Weekly Briefing: Genocide in Gaza resumes

Israel resumed its assault on Gaza this week with a devastating wave of airstrikes, killing more than 400 Palestinians in a single night. The attacks, which reportedly target Hamas’s civil leadership, are part of a strategy Haaretz described as designed to sow chaos by dismantling social order and paving the way for criminal gangs to take control. Mondoweiss’s Gaza Correspondent Tareq Hajjaj reported on the scale of the destruction, and filed this searing story about the lives lost to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, writing: “The war is back, and with it, the screams under the rubble.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rejection of the ceasefire reveals a deepening commitment to war, shaped by both ideology and political survival. He and his far-right coalition partners are united in their goal of destroying Hamas and displacing Palestinians and have vowed to continue the assault until those aims are met. Facing domestic unrest and an ongoing corruption trial, Netanyahu is also using the war to deflect growing criticism and cling to power. His decision to blow up the ceasefire marks not just a military escalation, but a willful rejection of diplomacy. For deeper analysis, don’t miss the reporting from Qassam Muaddi and Jonathan Ofir.

Meanwhile, violence in the West Bank is intensifying. Leila Warah reports from Tulkarem, where Israeli forces have shattered daily life and displaced families in yet another wave of military aggression. Qassam Muaddi outlines four key reasons why the world continues to tolerate Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign in the West Bank.

And here in the U.S., the Trump administration is using Palestine as a pretext to escalate its crackdown on free speech and academic freedom. Palestinian journalist Mahmoud Khalil, still detained in a Louisiana immigration facility, penned a powerful letter declaring, “I am a political prisoner.” In the second issue of Power & Pushback, Michael Arria documents the enormous pressure being placed on Columbia University to suppress pro-Palestinian students. One chilling example: Jelani Cobb, dean of the journalism school, told a Palestinian student, “Nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times.“

Dangerous times, indeed.

In solidarity,
Dave Reed, Publisher

Must read: Why Netanyahu chose to blow up the ceasefire and return to war

Qassam Muaddi: Israel was backed into a corner on the eve of its return to war because Hamas was forcing Netanyahu to honor the ceasefire deal he had signed. Confronted with his own internal political challenges, Netanyahu’s only choice was to blow up the deal.

Catch-up

🌍 Michael Arria: Progressive International’s Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla talks to Mondoweiss about the creation of the Hague Group, a campaign of global south nations to uphold the ICJ and ICC rulings on Palestine, and international efforts to hold Israel accountable.

🇵🇸 Qassam Muaddi: Political conflict was never the choice of Palestinians. It was and still is the ocean that separates them from their houses, their trees, and the graves of their elders, from Gaza all the way to Jenin.

🇾🇪 Mitchell Plitnick: Trump’s motivations are often unclear, but the recent U.S. bombing campaign on Yemen was clearly meant to stop Ansar Allah’s attacks on Red Sea shipping — and to send a message to Iran.

🇵🇸 Tareq Hajjaj: As Israel’s genocidal war resumes in Gaza, entire families are being exterminated amid the bombardment, with family homes becoming family graves. Survivors tell Mondoweiss most of the dead are women and children.

✒️ Mahmoud Khalil: Writing from an ICE detention facility, Khalil says: “The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent.”

🇺🇸 Hebh Jamal: Mahmoud Khalil’s detention follows decades of targeted harassment, imprisonment, and deportation of Palestinian students, scholars, and community leaders in the U.S.

🎥 Nikki Morse & Donna Nevel: Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner’s call to strip a local movie theater’s funding and lease over showing the film “No Other Land” is just the latest authoritarian example of how the U.S. government is attempting to censor criticism of Israel.

🇵🇸 Qassam Muaddi: Israel is erasing the Jenin refugee camp because of its role in Palestinian collective memory and resistance. It might destroy the camp, but it can never extinguish what it represents.

📉 Felice Gelman: Early this year investment research firm Morningstar caved to a multi-year ADL pressure campaign and exempted Israel from its socially responsible investing ratings. This success in exempting Israel from investor accountability is just the beginning.

🇿🇦 Ziyad Motala: The Trump administration’s extraordinary and unprecedented move to effectively expel South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was done for one reason: South Africa had the audacity to hold Israel accountable for the Gaza genocide.