Middle East Press On: Hamas, Israel, Somaliland, Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, Europe, Iran, Palestinians, Germany, New Age Islam's Selection, 30 December 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
30 December 2025
Hamas’s sexual abuses aren’t allegations but facts, survivors need real support
Israel recognized Somaliland – African nations like Ethiopia, Kenya should be next
Strategic misfire? Israel’s Somaliland move fuels new tensions
Somaliland’s democracy deserves recognition, and Israel is right to lead
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland a strategic earthquake
Europe is drifting away from Israel, toward Iran’s worldview
Never again, except for Palestinians: The moral realignment
Germany: Imprisoned ‘Palestine Action’ activists face harassment
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Hamas’s sexual abuses aren’t allegations but facts, survivors need real support
By JPOST EDITORIAL
DECEMBER 30, 2025
There is a moment in every conflict when denial becomes not just dishonest but grotesque. That moment has passed.
After more than a year of survivor testimony from Israelis held captive in Gaza, the continued denial that Hamas fighters carried out sexual assaults – or that such violence was incidental rather than systematic – is no longer a position grounded in scepticism. It is a refusal to see what is directly in front of us.
Romi Gonen’s testimony, aired on Thursday on Uvda, is among the most detailed and harrowing. Kidnapped from the Supernova music festival at age 23, wounded, operated on in Gaza, and held alone with male captors, she described repeated sexual assaults and escalating control: being touched under the guise of “care,” being forced to sleep beside her captor, being handcuffed at night, and finally being assaulted at gunpoint.
“If you tell anyone,” she was told, “I will kill you.”
Her account is not vague, not rhetorical, not filtered through advocates. It is specific, chronological, and devastatingly human.
Survivors’ evidence of Hamas sexual violence in Gaza
Amit Soussana told The New York Times she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint by the man guarding her in Gaza in late October 2023. She described being beaten, threatened, and forced to perform a sexual act.
Medical professionals who treated her within 24 hours of her release confirmed she had described the assault to them at the time.
This is corroboration, not allegation.
Rom Braslavski, speaking on Channel 13’s Hazinor, described being stripped naked, tied up, and abused in a way he explicitly identified as sexual violence whose purpose was humiliation – “to crush my dignity,” as he put it.
Guy Gilboa-Dalal testified that a captor dragged him naked from the shower, threw him onto a couch, touched him all over, and threatened him with a gun and a knife if he spoke.
Alon Ohel described a captor entering the shower with him, touching him under the pretext of “help,” after he had been left alone in the tunnels.
Nor do they stand alone. Aviva Siegel testified months ago that she saw young women return from showers trembling, later disclosing that they had been sexually abused by guards; she described being forbidden to comfort them.
Agam Goldstein-Almog has spoken of being held alongside women who bore clear physical signs of severe sexual abuse.
Internationally, these testimonies have been reinforced by investigation. In March 2024, a UN team led by Special Representative Pramila Patten reported “reasonable grounds to believe” that sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the October 7 massacre, and that hostages in Gaza were subjected to sexual violence. This was not a political statement. It was a forensic conclusion.
Against this, Hamas's denial – that sexual violence did not occur, or that it was not part of the attack’s character – collapses under the weight of lived experience. So does the claim, still echoed in some international discourse, that these acts were isolated deviations rather than part of a broader system of domination, terrorism, and dehumanization.
When sexual violence recurs across locations, captors, genders, and months, it is not incidental. It is instrumental.
And yet, even as survivors struggle to reclaim their bodies and lives, many have said the support they receive from the State of Israel is shockingly inadequate.
Several freed hostages have spoken publicly about bureaucratic obstacles, insufficient financial assistance, and a sense that the aid offered is symbolic rather than rehabilitative, or “a joke,” as more than one survivor has described it in interviews with Israeli media.
These are people emerging from prolonged captivity, physical injury, starvation, torture, and sexual trauma. They require long-term medical, psychological, and economic support. Too often, they are left to fight for it.
The moral burden does not rest only with the international community, which must continue to recognize Hamas’s sexual violence as a war crime and a crime against humanity. It rests with Israel as well.
Bearing witness is not enough. Survivors must not be forced to relive their trauma to justify their worthiness for care.
These testimonies do not serve a narrative. They dismantle one. The survivors and their testimonies are not symbols. They are individuals. They did nothing to deserve what was done to them, and their suffering cannot be contextualized away, balanced against geopolitics, or absorbed into abstraction.
Listening to them is no longer optional. Acting – seriously, materially, and with urgency – is the minimum that justice now demands.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-881749
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Israel recognized Somaliland – African nations like Ethiopia, Kenya should be next
By ISMAIL SHIRWAC
DECEMBER 29, 2025
The people of the Republic of Somaliland have walked a rough and often lonely journey for 34 years – building an exemplary nation, while waiting for the world to recognize reality. That journey required extraordinary perseverance, and it paid off last Friday, when Israel officially recognized the Republic of Somaliland, tipping the first domino.
This was not a random act; it was a calculated move.
Since regaining its sovereignty in 1991, Somaliland has achieved what many recognized states have failed to do, despite extensive external support. It disarmed militias through dialogue, reconciled deeply divided communities, drafted a constitution by consensus, and built functioning institutions from the ground up.
Somaliland has held multiple elections, overseen peaceful transfers of power, protected freedom of expression, and maintained the rule of law in a region where these qualities are often the exception rather than the norm.
Somaliland did not inherit legitimacy – it earned it.
Its people waited. They were repeatedly told to be patient.
Patient for negotiations, for regional consensus, and for a “right time” that never seemed to come. Yet through it all, Somaliland continued to demonstrate responsibility, maturity, and self-governance. Few societies have shown such discipline while being denied the basic dignity of recognition.
Israel's place in Somaliland's history
Israel’s decision matters because it recognizes reality over ritual. In doing so, Israel secures a place in Somaliland’s history as a state willing to stand up for justice and acknowledge facts on the ground.
It's no coincidence that this recognition comes from a fellow democracy – one that understands what it means to survive and thrive in a difficult neighbourhood.
Israel and Somaliland are two strong democracies amid significant challenges. Both have faced isolation, security threats, and constant regional turbulence. Both responded not by retreating, but by strengthening institutions, investing in resilience, and choosing democracy over disorder. Their mutual recognition reflects shared values as much as strategic calculation.
Somaliland’s importance extends well beyond symbolism. Its strategic location along the Gulf of Aden, with an 850-kilometer coastline overlooking one of the world’s vital maritime corridors, gives it global relevance.
Nearly a third of global trade and a significant share of the world’s energy shipments pass just off its shores. At a time when Red Sea insecurity, piracy risks, and geopolitical competition are rising, Somaliland has quietly played a stabilizing role.
Recognition would allow Somaliland to do more–formalize security cooperation, strengthen maritime governance, and contribute openly to the protection of global trade routes. Stability, when recognized, becomes a force multiplier.
Africa should pay close attention.
The continent frequently speaks of “African solutions to African problems.” Somaliland represents exactly that: a home-grown success built through dialogue, compromise, and accountability. It shows that peace is possible, democracy can take root, and power can change hands without violence. Somaliland is not an anomaly to be ignored; it is an example Africa can be proud of.
This is why Ethiopia and Kenya, in particular, should follow Israel’s lead.
For Ethiopia, Somaliland is a critical neighbour that offers strategic partnership opportunities, including security, trade, and a stable, terrorism-free border. Somaliland is also the most viable access point to the sea for Ethiopia via Berbera, which already contributes to Ethiopia's growing economy.
For Kenya, recognizing Somaliland strengthens regional security, counters extremism, stabilizes trade routes, and aligns with Nairobi’s long-standing interest in a predictable Horn of Africa. Kenya has already experienced the dangers of unresolved Somali irredentism; acknowledging Somaliland helps bring clarity where ambiguity has long fuelled tension.
Somaliland exists. It governs. It delivers. It contributes.
Israel has tipped the first domino. Africa – especially Ethiopia and Kenya – should allow the rest to fall.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-881704
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Strategic misfire? Israel’s Somaliland move fuels new tensions
By HABTOM GHEBREZGHIABHER
DECEMBER 29, 2025
Israel is the first country to formally recognize Somaliland as independent. While Somaliland’s desperation for recognition is understandable, Israel’s rush is puzzling. Any strategic gains for Israel are far outweighed by the risks.
Instead of strengthening Somaliland, it deepens its internal divisions, inflames regional tensions, fails to advance Israel’s security interests against the Houthis, and isolates Israel diplomatically.
In principle, Somaliland deserves international recognition, as its population is generally better off than the rest of Somalia, and colonially imposed states have consistently failed to provide security, employment, and political legitimacy.
However, Israel’s recognition increases Somaliland’s vulnerability and does little to advance Israel’s strategic goals, whether countering the Houthis, limiting Turkish influence in the Horn of Africa, securing the Red Sea, advancing the Abraham Accords, or even facilitating the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza. Instead, the move risks weakening Somaliland while offering Israel limited, if any, strategic benefit.
It is unsurprising that the Mossad is behind this move, reflecting institutional hubris, strategic arrogance, and a shallow understanding of the Horn of Africa. The Mossad failed to anticipate the Houthi threat, and it similarly underestimates the looming threat in Sudan.
The timing offered Israel a convenient opportunity
Prime Minister Netanyahu thanked Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Mossad Chief David Barnea, and the agency for facilitating Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, expressing hopes for its success. Yet, given Somaliland’s desperation for recognition and the looming Israeli elections, the timing offered Israel a convenient opportunity, even if the strategic payoff remains uncertain.
Although Somaliland has long presented itself as an exception in the Horn of Africa, stable, democratic, and functionally independent for the past three decades, the reality is far more complex. Clan identity plays a central role in politics, land ownership, and representation.
The Isaaq clan controls central and northern urban centres like Hargeisa, Berbera, and Burao. However, the eastern regions and north western present remain loyal to Somalia’s federal government, creating contested territories.
In eastern Somaliland, particularly in Sool and Sanaag, the Dhulbahante and other Darod subclans remain loyal to Somalia’s federal government, resulting in contested territories and frequent conflicts. On April 14, the Somali government recognized SSC-Khaatumo as its sixth Federal Member State, reducing Somaliland’s territory to about 45% of the former British Somaliland and significantly weakening its claim to independence.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland will intensify conflicts in both the eastern and north western regions. Federal-aligned clans in Sool and Sanaag are likely to use Israel’s presence to rally against Hargeisa, with Turkey providing political, military, and economic support.
The move also gives Al-Shabab propaganda leverage. The group can exploit strong anti-Israeli sentiment among Somali nationalists and Islamists, particularly within the Isaaq clan, to recruit fighters and gain legitimacy. Anti-Israel sentiment is the easiest way for Islamist militias to gain legitimacy.
Al-Shabab can frame recognition as Zionist interference betrayal to the Palestinians by Somaliland, strengthening ties with the Houthis, Iran, and the Eritrean dictator—who opposes Somalia’s fragmentation and UAE interference, and has already trained deployed 10,000 Somali troops in 2022, many of whom later defected to Al-Shabab. This dynamic further increases Somaliland’s vulnerability.
Strategically, the recognition fails Israel. The idea that recognition would strengthen Israel’s leverage against the Houthis misunderstands the threat. Defeating the Houthis requires a ground campaign by partners with a cohesive national army and the willingness to defeat them—capabilities that Somaliland lacks.
A naval base in Somaliland only brings Israeli airstrikes closer. Past air campaigns by Saudi Arabia and the US, and Israel's targeted killings, and sanctions have all failed. Even in Gaza, Israel required ground operations to deal with Hamas. Israeli presence in Somaliland would not shift the strategic balance against the Houthis.
The recognition does little to extend the Abraham Accords. On August 14, Sen. Ted Cruz urged Donald Trump in an open letter to recognize Somaliland, citing its willingness to strengthen ties with Israel and support the Abraham Accords. However, President Trump declined, stating that the United States had no immediate plans to follow Jerusalem’s lead.
Saudi Arabia, which has conditioned normalization with Israel on a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood, also opposed the move—further underscoring that Israel’s recognition of Somaliland hardly advances the Abraham Accords in any meaningful way.
Somaliland has explicitly denied any discussions or agreements with Israel or the United States regarding the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza. Deporting Palestinians and building a “Riviera” was never Israel’s plan; it was a proposal from Trump, which he has largely abandoned.
Regardless, Somaliland would not volunteer to host such a relocation, as doing so would be suicidal—turning Somaliland into a perceived dumping ground for Palestinians and a primary target politically, diplomatically, and security-wise, while mobilizing Somalis, including the Isaaq clan, as well as Arabs and Muslims worldwide.
Diplomatically, Israel faces backlash. The African Union, Arab League, and Gulf Cooperation Council oppose the move, gaining legitimacy for their anti-Israel stance. Most African countries face the risk of breakaway regions, like Somaliland.
China has officially opposed recognition, and the European Union has reaffirmed its strong support for Somalia’s territorial integrity and stability. While the UAE may view recognition favourably, given its ties to Somaliland, it has remained publicly restrained.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland serves neither its interests nor Somaliland’s. While Somaliland’s desire for recognition is understandable, the move deepens its internal divisions, heightens regional tensions, and strengthens extremist propaganda. Diplomatically, it isolates Israel and fails to deliver any strategic security benefits in the Red Sea. Overall, the recognition exposes both Somaliland and Israel to significant risks.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-881566
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Somaliland’s democracy deserves recognition, and Israel is right to lead
By GREG MILLS, RAY HARTLEY
DECEMBER 29, 2025
Somaliland went to the polls on November 13, 2024, in the ninth competitive election since its 1991 re-declaration of independence from Somalia via a constitutional referendum followed by municipal elections (in 2002, 2012, and 2021), presidential elections (2003, 2010, and 2017), and parliamentary elections (2005).
Somaliland’s roots lie in the agreements signed between the United Kingdom and clans in the area in the late 19th century, which led to the establishment of the Somaliland Protectorate. On June 26, 1960, the protectorate was formally granted independence and became the State of Somaliland. Five days after gaining independence, it voluntarily united with the Trust Territory of Somalia, the former Italian colony to its east and south, thereby forming the Somali Republic.
The union was problematic from the start. When Somalia’s Siad Barre regime enacted harsh policies against Somaliland’s dominant family, the Isaaq clan, a 10-year Somaliland War of Independence ensued. The bitter conflict resulted in the destruction of 90% of its capital city, Hargeisa, bombed by Siad Barre’s air force and stripped bare by looters.
Somaliland defeated Mogadishu’s forces and declared independence in 1991, regarding itself as the legitimate successor state to British Somaliland.
In the absence of Mogadishu’s acquiescence, Somaliland’s independence is not internationally recognized. Yet it has created one of the most inclusive multiparty democratic systems in Africa. Not only was the 2024 event the fourth presidential election by universal suffrage in Somaliland, but previous elections have resulted in transitions of power between parties.
In the 2024 election, which had an expected turnout of over one million people across 2,000 polling stations, incumbent President Muse Bihi Abdi was defeated by Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi “Irro.”
Standout democracy in its region
The former British colony has been a stand-out democratic performer in a region characterized by political upheaval, not least in neighbouring Ethiopia and Somaliland’s one-time state partner, Somalia.
Somaliland has proven remarkably adept at managing a very poor economy, with a per capita income of just $630; poverty worsened by the civil war in the late 1980s. With aid flows by 2024 amounting to less than $200 million annually, and livestock and other trade comprising the rest of the bulk of domestic export earnings and GDP, at some $300 million, the country depends on remittance flows from the diaspora, around $900 million annually.
And yet Somalia has similar customs and institutions, the same religion, and both are formed around clans. Profiting from chaos and destruction has, by comparison, become a way of business and life in neighbouring Somalia. The flow of international largesse, averaging $2 billion annually for 20 years in the 2000s, has made this an attractively profitable venture. Clan control of the capital, Mogadishu, has, in this regard, equated with the control of the sources and distribution of revenue.
Another explanation of the difference in performance is down to the presence of the Somali National Movement (SNM) in Somaliland, which took charge in 1991 as soon as independence was redeclared, this time not from Britain, as in 1960, but from Somalia.
A nearly month-long conference under the trees in the south-eastern city of Burao in April-May 1991 revoked Somaliland’s voluntary union with the rest of Somalia to form the Republic of Somaliland. A 1993 conference in Boroma extended government beyond the SNM.
Another reason is because of its democratic character. In 2001, Somaliland voters approved a new constitution that established a multiparty democracy, based on three major parties in a deal that is renewed every 10 years. Even though it is a functioning sovereign state with an elected government and its own currency, it is not internationally recognized. The frequent transfers of power between candidates, despite some very tight results, have made Somaliland a stand-out African democracy.
As such, it’s a better fit for Israel than some of the autocracies with which the Netanyahu government has invested, including Rwanda and Uganda.
The lack of international recognition has until now added a premium to costs, especially insurance and banking, while its strongest asset in democracy has added a relatively large burden of some $10 million every year to a budget of just $400 million, of which, in 2024, 43% was used for security, with payroll accounting for much of the remainder. Democracy has, however, ensured relative transparency compared to Somalia, along with accountability.
Neighboring Ethiopia, which always said that, due to its common border, it could never “be the first to recognise Hargeisa, but would be the second,” in 2024 concluded an agreement on a 50-year lease on the Red Sea port of Berbera, run by Dubai Ports.
Israel’s move acknowledges the political, security, and legal realities of the Horn of Africa, whatever the protests of the African Union, which bases this argument on the 1964 Cairo Resolution on the inviolability of African borders.
However, the AU’s own 2005 report on Somaliland found that its recognition was “historically unique and self-justified in African political history.”
Recognition does not create a new border but strengthens an existing one.
Whether recognition leads to better governance in Somaliland, along with a greater flow of foreign aid, is moot.
Until then, the lesson from its path to stability and recognition is well understood by democrats everywhere, including the two-thirds of Africans who routinely state their preference for democracy over other forms of government. Such openness may be expensive, with regular elections and transfers of power, but it’s also cheap at the price.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-881688
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Israel’s recognition of Somaliland a strategic earthquake
By PESACH WOLICKI
DECEMBER 29, 2025
Israel just made a decision that most of the world barely noticed, and which those who did largely misunderstood. Yet historians may look back at this moment as one of Israel’s most consequential geopolitical manoeuvres in recent years.
On December 26, Israel became the first country to formally recognize Somaliland as an independent state. For over three decades, it had existed in a strange diplomatic limbo as stable, democratic, and pro-Western, yet unrecognized by any nation. Until Israel broke the silence.
This matters because it isn’t just a humanitarian gesture or a symbolic diplomatic act. It is a strategic move with regional consequences stretching from Gaza to the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to Africa and directly into the heart of the global competition between Islamist blocs and Western-aligned democracies.
Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991 following a brutal civil war. Unlike Somalia, which remains plagued by corruption, piracy, Jihadist al-Shabaab terrorism, and constant instability, Somaliland built democratic institutions, conducted multiple peaceful transitions of power, maintains its own currency and military, and openly aligns with the West and with moderate regional actors, such as the United Arab Emirates.
In other words, Somaliland is what Western governments claim they want Middle Eastern and African states to be. And yet, for 34 years, no one recognized it. Until now.
The reaction in Hargeisa was instantaneous: fireworks, flags, dancing in the streets. A nation long ignored was finally acknowledged – not by the United Nations, not by the European Union, not by Washington – but by the Israel. This tells us something important: The Jewish state is no longer waiting for global approval before shaping the region. It is acting as a sovereign regional power.
Somaliland sits along the Gulf of Aden, at the mouth of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the gateway from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. A third of global shipping passes nearby.
Over the past two years, Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen have attacked shipping lanes there – threatening, and at times crippling, global commerce. The US strikes on Houthi targets last year were not about Israel – they were about keeping global trade flowing.
Somaliland’s strategic Berbera deep-water port, recently expanded with UAE investment, combined with Israeli security architecture, could become a Western foothold opposite Houthi-controlled Yemen – a pressure valve on Iranian influence and a counterweight to radical Islamist penetration in the Horn of Africa.
Israel didn’t just recognize a state, it secured a strategic doorway at one of the world’s maritime chokepoints.
Greece-Cyprus-Israel triangle
Days before recognizing Somaliland, Israel hosted the 10th Israel-Greece-Cyprus Trilateral Summit. There, the three states formalized cooperation in energy, joint naval drills, missile defence, and – crucially – discussed the India-Middle East-Europe economic corridor (IMEC), a US-led plan designed to route trade to Europe through Israel, to counter the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative.
This is not random. It is part of a coherent strategic realignment. In the Eastern Mediterranean, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus strengthen Western energy and security architecture.
In the Red Sea/Horn of Africa, Israel, the UAE, and Somaliland open a pro-West corridor opposite Yemen. Both constrain the influence of one actor: Turkey.
Turkey’s Islamist axis vs Israel’s emerging democratic bloc
Turkey is deeply involved in Somalia, the very state that claims Somaliland as part of its territory. Turkey trains Somali forces, builds infrastructure, and positions itself as a patron to Islamist currents there. Turkey hosts Hamas leadership in Istanbul, backs Muslim Brotherhood networks, partners closely with Qatar, and supports hard-line Islamist factions in Syria and Libya.
The Somaliland recognition struck directly at Turkey’s sphere of influence. No wonder Ankara and Doha immediately condemned Israel’s move.
This is the same logic behind Israeli support for Druze, Kurds, and other non-Islamist groups in Syria, and behind recent Israeli strikes aimed at blocking Turkish-installed air defence infrastructure there. Which brings us to Gaza.
The US has been advocating for Turkey to play a role in post-war Gaza. Israel has rejected the idea unequivocally. Why?
Because Turkey does not enter places to stabilize them – it enters to influence them. This is what happened in northern Syria and Libya. Once Turkish troops arrive, they rarely leave. A Turkish “peacekeeping presence” in Gaza would risk turning the enclave into a Turkish protectorate, governed by the same Islamist networks Ankara supports elsewhere.
Turkey wants influence along Israel’s border. Israel is now drawing a hard red line: A new reality in the Middle East. Israel’s recent moves all point in the same direction:
Greece-Cyprus-Israel alliance constrains Turkey in the Mediterranean.
Recognition of Somaliland constrains Turkey in the Horn of Africa.
Rejection of Turkish troops in Gaza constrains Turkey at Israel’s doorstep.
Security ties with minorities in Syria block Turkish-backed Islamist consolidation.
Air defence exports to Europe grow Israeli leverage without relying on the United States.
Israel is building alliances, trade routes, security frameworks, and regional architecture from Athens to Hargeisa.
Regional superpower
This is not the behaviour of an isolated state; it is the behaviour of a regional superpower
With all of this unfolding on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Donald Trump. Israel arrives not as a petitioning client, but as a state with leverage, partners, and strategic assets stretching across seas and continents.
Turkey sees it. The Arab world sees it. Europe sees it. And Washington – sooner or later – will see it too. Israel is not waiting for permission anymore. It is building the future of the Middle East.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-881684
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Europe is drifting away from Israel, toward Iran’s worldview
By MICAH HALPERN
DECEMBER 29, 2025
Countries, like people, need friends.
Those friendships are most often based on economic or military needs or the need for resources. Rather than calling them friends, however, when it comes to countries, they are referred to as allies.
Israel has, with the use of the Abraham Accords, amassed a group of allies that once upon a time seemed an impossible group of friends, and the US, under the presidency of Donald Trump, is a catalyst for big deals. Then there are those alliances built purely on the basis of geography and religion – such is the case in the world of Islam.
Iran, which hopes to dominate the Muslim world, is the prime example. Masoud Pezeshkian, the President of Iran, made that Iranian attitude perfectly clear. The president recently declared, “We are in a state of total war with the US, Israel, and Europe. They do not want our country to stand on its feet … If they attack us again, they will receive a harsher response. The unity of Iranian society will foil all enemy plots.”
There is an often-quoted ancient proverb, most often incorrectly attributed to the Italian philosopher, historian, and diplomat Machiavelli, that declares: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. By that rule, the US, Israel, and Europe, the ones listed as enemies by Iran, should all be friends. But the truth is that they are not all friends.
US and Israel are allies on many fronts
The US and Israel are certainly openly, publicly, and historically the best of friends on the international stage. They are allies on many fronts – “besties” if you wish. The two nations, as exemplified by their superbly coordinated attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, see eye to eye on the threat to the region and the world of a nuclear Iran. It is Europe that is the problematic part of the equation.
Iran does not, as evidenced by the president’s statement, lumping it together with Israel and the US, understand Europe. And it should.
The Iranian President does not have a proper understanding of Europe. Europe is not merely moving further and further away from the US and Israel in terms of diplomacy, doctrine, and politics, but also because Europe is moving closer and closer towards Iran.
Europe has fallen into an abyss. Europe has become a branch, an extension, of Islam – and it has a name. Today, there is a phenomenon that is referred to as European Islam. Islam has begun to cover Europe.
While it is true that several European countries are trying to fight this new phenomenon, trying to hold on to their long-held ways. They seem to be losing the battle. Europe is more and more rapidly, and more and more evidently, shifting away from alliances with the US and, even more so, with Israel. Because their population is shifting toward Islam.
The US is also shifting. The obvious example is the American political stage. What began with the election of several openly pro-Islam members of Congress blossomed into the election of New York City’s Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The election of Mamdani is a classic example of not just a shift in American politics, but also of the move away from Israel. Mamdani – as we all know by now – has not just criticized Israel’s policies, but he has refused to condemn Hamas and their brutal October 7, 2023, massacre.
When the population shifts, so too will a country’s attitude toward Israel. While most European nations do not conduct their census based on religious affiliation, these are common knowledge, guestimates for significant
European cities.
The metropolitan area of Paris is estimated to be around 10–15% Muslim, with higher concentrations in certain suburbs.
London is estimated to be around 12–15% Muslim, with much higher percentages in the areas of Tower Hamlets and Newham. Birmingham is estimated to be 20–22% Muslim. Manchester has about 15–16% Muslims.
Brussels is estimated to be around 20–25% Muslim.
Marseille is about 25–30%.
Rotterdam is about 20–25% Muslim.
Amsterdam has around a 15–25% Muslim population.
The Hague & Utrecht have around a 13–15% Muslim population.
Berlin is around 9–12% Muslim. Cologne is around 10–12%.
Vienna around 10–12%.
Copenhagen is about 10%. Stockholm & Malmö each have around 15–20% Muslims.
While Iran was pretty good at understanding the Western world until now, in this case, they are totally off.
The dream of Muslim revolutionaries is to generate influence in the West and then take over. They want to flip the world into a Muslim oriented society. The fulfilment of that dream necessitates a shift away from the US and especially away from Israel.
That explains the burgeoning business of organized pro-Hamas rallies on campus. What began on US campuses has taken hold in Europe. And there are no better recruits for a new revolutionary cause than restless – often disenfranchised, college and university students.
While Iran has not yet realized how successful they have been in swaying support their way, we realize it. Now the hard work is ours.
Israel and the US must find much more effective ways to change the tide and bring Western and Israeli contributions to the forefront of every student and every citizen, not just in the US but also in Europe.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-881670
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Never again, except for Palestinians: The moral realignment
December 29, 2025
By Ziyad Motala
Western leaders readily rediscover moral language when horror arrives on their own shoreline. After the murderous attack at Bondi Beach, Australia’s political class, rightly, denounced terrorism and mourned the dead. A nation gathered. Candles were lit. The grammar of moral clarity briefly returned to public life.
That clarity evaporates the moment the victims are Palestinian.
On any given week, despite the so-called ceasefire, Gaza and the West Bank produce images so grave that they should end political careers and place their perpetrators behind bars. Hospitals are starved of fuel. Children are killed in places the world once called “safe.” Settlers drive civilians from their homes. Unlawful attacks and the use of starvation as a method of warfare, long recognised as grave violations of international law, continue with numbing regularity.
Yet much of the Western political and media establishment responds not with scrutiny, but with ritual. The ritual has a name: antisemitism and the Holocaust.
They now seek to criminalise criticism of Israel itself, deploying antisemitism not as a shield against hatred but as a weapon against accountability. No honest person diminishes antisemitism or the singular barbarity of the Nazi project. The Holocaust must not be weaponised as a rhetorical prop. It is a moral abyss that demands remembrance, education, and vigilance. Precisely because it is so grave, its instrumentalization is so corrosive. In too many Western capitals, the Holocaust has been converted into an exemption card, a standing absolution for a state’s present conduct, even when that conduct is documented, litigated, and condemned by the most authoritative and mainstream human rights institutions in the world.
The argument runs as follows: because Jews suffered the ultimate crime, the Jewish state cannot plausibly commit atrocity. This reverence is a moral non sequitur. It converts memory into immunity. It also debases the lesson Western leaders claim to honour. “Never again” was never meant to mean never again, except when a favourite ally does it.
The American right’s unexpected revolt
A second development now complicates this familiar script. In the United States, a noticeable segment of right-wing commentary has shifted from reflexive Zionist piety to open scepticism, even contempt, for Israel’s war in Gaza and for Washington’s habit of underwriting it. This is not the progressive left speaking. It is the populist right, the “America First” faction, increasingly hostile to foreign entanglements and suspicious of permanent alliances that appear immune from scrutiny.
Tucker Carlson has become the most visible emblem of this shift, openly challenging the premise that Israel is a strategic asset rather than a strategic liability, and in doing so igniting a civil war within conservative institutions. Carlson has gone further, criticising Israeli human rights violations in Gaza and questioning why the United States continues to finance them.
The critique is not merely geopolitical. It is domestic and distributive. Why, critics ask, is Congress capable of limitless urgency for foreign military financing, including the underwriting of actions that violate basic human rights norms, yet paralysed by the everyday emergencies of American life?
Marjorie Taylor Greene, hardly a humane standard-bearer, has voiced this argument in its crudest and most disruptive form. She has tied foreign military aid to the neglect of soaring health insurance costs at home, explicitly juxtaposing Israel funding with America’s affordability crisis. More strikingly, she has described the assault on Gaza as genocide and condemned Israeli bombing campaigns that have struck Christian churches. Whatever one thinks of Greene, she is giving voice to a sentiment that is no longer fringe: the belief that an “Israel-first” posture has become a litmus test in Washington, even as grave Israeli human rights violations are financed by the United States while Americans drown in premiums, rent, and debt.
This is the new right-wing syllogism. If the alliance is truly “strategic,” it should make Americans safer and more prosperous. If it does neither and costs them dearly, then it resembles not strategy but habit, ideology, and political capture by the Zionist lobby.
When repellent voices say the quiet part aloud
There is, of course, a darker tributary feeding this moment. Some criticism comes from repugnant anti-Semites and outright neo-Nazis, including Nick Fuentes, who deserves no amplification. Their purpose is not justice for Palestinians. It is hate.
Still, even this filth is revealing, not because it is morally serious, but because it exposes a contradiction the establishment has tried to suppress. The West has spent decades insisting that ethnic supremacy is inherently suspect, until it is rebranded as “security” and aligned with Washington’s donor class. The more Israel presents itself as an explicitly ethnonational state, the harder it becomes to sustain the old liberal fiction that it is merely “like any other democracy.” When that fiction collapses, bad actors rush in to exploit the wreckage.
The correct response is neither to silence all criticism by smearing it as antisemitism, nor to indulge anti-Semites because they share a conclusion. The correct response is to insist on a clean moral line. Antisemitism is a poison. Palestinian life is not expendable. An ethno-fascist state is fundamentally anti-democratic and must be named as such.
Public opinion has moved. Elites have not
Now consider the numbers. Pew Research Centre’s spring 2025 survey across twenty-four countries records overwhelmingly unfavourable views of Israel throughout much of the West. In the United Kingdom, sixty-one per cent report an unfavourable view. France registers sixty-three per cent. Germany sixty-four. Canada sixty. Australia seventy-four. The United States fifty-three. In several European countries, the figures climb higher still: the Netherlands at seventy-eight per cent, Spain and Sweden at seventy-five, Greece at seventy-two.
These figures tell a story that political elites persistently refuse to hear. The so-called “special relationship” is increasingly special only to those who professionally benefit from it. Large majorities in mainstream democracies view the Zionist project with moral revulsion and reject the attempt to smear that judgment as antisemitic.
This is the defining disconnect of our moment. Political classes and major media institutions continue to speak as if Israel’s narrative is the default moral setting. The public, confronted daily with Gaza’s devastation and Palestinian suffering, has reached a different conclusion. What follows from this.
Three conclusions suggest themselves
First, for the majority of citizens in democratic societies, the Holocaust and antisemitism can no longer function as a trump card to excuse Israel’s violations of international norms. The understanding of the Holocaust must return to its true purpose. It is a warning against dehumanisation, collective punishment, and the bureaucratisation of cruelty. If remembrance is to mean anything, it must discipline power, not launder it.
Second, Western political elites are wagering that the old formula still works. Condemn terrorism when it strikes “us,” relativize atrocity when it strikes “them.” The Bondi Beach attack, like other attacks in the West, was properly condemned. The public is now telling its governments that moral reflexes cannot be reserved for Western victims alone. To reserve them so is grotesque racialised moral hierarchy, plain and indefensible.
Third, the emerging right-wing revolt in the United States should alarm the pro-Israel establishment, though not for the reasons it loudly proclaims. This is not merely a public relations problem. Support for the colonial Zionist project has become politically unsustainable across ideological lines. When both left and right increasingly view the alliance as immoral, expensive, and strategically incoherent, the political centre eventually loses its monopoly on the narrative.
The tragedy is that this reckoning has come only after Gaza was reduced to ruin. Politics often follows the bodies. If Western leaders wish to salvage even a residue of credibility, their publics are instructing them to stop debasing the moral capital of the Holocaust to excuse present injustice and to apply, at last, the lesson that memory demands. The value of human life is not contingent on race, religion, or passport.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251229-never-again-except-for-palestinians-the-moral-realignment/
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Germany: Imprisoned ‘Palestine Action’ activists face harassment
December 29, 2025
By Leon Wystrychowski
For years, Palestine activists in Germany have looked to Britain with a sense of astonishment. The state that promised Palestine to Zionist settler colonialism in the 1917 Balfour Declaration is scarcely less pro-Israel than the Federal Republic of Germany, with its so-called Staatsräson (‘reason of state‘) that proclaims unconditional solidarity with Israel – albeit without ever having been codified into law. And yet, solidarity in Britain appears – at least from this vantage point – to be more vibrant, broader, and above all more effective.
This perception is partly shaped by the mass demonstrations that repeatedly brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of London between October 2023 and October 2025. In Germany, by contrast – despite its many large cities but lack of true megacities – numerous decentralized actions have taken place every week since the start of the Gaza genocide. However, truly large demonstrations breaking the 50,000 or even 100,000 mark did not occur until last summer.
A model: ‘Palestine Action’
For many, this positive view of the British Palestine solidarity movement has also been decisively shaped by the group Palestine Action (PA), which succeeded in combining ‘direct action with media work and political struggle, including legal battles in court. Quite a few activists in Germany felt – and continue to feel – that the time had come to strike directly at the infrastructure of the genocide industry here as well.
That moment arrived only this fall. On September 8, five activists entered a factory belonging to the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems in the southern German city of Ulm. They filmed themselves, unmasked, damaging equipment and holding documents up to the camera. They then allowed themselves to be arrested without resistance.
‘Terrorists ‘there, ‘criminals ‘here
While in Britain thousands have taken to the streets since PA was designated a ‘terrorist organisation this summer – despite the risk of long prison sentences – the situation surrounding the so-called ‘Ulm Five‘ has so far remained strikingly quiet. The reasons are obvious: the group had no years-long history of actions through which to establish itself; the Palestine solidarity movement in Germany remains highly fragmented; even many activists only marginally noticed the action. Finally, the repression faced by the ‘Ulm Five’ – at least so far – has not reached the same extreme levels seen in Britain.
Unlike their British counterparts, the German authorities don’t accuse the activists of belonging to a ‘terrorist organisation a charge made possible by Section 129a of the Criminal Code, introduced in 1976. Instead, they are accused of forming a ‘criminal organisation ‘under Section 129, which carries a potential sentence of up to five years in prison. This alleged offense would be added to the charges of property damage already leveled against them.
Section 129, originally intended to combat organized crime, is increasingly being deployed against political groups. Most recently, it has been used against young climate activists and militant anti-fascists. In practice, this amounts to a kind of ‘light ‘version of a terrorist designation – while simultaneously denying the political nature of the accused and treating them as ordinary criminals.
Harassment and struggle behind bars
The treatment of the imprisoned activists is similarly harsh and legally questionable, according to a report by seven lawyers representing the five. As in Britain, they have been denied release on bail. The lawyers also describe harassment immediately following the arrests: the activists were forced to undress and wait in their cells wearing only underwear – women without brassieres included. For 30 hours they received almost no food, and in one case medically prescribed medication was withheld for 20 hours. Interrogations were conducted in the absence of legal counsel.
The harassment has continued. Several prisoners are reportedly held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. One individual was denied access to their lawyer for two weeks; in another case, contact with family was blocked for an entire month. Meetings with attorneys remain severely restricted, and family visits are in some cases limited to one hour per month. All communication is fully monitored, and letters are arbitrarily withheld.
While eight PA activists in Britain have been on hunger strike since early November to protest their conditions of detention – and are now said to be in life-threatening condition – the imprisoned ‘Ulm Five’ have not yet resorted to this drastic measure. But neither in Britain nor in Germany would they be the first political prisoners to turn their bodies into weapons against repression. And as the history of the Irish liberation struggle and West Germany’s urban guerrilla movements makes clear, those in power – there as here – have shown little hesitation in allowing prisoners to die.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251229-germany-imprisoned-palestine-action-activists-face-harassment/
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URL:https://newageislam.com/middle-east-press/somaliland-africa-ethiopia-kenya-europe-iran-palestinians-/d/138233
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