Israeli settler pogroms, annexation, and economic strangulation are eroding Palestinian life in the West Bank. So, why aren’t we seeing more Palestinian resistance to the existential threat erasing their communities?
Over the past 25 years, the U.S. has used “militainment,” the merging of media and war, to hide the realities of death and destruction. But the Gaza genocide has now made such propaganda impossible, which Trump and Hegseth are discovering with Iran.
Genocide does not require mass graves, it also includes efforts to destroy a people’s capacity to bring the next generation into being. Israel’s systematic use of torture and sexual violence against Palestinians meets that definition.
A month into the Iran war, it is clear that Israel aims to disrupt any possible off-ramp the Trump administration and Iran may be looking for to end the fighting, and that Iran, not the U.S., is the key actor that will determine how the war ends.
The upcoming No Kings protest could be the biggest anti-Trump event ever, but opposing the war on Iran doesn’t seem to be on the agenda.
A recent poll registered Israeli support for the war on Iran at a whopping 93%. Between the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, and the annexations, Israelis think this is how it’s meant to be. Constant war to sustain our constant expansion.
These are signs of the growing impatience of Iran’s Arab neighbors with Iran’s tactic of striking at them in response to Israeli or American attacks. But the anger of the Gulf states isn’t only reserved for Iran.
Israel is waging a campaign of psychological warfare in Beirut by projecting godlike power from the skies, raining down bombs that mete out death and dropping leaflets vowing that Beirut and Gaza will share in the same fate.
The dehumanization of Israeli society itself reaches yet another nadir, as the soldiers who gang-raped a Palestinian prisoner from Gaza are not only freed, but celebrated and recommended to return to military service.