This week, Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into dense residential areas of Gaza City, forcing families to choose between displacement and death. Tareq Hajjaj spoke to residents there who are refusing to leave: “There’s no point in struggling to find a better place in hell,” they told him. At the same time, the Israeli government is advancing settlement plans that would dissolve the West Bank as a geographic and political entity. Benjamin Netanyahu called for Israel to become a self-sufficient “super Sparta” and with a broader defiance of international norms. Abduljawad Omar says Israel is embracing isolation in order to annihilate the Palestinians. And now, after two years of brutality and over 65,000 Palestinians killed, a key United Nations commission concluded that Israel has committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the Genocide Convention and urged an arms embargo.
In the United States, political figures are struggling to contain the growing public rejection of Israel’s assault on Gaza. At the Democratic National Committee’s meeting in Minneapolis, the party’s establishment leaned on familiar pressure tactics while grassroots support for Palestinian rights grows within its base. State power is being wielded against individuals. Immigration Judge Jamee Comans ordered Mahmoud Khalil deported in a decision widely understood as retaliation for his activism, and the University of California, Berkeley, turned over private information of more than 150 students, staff, and faculty to federal authorities.
By now, readers will know about ABC’s suspension of the Jimmy Kimmel show after political pressure from the Trump administration. The First Amendment is under serious attack; there’s no question about that. But for those of us laboring in the Palestine solidarity movement, we’ve long fought censorship and repression. Palestine is the compass. For decades, the label “antisemitism” has been used to shut down speech and discourse around Palestine. State-imposed censorship has been normalized by applying it to speech focused on Palestinian liberation. And now, it’s being turned on everyone to limit speech that the current U.S. government dislikes. This is a clear example of why, as John Pilger said, Palestine is still the issue.
This assault on free speech and the easy capitulation we see from corporate media are why independent outlets like Mondoweiss are so critically important. We are coming into the final months of 2025, when nonprofits like us will be asking for support. This is the most important fundraising period of the year. We are facing threats like never before. Please make sure you support the independent media that you rely on – us and others – this year. Truthful reporting and insightful analysis are often the first targets of authoritarian regimes. The independent media outlets you follow simply cannot survive without your direct financial support.
Must Read: Israel moves to embrace its isolation
Abdaljawad Omar: Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent comments that Israel must start making its own weapons and become a self-sufficient “super Sparta” signal that the small colony might be willing to embrace its isolation — all in the name of annihilating Palestine.
Genocide in Gaza
🇮🇱 Tareq Hajjaj: As the Israeli army’s ground invasion advances into major residential areas in Gaza City, some residents say they’re not moving. “There’s no point in struggling to find a better place in hell,” one resident said.
🇺🇳 Michael Arria: A UN commission of inquiry concluded that Israel has committed four of the five genocidal acts defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention. The commission is urging governments worldwide to stop supplying weapons to Israel.
Catch-up
🫏 Nadia B. Ahmad: The Democratic National Committee’s recent summer meeting in Minneapolis showed how the Israel lobby is working to fight increasing support for Palestine among the party’s base, and how it is failing.
🧑⚖️ Michael Arria: Immigration Judge Jamee Comans has ordered Mahmoud Khalil to be deported to either Syria or Algeria, in a move seen widely as retaliation for Khalil’s Palestine activism.
🇮🇱 Qassam Muaddi: Netanyahu officially approved a settlement plan last week and announced his intentions to greenlight other settlements just like it. Together, these plans would end the West Bank as a geographic and political entity.
🇾🇪 James North: The mainstream media’s silence about the murder of 35 Yemeni journalists is part of a much larger, shameful cover-up aimed at protecting Israel.
🇺🇸 Michael Arria: The University of California, Berkeley has provided the federal government with the private information of more than 150 students, staff, and faculty. The university is being slammed for caving to Trump and his war on Palestine activism.
🇲🇦 Jessie Stoolman: Activists in Morocco are demanding an investigation after a well-known human rights leader, Sion Assidon, was found unconscious at his home under suspicious circumstances. Assidon is a leader of the Moroccan movement against normalization with Israel.
This might be a good point to take stock, look back and ask: what could Israel have done differently? Just for the sake of our colleagues at Hasbara U, let’s start with the assumption that after Oct 7 Hamas needed to be defeated – I don’t buy it, but let’s start there:
Haviv Rettig Gur is an Israeli journalist. Sam Harris is a public intellectual type who interviews various folks and discusses the issues of the day. So here’s his interview with Rettig Gur:
https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/422-zionism-jihadism
In my view it’s awful. Rettig Gur is a Zionist apologist who can’t seem to view Palestinians as humans with legitimate aspirations; Harris, normally a sharp guy, lowers his IQ by 50 points whenever he talks about Israel. But at one point in this 2 hour interview Rettig Gur says something interesting – something I’ve said since the start: Israel could have taken a few months to build prefab housing and medical facilities inside Israel, a place where there was adequate food, water and medical supplies, and then carefully moved the entire population of Gaza that wasn’t Hamas into the new area, at which point they could happily vaporized whatever they wanted in Gaza.
Instead they decided to drop bombs on people living in tents.