelo said. “Tulkarem and Jenin are completely devastated because of Israel’s actions. We saw Israeli soldiers and snipers during our visit to Tulkarem.”
Images captured by the delegation depicted several destroyed buildings. Inside a school, they saw Palestine maps ripped and painted over.
“We went to the roof of the school, but I could not film the refugee camp, because it had snipers aiming at us,” Marcelo noted.
“Daily life is filled with oppression,” he added, and went on to explain how the guide of the delegation was detained, handcuffed and beaten in one of the checkpoints they passed during the trip.
Marcelo believes that the soldiers only let him go because he was accompanied by the Scottish members of the Green Brigade. “We, from Brazil, had to show our passports several times because, according to the Israelis, we had ‘a Palestinian face’,” he said.
Hebron’s Challenges
Hebron is distinct, according to Marcelo, because the illegal Israeli settlers formed a settlement in the centre of the city, with houses built on top of the Palestinian stores of the central market.
“The settlers have closed a lot of stores, but there are a few left that are trying to survive,” he stated. “It’s difficult to access because the settlers have closed several streets and many people are afraid to go there.”
A fence separates the stores from the houses, because in the past, Israelis used to throw garbage and stones at Palestinians walking along the market street.
Brazil’s Favelas
For Marcelo, the situation in the occupied West Bank reminds him of the Brazilian favelas.
“It began with tents and, over time, it has practically become a city. It’s like the favelas, which started with a few shacks and, with the arrival of more people, the creation of commerce and the passage of time, became almost neighbourhoods, cities,” he explained.
The way people treat each other is also similar, according to him.
“The Palestinian people have a very strong collective sense. They are very similar to us Brazilians, they like to make friends,” Marcelo said.
In Brazilian favelas, it is also very common to see people helping each other in the face of police violence as well as the scarcity of basic resources and rights, like food, water, electricity and basic sanitation.
“The only thing they asked of us is to talk about Palestine, to show the justice behind it to the Brazilian people,” Marcelo adds.
Sports’ Influence
Resistance to the oppression in the territory takes on many forms, he notes. At the Lajee Centre, a cultural and sports centre in Aida, “children study other languages like English and French, do gymnastics, boxing, dance. They have a series of projects to strengthen the community,” Marcelo noted.
The centre also has a team of “really good athletes” with players following a training agenda.
“Many young Palestinians wait to get into the team”, he added. “This work is important because it offers a new perspective to all Aida residents, because the team is famous and attracts supporters from all over the world to the Palestinian cause.”
The Green Brigade is an example of that attraction. The Celtic FC’s fans’ relationship with the Lajee Centre deepened after the Green Brigade was fined for performing an act of solidarity with Palestine at a match. The fans held a fundraiser, raised more money than they needed and donated a good portion to the Lajee Center.
“Sport changes everything, and it’s the fans who keep everything going,” Marcelo said.
He says that Independent and its “brothers in cause” have already established new goals to support the Palestinian cause.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/sport-changes-everything-brazilians-building-palestinian-solidarity/
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/middle-east-press/antisemitism-humanity-gaza-judaism/d/136346
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