GAZA
Published July 6, 2025
DAWN
A TIMELINE to the cessation of the genocide in the Gaza Strip, even a 60-day ceasefire itself, is likely to be announced on Monday during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s White House meeting with President Donald Trump after Hamas said it had responded ‘in a positive spirit’ to the latest US proposal. It could lead to a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) from northern Gaza.
A ‘ceasefire’ was agreed to during the run-up to Trump’s inauguration — the outcome of considerable arm-twisting of Israel’s psychopathic regime in which even Netanyahu’s extreme views were dwarfed by those of his coalition partners who wish to ethnically cleanse occupied Palestine of its rightful Palestinian owners. The latest cessation may be shaky too. The earlier ceasefire lasted from February to March and Israel’s massacre of civilians resumed after it reneged on the promise to move to the ‘second phase’, which would have delivered a permanent ceasefire.
The details of the new agreement emerging in different media reports suggest a 60-day ceasefire followed by the phased release of Israeli hostages — numbering 50, including nearly three dozen bodies — in Hamas captivity since Oct 7, 2023, in return for the release of Palestinian hostages. (The Western media calls them prisoners in Israeli jails but since most have been imprisoned without due process, on the military court’s ‘administrative orders’, they, too, are hostages).
According to Western media reports, the new agreement will allow for the provision of direly needed food and other humanitarian aid through established international aid organisations, and not the infamous ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’. The US-backed GHF rose to infamy when some of its employees discovered their conscience and anonymously told the BBC among others that they saw starving Palestinians, who were queuing for sacks of flour, shot by sadistic security contractors without provocation. IOF whistle-blowers also mentioned shooting starving Palestinians in queuing pens.
While the widely quoted death toll of Palestinians stands at around 57,000, some researchers have mentioned far higher numbers.
The new deal will also see IOF withdraw from some parts of northern Gaza where it has increased its occupation footprint, but till it happens, any withdrawal will be questionable because Israel has progressively squeezed the Gaza population into tinier and tinier ‘secure’ zones and even bombed those with heavy bombs and missiles.
While the widely mentioned death toll of mostly civilian Palestinians killed by IOF stands at around 57,000, and includes over 12,000 children, some researchers have referred to far higher numbers. Even an Israeli cabinet member talked of ‘1.8 million people in Gaza’, whereas pre-October 2023, the figure was said to be between 2m to 2.2m. Even if one were to take the lower number, the death toll would be four times than the widely quoted figure.
This is just part of the picture. The systematic destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure — from water, power and sewerage systems to schools, hospitals and some 80 per cent of homes can mean only one thing: ‘elimination of Hamas’, as the Israeli leaders described their war goal, is a window dressing to disguise a far more sinister agenda — the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by rendering the Strip uninhabitable and leaving the battered yet proud and courageous Gaza Palestinians no other option but to think in terms of relocating.
This view is substantiated by the zeal with which the IOF has gone after healers, doctors, surgeons, nurses, mobile paramedical staff, ambulances and hospitals. Men and women of learning, professors, educators, lawyers and similar thought leaders have been also targeted over the entire 21 months of a mostly one-sided war where US-supplied weaponry, including 500-pound bombs with targeting kits, has been used to slice off the top layers of the Palestinian intelligentsia. The long-term consequences of this ‘brainpower obliteration’ will not be known for months, even years.
After decimating Gaza and waging an unprovoked war against Iran, Netanyahu’s ratings have risen in his country. Also, as the Guardian notes, soon the Israeli parliament and top court will take a three-month recess. This means that Netanyahu will not face a vote of no-confidence by coalition partners more genocidal than him if he agrees to a ceasefire deal. At the same time, he will get respite from prosecution for several weeks, which many sceptics say was the cause of this prolonged genocidal military campaign.
In the Middle East, shaky despotic regimes may heave a sigh of relief. They took one position in public over Palestine and another privately as was evident in their role in ensuring uninterrupted supply to Israel of all its imports including energy and also defending the Zionist state by intercepting (and allowing the US to intercept) missiles and drones fired over their airspace by Iran and Yemen Houthis. There is obviously a gulf between the rulers and the ruled. Where the rulers are docile, the people are angry.
While the starving Gaza Palestinians will, of course, welcome any respite from the ethnic cleansing that each of them has witnessed or been affected by, through the loss of loved ones and the destruction of their homes, it remains to be seen what is in store for them over a longer period — beyond the first 60-day phase. Is the Arab rebuilding and rehabilitation plan still on the drawing board or will the narcissistic Trump push to realise his Gaza Riviera dream? Over the past months, reports of plans to relocate the Gaza population to as far away as Libya have trickled out. Each time Trump or others in the know are asked, they say there will be no forced relocation. Only voluntary.
When there are ruins where your home was; when there is no school or hospital or no civic infrastructure worth its name left standing; no food or water; and when Israeli drones and warplanes are hovering overhead, one wonders if any relocation will be forced or voluntary. The will of the Palestinians has baffled the world previously. Can they display it again, despite suffering relentless and indescribable pain for 21 months?
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
abbas.nasir@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2025
Songs of hate
Muna Khan
I SAW the ‘disturbing’ music video of Jatt Mehkma, a Punjabi hip-hop song that caused Britain’s MP Manuela Perteghella so much anguish that she lodged a complaint with the government. The song by Indian rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh features Pakistani actress Mehwish Hayat; they are gangsters at a party in the video. As they drive away, and are stopped by ‘bad guys’, young children emerge out of nowhere, surround Hayat and fire guns at their opponents. The MP was so disturbed by the violent content that she complained to the Home Office and called for a ban on the entry of Singh and Hayat. It is one of the silliest things I’ve read this past week. And a reminder of the gross hypocrisy we see on display every day.
I don’t condone violence but I’m surprised this video released in November has caused anyone this kind of umbrage.
I’m comparing it to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians being streamed on our screens 24/7 which doesn’t cause any concern. It’s almost expected that Palestinians deaths will be streamed live with no accountability.
I went looking for Ms Perteghella’s outrage about Zionist songs celebrating the death and destruction of Gaza but till the time of writing could not find anything on this specifically. Her politics aren’t all bad — she does support an immediate ceasefire, the UK restoring funds to UNRWA so they can get aid to Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel while it perpetuates war crimes to name a few.
The rappers spit on those calling for a Free Palestine and praise their erasure.
But, it seems she takes exception to brown folks acting like gangsters in a music video.
Violent images and music about Palestinians haven’t just surfaced following the Hamas attack in 2023. In 2015, Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and burned a baby alive. That gruesome act has been celebrated. Zei Squirrel’s account on X posted a video of an Israeli wedding in which they stab the photo of that burned baby as they dance to rock music, saying they will do it to other infants. It is beyond depraved.
This is how violence is normalised and, as a story in UnTold Mag last year said, creates a collective identity which “cultivates a shared mindset of hatred”.
It has gotten worse as evidenced on the hatred across social media platforms like TikTok where these “popular expressions carry not only hateful and violent messages but, in some instances, verge on the genocidal,” reported the magazine. And it’s not just settlers sharing this violent musical content. There are videos showing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli camps listening to a child’s song Meni Mamtera for eight hours on end. People soon started playing it at Orthodox weddings and in one video on X, I saw guests mimicking the handcuffed prisoners listening to the song. Then there was the TikTok ‘challenge’ of kidnapping and blindfolding Palestinians.
“In these different videos, the prisoners have no face, no life stories, no voice, all that remains is an Israeli song, torturing anonymous bodies,” reports the magazine. “Taken outside of time, space and humanity, the prisoners are excluded from both human and political communities, treated as dispensable entities without rights or protections.”
The rap song Harbu Darbu (which means raining hell on the enemy) by Ness Ve Stilla, which has 35m views since its release last year, calls Palestinians rats. The rappers spit on those calling for a Free Palestine and praise their erasure. The song was number one for weeks in Israel. It was used also on TikTok as a way to show support for the war.
Israel has killed more than 56,000 people and uprooted nearly the entire population of 2.3 million according to Al Jazeera. It has also killed 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, an oft-ignored story as the focus is on Gaza.
How were entire generations wiped out in the name of Israel’s right to ‘self defence’?
You can understand my outrage then when one British MP chooses to take umbrage with a Punjabi video that uses children resorting to violence but seems to ignore Israeli children’s songs glorifying violence in Gaza?
I understand the music video may have flouted some UK laws including “the use of imitation firearms and exposing minors to harmful content” according to a report last week by Deadline. But does it merit Singh and Hayat not being allowed to enter the UK because they are “not conducive to the public good” under immigration rules?
Will the same rules be applied to everyone involved in the creation of Friendship Song 2023, where children sing “we will annihilate everyone in Gaza”? The video was taken down from YouTube but I watched it on Electronic Intifada’s X account and it made Singh’s video look amateur. Legislators should direct their concern at the impact Israel’s genocide is having on society.
The writer is an instructor of journalism.
Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2025
Muna Khan
Published July 6, 2025
DAWN
I SAW the ‘disturbing’ music video of Jatt Mehkma, a Punjabi hip-hop song that caused Britain’s MP Manuela Perteghella so much anguish that she lodged a complaint with the government. The song by Indian rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh features Pakistani actress Mehwish Hayat; they are gangsters at a party in the video. As they drive away, and are stopped by ‘bad guys’, young children emerge out of nowhere, surround Hayat and fire guns at their opponents. The MP was so disturbed by the violent content that she complained to the Home Office and called for a ban on the entry of Singh and Hayat. It is one of the silliest things I’ve read this past week. And a reminder of the gross hypocrisy we see on display every day.
I don’t condone violence but I’m surprised this video released in November has caused anyone this kind of umbrage.
I’m comparing it to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians being streamed on our screens 24/7 which doesn’t cause any concern. It’s almost expected that Palestinians deaths will be streamed live with no accountability.
I went looking for Ms Perteghella’s outrage about Zionist songs celebrating the death and destruction of Gaza but till the time of writing could not find anything on this specifically. Her politics aren’t all bad — she does support an immediate ceasefire, the UK restoring funds to UNRWA so they can get aid to Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel while it perpetuates war crimes to name a few.
The rappers spit on those calling for a Free Palestine and praise their erasure.
But, it seems she takes exception to brown folks acting like gangsters in a music video.
Violent images and music about Palestinians haven’t just surfaced following the Hamas attack in 2023. In 2015, Israeli settlers attacked two Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and burned a baby alive. That gruesome act has been celebrated. Zei Squirrel’s account on X posted a video of an Israeli wedding in which they stab the photo of that burned baby as they dance to rock music, saying they will do it to other infants. It is beyond depraved.
This is how violence is normalised and, as a story in UnTold Mag last year said, creates a collective identity which “cultivates a shared mindset of hatred”.
It has gotten worse as evidenced on the hatred across social media platforms like TikTok where these “popular expressions carry not only hateful and violent messages but, in some instances, verge on the genocidal,” reported the magazine. And it’s not just settlers sharing this violent musical content. There are videos showing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli camps listening to a child’s song Meni Mamtera for eight hours on end. People soon started playing it at Orthodox weddings and in one video on X, I saw guests mimicking the handcuffed prisoners listening to the song. Then there was the TikTok ‘challenge’ of kidnapping and blindfolding Palestinians.
“In these different videos, the prisoners have no face, no life stories, no voice, all that remains is an Israeli song, torturing anonymous bodies,” reports the magazine. “Taken outside of time, space and humanity, the prisoners are excluded from both human and political communities, treated as dispensable entities without rights or protections.”
The rap song Harbu Darbu (which means raining hell on the enemy) by Ness Ve Stilla, which has 35m views since its release last year, calls Palestinians rats. The rappers spit on those calling for a Free Palestine and praise their erasure. The song was number one for weeks in Israel. It was used also on TikTok as a way to show support for the war.
Israel has killed more than 56,000 people and uprooted nearly the entire population of 2.3 million according to Al Jazeera. It has also killed 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, an oft-ignored story as the focus is on Gaza.
How were entire generations wiped out in the name of Israel’s right to ‘self defence’?
You can understand my outrage then when one British MP chooses to take umbrage with a Punjabi video that uses children resorting to violence but seems to ignore Israeli children’s songs glorifying violence in Gaza?
I understand the music video may have flouted some UK laws including “the use of imitation firearms and exposing minors to harmful content” according to a report last week by Deadline. But does it merit Singh and Hayat not being allowed to enter the UK because they are “not conducive to the public good” under immigration rules?
Will the same rules be applied to everyone involved in the creation of Friendship Song 2023, where children sing “we will annihilate everyone in Gaza”? The video was taken down from YouTube but I watched it on Electronic Intifada’s X account and it made Singh’s video look amateur. Legislators should direct their concern at the impact Israel’s genocide is having on society.
The writer is an instructor of journalism.
Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2025
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