Middle East Press On: Palestine Question, Genocide, Zionism: New Age Islam's Selection, 29 October 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
29 October 2025
Gaza’s Children Deserve Education, Not Mere Survival
The World Confronts The Genocide Washington Is Trying To Bury
The Hague Group: Global South States Mobilise To End Genocide In Gaza
The UN At 80 And The Future Of The ‘Palestine Question’
Israel’s Next Election Can Answer Its Desperate Cry For Help And Healing
How Israel-First Jewish Americans Plan To Re-Monopolize The Narratives On Palestine
The Post-Gaza Rebalancing In The Middle East: Emerging Fault Lines In A Multipolar Region
The Palestinian Authority: Existence And Erasure For Israel’s Benefit
Jews From The Middle East Know Mamdani Is A Threat To Israel
All Eyes On Zionism: When Something Inseparable From Judaism Becomes A Slur
Is Israel’s Unity With The Diaspora A One-Way Street?
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Gaza’s Children Deserve Education, Not Mere Survival
Hani Hazaimeh
October 28, 2025
As the dust begins to settle over the ruins of Gaza, the world faces a moral reckoning. It is no longer enough to deliver sacks of flour, medical supplies or tents to the survivors. The children of Gaza — hundreds of thousands of them — need something far more enduring than relief aid. They need education. They need the promise of a future that stretches beyond hunger, fear and rubble. For too long, Gaza’s children have been denied not only the right to live but also the right to learn — and in that deprivation lies the greatest long-term danger of all.
Today, nearly 1 million children in Gaza are out of school. Entire neighborhoods that once housed classrooms are now piles of concrete dust. The UN estimates that more than 80 percent of Gaza’s schools have been damaged or destroyed and many of those that remain are being used as shelters for displaced families. The blackboards are gone, the teachers scattered or dead and the pupils — many of them orphaned — have lost both their classrooms and their childhoods.
In humanitarian crises, the immediate priorities — food, water, medicine — are obvious. But in Gaza, where war has stretched from months into years, survival must not be mistaken for living. Education is not a luxury that can wait until peace returns; it is the foundation on which peace depends. Without it, Gaza’s next generation will grow up ill-equipped to rebuild, govern or heal their society. A child who cannot read or write cannot rebuild a nation.
The numbers are harrowing. UNICEF warns that young Gazans risk becoming a “lost generation,” with tens of thousands of children showing signs of trauma, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Many can no longer concentrate, sleep or communicate normally. A 10-year-old who has seen their siblings buried or their home bombed cannot return to learning without psychological support. This means rebuilding schools must go hand in hand with rebuilding minds. Education in Gaza must be both academic and therapeutic — a bridge between survival and hope.
Every war leaves physical destruction but the war on Gaza has inflicted a deeper kind of devastation: an assault on the human spirit. When a child loses years of schooling, they lose more than knowledge — they lose structure, dreams and the sense that the future can be different. That loss is what perpetuates cycles of despair and violence.
And yet, amid the destruction, the courage of Gaza’s teachers and students remains extraordinary. Many educators have turned shelters into makeshift classrooms, using scraps of paper and burned textbooks. Children gather in courtyards to recite lessons by memory. Parents — despite hunger and grief — push their children to learn anything, to cling to a routine that affirms life. These acts of resilience are not trivial; they are quiet forms of resistance against the machinery of dehumanization.
The international community must see education in Gaza as an emergency priority, not an afterthought to be addressed once the reconstruction begins. Learning cannot wait for perfect conditions — it must begin even amid the ruins. Mobile classrooms, temporary learning centers, digital education programs and community teaching hubs can all help restore a sense of normalcy.
But rebuilding Gaza’s education system will require more than materials. It will demand a new global commitment to justice and accountability. The destruction of schools is not collateral damage — it is a war crime. International law protects educational institutions precisely because they represent the future of nations. When schools are bombed, the crime extends beyond the immediate victims; it strikes at the heart of an entire generation’s right to progress. Those responsible must face accountability before international courts, while reconstruction funding must include specific allocations for restoring and expanding educational infrastructure.
Moreover, the education Gaza’s children receive must be forward-looking. The world’s support should therefore extend beyond cement and steel — it must include training teachers, funding psychosocial programs and providing technology that connects Gaza’s youth with the wider world.
The argument that “it’s too soon” to talk about education while basic needs remain unmet is short-sighted. Food nourishes the body for a day; education nourishes the soul for a lifetime. Healthcare preserves life but education gives that life meaning. For Gaza’s children, whose lives have been defined by displacement and deprivation, schooling is the only way to reclaim agency.
The responsibility lies not only with governments and aid agencies but also with ordinary citizens around the world. Universities, nongovernmental organizations and education networks can establish partnerships with Gaza’s teachers, provide remote learning materials and support trauma counseling programs. Digital education platforms can help children continue their studies even amid displacement. Gaza’s youth are tech-savvy, multilingual and hungry to learn — they need tools, not pity.
And for the Arab world, in particular, supporting Gaza’s education system is not charity — it is a duty. The region’s future stability depends on whether its children, especially in places like Gaza, grow up believing they have something to live for. Scholarships, exchange programs and cross-border teacher training can all serve as lifelines to reintegrate Gaza into the broader Arab and global educational fabric.
In the end, rebuilding Gaza’s schools is about far more than repairing buildings. It is about restoring identity, dignity and hope. It is about telling a child who has lost everything that the world still believes in their future.
When the bombs fell, classrooms collapsed — but the right to learn did not. If the world truly means to stand with Gaza, it must stand with its children’s right to education. Food will keep them alive. Medicine will keep them healthy. But only education will make them free.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2620550
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The World Confronts the Genocide Washington is Trying to Bury
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies
October 28, 2025
On October 4, 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel’s international standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,” Trump said. “Now I am gonna get all that support back.”
Under Trump’s plan, a supposed ceasefire took effect on October 10. But Israel only withdrew from less than half of the Gaza Strip, and killed at least 93 people in the next two weeks, after killing at least that many per day for the previous two years. Israel has only allowed 15 percent of the humanitarian aid called for in the plan to enter Gaza, and has kept the critical Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza closed. The daily life-and-death struggle to find food, water and shelter carries on unabated for two million people in Gaza.
While the reduction in the daily scale of Israel’s mass murder is obviously welcome, this is not a real ceasefire. Like previous Israeli ceasefires in Gaza, as in Lebanon, this is a one-sided ceasefire that Israel violates at will, on a daily basis, with no accountability.
This is only the first part of Trump’s plan for Gaza, and there is still no agreement on the other parts, such as the disarmament of Hamas, who provide the only government and police force in Gaza. They now have the added job of protecting their people from Israel-backed criminal gangs and death squads, some with links to ISIS, who prey on them from the Israeli-occupied areas, stealing aid supplies, assassinating local leaders and terrorizing the population.
Hamas is obviously not going to disarm under these conditions, and previously said it would only surrender its weapons once Palestine has an internationally recognized government with its own armed forces. On the other side, Israel has not agreed to other parts of Trump’s plan, such as its withdrawal from the rest of Gaza, or to any plan for the future of Palestine.
In the United States, where corrupt politicians and corporate media take US and Israeli lies at face value or even repeat them as statements of fact, some may believe that Trump’s plan has resolved the crisis in Palestine. The rest of the world is not so naive or easy to manipulate, but many other governments are also beholden to oligarchies that profit from trade, investment and arms deals with Israel, even as the public in those same countries reels in shock at Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians and US-backed impunity for its crimes.
Trump’s Gaza plan, like much of his foreign policy, cynically exploits the greed and fear of political leaders and their oligarch patrons. Admitting that Israel has “lost a lot of support in the world,” he offers a shortcut back to “business as usual” for governments eager to protect—and even expand—profitable ties, despite Israel’s ongoing atrocities and open contempt for international law.
In his first term, Trump brokered the “Abraham Accords,” normalization deals between Israel and Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan that included mutual recognition and expanded trade. He now has his eye on the big prize: Saudi Arabia.
But Arab-Israeli relations have long been contested. In the 1949 UN General Assembly vote on Israel’s admission, all Arab and Muslim countries, except Turkiye (which abstained), voted against recognizing the state of Israel. Thirty-two mostly Arab and Muslim countries, including some of its closest neighbors, still either do not recognize Israel or have no diplomatic relations with it.
Despite decades of hostility, Trump persuaded Israel and some of these countries to support his Gaza plan with the promise of future benefits from normalization and trade. But there is still a gaping chasm between Israel and these Arab and Muslim countries over Palestine. They say they will not recognize Israel unless Israel recognizes Palestine, with full sovereignty over East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
But the foundational basis of Netanyahu’s Likud Party is its plan for a Greater Israel, to be formed by annexing all of occupied Palestine “between the sea and the Jordan.” On October 22, during Vice President Vance’s visit to Israel, the Knesset voted in favor of annexing the West Bank.
Trump unveiled his Gaza plan at the very end of the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting in New York, where many world leaders spoke out for much stronger international action against Israel. The New York Declaration, which 142 countries voted for, was the result of a conference in July, led by France and Saudi Arabia, that promised “concrete, timebound, coordinated action” to enforce a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal and must be ended “as quickly as possible.”
Trump’s initiative temporarily upstaged and marginalized calls for further action at the UN. But, on October 22, the ICJ issued a new ruling strongly condemning Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, and ruling that, as an occupying power, Israel must ensure the “basic needs” of the population are met, including food, water, fuel, shelter and medicine. The Court also ruled that Israel must permit UN staff working for UNRWA to do their work in Gaza, after Israel provided no evidence to the Court for its claim that UN staff were members of Hamas or took part in its October 2023 incursion into Israel.
In the wake of the ICJ decision, Norway said it would introduce a resolution in the UN General Assembly to enforce the Court’s directives, including ensuring the full amount of aid reaches Gaza. Humanitarian advocates hope that this resolution will be introduced in an Emergency Special Session under the “Uniting For Peace” option, enabling the UN to deliver the “concrete, timebound, coordinated action” it promised in July—potentially including sanctions, such as an arms embargo and targeted trade and investment measures that should take effect within days, if Israel continues to block aid.
Trump plainly intended his plan to close the book on Israel’s crimes—and on US complicity—and to inaugurate a new phase: normalization of the occupation and Israel’s diplomatic rehabilitation. Yet, even before the ICJ condemned Israel’s starvation policy, people worldwide were already mobilizing, urging their governments not to let Israel off the hook.
In Europe, momentum for accountability continues to build. As the British Parliament debates a new pensions law, an amendment has been submitted to divest local government pension funds from companies that are complicit in the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. Many local councils in the UK have already passed individual ordinances to do this, but the amendment to the pensions law would force all of them to divest the $16 billion that their pension funds still have invested in those firms.
In September, the European Union (EU) announced plans to suspend its 25-year-old free trade agreement with Israel and impose sanctions on extremist Israeli cabinet members and settler leaders. On October 20, it “paused” these steps in response to Trump’s plan, but EU leaders immediately faced strong push-back on that decision.
Over 400 former senior diplomats and officials signed a statement that the EU must take robust action “against spoilers and extremists” who would jeopardize “the establishment of a future Palestinian state,” noting that Trump’s plan only vaguely addressed that goal. International lawyers advised EU leaders that EU policy must comply with the 2024 ICJ ruling that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must be ended as quickly as possible.
Individual European countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain, already ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine, and Ireland is currently debating a similar trade ban in its Occupied Territories Bill, which should get a final vote by January. The original bill would only affect trade in goods, but activists want trade in services included in the ban, while powerful business interests, including US tech firms with European headquarters in Ireland, are lobbying to kill the bill altogether. It should help that Ireland’s newly elected president, Catherine Connolly, is a strong supporter of Palestine.
In stark contrast to much of the world, which is still grappling with the contradictions of Trump’s Gaza plan and Israel’s ongoing unlawful occupation, US officials are already trying to turn the page—moving to fortify and expand Washington’s military alliance with Israel.
This alliance is renewed and updated every ten years in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two governments, which would normally be negotiated in 2026, before the previous MOU expires in 2028.
There is already a bipartisan bill in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (S.554) to initiate this process, titled “United States-Israel Defense Partnership Act of 2025,” authorizing joint projects with Israel under categories like “countering unmanned systems … anti-tunnel cooperation … (and) war reserves stockpile authority.”
Conspicuously absent from this policy review is any debate over US complicity in Gaza’s destruction—a debate that should come first and set the terms for any serious re-examination of the US–Israel alliance.
On October 20, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights, released a new report titled “Gaza Genocide: a Collective Crime.” Here is the summary of her report:
“The ongoing genocide in Gaza is a collective crime, sustained by the complicity of influential Third States that have enabled longstanding systemic violations of international law by Israel. Framed by colonial narratives that dehumanize the Palestinians, this live-streamed atrocity has been facilitated through Third States’ direct support, material aid, diplomatic protection and, in some cases, active participation. It has exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest. The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal. Renewal is only possible if complicity is confronted, responsibilities are met and justice is upheld.”
We urge all members of the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees to read the UN report and to invite UN experts to testify at hearings on US complicity and participation in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Palestine.
To move ahead with consideration of a new MOU or any arms transfers with Israel without first conducting such a serious and objective policy review would only serve to perpetuate the endless wars that all our leaders, including President Trump, keep telling us they want to end.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-world-confronts-the-genocide-washington-is-trying-to-bury/
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The Hague Group: Global South States Mobilise To End Genocide In Gaza
by Rayan Freschi
October 28, 2025
On 26 September in New York, amid the high-stakes atmosphere of the 80th United Nations General Assembly, the Hague Group — consisting of Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa — convened a high-level inter-ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the UN, bringing together more than thirty governments in an effort to “halt the Gaza genocide”. Co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa, the meeting sought to consolidate coordinated legal, economic and diplomatic measures against Israel.
Crucially, the timing overlapped with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly. While Netanyahu spoke inside the UN hall amid walkouts, protest disruptions and heightened tensions, delegations simultaneously gathered in a separate venue to forge a collective counter-strategy. As Netanyahu defended Israel’s genocidal campaign, a global coalition was already mobilising to pre-empt his narrative with a call for accountability.
The Hague Group released a co-chairs’ statement insisting that the one-year deadline set by UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/ES-10/24 (which demanded Israel comply with an International Court of Justice advisory opinion to cease its occupation) had passed unheeded, and that Israel had escalated its actions. The group sought to move beyond rhetorical condemnation and to institutionalise concerted pressure. An event was organised immediately after the meeting at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. NGOs from around the world, including CAGE International, were invited to globalise the direct measures proposed against Israel.
Two weeks later, the Palestinian resistance, supported by international pressure from Global South states and civil societies around the globe, forced a ceasefire. This outcome highlighted the effectiveness of bold political initiatives.
Ending Zionism, Ending Genocide
The fact that the Hague Group meeting was convened by states from the Global South underscores a concrete political intent to unshackle international law from Western inertia and to demand direct action. It demonstrates that countries outside traditional Western centres are asserting agency in addressing mass atrocity. As co-chair of the group, Colombian President Gustavo Petro stressed repeatedly that “discussion won’t stop the genocide”, denounced Israel’s campaign as genocidal and called for US troops to defy orders.
Petro went further, escalating his rhetoric by calling for the establishment of a volunteer force hosted by Colombia to assist the Palestinians in their resistance. His visa was revoked by the Trump administration hours later, a self-evident punitive measure designed to silence any concrete call to action. This dynamic illustrates that the Hague meeting was not merely symbolic, but evidence of an insurgent bloc seeking to end the complicity and impunity that have sustained the Gaza campaign through tangible actions.
To understand the stakes, one must recognise that the erasure of the Palestinian people is the natural outcome of Zionism as a colonial project. Conceived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Zionism envisaged an exclusively Jewish homeland in Palestine at the expense of the indigenous Arab population. The displacement, disenfranchisement and structural suppression of Palestinians were baked into the project’s logic. The Israeli mainstream subscribes uncritically to this ideology, and its current consent to genocide is no surprise.
In this spirit, Professor Noura Erakat, during the Hague event, insisted on the necessity of a historic “dezionification” process as the only path toward genuine Palestinian freedom. This echoed her past call for complete “denazification”, arguing that Zionists are now committing the “Holocaust” of our era. Stopping the genocide is only possible through the complete decolonisation of Palestine. Only such a process can extricate Palestinians from a system designed to contain, emasculate and ultimately dissolve their right to self-determination. In rigorous terms: one cannot liberalise a colonial regime from within its constructs; one must dismantle the colonial frame entirely.
Unprecedented Traction
The significance of the New York meeting lies not only in what was said, but in what it reflects: the Palestinian movement is achieving unprecedented global traction, and that momentum is now translating into collective action. Where once sympathy might have been confined to statements and declarations, we now see mass protests, direct action, corporate boycotts and attempts to blockade Israeli or pro-Zionist supply chains. The movement has shifted from moral outcry to strategic disruption.
Worldwide rallies have multiplied in cities across Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. In many places, protesters are targeting companies complicit in Israel’s military infrastructure — defence firms, arms manufacturers, and dual-use technology providers — as part of a campaign of economic isolation. The success and rising prominence of Palestine Action, along with the strong pushback against its criminalisation, are among the clearest indicators of the decisive shift in public opinion towards supporting the complete liberation of Palestine.
What we witnessed in New York was more than a meeting or a moment of symbolism. The political analysis of this shift is clear: the Global South is reasserting moral agency; Zionism is recognised as the political motive for genocide; and the Palestinian movement is transitioning from moral appeal to strategic force.
The current ceasefire is in itself a positive yet fragile outcome of these concerted efforts and was a key demand of the Hague Group since July. The initial relief it engendered has been replaced with renewed anger as the Zionist state — true to its nature — disregarded the agreement, continued to target civilians, slashed humanitarian aid, and refused to acknowledge the consequences of its brutality, even on its own citizens. Its constant and documented transgressions — including the breach of another ceasefire in January this year — are a reminder, and should serve as a renewed incentive.
Zionists will not back down until Palestinians are completely erased. The Hague Group meeting was a necessary and successful first step. Many more must follow.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251028-the-hague-group-global-south-states-mobilise-to-end-genocide-in-gaza/
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The UN At 80 And The Future Of The ‘Palestine Question’
Osama Al-Sharif
October 28, 2025
The UN turned 80 years old this year. This is an incredible milestone for the only body that brings together all states in an attempt, as per its charter, to preserve world peace and resolve conflicts.
But with 193 members, it is also an organization that is suffering from an identity and financial crisis. US President Donald Trump, whose country is the most significant economic contributor to the UN, is withholding most of the key financing it provides and demanding that the international body limits its mandate to the preservation of world peace and security, while staying away from what he views as controversial issues such as climate change, human rights and humanitarian efforts.
Washington’s closest allies have a very different view; they would like the UN to become more involved in conflict resolution and efforts to address global challenges such as climate change and human rights.
Under Trump, the US has withdrawn from key UN agencies such as UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the Human Rights Council, and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, either on political grounds related to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, or based on ideological, right-wing populist dogmas that have polarized the world since Trump’s rise to power.
Some countries see a substantial shift in global geopolitics, especially in the aftermath of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the protectionist trade crusade Trump is waging, which lends merit to their case for expanding the number of permanent seats on the Security Council. Those in favor include India, Brazil and Japan, among others.
But while the UN has been successful in preserving global peace through its peacekeeping role, and in resolving conflicts in some parts of the world, its record remains blemished, at best, when we consider the oldest conflict on its roster, which has been there since the organization was founded in 1945: the Palestine question, a question that remains unresolved by the colonial powers that emerged in the region after the First World War.
The UN inherited the Arab-Israeli conflict, with the occupation of Palestine at its core, the moment it opened for business 80 years ago. Israel’s war on Gaza over the past two years reminded the world that this ongoing saga, often bloody and ruthless, remains one of the most complex and challenging conflicts facing the world.
It is not for a lack of trying that the UN has failed to resolve this challenge. The annals of the Security Council are rife with resolutions — more than 130 of them — that address the issue or parts of it, from the controversial partition plan of 1947 to the most recent, Resolution 2735 in June 2024, which called for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
It goes without saying that the will of the Security Council to push for the implementation of these resolutions was foiled, mainly as a result of geopolitical tensions, international rivalries, and the inclination of the US to support Israel at any cost.
During the Cold War and the deep polarizations in the region from the 1950s through to the end of the 1980s, the Palestine question fell victim to the prevailing global political conditions of the time. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in 1991, the US emerged as the sole superpower and soon claimed responsibility for efforts to resolve the Palestine-Israel conflict on its own, outside of the UN.
From the early 1990s until Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza this month, the US owned and managed what was called the Middle East peace process. During this time there was a slow, but intentional, departure from resolutions 242 and 338, the bedrock UN resolutions related to the future of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
The UN had been kept away from any direct involvement in efforts to resolve the conflict. And in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel by Hamas, the US and Israel decided to end the role of UNRWA, the UN’s humanitarian agency for Palestinian refugees, by falsely claiming it had colluded with Hamas in the attacks. Both Washington and Tel Aviv wanted to remove one central pillar of the conflict: the fate of Palestinian refugees and their right of return.
Washington’s monopoly over the peace process has been disastrous for the Palestinians — and the region as a whole. The US was never an honest broker. In the past decade-and-a-half, it leaned openly and brazenly toward the Israeli position which, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had shifted to the far right of Israeli politics.
That position denies Palestinians their rights to self-determination and to an independent state. It offers them no hope and, more importantly, it confirms Israel as an apartheid state ruling over 5 million Palestinians.
Israel’s war on Gaza — recognized as a genocide by many nations, while international courts consider the matter — is now bringing the Palestine question back to the UN. The sheer indifference shown by Israel to its war crimes in Gaza has become a game-changer, destroying the country’s long-held narrative and turning it into an international pariah.
In September, a Saudi-French initiative introduced at the UN General Assembly resulted in historic global support for the two-state solution, and unprecedented official recognition of Palestinian statehood by 157 member nations, as of today. Israel and the US stood alone, abandoned even by their closest Western allies.
Trump’s Gaza peace plan is a small step on a long path that should restore responsibility for the Palestine question to the UN, where a just and lasting solution can be attained.
The plan, which Israel is trying to derail, calls for an “International Stabilization Force” to be deployed in Gaza to help preserve the peace and ensure the terms of the ceasefire agreement are observed. Arab and Western allies of the US are pressuring Washington to approach the UN and seek a legal mandate for the deployment of such a force.
This is a political nightmare for Israel because it would be a significant step toward the “internationalization” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the reinstatement of UN resolutions pertaining to it.
It is ironic, as well, that it is Trump, the best American president for Israel in decades, who can now steer this conflict toward a more balanced path. He has already warned that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank under any circumstances. That position is in alignment with UN resolutions and the will of the international community.
While the world is divided over much-needed reforms to the UN, there is now a consensus on the Palestine question. The US cannot resolve this conflict on its own; its track record over the past 30 years speaks for itself.
It is high time the Palestinians were able to exercise their right to self-determination, have their own state and be free of occupation. The only venue where this can be achieved is the UN.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2620557
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Israel’s Next Election Can Answer Its Desperate Cry For Help And Healing
Yossi Mekelberg
October 28, 2025
Israel has entered an election year, and when Israelis next go to the polls to elect their representatives in the Knesset they must be aware that this will be one of the most, if not the most, crucial general elections in terms of deciding the future of their country, possibly since its inception.
Now that we can cautiously hope that the ghastly war in Gaza is gradually winding down, it is a time of reckoning. It is time for Israeli society to decide who can best represent them in the rebuilding of a country which, after 17 years during most of which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in power, is deeply polarized at home and has been left with very few friends and allies abroad.
Election law dictates that a general election must take place no later than Oct. 27 next year but the Knesset can set an earlier date. It is hard to contemplate the prospect that even such a brazen, cynical and autocracy-prone prime minister as Netanyahu, aided by his bunch of antidemocratic and war-mongering political allies, would attempt to postpone the election — or even cancel it.
A government asks voters to reelect it based on its record. An opposition stands on its potential to do better. But the next election in Israel will not be the normal bout of political wrangling between opponents over merely making a few adjustments to the course of the country.
Instead, it will be about steering this troubled nation in a whole new direction. It will be a battle for the very soul of Israel and its long-term survival. Voters will have to decide whether to once again leave their fate in the hands of a divisive leader and a government that polarized the country, assaulted its democratic character, failed to protect its people on what proved to be the single most deadly day in the nation’s history, and then responded to that day by saddling the country with charges of genocide, and its prime minister with an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.
Or do they instead want to begin what is sure to be a long, excruciating and arduous, but desperately needed, process of internal healing, and also a process of reconciliation with the rest of the world — first and foremost, their Palestinian neighbors.
The Trump administration seems determined to ensure that the war in Gaza is over. To this end, the US president continues to dispatch his “heavies” to Jerusalem to ensure Netanyahu complies with the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
In quick succession, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have visited Israel, while the two chief US mediators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, are spending more time in Jerusalem than in Washington.
Now that all the living hostages are back home and the bodies of the deceased ones are slowly being returned so that their loved ones can say their last goodbyes, some sense of normality is gradually being restored.
This also means that most of the country’s army reservists will soon be demobilized. They will be returning to a very different society from the one they left and with which they have had only sporadic engagement over the past two years, having served in the military for up to 300 days in each of those years.
This will be the time for them to tell the stories of what they were sent to do by the most extreme and incompetent government in their country’s history, and what the implications of this are for themselves, for their families, and for the nation.
Over the past three years, many of the built-in contradictions in Israeli society, stemming from its aspiration to be both Jewish and democratic, came to a head as never before. It can be argued that an outright clash between these two ambitions was always inevitable, and this might well be the case. However, it does not mean that the two aspirations cannot be reconciled.
It is true that the present government is the worst imaginable combination of ultranationalism, religious fundamentalism and strong autocratic tendencies, in addition to being sectarian and corrupt. Moreover, except for an 18-month spell, Netanyahu has been prime minister for the past 17 years and has dragged the country down into a morass of divisive populism, strategic shortsightedness, normalized corruption, and readiness to compromise national interests for the benefit of his own political survival, while more recently doing his best to sabotage his corruption trial.
But the forthcoming general election must also be as much about what the opposition, with the support of civil society and individuals, can offer as a genuine alternative, not an attempt to compete with Netanyahu on his own rotten patch.
It goes without saying that the first step in the country’s healing process must be the formation of a genuinely independent inquiry into the disastrous failures of Oct. 7, 2023, not one appointed by the government. Such an inquiry must look at every aspect of the deadly fiasco of that day and the two years that followed. It should go deeper than examining the military or even the political failure, which will mean a discussion about the very essence of what Israel is and what it would like to be.
It must provide answers to those communities on the border with Gaza that found themselves left alone to fend off the Hamas assault; to the families of those who were celebrating life at the Nova music festival and were massacred; and to the young soldiers who had not been properly equipped to face such dangers. All of them feel betrayed by their government and the heads of the security forces.
The inquiry must address decades of failure to achieve a fair and just resolution to relations with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution, and the entrenchment of the occupation through the blockade of Gaza and the construction and expansion of settlements.
It must also be about the irrational obsession with preventing Palestinian self-determination, which led to the folly of funneling money to Israel’s archenemy in Gaza. It is also time to ask how the “world’s most moral army” became an army of revenge that set about killing tens of thousands of innocent people, and inflicting hunger and destitution on hundreds of thousands more.
It must address all of this, as well as the reason why the demand from most of the country that the government prioritize the release of the hostages fell on deaf ears, costing the lives of more than 40 people.
Those who return from the battlefield, some of them with long-term injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder, will also ask why this government continues to cave in to the ultraorthodox community and its demands that its members be exempt from military service. This places a heavier burden on serving soldiers and their families, at the same time vast sums of money are appropriated and doled out to a sector of society that contributes almost nothing to their country’s security or economy.
And finally, the road to healing must also include an honest debate about how to end the conflict with the Palestinians peacefully, and genuinely provide the Palestinian citizens of Israel with a voice in the governing of their country.
For all this to happen, voters in Israel will need to elect an antidote to everything that the Netanyahu government represents.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2620554
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How Israel-First Jewish Americans Plan to Re-Monopolize the Narratives on Palestine
By Jamal Kanj
October 28, 2025
The nature of the United States’ relationship with Israel defies logic and reason. It is a parasitic one-sided benefit, entangled in the tentacles of organized influence, manipulation, financial power, and media control. Israel contributes next to nothing of tangible benefit to America’s security, strategic value, or economy, yet Washington continues to design its foreign policy and moral compass around Israel. It is so absurd, it borders on sorcery.
A relationship driven by an Israel-first agenda that extends beyond the halls of Congress into the very architecture of the disinformation system. It reshapes how Americans think and how they view the world: through Congress, through newsrooms, through algorithms, and through paid “influencers,” one at a time. To that end, the American media and entertainment industries serve as essential tools for molding the nation’s political landscape and American culture. Oracle’s CEO, Safra Catz, captured this intent candidly in a 2015 email to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, writing, “We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.”
A decade later, that vision is maturing. Israel-first Oracle founder Larry Ellison is now poised to acquire major show business studios and news outlets. His son, David Ellison, has become the head of Paramount and CBS through the Skydance–Paramount merger. This is while Ellison senior is in talks to purchase Warner Bros., its film studios, and CNN.
As a major media owner and influential figure in political campaigns, Ellison has a well-documented history of coordinating with Israeli government officials. Evidence of this surfaced recently in hacked emails published by Drop Site News and Responsible Statecraft. In 2015, in an email exchange, Israel’s then–ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, asked Ellison if Senator Marco Rubio had “passed his scrutiny.” Ellison assured him that Rubio “will be a great friend for Israel,” later donating $5 million for Rubio’s presidential primary campaign. Rubio did not pass Ellison’s scrutiny as an American patriot; he passed it for Israel.
Under the ownership of Israel-first billionaires, American media outlets have become revolving doors for “embedded” Zionist shaping public perception. Case in point is Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press, and the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss is described as an “ardent supporter of Israel” who has used her platform to whitewash the Israeli genocide and starvation campaign in Gaza. She is now bringing those talking points from a fringe outlet straight into one of the nation’s major news organizations.
Ellison and other Israel-first donors like Miriam Adelson, who gave Trump’s campaign $100 million, have one single focus: who is best to represent Israel’s interests in Washington. Even Trump, who brands himself as an “America First” President, admits as much, telling the Israeli Knesset that his major donor, Adelson, loves Israel more than America.
In addition to traditional media, social media has become the latest arena for influence by Israel-first power brokers. TikTok stands out as the first major platform not owned or controlled by Israel-first investors. For this reason, TikTok was possibly the only major social media outlet that escaped the Israeli-managed algorithm. It is no coincidence that Israeli officials, along with Israel-first Jewish American politicians and media pundits, have amplified claims of “data security risks” to justify efforts to either shut TikTok down or take control of its messaging.
Leading the push to acquire TikTok are none other than the Israel-first Ellison and Murdoch families. The same Israel-first billionaires whose influence extends across media, technology, and politics. The TikTok debate has little to do with data security and everything to do with Israeli narrative security. The concern was never Chinese access to American data, but rather the inability of the Israel-first actors to manipulate TikTok’s algorithm and content flow. Ironically, even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu applauded the planned takeover of TikTok, calling it “the most important purchase going on right now.” “Weapons change over time,” he told a group of Israeli “digital warriors.” “The most important ones are on social media.”
The consequences reach far beyond the newsroom. A Responsible Statecraft investigation revealed that Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been quietly paying American social media influencers up to $7,000 per post to push pro-Israel content without any disclosure. In other words, US information space is being systematically infiltrated by undisclosed foreign propaganda.
What we are witnessing is not just the manufacturing of consent, but a corporate and money colonization of truth. With Ellison’s empire controlling these platforms, Weiss’s like controlling the newsroom, and Israel’s ministries funding the feeds, the American mind is a victim of engineered illusion. This is not a mere media bias. It is institutionalized propaganda disguised as “mainstream journalism.”
Voltaire once wrote, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” For decades, Israel and its enablers have convinced Americans of the absurd: that religion grants Europeans ancestral rights to the Middle East, a nuclear-armed occupier is a victim, and genocide is “self-defense.”
America’s real test of democracy is not on the battlefields, but in confronting AIPAC and Israel-first influence over our executive and legislative branches, the curated news, and, most dangerously, the creeping effort to stifle academic freedom in our universities, sealing the colonization of the American mind.
The intersection of political influence and media ownership raises concerns not only about the extent of its reach but in how seamlessly it blends into the cultural and political mainstream, making foreign interests appear as domestic consensus. The merging of political power and Israel-first money has reduced the US media to an instrument of ideological conformity. Now, with Israel-first Fox News, combined with Ellison’s expanding media empire monopolizing the narrative, America will finally have its version of the Israel-Pravda.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/how-israel-first-jewish-americans-plan-to-re-monopolize-the-narratives-on-palestine/
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The Post-Gaza Rebalancing in the Middle East: Emerging Fault Lines in a Multipolar Region
By Dr. Dan Steinbock
October 28, 2025
On October 9, when the Gaza ceasefire took effect, it was regarded as the first phase of a 20-point peace plan drafted by the White House. Neither Israel nor Hamas liked the full plan. But the former was pressured by Trump and the latter by a set of Arab states, particularly Qatar, Egypt, and Turkiye. That is what made the imposed ceasefire unique.
But it is no peace plan. It is a fragile ceasefire scheme that could be developed into something more lasting over time, or easily undermined, like the previous ceasefire efforts. Unsurprisingly, the plan is silent on Israel’s genocidal atrocities.
What this brittle ceasefire plan heralds is the rebalancing by major Arab states in the broader Middle East as they seek a gradual shift from decades of destabilization to economic development.
From Ceasefire to Peace?
In the first phase of the peace plan, the two sides agreed to a set of parameters – including ceasefire, a military drawdown, a hostage and prisoner release, troop deployment, and, most importantly, aid delivery increases.
But the devil is in the implementation details. With Israeli violations, the White House was compelled to send special envoy, Steve Witkoff, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, basically to force the Netanyahu cabinet to stick to the plan. Worse, infrastructure rehabilitation has not really started and inadequate food aid has left almost 2 million Palestinians in a dangerous limbo, on the eve of winter.
What sold the Trump plan to Arab states was the stipulation that no Palestinians will be militarily forced to leave Gaza and that Israel will agree not to occupy or annex the Gaza Strip. Yet, just days later, the Israeli parliament advanced a bill precisely to annex the West Bank.
To reach the aspirational goals, the plan offers little guidance, except for the formation of an International Stabilization Force; technocratic transitional governance by a Palestinian committee, under an international board, chaired by Trump, and led by the controversial former British Prime Minister Tony Blair; demilitarization by an independent monitor group and economic reform by a panel of experts.
The plan does not address the funding for reconstruction, which is estimated to cost more than $50 billion. That is significantly less than the $68 billion Israel paid for its Gaza war in 2023-24 alone, with weapons and financing mainly by the US. Nonetheless, only a month ago, even a ceasefire seemed like a distant dream – until Prime Minister Netanyahu’s gross miscalculation.
How Qatar Attacks Sped Up Recalibrations
On September 9, Israeli missiles slammed into an office in Qatar where Palestinian group Hamas’ top negotiators were discussing President Trump’s latest proposal for a ceasefire. Targeted assassinations have been an Israeli norm for decades. But this attack occurred on the soil of a major US security partner, with no prior warning to Qatar.
Concerned that their peace efforts would go off the rails, Trump and his special envoy Witkoff decided to try to turn the crisis to his advantage by initiating the talks that led to the ceasefire.
What the two did not see coming was the Saudi-Pakistani defense pact just two weeks later, between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif. According to the pact, “any aggression against either country shall be considered an aggression against both.”
Afterward, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif suggested that the pact included a nuclear umbrella. Subsequently, he retracted his comment.
Downplaying the pact and its long-term ramifications is in the US’ interest. Yet, other sources say Pakistan has extended a nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia.
Eclipse of Israel’s Nuclear Primacy
Ironically, the nuclear stakes were first raised by the White House in June, with the US attack against three major nuclear sites in Iran. But the U.S.-Israel path to nuclear risks in the region was paved already, before the 1967 Six-Day War. That is when Prime Minister Levi Eshkol secretly ordered the nuclear reactor scientists in Dimona to assemble two crude nuclear devices, in case “Arab forces overwhelmed Israeli defenses.”
In the early days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, PM Golda Meir’s cabinet had thirteen 20-kiloton atomic bombs assembled with greater destructive potential than the atom bomb in Hiroshima. In 1981, Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor, Osirak. The attack gave rise to the Begin nuclear doctrine, which allows no “hostile” regional state to possess nuclear military capability.
Today, the conventional estimate is that Israel’s nuclear stockpile comprises 90 nuclear warheads, which makes the tiny country the world’s 9th largest nuclear power (with 170 nuclear warheads, Pakistan is the 7th). Yet, some analysts suggest that Israel could have as many as 200, up to 400 nuclear weapons.
The Begin doctrine relies on Israel’s nuclear monopoly as a regional deterrent. But with the Saudi-Pakistan pact, that doctrine is in limbo.
Who is Driving Regional Instability?
Since 1945, the US hegemony in the Middle East has relied on oil buys, weapons sales, aid dependency and regime change. After his first term, President Trump has built on the Abraham Accords (2020-1), a series of bilateral agreements to normalize relations among Israel and Arab states, led by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. With massive oil buys from and arms sales to Riyadh, the goal is to have Saudi Arabia join the Accords.
In the US-Israeli view, Western interests in the region have been threatened by “Iran proxies” in Gaza (Hamas), Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthis), and Iraq (various groups). Following the Gaza wars, they believe the Axis has been severely weakened.
But here is the problem: this view effectively ignores a century of colonial interventions in the Middle East, Israel’s ethnic cleansing and forced population transfers (1948-49, 1967, 2023-25), US sanctions (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen), US efforts at regime change (e.g., Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Gaza), and US post-9/11 wars in the region (Iran, Iraq, Yemen).
The regional states attribute most of the destabilization in the region to Israel and the United States, due to the huge adverse spillovers to adjacent Arab states.
Rebalancing in the Changing Middle East
Saudi Arabia has concerns, both with US disengagement from the region, which would undermine the Gulf countries’ current security arrangements, and with excessive US engagement in the region, which is seen to foster Israel’s increasing military boldness and growing hegemony in the region.
As Riyadh is fostering its strategic autonomy and diversifying its partnerships, China has replaced Washington as the Kingdom’s main trade partner. In parallel, major regional Arab states, including Egypt, Turkiye, and Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain, and Iran, build on the China-led Belt and Road Initiative.
Selling oil in multiple currencies, Saudi Arabia is one of China’s largest oil suppliers. It has been invited to join the BRICS, which features Egypt, Iran, and the UAE as its members. In fact, the Gulf-China trade and investment ties are now growing well beyond the energy industries.
For decades, US administrations fostered divides between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But, in March 2023, these two countries resumed relations after a China-brokered deal. The détente has proved resilient after October 7, shielding the Kingdom from Iranian and Houthi attacks; most – if not all – of the time.
In August 2024, Beijing established a Second Silk Road in the region. In July 2025, China and Egypt expanded their bilateral cooperation across various economic sectors.
What Saudi Arabia Wants
Until the Israeli and US strikes on Iranian facilities, Saudi Arabia was said to benefit from mounting US pressure on Iran and Israel’s weakening of Iran’s proxy network. However, a regional order dictated by Israel and enabled by the US would leave inadequate room for a solid Saudi position.
The Saudis recognize their reliance on the US for security, but they are leveraging ties with China and building increasingly on their national and regional Gulf interests. The Saudi-Pakistani defense pact reflects this quest for greater security independence, with Washington reportedly made aware of the agreement only after it was signed.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s main priority is the huge modernization initiative Vision 2030. Its future hinges on the Kingdom’s integration in the international economy, safety and security, to attract tourism and foreign investment, driving innovation-led economic transformation.
The massive project requires the kind of peace and stability that Chinese investment fosters in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. But it is also premised on the kind of regional balancing that Washington can no longer reinforce.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-post-gaza-rebalancing-in-the-middle-east-emerging-fault-lines-in-a-multipolar-region/
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The Palestinian Authority: Existence And Erasure For Israel’s Benefit
by Ramona Wadi
October 28, 2025
The Palestinian Authority seems set on maintaining its illegitimate rule. As PA leader Mahmoud Abbas makes plans for a future in which his post is vacated, he named vice-president Hussein al-Sheikh to assume the presidency for an interim period of 90 days, after which elections should be held. Elections have not been held since 2006.
Abbas’s choice of al-Sheikh extends the PA’s current colonial complicity. His name is synonymous with the PA’s security services and collaboration with Israel. A July 2023 article in Foreign Policy opens with accolades for al-Sheikh on account of his being welcomed at Israel’s Defence Ministry, while juxtaposing his earlier resistance activities with the curated image of a “Rolex-sporting, globe-trotting official” that works to prevent the PA’s collapse. None of these adjectives remotely address the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle – many Palestinians suffer economically and their freedom of movement is severely curtailed or obliterated completely.
Looking towards the colonisers and their international accomplices is what renders the PA’s existence relevant. Earlier this month, during a meeting with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, al-Sheikh stated, “We have confirmed out readiness to work with President Trump, Mr Blair and the partners to consolidate the ceasefire, the entry of aid, the release of hostages and prisoners, and then start with the recovery and reconstruction.”
Such endorsements from the PA, of course, are not uncommon. It must be stated, however, that maintaining the PA’s existence also contributes to the erasure of the Palestinian people.
Al-Sheikh and the PA endorsed Blair’s Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA) Institutional Structure, which eliminates Palestinian participation in their political process. Indeed, external actors seems to be the key phrase for Blair’s plan, and the PA is mentioned vaguely, with no time frame, as the entity which would eventually oversee “the eventual unifying of all the Palestinian territory.” What territory is the GITA document talking about? For the international community and the PA, such a sweeping statement makes for good publicity. For the Palestinian people, who are living the reality of colonial dispossession, colonial violence and genocide, territory is becoming an illusion. Blair is proposing an extension of the illusory government that maintains the PA’s existence; Al-Sheikh and the PA will not refuse a lifeline, however temporary, that secures them from immediate collapse.
But the focus should be the Palestinian people. No matter how much the mind conjures up the PA as being synonymous with Ramallah, as Western diplomacy has publicised, Gaza has been affected by the PA’s sanctions to force Hamas into relinquishing power in the past, while the PA’s security forces beat Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who dared to protest against the policies. Israel’s genocide in Gaza was based upon the same premise. But in both instances; the latter at a much greater price, Palestinians were rendered more vulnerable not only to colonial violence but to foreign diplomatic interference.
The end result is always territorial gain for Israel. While the PA continues to appease with purported reform – changes that entrench the current power dynamics under a different guise – Palestinians face erasure, in terms of territory, memory and people. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251028-the-palestinian-authority-existence-and-erasure-for-israels-benefit/
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Jews From The Middle East Know Mamdani Is A Threat To Israel
By Linda Argalgi Sadacka
October 29, 2025
Dov, I respect that you had a positive meeting with NYC Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Personal interactions can absolutely feel reassuring.
However, those of us who come from the Arab and Muslim world have learned something very different from our history. We grew up immersed in these cultures. We understand the code-switching, the dual messaging, and the gap that often exists between what is said quietly to individuals and what is shouted proudly in public.
Our communities saw this movie before. In Baghdad, in Cairo, in Tripoli. Jewish neighbors were embraced as “brothers” right up until the moment the street turned against them. The warning signs were always visible in public rhetoric, public affiliations, and public mobilization long before the disaster arrived at the doorstep.
Middle Eastern Jews see old antisemitic patterns in Mamdani
We cannot ignore:
• Public alignment with movements that define Israel as a colonial crime• Repeated participation in rallies where demonization of Jews is normalized• Ideological coalitions that consistently place hostility to Zionism at the center• Advocacy that questions the Jewish right to safety and sovereignty
A friendly conversation does not invalidate these patterns. Patterns tell the truth.
This is not about demonizing Muslims. Many protected us. Many are still our family and dear friends. It is about recognizing that the environments a leader chooses and the crowds they empower reveal far more than a cordial meeting ever will.
Our European brothers and sisters often come from a worldview where dialogue and diplomacy change outcomes. We pray they are right. Our perspective simply insists that trust must be earned by action, not by a pleasant exchange.
We are not suspicious of ideology. We are cautious by memory.
When Jews who survived the Middle East say, “Pay attention,” it is not hysteria.
It is experienced individuals trying to prevent history from repeating itself.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-871988
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All Eyes On Zionism: When Something Inseparable From Judaism Becomes A Slur
By Helen Joyce
October 29, 2025
Sometimes complex issues are confusingly packaged to obscure simple truths. Two such truths struck me this past Shabbat in Jerusalem, when I visited my daughter’s family and attended the morning service at the Ramban Synagogue.
The first truth may sound controversial, but it is not. Whether they acknowledge it or not, all Jews, whatever nationality is stamped on their passports, are, by definition, Zionists. Not all Jews agree with the policies of the Israeli government; many Israelis themselves protest those same policies. A small minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews may even deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel as the beginning of the “flowering of our redemption.”
Yet no one who identifies as Jewish can deny that the Land of Israel has been – and remains – the focus of Jewish yearning and prayer throughout two millennia of dispersion, discrimination, and destruction.
The centrality of the Land of Israel is enshrined in the Bible, and the longing for Zion pulses through almost every prayer, no matter the language or denomination. Zion and Judaism are inseparable.
Zionism during the war
In many ways, this war has brought out the best in Jews everywhere. A vocal minority has protested actions in Gaza or distanced themselves from government policy, but they cannot erase the Zionism that lies at the heart of Jewish identity. Most Jews outside Israel have found ways to contribute: offering aid, raising funds, and standing up for Israel in increasingly hostile environments.
Here in Israel, I know of no one who hasn’t, in some way, put their shoulder to the national wheel. My own congregation in Netanya, made up mainly of aging Anglo retirees, has done its bit: volunteering on farms, raising funds, knitting balaclavas and fingerless mittens for our soldiers in winter, and tying tzitzit in summer.
In my daughter’s larger Jerusalem community, members have supported the families of serving soldiers – cooking meals, delivering comfort packages, and ensuring their children are “adopted” within the synagogue while their fathers risk everything on the front lines.
As we have watched this spirit of unity, we have all been unsettled by that other, darker constant that shadows Jewish history: antisemitism. That shape-shifting virus has always existed, reappearing in new guises throughout the centuries.
Zionism and Judaism
With the current ceasefire in place, many soldiers have thankfully returned home. At the Ramban service, the rabbi thanked them, and the community, for their devotion and support. Two young fathers, newly returned from the front, stood to speak and thank the community for its embrace of them and their families. It was deeply moving. Even more so was stepping into the sunlit courtyard afterward to find tables laden with kiddush delicacies, each one adorned with a framed photograph of a soldier: some with comrades, some reunited with loved ones, and one, to everyone’s amusement, with his dog.
That moment brought something home to me with great clarity. We must learn to distinguish among these three words: Judaism, Zionism, and antisemitism.
Judaism and Zionism are inseparable. Love of Zion, whether expressed through faith or culture, is the beating heart of Jewish identity.
It is legitimate to protest Israeli government policies; democracy demands nothing less. Yet to vilify the very word Zionism, the word our enemies have chosen as the epitome of their hatred, is undeniably anti-Semitic.
We must sharpen our discourse, here and abroad, and insist on this distinction. Criticize policies if you wish, but when “Zionist” becomes a slur, make no mistake: That is antisemitism, plain and simple.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-871921
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