Middle East Press on: Palestinian, Jewish, Syria, Kurds, Zionism: New Age Islam's Selection, 2 January 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
2 January 2025
How Media Bias Fuels The Facade Of Palestinian Nationhood And Ignores Accountability
The Jewish Community Should Re-Evaluate Its Priorities And Reconnect With Its Mission
Should Israel Support Independence For Syria's Kurds?
Can Bennett Solve Israel's Dilemma?
How Zionism's Obsession With 'Total Victory' Will Destroy Israel
The Year Israel Became A Pariah State
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How Media Bias Fuels The Facade Of Palestinian Nationhood And Ignores Accountability
By David Christopher Kaufman
January 2, 2025
A quick look at last month’s shortlist for many of 2025’s Academy Award nominations reveals that the facade of Palestinian nationhood has never been stronger.
A handful of pro-Palestinian documentaries are poised to make the final cut for next year’s Oscars – movies such as No Other Land, which focuses on the destruction of a Palestinian village by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, and From Ground Zero, an anthology of 22 “video diaries” from Gaza.
Missing from the list, however, are any contenders from Israel – one of the most robust film-making nations in the world.
Such official nods to Palestinian creativity are not merely limited to cinema. ARTnews recently reported about the return of the Ramallah Art Fair in December. The event’s fourth edition – provocatively titled “Voices of Resilience” – is being mounted at Ramallah’s Zawyeh Art Gallery for the next few weeks.
And like those potential Academy nominations, the fair’s artworks, many visually striking and historically compelling, reference a laundry list of supposed Palestinian injustices – from the Nakba in 1948 and on through Israel’s Gaza military campaign of the past 15 months.
The global media likes nothing more than to imbue all things Palestinian with the imprimatur of legitimacy and propriety. But missing from reports like the one from ARTnews or the ballyhoo accompanying those potential Oscar nominations is any sense of responsibility or, most crucially, accountability on the part of Palestinians themselves.
Palestine and the Palestinians, it seems, are concepts that demand a world’s worth of respect and authority – yet little of the duties or obligations expected of most other nations.
From Gaza and the West Bank – UNRWA to Al Jazeera – it’s all impunity and entitlement, rather than duty and respect for international law, which is why the greatest gift the world could give the Palestinians for 2025 is the gift of accountability.
The Palestinians have never done accountability particularly well. But who can blame them, given that it’s so rarely been asked of them? From the Oslo Accords to Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian nation-building has mostly been about Israel facilitating change, as the other side stands by passively (and often violently).
Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel, there have been calls for everything from an immediate ceasefire to the recognition of Palestinian statehood by nations who should know better, such as Norway, Ireland, and Spain. In every instance, Israel is demanded to withdraw and concede, yet little is asked of the Palestinians in return.
No end to Hamas hostilities, no proper hostage deal, no political leadership or corruption-free institutions to do the hard work of actual governing is ever expected.
Media's anti-Israel bias
FOR MANY of the world’s leading media outlets, there isn’t even the need for an honest accounting of the war dead. Hamas says 45,000 have been killed – who cares how many are militants or if the numbers are massaged with calculated impunity? Hamas says yet another Israeli attack has killed journalists – never mind if they’re also freelancing as Islamist terrorists.
Meanwhile, despite being the elected leader of a Western democracy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been branded a genocidaire – unable to enter Poland to honor the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation owing to an international arrest warrant by a bogus global court.
And Israeli cultural and civic groups are being banned from global gatherings. Most recently, the delegation to the World Bowls Tour was forbidden from participating in the event in Great Britain next month after an outcry from the pro-Palestinian Action Network, which branded Israel an “apartheid and genocidal state.” (The World Bowls Tour has since reversed its decision.)
And yet much of Hamas’s leadership still travels freely across the Middle East, while pro-Palestinian films continue to be hyped out in Hollywood.
As Hamas refuses to confirm its hostage count, both Israel and the world are forced to negotiate with literal terrorists so that terrorized civilians might go free. Gleeful murderers must be set loose so that Israel may bring their innocent back home.
Nothing is demanded of those murderers to go free, no conditions imposed to ensure they, like Yahya Sinwar, don’t re-offend in an even bloodier and more spectacular fashion. Lots of impunity – little accountability.
For many, a Palestinian state remains the ultimate goal – possibly as a byproduct of Israel’s eventual normalization with Saudi Arabia. Both are still possible.
But even if statehood were achieved, how would Palestinians govern if they never learned the most basic building block of sovereignty – accountability? There can be no sovereignty without accountability to its citizens, neighbors, regional allies, and, ultimately, the global community. Once again, accountability has never been something Palestinians have done particularly well.
As 2025 arrives, both increased military activity in Gaza and yet another potential hostage deal are crowding the headlines. Israel, as always, is being pressured to compromise while the Palestinians continue to play hardball.
This may be business as usual – but it’s a bad business. It’s bad for Israel, which lacks a serious negotiation partner; for the Gaza civilians forced by their craven leadership to jockey for martyrdom; and for the Palestinian nation that so many pretend already exists.
Many hope it never will, but for those who believe that it must, the era of carte blanche diplomacy must end in Gaza, Doha, and Ramallah. And in its place, the gift that no one has dared to demand – the gift of Palestinian accountability.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-835740
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The Jewish Community Should Re-Evaluate Its Priorities And Reconnect With Its Mission
By Daniel M Rosen
January 2, 2025
The last 15 months have been a tragedy for the individual and a triumph for the collective. History is rife with examples of this dichotomy. The tragedy of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing aftermath across the world have created an earthquake that has realigned worldwide Jewry in the most profound of ways.
Israeli Jewry and the worldwide Diaspora have gone through a type of catharsis and have regained a sense of purpose that was dangerously close to being lost.
With regard to American Jewry, they had convinced themselves that they could blend into society and that their Jewishness was merely incidental.
The last 15 months have retaught many that this was a thinly veiled lie. It revealed the truth that we are a persecuted minority who must always be on guard and vigilant to protect our rights and our freedoms.
For thousands of years, Christian and Muslim societies had no problem distinguishing “us” from “them.” In the US, perhaps because of the multicultural society we live in or because of a few generations of material wealth that many have experienced, many people developed a false sense of their “place” in society.
This perhaps provided the space for this suspension of disbelief.
In a recent episode of the “Call Me Back” podcast, hosted by Dan Senor, he interviewed Yardena Schwartz about her new book entitled Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Hebron.
The book describes how the Jewish community in Palestine and, for that matter, throughout the world, was not in favor of Zionism for various reasons.
In fact, when the Hagana warned the Jews of Hebron of what was about to befall them, they rejected the Hagana’s help. Only after the massacre did it become clear what needed to happen.
After the massacre, the Jews of Palestine fully embraced the necessity of the Hagana being a much more organized fighting force in order to defend the Jewish people.
It was this tragedy that allowed a new understanding and a new growth. Senor expressed that the situation today is not too dissimilar.
Just as the tragic events of the 1929 Hebron massacre galvanized Jews in Palestine to strengthen their defences and solidify the foundation of Zionism, today’s challenges are sparking a similar resolve among Jews worldwide.
Adversity, while deeply painful, has a way of clarifying purpose.
For American Jews, and particularly for younger generations, this period of challenge has been a defining moment. On college campuses and in communities across the nation, Jewish students and families are confronting a harsh reality: they cannot afford to take their security or identity for granted.
Within this struggle lies an opportunity for growth. The notion that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” may be an oversimplification, but the principle holds true. Like muscles that grow stronger through strain and recovery, communities, too, can emerge reinvigorated by their challenges.
History is the best teacher and has shown that resilience is born from hardship. The pogroms of 1929 were a painful catalyst for the reorganization of the Hagana into a much more formidable entity that would eventually become the IDF.
Without that tragedy, who knows if the Jewish people in Palestine would have developed the strength and organization necessary to defend themselves?
This article is intended to take a view of the events from 10,000 feet away.
This is a moment of catharsis – a chance for the Jewish community to reevaluate its priorities and reconnect with its mission. It is a time to instill in younger generations a sense of purpose, resilience, and pride in their heritage.
As leaders and parents, the responsibility falls on us to frame these challenges as opportunities for growth and to teach our children that life is rarely black and white. It is equally important to send a message to our enemies that we are strong and that we are not going anywhere.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-835731
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Should Israel Support Independence For Syria's Kurds?
By Mem Husedin
January 2, 2025
Although it must be rare, if someone unfamiliar with the Kurds were to search the Internet for them, two pieces of information would immediately catch the eye: One, that the Kurds are one of the largest peoples without a country, and two, the Kurdish proverb: “No friends but mountains.” Would it be wrong to say that a people without a country will have no friends among nations?
The Jerusalem Post published an opinion article by Atar Porat on December 22, 2024, with the headline: “Israel should not gamble on the Kurds: Our strategy should be based in reality.”
In it, Porat proposes that Israel approach the situation in Syria as a great power game, albeit a limited one between Israel and Turkey, with Syria as the playing field. In his proposal, Turkey and Israel would agree on zones of influence and/or control in Syria in exchange for security for Israel. The assumption is that the Kurds’s sentiments and reactions do not matter in such an arrangement.
I disagree with Porat.
I am one year short of hitting the 50 mark in my life. I was born and raised in Iskenderun, Turkey. It is a city we consider part of Kurdistan, whose original Kurdish residents were forcefully deported to today’s Armenia by Ottoman rulers in the 17th century.
This type of deportation should not be unfamiliar to Jews. Porat is correct that there is a shared sentiment between the two peoples. We have similar histories, even though the Jewish people have made great strides in the past 70 or so years, despite many challenges.
As Kurds, we are still in the infancy of becoming a nation, even though we are rapidly building a national narrative. The autonomy we established in northern Iraq is not fully safe from Turkish or Persian threats. As Porat noted, our fragile autonomy is subject to annihilation by the Turks unless we secure backing from the United States or support from Israel. Porat’s view is that “it is none of Israel’s business.” But isn’t it?
Just as I would advise Kurdish decision-makers – were there such a national Kurdish agency – Porat appeals to Israeli decision-makers, arguing that it would be safer to agree with the Turks on Syria than to “gamble on the Kurds.”
Let us develop Porat’s proposal in a simulation. In this scenario, Israel annexes parts of southern Syria and agrees with the Turks on separate zones of influence. In exchange, Turkey takes control of the rest of Syria – including Kurdish areas, which, based on Porat’s perspective, are dispensable.
What would the Kurds do, though?
ON A SENTIMENTAL level, Kurds would feel deeply betrayed by the Israeli state, especially after the last two months of reading about irrevocable support from Jewish people and statesmen, both in Israel and elsewhere. We Kurds felt embraced by the Jewish people, and those like me have turned to our own people, urging them to embrace Israel in return.
Since my childhood, I have heard from prominent Kurdish intellectuals that the Jewish people would be friends to the Kurds, but this sentiment has never felt as real as it does today. We know Israel supplied drone capabilities to the Turkish army in the 1990s, and we understand why. Every nation must prioritize its survival, and for Israel, survival comes first.
The same applies to the Kurds. Kurds would undoubtedly feel betrayed, but they would also explore alternatives. On one side are the Turks, and on the other would be Russia and Iran – not by choice, as we are acutely aware of how dispensable we are to both.
What does Porat think Russia and Iran would do in such a scenario? And what does he believe Kurdish factions would prioritize in their decision-making?
Israel has to make its own decisions. However, I would caution against trusting the Turks. Turkish diplomacy is notorious for betrayals and for shifting alliances between great powers, leveraging their control over Black Sea passage.
One must also recognize the irredentist policies of Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which mark a reversal of the Kemalist regime. If Turkey were to bring the Kurds of Iraq and Syria under its hegemony, along with Damascus, why assume it would stop there?
ISRAEL’S SAFER bet lies in investing in a new map for the Middle East – one that began with the establishment of the State of Israel.
The existential threat to Israel has never been the Shi’ites, who are a minority in the region. It has always been the Sunni, and the Turks aspire to champion their cause. What cause? What could unite the Sunni under Turkish leadership? Israel, of course.
I am familiar with the Zionist movement’s efforts in pre-World War I Istanbul to secure land for the Jewish people. The Young Turks, under Talat Pasha, manipulated the Zionists to gain their support, ensuring their attention was diverted while Turks massacred Armenians, and gave the Zionists nothing in exchange.
It is always a dirty game with the Turks. What did the World Zionist Organization gain from supporting the Young Turks? Porat may not know, but Erdogan certainly does.
Erdogan and the establishment behind him understand the Ottoman playbook well, using it to play sides against each other. But unlike the Kemalists, Erdogan’s regime harbors deep resentment toward Jews and Israel.
Good luck to Israel if it follows Porat’s proposal and chooses “not to gamble on the Kurds.”
However, I know that Kurds are not a gamble for Israel. I believe the map of our region is finally being redrawn after more than 2,500 years. In that distant past, it was not the Persians who helped the Jews in Babylon but the Medes under the Persians – a people mistakenly and unfairly associated with the Fars today.
The Medes were Kurds. Again, it was the Kurds who stood with the Jews when the Second Temple was attacked; in this case, the Kurds of Adiabene.
Today, the roles are reversed. The descendants of the Medes and Adiabene are in need. These are mystical narratives, I am aware, but isn’t this what it is all about?
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-835727
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Can Bennett Solve Israel's Dilemma?
By Tova Herzl
January 2, 2025
Polls indicate that a party headed by former prime minister Naftali Bennett would change Israel’s parliamentary landscape and that he is considered more suitable as a prime minister than the incumbent.
Bennett, whose first position in politics was as Netanyahu’s chief of staff (2006-2008), subsequently ran successfully in elections, headed several ministries, and was briefly prime minister of the short-lived “government of change” (2021-2022).
Bennett’s record includes successful exists in hi-tech. Like Netanyahu, he served in a commando unit and he too, is fluent in English. Unlike Netanyahu, he is not on trial for corruption, drama does not surround his family, and world leaders do not comment on his problematic relationship with truth. So far, so good.
We could ignore Bennett’s questionable judgment in bringing Idit Silman and Amichai Chikli into politics. Anonymous until he included them in his Knesset list, they brought down his government, joined the Likud party, and become cabinet ministers (responsible respectively for environment and Diaspora affairs).
Let us assume that he learned his lesson and that in future he will not choose partners who seem to have been selected by a computer program.
I have one major question for Bennett. Does he have a realistic solution to the dilemma that Israel has been facing for 57 years – three-quarters of its existence? In other words, does he have a viable plan for the future of the territories that Israel has controlled since the 1967 Six Day War?
The many descriptions of this land, “held,” “liberated,” “occupied,” “West Bank,” “Judea and Samaria” reflect our multi-layered attitude toward them: historical, political, religious, legal, and more. This points to the situation’s complexity.
Clearly, there are no magic solutions. But one can expect a realistic outlook from whomever presumes to lead the country.
Bennett's views towards Palestinians
IT APPEARS that Bennett, while religiously observant and an avowed right-winger, does not believe that the biblical Book of Joshua is a practical guide on how to run a country in the 21st century. Unlike some in Israel’s current ruling coalition, the Messiah and redemption are not part of his political terminology.
He appears to understand that within the international community, it is impossible for each player to act on private beliefs and that therefore there must be agreed-upon rules. And he certainly realizes that the Palestinian question cannot be ignored.
In his 2012 Israeli Stability Initiative – I have found no update thereof – Bennett proposes annexing Area C, which contains most of the Israeli settlements in the territories.
Palestinians living there would be offered Israeli citizenship in order to avoid accusations of apartheid. To his credit, Bennett understands the severe implications of branding Israel thus.
Alas, this comprehension does not extend to Areas A and B, for which he proposes autonomy under an Israeli security umbrella.
This implies that millions of local Arabs without civil rights would be at the mercy of the rulers, even as he encourages Israel to expand civilian settlements (in international law, they are different from a security presence) in a manner designed to prevent the possibility of separation.
In other words, Israel would control the territories, the locals would accept the situation, and the international community would agree. This scenario appears unlikely, and it is pointless to react to this assessment along the lines of: “But look at what Russia is doing in the Ukraine!” A small dependent country, like Israel, cannot impose its will on the world and cannot survive without it. Moreover, Russia and its leaders are under sanctions.
Elections are scheduled for 2026; early elections do not appear on the horizon, and politics in Israel are volatile. Currently, Bennett – eloquent, dynamic, successful – is marked as a likely successor to our longest-serving prime minister.
That is why the following question is directed at him – but all those on the Right who would like to lead Israel are invited to answer: “Do you have a plan regarding the territories that would be acceptable to anyone but Israel’s Right and its sprinkling of supporters around the world? If not, how do you plan to handle the boycotts and isolation we would face?”
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-835726
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How Zionism's Obsession With 'Total Victory' Will Destroy Israel
1 January 2025
As the success or failure of the hostage deal between Israel and Hamas hangs in the balance, the internal tensions within Zionism have reached unprecedented levels.
There has never been a previous instance where the issue of Israeli hostages became such a political matter within Israeli society.
This time, not only is there disagreement among the political leadership, with right-wing leaders openly expressing willingness to sacrifice the hostages for military gains, but the families of the hostages themselves are not met with consensus.
On several occasions, they have even been attacked by passersby. While political and social divisions have long existed within the Zionist project, this time the crisis cuts deeper, forcing a redefinition of Zionism itself.
It reflects a profound societal and ideological crisis and raises questions about the future governance of Israel, especially in light of the far right's continued judicial overhaul efforts.
This existential crisis comes at a time when Israel claims to be actively reshaping regional realities.
Its actions include pushing territorial boundaries into Lebanon despite agreements with Hezbollah for withdrawal, encroaching on southern Syria amid the Assad government's collapse, and systematically deepening its foothold in Gaza.
Hostages sacrificed
These steps indicate a broader strategy of expansion. Meanwhile, the plight of the Israeli hostages has become secondary, as the narrative of their sacrifice for military gains transforms into an accepted reality.
The idea of sacrificing hostages for military advantage is not new in Zionist ideology. It dates back to the infamous "Hannibal directive", which allowed for the killing of captured soldiers rather than negotiating for their release.
Today, this ethos manifests in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where the "civilian hostages" - whom the state has failed to protect - are being consistently sacrificed, despite negotiations for their release.
This shift stems from the messianic right’s redefinition of Israel's cultural codes, adopting a Spartan ethos where society is conditioned for perpetual warfare.
The narrative now glorifies death, sacrifice and military conquests over civilian life.
While Israeli consensus broadly supports the Gaza genocide, the public has yet to fully grasp the long-term costs of taking this path.
The surrender to vengeance-driven policies not only fractures Israeli society but also risks devastating international consequences, as the world reacts to Israel’s unrestrained actions against civilian populations.
The former defence minister and military chief of staff, Moshe "Bogie" Ya’alon, a staunch right-wing figure, has been one of the few voices warning of this trajectory.
He describes the current situation as a “third destruction of the Temple” moment for Israel.
While admitting Israel’s ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, he also highlights how these policies erode Israel’s legitimacy and turn it into a pariah state.
Global disgust
Fifteen months into this war, Israeli society is beginning to understand the price it must pay.
Beyond the risks to hostages' lives, Israelis now face a deteriorating standard of living, sweeping economic austerity measures in the 2025 budget, international boycotts and global disgust with Israeli society.
The euphoria once associated with territorial conquest has faded. Expanding military campaigns now only herald years of additional conflict and mounting costs that strain Israeli life, especially as reports reveal the psychological toll of war on Israeli soldiers, who bring violence back into their homes.
A recent report by the Women's International Zionist Organisation (Wizo) found that there had been a 65 percent rise in domestic violence cases in the first six months of the war.
The gaps between Israel’s leadership and its public are more than political - they reveal fundamental cracks within Zionism itself.
Zionism once promised security, economic prosperity and Jewish unity.
Today, the shift toward messianic right-wing policies has created an unbridgeable divide between what Zionism promises and what it delivers.
The secular Zionist elites that once navigated Israel through regional complexities have been replaced by leaders ill-equipped for such tasks.
The slogan "total victory" exemplifies this divergence.
Historically, Israeli victories were marked by military success followed by peace agreements with Arab nations, such as the Camp David Accords with Egypt or the Abraham Accords.
However, the new definition of victory, rooted in prolonged wars of attrition and regional bullying, undermines political alliances that have sustained Israel’s survival.
Zionist arrogance
The 7 October 2023 failure and the obsession with restoring "deterrence" at all costs have torn Israeli society apart, prompting unprecedented emigration.
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 40,600 Israelis left the country long-term over the first seven months of 2024, a 59 percent increase over the same period a year earlier. Many of these people represent Israel’s economic and intellectual backbone.
As Israeli economist Dan Ben-David warns, the loss of even a small percentage of this demographic could cripple the state.
Figures like Ben-David and Ya’alon represent remnants of the old elite who understood the importance of balance between military campaigns and maintaining quality of life, international legitimacy and strong western ties.
Today, this balance has eroded in an unstable global environment, further aggravated by regional upheavals in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and Donald Trump’s upcoming presidency.
The hostage issue reflects a broader shift within Zionism, exposing its fractures and presenting unprecedented political opportunities for Palestinians.
While Zionist elites once masked their crimes with diplomatic finesse, today’s leadership exudes arrogance and disregard for Israel’s fragile standing.
The question remains: can Palestinians leverage this arrogance to their advantage?
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/zionism-new-obsession-total-victory-destroy-israel
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The Year Israel Became A Pariah State
Osama Al-Sharif
January 01, 2025
There is a famous quote that states: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” This, I believe, best describes 2024 — a year of tumult, political upheavals, unyielding atrocities, apocalyptic devastation and historical legal precedence.
For the Middle East, this was a year where nations were caught in a vicious loop: the images of bloody rampages, imploding buildings, broken families, shell-shocked children, gutted hospitals and grieving parents. There has been no reprieve. Gaza has become one ever-expanding killing field, a gushing wound in the belly of humanity.
In the beginning, numbers meant something. So many children killed, so many women, so many journalists, so many doctors, so many buried under the rubble; numbers that were meant to deliver shock and awe — and shame.
But then, Israel managed to do something no country has been able to pull off before: it normalized genocide.
Politicians and pundits argued among themselves: Is what is happening in Gaza genocide? They squabbled as the world saw the images of emaciated babies, the headless bodies of children, the mass exodus of civilians, the faces of bereaved parents, wailing mothers and stricken fathers holding little white shrouds containing what was left of their sons and daughters.
As it turned out, it all came down to semantics. Killing thousands in Gaza was justified as Israeli “self-defence.” Politicians defended the massacres because “Hamas was using civilians as human shields.” Collateral damage, they said, which is another arbitrary and callous term.
Yes, semantics matter. If it was genocide that Israel was carrying out in Gaza, then the US and the West would have acted differently, right? While nations joined South Africa at the International Court of Justice in arguing that, yes, it is genocide, a US State Department spokesperson disagreed and insisted that “we are not seeing any acts that constitute genocide,” adding that South Africa’s case was “unproductive.”
While the debate over what constitutes genocide went on, Israel was quick to describe a clash between Israeli football hooligans and pro-Palestine groups in Amsterdam as a “pogrom.” The mainstream media and Zionist influencers were quick to adopt the term. No one died in Amsterdam and social media activists soon exposed the truth about the events there: Israeli hooligans provoked the clashes by chanting “death to Palestinians.” The term pogrom refers to the organized massacre of Jewish people in Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So, no genocide in Gaza, but a pogrom in Amsterdam.
The mainstream Western media continued to manipulate the coverage of the war in Gaza, particularly the indiscriminate killing of civilians by Israel. “Dozens killed in a strike at a UN school in Gaza,” read one headline in an influential daily newspaper in America, blaming an unnamed third party.
In Gaza, according to the Western press, people “die,” which is a euphemism for “Palestinians killed by Israel.” The dehumanization of Palestinians has not subsided. The disinformation, the bias, the hatred and the allegations that are never fact-checked or corrected have become the poisoned legacy of the Western press.
On the other side of the world, the elections in the US took an unexpected turn. President Joe Biden, a self-described Zionist and Israel’s best friend, was forced out of the race due to fears over his health. Vice President Kamala Harris was pushed into the fray as the presumptive Democratic nominee. She was to challenge Donald Trump, who led the polls against Biden.
Late in 2023 and in the spring and summer of 2024, students at Ivy League universities became the centre of media coverage and political jockeying by US lawmakers. The students held sit-ins, vigils and marches calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the severing of ties between universities and Israel.
In the ensuing maelstrom, Gaza, Israel and the Palestinian cause became a consequential election issue. University presidents were summoned to Congress to receive a lashing for allowing antisemitism to spread in American universities.
Pro-Palestine protests had already spread across the world in an unprecedented manner. There was what one could call a global awakening. People were protesting their own governments’ pro-Israel policies, citing the contrasts between their policies toward Ukraine and Gaza.
Palestine had become a matter of moral standing. The narrative that Israel had built with precision and deceit over decades began to crumble. Its hasbara lost ground to social media. The deep state and the corporate media were on the defensive.
The culmination of this gaping gulf between the state and the people occurred when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited by defiant US House Speaker Mike Johnson to address a joint session of Congress for the fourth time — a record.
The invite was issued following a bold announcement by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, that he had asked the court to issue warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and his then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in addition to Hamas’ military leader Yahya Sinwar, his second-in-command Mohammed Deif and the movement’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Netanyahu and Gallant were accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Khan’s announcement sent shock waves across the world. For the US, which is not a member of the court, it was a time to demonstrate fealty to Israel and present yet another example of Western double standards. Khan and the court were attacked by US lawmakers, who made direct and explicit threats of sanctions against the judges and their families.
Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington to deliver his speech prompted mass protests that engulfed the Capitol. Many Democratic lawmakers boycotted the event. An animated Netanyahu did what he does best: he lied all the way, even claiming that there were no civilian casualties in Gaza. He received more than 50 standing ovations. That scene epitomized decades of the complex US-Israeli alliance. It underlined a bitter and dark reality: the Palestinians were not only facing Israel, but also Washington’s Zionist cult.
Arab and Muslim voters in America were making their position on the elections known. Earlier, during the primaries, they had shunned Biden in Michigan by voting “uncommitted.” Harris had tried to woo them by showing empathy with the Palestinians in Gaza. But she would not allow any representatives of these Arab and Muslim voters to take the stand at the Democratic National Convention to plead their case.
Trump saw an opportunity to address their grievances. He promised to end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon once he took office. Some believed in him and voted for him, only to be disappointed by his nominations for UN envoy, ambassador to Israel and defense chief — all fanatic Zionists.
Meanwhile, a rare bright spot in a bleak regional canvas was the International Criminal Court’s decision last month to issue warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and Gallant. This historic move rattled Israel and its allies in Washington.
While the two wanted Israeli officials will not surrender themselves voluntarily to The Hague, the fact is that the war crimes stigma has now stuck like an indelible stain on Israel. Israel and the US will fight the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. When the new administration takes over, it may even pull the US out of the UN altogether, triggering global chaos. That could mean the end of the unipolar world as we know it, sowing the seeds of a new multipolar world; and that could be a good thing in the end.
This is no longer about Gaza and the Palestinians. However, they have become the unsuspecting instigators of what could be the ultimate reset of the world order. Where the world will head in 2025 is a matter of speculation, since there are already many parts simultaneously moving in many directions. But what is a fact is that there is no going back to the world of before Oct. 7, 2023.
We are a long way from seeing justice delivered to the victims of Israel’s horrific war. But we are seeing a world where Israel is turning into a pariah state, with its leaders accused of genocide and war crimes. In that, there may be some solace and fractured justice for its victims.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2584970
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