Gaza: “More than a human being can bear”
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
The report by the UN Independent Commission* on Israel’s sexual and reproductive crimes against Palestinians confirms what we already knew: the Zionist state systematically and massively uses sexual violence against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys!
But the report also tells us something else: these sexual and reproductive crimes committed by Israel are an integral part of the Zionist state’s genocidal plan, along with the constant bombardment and murder of tens of thousands of civilians, the systematic destruction of all the infrastructures of their daily lives and the repeated mass displacement of the population of Gaza.
It’s no coincidence, then, that this report refers to the famine organized by Israel affecting the population of Gaza, underlining that “the use of starvation as a method of war, has impacted all aspects of reproduction”. In other words, on all aspects of what constitutes the major – and still unsolved – problem of the Zionist project: the persistence of Palestinian women to give birth to little Palestinians!
So, let’s talk about this programmed, well-organized famine against the Palestinians in Gaza, which is still being implemented, and which completes the Netanyahu government’s genocidal project. A project that resembles the one implemented in the then Soviet Union by Nazi Germany, which exterminated at least 7 million Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian and Jewish Soviet soldiers and civilians, by means of organized famine. And the main reason why the Nazi famine of the time and the Zionist famine of today are so similar is that both served and still serve a common, publicly declared project: the extermination of the indigenous population in order to empty, annex and colonize its territories with their own settlers!
So let’s not forget that, even as we read these lines, a whole people, not so far from Crete, is slowly dying of hunger and thirst, deprived of medicines, doctors and hospitals, while being the target of live-fire exercises by the Israeli army aimed at refugee tents and the interminable ruins of Gaza, which have nothing to envy to those of Dresden or Berlin in 1945. Let’s not forget…
Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023
GENEVA – Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, according to a new report issued today by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
The report documents a broad range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys across the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023 that constitutes a major element in the ill-treatment of Palestinians and are part of the unlawful occupation and persecution of Palestinians as a group.
“The evidence collected by the Commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” said Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission. “There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorize them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.”
The release of the report was accompanied by two days of public hearings held in Geneva on 11-12 March, during which the Commission heard from victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence and medical personnel who assisted them, as well as representatives from civil society, academics, lawyers and medical experts.
The report found that sexual and gender-based violence – which has risen in frequency and severity – is being perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a strategy of war for Israel to dominate and destroy the Palestinian people.
Specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence – such as forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault – comprise part of the Israeli Security Forces’ standard operating procedures toward Palestinians.
Other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership, the report said.
A climate of impunity also exists with regard to sexual and gender-based crimes committed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, with the aim of instilling fear into the Palestinian community and expelling them.
“The exculpatory statements and actions by Israeli leaders and the lack of effectiveness shown by the military justice system to prosecute cases and convict perpetrators send a clear message to members of the Israeli Security Forces that they can continue committing such acts without fear of accountability,” said Pillay. “In this context, accountability through the International Criminal Court and national courts, through their domestic law or exercising universal jurisdiction, is essential if the rule of law is to be upheld and victims awarded justice.”
The Commission found that Israeli forces have systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza. They have simultaneously imposed a siege and prevented humanitarian assistance, including the provision of necessary medication and equipment to ensure safe pregnancies, deliveries and post-partum and neonatal care. These acts violate women’s and girls’ reproductive rights and autonomy, as well as their right to life, health, founding a family, human dignity, physical and mental integrity, freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and self-determination and the principle of non-discrimination.
Women and girls have died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities which have denied access to reproductive health care – acts which amount to the crime against humanity of extermination.
The Commission found that Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare, amounting to two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
“The targeting of reproductive healthcare facilities, including through direct attacks on maternity wards and Gaza’s main in-vitro fertility clinic, combined with the use of starvation as a method of war, has impacted all aspects of reproduction,” said Commissioner Pillay. “These violations have not only caused severe immediate physical and mental harm and suffering to women and girls, but irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group.”
The Commission found an increasing proportion of female fatalities in Gaza, which have occurred at an unprecedented scale as a result of an Israeli strategy of deliberately targeting residential buildings and using heavy explosives in densely populated areas. The Commission also documented cases in which women and girls of all ages, including maternity patients, were targeted – acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of willful killing.
Background: The UN Human Rights Council mandated the Commission on 27 May 2021 to “investigate, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel, all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and abuses of international human rights law leading up to and since 13 April 2021.” Resolution A/HRC/RES/S-30/1 further requested the Commission of inquiry to “investigate all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity.” The Commission of Inquiry was mandated to report to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly annually commencing from June 2022 and September 2022, respectively.
Beyond Outrage: Israel’s Execution of Medical Workers
Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0
The Israeli killing of medical workers in Gaza is further proof of a lack of any restraint on the part of Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF). They have been accused of executing 15 handcuffed medics before burying them in a mass grave underneath their crushed ambulances in southern Gaza. As Middle East Eye reported on the medics: “They were found over the weekend in a mass grave with around 20 multiple gunshots in each one of them.” According to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza; “At least one of them had their legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless,” he added.
Here are some of the reactions to the execution:
The top United Nations interim official for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jonathan Whittall, told journalists: “What is happening here defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law. It really is a war without limits. It’s an endless loop of blood, pain, and death.”
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was “outraged.” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain stated: “Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules. These rules of International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected.”
“Preliminary analysis suggests they were executed, not from a distant range,” a forensic consultant who examined the exhumed bodies told The Guardian, “since the locations of the bullet wounds were specific and intentional,” he said. “One observation is that the bullets were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”
What was Israel’s explanation? “When Hamas terrorists operate in active combat zones — while using humanitarian vehicles as cover, launching rockets from hospitals and stealing aid — Israel will do whatever it takes to protect its soldiers and citizens,” justified Jonathan Harounoff, a spokesman for Israel’s mission to the U.N.
The New York Times contradicted Israel’s version of what happened: “The video obtained by the Timesshows that the approaching ambulances and fire truck were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.” The video was discovered on the cellphone of one of the dead paramedics.
After watching the video, Farnaz Fassihi and Christoph Koettl described what they saw and heard in the Times. It is worth repeating the gruesome details:
“Rescue workers, at least two of whom can be seen wearing uniforms, are seen exiting a fire truck and an ambulance marked with the emblem of the Red Crescent and approaching the ambulance derailed to the side. Then, sounds of intense gunfire break out. A barrage of gunshots is seen and heard in the video hitting the convoy. The camera shakes, the video goes dark. But the audio continues for five minutes, and the rat-a-tat of gunfire does not stop. A man says in Arabic that there are Israelis present.
The paramedic filming is heard on the video reciting, over and over, the ‘shahada,’ or a Muslim declaration of faith, which people recite when facing death. ’There is no God but God, Muhammad is his messenger,’ the paramedic is heard saying. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die.
‘Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose — to help people,’ he said.’”
After reports on the video went public, Israeli officials modified their initial justifications. “The Israeli military on Saturday [April 5] acknowledged that the initial accounts from troops involved in the killing last month of 15 people in southern Gaza — who the United Nations said were paramedics and rescue workers — had been partially ‘mistaken,’” journalist Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem. Israel now says the episode was “under thorough examination.” (The Times has interviewed several witnesses to the shootings Eyewitnesses Recount Deadly Israeli Attack on Medics in Gaza – The New York Times)
The outright assassination of medical workers is a new and different form of Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in its continuing refusal to respect international norms. Over 50,000 people, including women, the elderly and children, have died in Gaza. An entire infrastructure has been destroyed. Millions have been displaced. IHL in all its complexities is only effective if it is respected by all parties to a conflict. Israel signed the Geneva Conventions on Dec. 8, 1949, and ratified them on July 6, 1951.
What happens if a party to a conflict like Israel continues to violate IHL in the most egregious manner? So far, very little. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visits Hungary and the United States as if they were normal diplomatic trips, ignoring the fact that the International Criminal Court has issued search warrants for his arrest. (The U.S. and has no obligation to arrest Netanyahu since is not party to the Rome Treaty.)
For years, my dear friend Eugene Schulman often wore a keffiyeh to honor the Palestinian people. He would regularly unfurl a Palestinian flag on his Geneva balcony in support of a Palestinian state. A non-practicing Jew, Gene was constantly outraged at how Palestinians were treated by Israel. Gene died five years ago next month – Matthew Stevenson movingly described him in CounterPunch (Our Friend Eugene Schulman – CounterPunch.org.). Gene would be beyond outrage today at what is happening to Palestinians.
Hunters have seasons to shoot. Their prey have respites. The IDF and Israeli military have shown it is an open season in Gaza. Nothing is out of bounds. There is no respite for anyone, including humanitarian workers and medics. Even the erudite Gene Schulman would not find words to describe what is taking place. He would be, as we all should be, beyond outrage.
Killing Paramedics: Israel’s War on Palestinian Health
A frame from the video published by NYT, showing the marked ambulances and personel – Fair Use
It was a massacre. Fifteen emergency workers, butchered in cold blood by personnel from the Israeli Defense Forces in southern Gaza on March 23. It all came to light from a video that the IDF did not intend anyone to see, filmed by Red Crescent paramedic Rifaat Radwan in the last minutes of his life. Caught red handed, the wires and levers of justification, mendacity and qualification began to move.
The pattern of institutional response is a well-rehearsed one. First came the official claim that the troops only opened fire because the convoy approached them “suspiciously”, enshrouded in darkness, with no headlights or evidence of flashing lights. The movement of the convoy had not, it was said, been cleared and coordinated with the IDF, which had been alerted by operators of an overhead UAV. Soldiers had previously fired on a car containing, according to the Israeli account, three Hamas members. When that vehicle was approached by the ambulances, IDF personnel assumed they were threatened, despite lacking any evidence that the emergency workers were armed. On exiting the vehicles, gunfire ensues. Radwan’s final words: “The Israelis are coming, the Israeli soldiers are coming.”
Then comes the qualification, the “hand in the cookie jar” retort. With the video now very public, the IDF was forced to admit that they had been mistaken in the initial assessment that the lights of the ambulance convoy had been switched off, blaming it on the sketchy testimony of soldiers. Also evident are clear markings on the vehicles, with the paramedics wearing hi-vis uniforms.
After being shot, the bodies of the 15 dead workers were unceremoniously buried in sand (“in a brutal and disregarding manner that violates human dignity,” according to the Red Crescent) – supposedly to protect them from the ravages of wildlife – with the vehicles crushed by an armoured D9 bulldozer to clear the road. Allegations have been made that some of the bodies had their hands tied and were shot at close range, suggesting a willingness on the part of the military to conceal their misdeeds. The IDF has countered by claiming that the UN was informed on the location of the bodies.
The Palestinian Red Crescent society is adamant: the paramedics were shot with the clear intention of slaying them. “We cannot disclose everything we know,” stated Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the West Bank, “but I will say that all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill.”
The IDF, after a breezy inquiry, claimed that it “revealed that the force opened fire due to a sense of threat following a previous exchange of fire in the area. Also, six Hamas terrorists were identified among those killed in the incident.” This hardly dispels the reality that those shot were unarmed and showed no hostile intent. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Palestinian rescuers have offered a breakdown of those killed: eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Palestinian Civil Defence, and one employee from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.
The OCHA insists that the first team comprised rescuers rather than Hamas operatives. On being sought by additional paramedic and emergency personnel, they, too, were attacked by the IDF.
The findings of the probe into the killings were presented on April 7 to the IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir by the chief of the Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor. On doing so, Zamir then ordered that the General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism be used to “deepen and complete” the effort. That particular fact-finding body is risibly described as independent, despite being an extension of the IDF. Self-investigation remains a standard norm for allegations of impropriety.
Since October 7, 2023, the death toll of health workers in the Gaza Strip has been impressively grim, reaching 1,060. Health facilities have been destroyed, with hundreds of attacks launched on health services. The World Health Organization update in February found that a mere 50% of hospitals were partially functional. Primary health care facilities were found to be 41% functional. Medical personnel have been harassed, arbitrarily detained and subjected to mistreatment. A report from Healthcare Workers Watch published in February identified 384 cases of unlawful detention since October 7, 2023, with 339 coming from the Gaza Strip and 45 from the West Bank.
In the opinion of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories since 1967, Francesca Albanese, “This is part of a pattern by Israel to continuously bombard, destroy and fully annihilate the realisation of the right to health in Gaza.”
The IDF, which claims to be fastidious in observing the canons of international law, continues to dispel such notions in killing civilians and health workers. It also continues to insist that its soldiers could never be guilty of a conscious massacre, culpable for a blatant crime. The bodies of fifteen health workers suggest otherwise.
April 11, 2025
Image by Ömer Faruk Yıldız.
In the colonial view of the world — and, in its own strange fashion, Donald Trump’s view couldn’t be more colonial — White European colonizers were embattled beacons of civilization, rationality, and progress, confronting dangerous barbaric hordes beyond (and even, sometimes, within) their own frontiers. Colonial violence then was a necessary form of self-defense needed to tame irrational eruptions of brutality among the colonized. To make sense of the bipartisan U.S. devotion to Israel, including the glorification of Israeli violence and the demonization of Palestinians, as well as the Trump administration’s recent attacks on Black South Africa, student activists, and immigrants, it’s important to grasp that worldview.
On the Caribbean island of Barbados, Great Britain’s 1688 Act “For the Governing of Negroes” proclaimed that “Negroes… are of a barbarous, wild, and savage nature, and such as renders them wholly unqualified to be governed by the Laws, Customes, and Practices of our Nation: It is therefore becoming absolutely necessary, that such other Constitutions, Laws and Orders, should be… framed and enacted for the good regulating or ordering of them, as may both restrain the disorders, rapines, and inhumanities to which they are naturally prone and inclined.”
When I read those words recently, I heard strange echoes of how President Trump talks about immigrants, Palestinians, and Black South Africans. The text of that act exemplified what would become longstanding colonial ideologies: the colonized are unpredictably “barbarous, wild, and savage” and so must be governed by the colonizing power with a separate set of (harsh) laws; and — though not directly stated — must be assigned a legal status that sets them apart from the rights-bearing one the colonizers granted themselves. Due to their “barbarous, wild, and savage nature,” violence would inevitably be necessary to keep them under control.
Colonization meant bringing White Europeans to confront those supposedly dangerous peoples in their own often distant homelands. It also meant, as in Barbados, bringing supposedly dangerous people to new places and using violence and brutal laws to control them there. In the United States, it meant trying to displace or eliminate what the Declaration of Independence called “merciless Indian savages” and justifying White violence with slave codes based on the one the British used in Barbados in the face of the ever-present threat supposedly posed by enslaved Black people.
That grim 1688 Act also revealed how colonialism blurred the lines between Europe and its colonies. As an expansionist Europe grew ever more expansive, it brought rights-holding Europeans and those they excluded, suppressed, or dominated into the same physical spaces through colonization, enslavement, transportation, and war. Enslaved Africans were inside the territory, but outside the legal system. Expansion required violence, along with elaborate legal structures and ideologies to enforce and justify who belonged and who never would, and — yes! — ever more violence to keep the system in place.
Ideas Still with Us
The legacies of colonialism and the set of ideas behind that Act of 1688 are still with us and continue to target formerly colonized (and still colonized) peoples.
Given the increasingly unsettled nature of our world, thanks to war, politics, and the growing pressures of climate change, ever more people have tried to leave their embattled countries and emigrate to Europe and the United States. There, they find a rising tide of anti-immigrant racism that reproduces a modern version of old-fashioned colonial racism. Europe and the United States, of course, reserve the right to deny entry, or grant only partial, temporary, revocable, and limited status to many of those seeking refuge in their countries. Those different statuses mean that they are subject to different legal systems once they’re there. In Donald Trump’s America, for instance, the United States reserves the right to detain and deport even green-card holders at will, merely by claiming that their presence poses a threat, as in the case of Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, arrested in New York but quickly sent into custody in Louisiana.
Colonial racism helps explain the Trump administration’s adulation of Israeli violence against Palestinians. In good colonial fashion, Israel relies on laws that grant full rights to some, while justifying the repression (not to mention genocide) of others. Israeli violence, like the Barbadian slave code, always claims to “restrain the disorders, rapines, and inhumanities to which [Palestinians] are naturally prone and inclined.”
South Africa, of course, is still struggling with its colonial and post-colonial legacy — including decades of apartheid, which created political and legal structures that massively privileged the White population there. And while apartheid is now a past legacy, ongoing attempts to undo its damage like a January 2025 land reform law have only raised President Trump’s ire in ways that echo his reaction to even the most modest attempts to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or that dreaded abbreviation of the Trump era, DEI, in American institutions ranging from the military to universities.
Israel, though, remains a paragon of virtue and glory in Trump’s eyes. Its multiple legal structures keep Palestinians legally excluded in a diaspora from which they are not allowed to return, under devastating military occupation, with the constant threat of expulsion from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and in occupied East Jerusalem, where they are Israeli residents but not full citizens and subject to multiple legal exclusions as non-Jews. (Donald Trump, of course, had a similar fantasy when he imagined rebuilding Gaza as a Middle Eastern “Riviera,” while expelling the Palestinians from the area.) Even those who are citizens of Israel are explicitly denied a national identity and subject to numerous discriminatory laws in a country that claims to represent “the national home of the Jewish people” and to which displaced Palestinians are forbidden to return, even as “Jewish settlement is a national value.”
Good Discrimination, Bad Discrimination
Lately, of course, right-wing politicians and pundits in this country have been denouncing any policies that claim special protections for, or even academic or legal acknowledgement of, long marginalized groups. They once derisively dubbed all such things “critical race theory” and now denounce DEI programs as divisive and — yes! — discriminatory, insisting that they be dismantled or abolished.
Meanwhile, there are two groups that those same right-wing actors have assiduously sought to protect: White South Africans and Jews. In his February executive order cutting aid to South Africa and offering refugee status to White Afrikaner South Africans (and only them), Trump accused that country’s government of enacting “countless… policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business.” No matter that such a view of South Africa is pure fantasy. What he meant, of course, was that they were dismantling apartheid-legacy policies that privileged Whites.
Meanwhile, his administration has been dismantling actual equal opportunity policies here, calling them “illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).’” The difference? President Trump is proud to kill policies that create opportunities for people of color, just as he was outraged at South Africa’s land reform law that chipped away at the historical privilege of White landowners there. His attack on DEI reflects his drive to undo the very notion of creating de facto equal access for citizens (especially people of color) who have long been denied it.
Trump and his allies are also obsessed with what his January 30th executive order called an “explosion of antisemitism.” Unlike Black, Native American, Hispanic, LGBTQIA+, or other historically marginalized groups in the United States, American Jews — like Afrikaners — are considered a group deserving of special protection.
What is the source of this supposed “explosion” of antisemitism? The answer: “pro-Hamas aliens and left-wing radicals” who, Trump claims, are carrying out “a campaign of intimidation, vandalism, and violence on the campuses and streets of America.” In other words, the ever-present barbarian threat is now embodied by “aliens” and “radicals” who challenge Israeli colonial violence and a US-dominated global order.
And — this is important! — not all Jews deserve such special protection, only those who identify with and support Israel’s colonial violence. The American right’s current obsession with antisemitism has little to do with the rights of Jews generally and everything to do with its commitment to Israel.
Even the most minor deviation from full-throated support for Israeli violence earned Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer the scorn of Trump, who called him “a proud member of Hamas” and added, “He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.” Apparently for Trump, the very word “Palestinian” is a slur.
Israeli Violence Is “Stunning,” While Palestinians Are “Barbaric”
The American media and officials of both parties have generally celebrated Israeli violence. In September 2024, the New York Times referred to Israel’s “two days of stunning attacks that detonated pagers and handheld radios across Lebanon” that killed dozens and maimed thousands. A Washington Post headline called “Israel’s pager attack an intelligence triumph.” President Joe Biden then lauded Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in September as “a measure of justice” and called its assassination of Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar a month later “a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” On Israel’s murder of the chief Hamas negotiator, Ismael Haniyeh, in the midst of U.S.-sponsored ceasefire negotiations in August, Biden could only lament that it was “not helpful.”
Compare this to the outrage professed when Columbia Middle East Studies professor Joseph Massad wrote, in an article on Arab world reactions to Hamas’s October 7th attack, that “the sight of the Palestinian resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding.” For that simple reflection of those Arab reactions, Columbia’s then-President Minouche Shafik denounced him before Congress, announcing that she was “appalled” and that Massad was being investigated because his language was “unacceptable.” He never would have gotten tenure had she known of his views, she insisted. Apparently only Israeli violence can be “stunning” or a “triumph.”
Meanwhile, at Harvard on October 9th, Palestine solidarity student groups quoted Israeli officials who promised to “open the gates of hell” on Gaza. “We hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” they wrote. Despite the fact that multiple Israeli sources were saying similar things, Republican Representative Elise Stefanik posted: “It is abhorrent and heinous that Harvard students are blaming Israel for Hamas’ barbaric attacks.” Note the use of the word “barbaric” from the slave code, repeatedly invoked by journalists, intellectuals, and politicians when it came to Hamas or Palestinians, but not Israelis.
In November 2024, when the U.S. vetoed (for the fourth time) a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the world was aghast. The U.N. warned that, after a year of Israel’s intensive bombardment and 40 days of the complete blockade of humanitarian supplies, two million Palestinians were “facing diminishing conditions of survival.” The U.N. Director of Human Rights Watch accused the U.S. of acting “to ensure impunity for Israel as its forces continue to commit crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.” The American ambassador, however, defended the veto, arguing that, although the resolution called for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, it did not provide enough “linkage.” And of course, U.S. arms, including staggeringly destructive 2,000-pound bombs, have continued to flow to Israel in striking quantities as the genocide continues.
Connecting Immigrants, Palestinians, and South Africa
Closer to home, Trump’s full-throated attack on immigrants has revived the worst of colonial language. The Marshall Project has, for instance, tracked some of his major claims and how often he’s repeated them: “Unauthorized immigrants are criminals [said 575+ times], snakes that bite [35+ times], eating pets, coming from jails and mental institutions [560+ times], causing crime in sanctuary cities [185+ times], and a group of isolated, tragic cases prove they are killing Americans en masse [235+ times].” Clearly, draconian laws are needed to control such monsters!
Trump has also promised to deport millions of immigrants and issued a series of executive orders meant to greatly expand the detention and deportation of those living in the United States without legal authorization — “undocumented people.” Another set of orders is meant to strip the status of millions of immigrants who are currently here with legal authorization, revoking Temporary Protected Status, work authorizations, student visas, and even green cards. One reason for this is to expand the number of people who can be deported since, despite all the rhetoric and the spectacle, the administration has struggled so far to achieve anything faintly like the rates it has promised.
This anti-immigrant drive harmonizes with Trump’s affection for Jewish Israel and White South Africa in obvious ways. White South Africans are being welcomed with open arms (though few are coming), while other immigrants are targeted. Non-citizen students and others have been particularly singled out for supposedly “celebrating Hamas’ mass rape, kidnapping, and murder.” The cases of Mahmoud Khalil, Rasha Alawieh, Momodou Taal, Badar Khan Suri, Yunseo Chung, and Rumeysa Ozturk (and perhaps others by the time this article is published) stand out in this regard. The Trump administration repeatedly denigrates movements for Palestinian rights and immigrants as violent threats that must be contained.
There are some deeper connections as well. Immigrants from what Trump once termed “shit-hole countries” are, in his view, not only prone to violence and criminality themselves but also inclined to anti-American and anti-Israel views, leaving this country supposedly at risk. Included in his executive order on South Africa was the accusation that its government “has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel… of genocide in the International Court of Justice” and is “undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation” — almost identical wording to that used to justify the revocation of visas for Khalil and others. In other words, threats are everywhere.
Trump and his associates weaponize antisemitism to attack student protesters, progressive Jewish organizations, freedom of speech, immigrants, higher education, and other threats to his colonizer’s view of the world.
In reality, however, the United States, Israel, and White South Africa exist as colonial anachronisms in what President Joe Biden, echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, described (with respect to Israel) as an “incredibly dangerous neighborhood.” And Trump has only doubled down on that view.
Strange to imagine, but the planters of Barbados would undoubtedly be proud to see their ideological descendants continuing to impose violent control on our world, while invoking the racist ideas they proposed in the 1600s.
This piece first appeared on TomDispatch.
Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. Her latest book, Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions about Climate Justice, is just about to be published.
The Obscenity and Futility of US and Israeli Air Power
Photograph Source: Deror Avi – CC BY-SA 4.0
For the past 80 years, the United States and Israeli air power have owned the global and Middle Eastern skies, respectively, but wars are typically won with ground power, not air power. World War II was won against Germany with ground power, particularly Soviet ground power, and the United States hasn’t been on a winning side since, with the exception of the war with Iraq in 1991 (Desert Storm). Other U.S. wars have been fought to a standstill (Korea 1950-1953) or to something less than victory over decades of fighting in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Israel has engaged its Arab neighbors in a series of wars over the years, but currently finds itself surrounded by hostile states and borders, where it fears the deployment of ground forces that result in unacceptable losses. U.S. national security has been diminished in recent years despite U.S. dominance in air power, and the same could be said for Israeli national security in view of hostilities with Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Yemenis.
Nevertheless, the United States and Israel continues to count on air power to provide a measure of safety despite the absence of formidable adversaries in the air. The problem is that the heavy reliance on air power translates into disproportionate civilian losses, blandly referred to as collateral damage. Israel and the United States deceitfully claim that air power reduces the need for ground forces, but there is no indication that Israeli and U.S. air power has led to smaller and less lethal ground forces. Israeli reliance on precision-guided weapons provided by the United States has only led to enormous civilian casualties and fatalities and a whole raft of war crimes. The use of 2,000-lb bombs in congested urban areas in Gaza was particularly obscene.
Israeli airpower is responsible for a growing number of war crimes as well as charges of genocide because of the heavy bombing of crowed urban areas, hospitals, mosques, and educational institutions as the Israelis claim (often without proof) that such facilities are used to train intelligent operatives, conduct military planning, and/or serve as weapons depots. There is no doubt that the Israelis are conducting a war of collective punishment—a war crime—with no opposition within the Israeli population.
The United States and Israel have won wars in the first months of combat, but continue confrontations relying on air power. Israel, for example, defeated Hamas for all practical purposes in the first several months, but continue the heavy campaign right up to today. The Israeli war against Gaza is not a just war by any stretch of the imagination. The same could be said for the U.S. campaign against Afghanistan, which was won in the first several months, but the use of air power continued for nearly two decades.
The recent U.S. chat room on the military plan for Yemen revealed a great deal of sensitive intelligence regarding U.S. air power against adversaries such as the Houthis that lack air power and even air defense. It is more likely that U.S. of air power was designed primarily to send a message to Iran and secondarily to the Houthis. The United States currently is sending B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia, the Navy’s island base in the Indian Ocean, and warships to the region. The B-2 can accommodate the Pentagon’s largest “bunker-buster munitions, which can penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. Donald Trump has threatened that, if Iran doesn’t destroy its nuclear program, Iran will face “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.” Given the unpredictability and capriciousness of Trump as well as his need for a military victory, this threat may not be mere bluster.
The example of America’s “shock and awe” campaign against Iraq in 2003 could be an example of the kind of actions the United States will take against Iran. According to former secretary of defense Dick Cheney, the 43-day U.S.-led military campaign to oust Iraq from Kuwait, Operation Desert Storm, was spearheaded by “the most successful air-campaign in the history of the world.” In some respects, this claim seems justified. The allies assembled a gigantic airborne armada that quickly and easily established air superiority over Iraqi military forces. Allied aircraft bombed wherever and whenever they wanted.
By means of the bombing campaign, the allies overwhelmed the foe to the point where — once the long-dreaded ground war got underway — it quickly became a rout and coalition forces suffered mercifully few casualties. Yet Cheney’s assertion of unequalled success went even further. President Bush and many Pentagon officials claimed that never before had such care been taken to avoid harm to the opposition’s civilian population. Further, U.S. and other allied spokespersons claimed at every turn that the effort to minimize damage to civilians had succeeded. Bush claimed that Desert Storm was a “near-perfect war,” with as little harm to civilian life and property as humanly possible. However, Iraqi civilian deaths ranged between 100,000 to 200,000. The Israelis make similarly false claims in their war against Hamas with civilian deaths numbering between 50,000 and 60,000.
The Israelis essentially achieved their political and military goals against Hamas in less than five months, but the genocidal air campaign continues.. Today, there are no political or military goals for the Israelis other than to maintain Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and his place at the top of the government. The political and military goals of the United States against the Houthis in Yemen are similarly difficult to explain.
Mary of Palestine
I am not just a survivor, but a witness. A witness to destruction, resilience and countless stories of suffering and survival. So many stories will never be told, so many names will never be remembered.
The Occupier asked us to surrender, but I don’t know what surrender means anymore. The war took away my ability to choose, instead I endured. Every tear marks the beginning of another story, every pain marks the birth of hope. I was pregnant when the war began, and for months all I knew were hunger, thirst, heat and cold. As my due date approached, my heart raced, for I did not count myself among the mighty. I was more fragile than you could imagine. I mourned without ceasing, yet my heart burned with the desire to live. Sometimes, I let my tears fall freely; other times, I wiped them away before they betrayed me. Each tear was a surrender to circumstance, but with every sob, I grew stronger.
My baby came prematurely. The air was thick with smoke, and the sky was filled with war. This was not the beautiful day I had been waiting for. Three weeks earlier, I had registered to leave Gaza, and I started counting down the days one by one: ten, nine, eight… But instead of inhaling the scent of freedom the evening before my evacuation day, I started feeling the pains of labor.
In the middle of the night, a wave of agony swept over me. Outside, plumes of smoke obscured the stars while screams betrayed the terror of my fellow Palestinians. Our refugee camp was no longer safe. I clung to my trembling belly, swallowing my cries amidst the chaos. But then I realized my pain was nothing compared to the suffering of the orphaned children. Their tiny bodies torn by shrapnel, burned by flames, left to face torment without a mother or a father to wake them from this terrible dream. How could the pain of childbirth compare to that? I was overwhelmed with shame.
I huddled against the wall of my tent—its flimsy fabric all shielded me from death. The black night was punctuated by flashes of fiery explosions. Every now and then, I would lift my eyes to the sky, searching for a glimmer of twilight—the indication that it would be safe to leave for the hospital. My contractions felt more powerful than the roar of cannons. But walking in the dark was more dangerous than giving birth in the camp, which lacked even clean water and electric lights. When dawn came I finally stepped outside and was met with a sight more shocking than I could have dreamed.
Every home had been turned into a pile of rubble—refrigerators, washing machines, and even a kitchen sink stuck out from beneath the debris. Sofas had turned to dust, while burnt clothes smothered smoldering mattresses. Amidst the wreckage, remnants of a life once lived lay scattered: family photos and precious memories, covered with blood stains and broken bones. Whole families had died while I was hiding in my tent.
The air was saturated with sorrow. A mother wept for her three children. A wife cried for her husband and baby. People searched for the remains of loved ones. Their homes had become a burial ground with bodies shrouded in coffins made of nightmares and dust. But their pain was not theirs alone; it was shared by all of us.
Through this hell I walked to a hospital overflowing with the wounded and the dead. The patients carried on without medicine or bandages. The walls trembled with each new airstrike. The floors were soaked with blood. There were no empty beds—only bodies barely breathing, or breathing not at all. I was just a number watching doctors rush from one emergency to another, trying to save those who were not yet dead. I sat in a cold corner, waiting for my turn to die, whispering verses from the Quran: For indeed, with hardship comes ease.
The hospital had become a battlefield filled with screams of pain and states of shock; bodies limped for want of limbs, limbs lay still without their bodies.
Many hours later, I gave birth.
*****
My daughter illuminated the world for me—a ray of hope and a light of victory. I named her Talia, a name that carries beauty and salvation. Talia means “dew” in Hebrew, the gentle drops that herald the beginning of a new morning, just as she did. In her, I saw resilience and struggle, a flame in the midst of darkness.
I was never strong. I never claimed to be. I always saw myself as an ordinary woman, trembling in the face of pain, fearing challenges, and avoiding adventure. But life hasn’t granted me the luxury of making choices. It forced me to stand, to endure, to keep moving forward despite the hardships. After the January 2025 ceasefire, I was forced to walk under the scorching sun, the whole length of a day and then some. My steps faltered on the sandy road, carrying my daughter in my arms and my belongings on my back as though I were carrying the world itself. My tired feet were no longer mine; my back screamed in pain, but I walked… I walked because I had no other choice. I had no luxury of surrender, and no time for weakness. Fear made my choices for me. Every step was like combat. It wasn’t just the distance that exhausted me, but the weight of responsibility, the tiny lives that I held in my hands. And when I arrived near my pre-war home, I didn’t know if I had won or if I had just survived for another day. I thought I had reached safety, but soon realized that survival in this place is only temporary. It is a home that has never known peace, only truces to exchange prisoners and collect the dead.
The genocide is not over yet, and now, I realize I am no longer who I once was. That woman who thought she was weak, was never weak. And she would never be weak! The road, the shattered walls, the cold nights, the exhaustion shaped and honed me, until I became a woman who knows nothing but traversing the path of life, no matter the cost.
*****
Today is supposed to be “Eid al-Fitr,” one of the two major celebrations for Muslims throughout the year. However, in Gaza, it is not a celebration, but another chapter of loss and pain.
Before the war, the atmosphere of Eid in Gaza felt like a piece of heaven. The streets were alive with the laughter of children, amusement parks were full of life in every neighborhood, and the scent of delicious sweets and food filled the air. Children wore their finest clothes and, scented with the most beautiful perfumes, their hearts danced like birds, filled with joy.
But today, the children of Gaza have had the joy ripped from their hearts. They wake up to the sounds of bombing and gunfire, they don’t sing the Eid songs or wear their festive clothes. Instead, their mothers dress them in shrouds as they head to play with their toys, some with sweets in their hands. The beautiful Eid songs are replaced with suffering and sorrow.
This is Gaza… our blood is like water, our souls like mirages, and our lives mean nothing to the world. Our wounds are no longer new, but have become a familiar reality.
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