In response to Israel’s (now usual) bombing of foreign countries like Lebanon and Iran, there is usually some sort of (expected and natural) response. Two questions are immediately posed inside Israel: 1) Do you support Israel’s bombing of Country X or Y, and 2) Do you feel “safe”? It is in response to these two questions that you can see just how different Israeli and Palestinian lives are, as well as their perceptions of the world.

Subscribe now

For Jewish Israelis, an overwhelming (and by overwhelming, I mean overwhelming) majority support Israel’s latest strikes on Iran, just as they support every Israeli attack on every country and on Palestinians, always. In a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a whopping 92.5% of Jewish Israelis support the attack on Iran, including 68% of those who self-identify as “left wing” in Israel. By contrast, Palestinian citizens of Israel largely do not support this or any other Israeli military attack, with roughly 25% saying they support Israel’s strikes on Iran. This same survey asked whether people in Israel feel protected from Iranian attacks: 79% of Jewish Israelis surveyed feel protected compared to 15% of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Why the differences? Simple. Because Palestinians in Israel have never been part of Israeli society, yet we pay the price for Israel’s wars. (Incidentally, no one ever bothers to poll Palestinians in the occupied West Bank – including Jerusalem – or in the Gaza Strip, and they too pay a price for Israel’s assaults.)

Only 37 Shelters

Let’s begin by looking at the issue of “safety” and feeling “protected.”

Read more

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t have appeared happier; he looked almost giddy. By launching an illegal attack on Iran with the United States, Netanyahu’s lifelong goal was achieved. He said as much. While standing on the rooftop of the Israeli military headquarters (Israel’s Pentagon), nestled among residential and commercial buildings in the heart of Tel Aviv, Netanyahu proclaimed, “This coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years: smite the terror regime hip and thigh. This is what I promised – and this is what we shall do.”

Subscribe now

Let’s leave aside the “40 years” comment for the moment – though it is clear that Israel has posed a threat to Iran for at least that time, given its years of attacks on the country and its allies. It’s the rest of the sentence that is equally disturbing. Just as Netanyahu made a Biblical reference to the tribe of Amalek – an enemy that must be completely wiped out – as a justification to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza, including children and infants, he is now invoking a phrase from the Old Testament’s Book of Judges in which Samson “smote them [the Philistines] hip and thigh,” to justify the war with Iran. In plain English, Samson attacked the Philistines mercilessly and viciously. Not coincidentally, Israel’s widely-reported nuclear deterrence strategy is known as the “Samson Option,” in which Israel will resort to using nuclear weapons if it deems necessary. By the way, unlike Iran, Israel has never submitted to international inspections, and Israel has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that 191 countries (including Iran) have signed.

This out-and-proud combination of unchecked military aggression, coupled with deranged Zionist biblical references, foretells what’s to come, but it also underscores what we’re already witnessing in Palestine, making it all the more important that we don’t look away from what Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank as the war in Iran rages on.

Just take Gaza, for instance.

As expected, since the US-Israeli attacks in Iran began, Gaza has once again slipped from the radar. After killing more than 72,000 Palestinians (including more than 615 since the October 2025 “agreement”) and flattening more than 90% of Gaza’s housing infrastructure, Israel’s genocidal policies continued unhindered over the last week. Now, instead of fast-paced live-streamed killing, Israel’s death policies include monitoring virtually every morsel of food that enters Gaza. And despite (hesitatingly) agreeing to allow aid trucks into Gaza (as an aside, why does a genocidal regime have a say in this anyway?), Israel continues to turn away needed goods. For days, Israel prevented any supplies from entering Gaza – including food and medicine – before allowing a mere trickle of supplies last week. Despite glitzy reconstruction plans – funded by the same countries that the US has now put in the line of fire – Palestinians continue to languish in flooded tents. The instant meme of Trump’s so-called Board of Peace becoming ”Bored of Peace” rings eerily true. And, of course, Israel’s killing machine continues to grind on (Israel has killed more than a dozen Palestinians in Gaza since attacking Iran, including a 12-year-old girl, a journalist, and a paramedic over the weekend) while Israeli settlers clamor for the establishment of settlements in the enclave.

Share

In the West Bank, Israel has imposed a blanket ban on Palestinian movement while Israeli settler-militias, emboldened by their leaders and an army that thinks it is cool to stand by and watch Israelis terrorize Palestinians, carry out their attacks on Palestinians in an attempt to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. After an especially violent February, which saw settlers carry out hundreds of attacks against Palestinians, ranging from killings (including an American citizen, if that still matters to anyone) to stealing land, destroying homes, uprooting trees, and burning fields, the violence has only gotten worse. Just since the start of the war in Iran, Israeli settlers have killed at least five Palestinians. That includes two Palestinian brothers who were murdered by settlers last Monday in Qaryut. Three others, including a third brother, were wounded in the attacks. On Saturday, settlers killed another Palestinian man in Masafer Yatta. And on Sunday, Israeli settlers murdered two Palestinians in the village of Khirbet Abu Falah (a third man died after getting hit with a tear gas deployed by the Israeli military). All the while, the Israeli army continues to arrest Palestinians across the West Bank. Why? Because Palestinians are not allowed to defend themselves or their land. That right is reserved exclusively for those trying to steal land – i.e., Israelis.

And, alarmingly, in Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque, usually packed with worshippers during Ramadan, has been effectively closed. Even prior to the Israeli-American attack on Iran, Israel decided to limit the Palestinians from the West Bank who can worship in Al-Aqsa to women over 50 and men over 55, and capped the number at 10,000 – less than 3% of the number that can be accommodated. Now, however, Israel has canceled Friday prayers completely for “security reasons.”

Meanwhile, during the Jewish holiday of Purim, Israelis traipsed through Jerusalem chanting what now seems to be Israel’s national anthem, “May your village burn.” With the rise in Israel destroying Palestinian homes, ethnically cleansing Palestinian towns, and settlers terrorizing Palestinians so that they can build more settlements, it is unsurprising that the UN commissioner for human rights has warned that Israel aims to bring “permanent demographic change” to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israeli ministers are now doing their usual boasting and bragging as they do when they commit war crimes. In particular, Israel’s actions in Gaza – rather than being an embarrassment for the war crimes committed – are a source of pride: a model for the future.

Share

Last week, Israel issued “evacuation orders” (aka ‘leave or risk death’ orders) for the residents of southern Lebanon, an area encompassing nearly 10% of the country’s entire area and 100 villages and towns, as well as Dahiyeh, the densely populated southern neighbourhoods of Beirut, an area about the size of lower Manhattan and home to an estimated 800,000 people. Israel’s Finance Minister Bezelal Smotrich has promised that, “Very soon Dahiyeh will resemble Khan Younis.” Why wouldn’t he say that? Makes sense, given that Israel intends to bomb the place to the ground, just as it did in Gaza. And, violent election promises bring votes, and we are only months away from an election. With 93% of Jewish Israelis supporting this war (I have never seen a society more intent on war – the prime minister has “yearned” for this for 40 years! – and the so-called “opposition” is fully in support), one can see that the next election victor will be the person who calls for more killing and more land theft. He will be the stronger Samson.

But maybe Israel’s leaders – drunk on destruction and the impunity with which they have been allowed to kill – should recall Samson’s fate: his final act was to bring down the pillars of the temple of Dagon, apocalyptically killing his enemies…and himself.

Diana Buttu is a Haifa-based lawyer and analyst who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s and is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues. She is also a practitioner in residence at Georgetown University in Qatar. She writes Zeteo’s ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel.’

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.

Check out more from Zeteo:

As I was scrolling through social media the other day, I came across a Facebook post showing a picture of an Israeli car with a yellow sticker reading, “Bring Them Home Now” in English. The author of the post asked a question: “Advice as to how to remove? Soapy water?” For the author, just like that – poof – their life had returned to normal: no more caring about Gaza. The person was now preoccupied with ways to remove a bright yellow sticker – crowdsourcing advice in a Facebook group.

This single post shows the vast disparity between Israeli and Palestinian life – not just since October 2023, but since Israel was created, on the ruins of our country and by devastating our nation and people. While the post’s author was concerned with sticker residue, we are forced to contend with trying to survive (a still ongoing) genocide. Every day, we see Israel killing Palestinians – an additional 586 added to the 72,000 death toll since the unveiling of the Trump Plan – with little attention paid to any of these killings. Israeli soldiers continue to gleefully blow up and raze Palestinian schools, buildings, and homes, while slowly squeezing Palestinians into even smaller spaces to shrink the area inside the “yellow line” beyond which Palestinians live in a death trap. Palestinians are contending with little humanitarian aid entering Gaza due to Israel’s continued blockade. Palestinians continue to languish in tents, with absolutely no clear prospects that Gaza will ever be rebuilt after Israel bombed more than 81% of all buildings in Gaza. We are still digging through the rubble to find our dead.

For Israelis, of course, they can breathe a sigh of relief: the last of the dead Israelis was returned, so they can go back to ignoring Gaza. They paid no price for committing genocide; no price for ethnic cleansing; no price for eviscerating Gaza. Accountability looks like a joke. It didn’t matter to them that they killed four Palestinians and bulldozed a mass grave in order to get the last Israeli dead body back. Who cares about dead Palestinian bodies strewn all over the streets of Gaza? And who cares about how dead Palestinian bodies are returned to Gaza? Certainly not Israelis. This is why when the Israelis returned the bodies of 54 Palestinians and skull samples, they were returned mutilated and unidentifiable, and not a word from the Israeli media or the Israeli public.

But it isn’t just Israeli media that has been silent.

So too have much of the mainstream media and the so-called international community fallen silent. Can it be that Palestinian lives are just not worth as much as Israeli ones? What else can explain the silence surrounding Israel’s continued imprisonment, torture, and starvation of more than 9,300 Palestinians from the West Bank, including 350 children and 3,300 who are imprisoned without any charges whatsoever (i.e., hostages)? What else can explain the silence surrounding the continued imprisonment of more than 1,000 Palestinian hostages from Gaza (the true number is unknown as Israel has refused to provide this information), including 80 medical professionals, such as Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, who are being held in horrific conditions, some held underground and without access to lawyers. Video-recorded abuse sessions (shown to the Israeli public on TV) show these gaunt Palestinians subjected to regular beatings, assaults by dogs with muzzles, and being stepped on by prison guards. What else can explain the silence as Israel continues to hold 776 Palestinian dead bodies, including the bodies of Palestinian citizens of Israel? (Incidentally, Israel is the only country in the world that uses dead bodies of its own citizens as bargaining chips.) Why aren’t we hearing politicians endlessly demand that Israel release Palestinian hostages?

Share

And, as Israel breathes a sigh of relief, we now see that Israel is backing away from its endless hasbara because it doesn’t need it any longer – it can do as it pleases. For two years, Palestinians were gaslit and told that the 72,000 Palestinians that Israel killed were somehow a figment of our imagination. Imagine how dehumanizing it has been for Palestinians to have to prove that their loved ones are dead. We have had to come up with list upon list, with names and ID numbers, of the dead; we have had to explain our decades of experience in counting the dead; we have had to point to US reports attesting to our expertise in counting the dead. Recently, Israel accepted the 72,000 figure – which means that it is now kosher for the rest of the world to follow suit. Undoubtedly, the figure is much higher than that, particularly given that Palestinians have been reporting for some time that Israel has been using weaponry that has effectively incinerated Palestinian bodies, leaving no trace behind. But of course, it will only be when Israel admits to it that this will be accepted as true.

So why is this happening? Because everyone wants to forget. Palestinians have seen this game before: everyone wants to turn away from the horrors that Israel creates, and so, it only takes the words “peace” and “process” and “boards” and “plans” for the world to become distracted. It becomes easy to pretend that life has improved for Palestinians. This is why people lazily use words and phrases like “progress” when a couple of cans of food make it into Gaza or “risks fragile ceasefire” when Israel kills 31 people after bombing residential buildings. Trump knows this, and Israel knows this, too.

And so, as Jared Kushner unveils a seemingly ChatGPT-created reconstruction plan for Gaza with the Arabic written backwards and disjointed, not only is it obvious that he did not have a Palestinian read the plan, it is obvious that he does not care. His talk about stadiums and high-rise towers is really just about paving over the dead Palestinian bodies trapped beneath the rubble that he claims to want to clear. The focus is on forgetting – pretending that genocide did not happen.

So while Israelis are too busy thinking about how to remove sticker residue and thinking about whether they will win a medal at the Olympics that they should have been barred from participating in, we are focused on putting our lives back together and on how we will survive as a nation with a country full of genocidaires who believe that what they did was right and who have yet to pay a price for all of the evil that they have committed. And while Israel and world powers may have forgotten, Palestinians have not forgotten and will never forget. No Trump Tower, no “Board” of Colonization, no plan will make us forget. And so to the Israeli who asked, yes, soap may remove the sticker residue, but nothing will ever remove the residue of committing genocide.

Share

Diana Buttu is a Haifa-based lawyer and analyst who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s and is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues. She is also a practitioner in residence at Georgetown University in Qatar. She writes Zeteo’s ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel.’

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.

Check out more from Zeteo:

It is what I call the “death by a thousand cuts”: the slow, methodical, bureaucratic way of killing or destroying something that the Israeli government has perfected over the decades. It always has a fake security rationale, but the real reason is to control Palestinian life, to make living impossible, to eventually erase us.

We have seen this pattern for decades, not just in the way that Israel tries to steal land, or put up checkpoints, or destroy our homes, but also in the ways in which they try to control the work of Palestinian as well as international non-governmental organizations. It is therefore not at all surprising that Israel has now effectively banned dozens of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) working in Palestine. It’s a fateful and deadly cut – that was planned, and we saw it coming. Yet, the outrage from the foreign governments home to these vital aid groups has been minimal at best.

The Shrinking Space

Read more

He called nuking Gaza “one option.”

He was among the Israeli lawmakers who participated in protests for the right of Israeli soldiers to rape Palestinian detainees.

And he’s using his position to help Israel systematically steal Palestinian land.

This isn’t ultranationalist Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, but a lesser-known, dangerous member of the Israeli government: Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu.

Eliyahu is part of Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party (Otzma Yahudit) and has been Israel’s minister of heritage since 2022 (he briefly resigned in January 2025 because he did not like the so-called Gaza ceasefire in January, but he was quickly reappointed in March 2025). The media frequently refer to him as “far right” rather than fascist, and his statements are often dismissed or downplayed. I have been told so many times that he is “fringe” and that he just says these things for votes. And yes, he was “suspended” by Netanyahu (briefly) in 2023 after saying dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was “one option” (Eliyahu attempted to claim his remark was “metaphorical”). But that is it.

Subscribe now

Since then, he has said that Israel must find ways of dealing with Palestinians that are “more painful than death.” He has supported the rape and torture of Palestinian hostages held illegally in torture camps in Israel and swarmed the Sde Teiman torture camp along with his supporters after nine Israeli soldiers were detained briefly for brutally torturing a Palestinian hostage. He has called for the bombing of Gaza’s food stores, and has said that anyone who waves the Palestinian flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the Earth.” He has also called for the establishment of settlements in Gaza, made genocidal statements such as “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza,” and called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. With statements like this, it is obvious why the Israeli government – a government that attempts to look “democratic” when it is really fascist – wants to hide the Eliyahus of Israel.

But Eliyahu is a minister, and he is using his power as minister to do what Israel loves to do: steal Palestinian land. Eliyahu’s latest target is the Palestinian West Bank town of Sebastia.

Seizing Sebastia

Sebastia is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the West Bank and is located a little over six miles (10 km northwest) of Nablus. It sits on the junction of two main routes: the northern Nablus road to Jenin and the western route from the Jordan valley to the coast. The town, home to over 3,000 Palestinians, is the burial site of John the Baptist, where the Nabi Yahya mosque is located. Sebastia’s archaeological sites include the ruins of a Byzantine basilica, a Roman forum and amphitheatre, and one can often see children running up and down the steps of the amphitheater as their elders have done for centuries. Its terraced landscape is filled with olive, apricot, and fig trees, tenderly cared for for hundreds of years. It has been on the UNESCO “tentative list” of World Heritage Sites for the State of Palestine since 2012.

Israel’s intention is clear – to sever the ancient site of Sebastia from the Palestinian historic town of Sebastia, and turn the site into a settler-led “tourist” attraction (similar to what the Israelis did with the City of David in Silwan, East Jerusalem).

Eliyahu is targeting Sebastia under the pretext of “developing the archaeological site in Sebastia.” The focus, of course, is on one history: Jewish history. The aim is to erase all others. On Nov. 19, 2025, the Israeli army published an order declaring its intention to seize around 1,800 dunams (more than 400 acres of Palestinian land), including the archaeological heart of Sebastia, along with surrounding lands that belong to families from Sebastia and the nearby town of Burqa. This is roughly 25% of Sebastia’s land. The expropriation order includes 550 privately owned olive orchards and four houses.

This development follows a government decision in May 2023 that allocated 32 million NIS (nearly $10 million) to develop what Israeli authorities call the “Shomron (Samaria) National Park” (Samaria being Israel’s term for the West Bank) in a plan that entails massive development of the site, including a visitors’ center, a parking lot, and a fence that will separate the acropolis from the rest of the town.

While Israel has long used archaeology as a means of taking over Palestinian land and of separating Palestinians from their land, this is the largest seizure of Palestinian archeological sites and is being met with radio silence by the world.

“I cannot imagine my life without Columns Street,” Zaid Azhari, a cultural heritage researcher from Sebastia, tells me, referring to the Roman columns that run through Sebastia. “Every newly married couple takes their first walk together on Columns Street, and every child has a picture of themself sitting on the steps of the Roman theatre.” Of course, once Israel takes over these lands, they will be completely off limits to Palestinians, including Zaid. “We have seen this pattern before,” says Zaid. “Once an area becomes a ‘heritage site,’ it is open to Israelis, it is open to foreigners, but it is not open to the Indigenous inhabitants of the land – the people who have cared for these sites for centuries – us Palestinians.”

Zaid is referring to the many sites across the West Bank that are now off limits to Palestinians, where “archaeology” or even religious significance was used as a pretext to take Palestinian land. For example, the Palestinian town of Qaryut was taken over by Israel under the guise of an archaeological excavation camp back in 1978. Instead, Israel established the settlement of Shiloh and, to this day, the owners of the land of Qaryut can no longer access their land, while the Israeli settlement of Shiloh not only remains standing but has expanded. We have watched this movie for decades; we know the ending. “Where will the families go?” I ask Zaid. “I don’t know,” he responds.

As he speaks, I think of the more than 32,000 Palestinians in the West Bank whose houses have been blown up or bulldozed in the past two years alone. These are Palestinians from Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps (yes, Israel is blowing up refugee camps), now made refugees again. Where will they go?

Share

With the horrors that Israel has inflicted on Gaza, people often forget what Israel is doing in the West Bank. Israel’s overall plan is overlooked: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine – all of it. It is done through different means – through genocide; by blowing up and destroying homes; by stealing land for settlements; by throwing Palestinians in prison indefinitely, and even through stealing land for “archeological” reasons. The aim is the same: to pretend that we never existed. This is Israel’s “heritage,” and Eliyahu is the best person to represent it

So, no, Eliyahu is not “fringe” – but he is unique: he is open and honest about what he intends to do; the others are not. And yes, while the statements about nuking Gaza being “one option” are condemned, his overall plan to steal Palestinian land (and get rid of us) is not. He is part of the Israeli government (and likely to be re-elected), and the government aims to steal Palestinian land through any means possible – and they are getting away with it.

Sebastia’s residents are urging people to join their Save Sebastia campaign. More information can be found on Instagram at @savesebastia.

Diana Buttu is a Haifa-based lawyer and analyst who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s and is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues. She is also a practitioner in residence at Georgetown University in Qatar. She writes Zeteo’s ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel.’

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.

Check out more from Zeteo:

For nearly three weeks, we have heard by-the-minute news about the retrieval of Israeli bodies in Gaza. International rescue teams have been sent into Gaza, not to help retrieve the more than 10,000 bodies (a conservative figure) of Palestinians – including babies, children, the elderly – but to retrieve the remains of last Israelis, whom, it is known, including by Israelis, are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve because they are trapped beneath rubble due to two years of non-stop Israeli bombardment. Meanwhile, the population of Gaza remains starved, collectively punished, until the last of the Israeli bodies is retrieved and confirmed. But while we see New York Times “breaking news” alerts on Israeli bodies, little attention has been paid to obvious signs of torture that Palestinians held by Israel endured before being returned to Gaza for burial, or to the sheer number of Palestinian bodies held by Israel.

Subscribe now

Under the so-called “ceasefire agreement,” for every dead Israeli handed over to Israel, Israel would, in turn, return the remains of 15 Palestinians. To date, Israel has returned some 300 Palestinians, but without providing the names of the deceased. Due to Israel’s bombing of the forensic labs, all of the identification is being done by hand, a laborious job. Israel had, of course, failed to place the bodies in refrigerators, so the bodies arrived decomposed. And also mutilated. As Palestinian bodies are brought to Gaza, their family members wait to find out whether their loved ones are among the dead, trapped under the rubble, or still held hostage in Israel.

I obtained pictures of some of the Palestinian bodies that have been returned – pictures that I wish I had not seen and now cannot unsee.

Read more

Eighty-two. That’s the percentage of Jewish Israelis who support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, as revealed in a survey commissioned earlier this year by Pennsylvania State University. Yes, 82%.

In the same survey, 56% support the ethnic cleansing of those Palestinians who live as “citizens” inside Israel, including 66% of those under the age of 40 supporting the idea. That means that of 10 of my neighbors in Haifa, nearly six of them want to see me and my family gone, and eight of them want to see Gaza ethnically cleansed.

Subscribe now

At the same time, nearly half of Jewish Israelis (47%) agree that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants."

Genocide fever has now reached its logical conclusion: “If we can get rid of all of them, why not?” (To be clear, there have been attempts to downplay the Penn State survey to claim that only 53% support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, pointing to another poll around the same time. Even still, that’s more than half of Israelis.)

Am I surprised? Absolutely not. Since it’s founding as a state, Israel has always been a society that is based on the dehumanization of Palestinians. As I have said time and again, there is no way that a person can live in the home of another, on the land of another, and destroy the homeland, communities, and lives of others without some deep-rooted dehumanization.

I can see this in the ways in which Israeli news media’s coverage of Israel’s genocide and the official statements of the Israeli government have evolved over time.

Read more

“Diana, are you and your family ok?” This was the first text message I received from a friend after missiles landed in Haifa following Israel’s illegal attack on Iran. Many friends from around the world have since messaged and called, but it was that first message – from a friend in Gaza – that has stayed with me these past few days.

Yes, we are fine, physically. I live in Haifa, where the amenities that are provided to Jewish Israelis are available to me: we hear the warning sirens; we get warnings on our phones; I have a bomb shelter in my apartment (it was built after 1990, so by law, it must have one); there are public bomb shelters throughout many parts of Haifa; we have electricity, food, water, phones, and internet.

Subscribe now

Before any of Israel’s apologists chime in to show that this is “proof” that there is no apartheid in the country, it needs to be said that Israel has failed to build public shelters or safe schools in the vast majority of Palestinian cities and towns. Out of 71 Palestinian towns examined in 2018, only 11 had public shelters (29 shelters in total). It has not gotten better since. Palestinians often reported being ousted from or harassed in these shelters. This week, as a missile hit a family home in the Palestinian town of Tamra, killing four members of the same Palestinian family, Jewish Israeli residents of the neighboring Mitzpe Aviv were seen cheering as the missile hit Tamra, with some cheering, “May your village burn!” – a common chant uttered by Israelis towards Palestinians. (Among the first sentences I learned in Hebrew!) In Tamra, a town of 37,000 Palestinians, there are no public shelters, while Mitzpe Aviv, with its 1,100 residents (including some who cheered for the missile), has 13 shelters.

But while we are physically fine, and while we see, for the first time, that Israelis are now getting a very small glimpse into the horror that they have meted out in Gaza, no Palestinian is “fine.” For 20 months, Israel has been carrying out genocide, with performative hand-wringing by the West but not much else. The international system as we know it has been shredded to pieces – as have Palestinian children’s bodies – by Israeli bombs and Western indifference.

Don’t Take Your Eyes Off Gaza

With each siren, I cannot help but think of my friends in Gaza who, in the midst of genocide, are being starved, forced out of their houses and tents time and again, and, in the case of my friend, 11 times, while watching Israeli bombs tear apart the limbs of children, crush buildings, flatten cities, destroy the medical and education systems in Gaza.

Read more

“I am finding it difficult to stay positive,” reads the message sent to me by Maram, a young girl in Gaza. “Our situation is very difficult, and my mother does not want me to tell you.”

This, of course, is code for “I’m hungry; I’m starving.” Of course, she is hungry. She has remained in the northern part of the Gaza Strip during the entire genocide, unable to flee from her area. Israel decided, on March 2, to block all supplies from entering Gaza – aid paid for by international donors, none provided by Israel, of course, despite its obligation to do so. This means that for more than two months, no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel supplies have entered the Gaza Strip.

Subscribe now

Already, 57 Palestinians, mostly children, have died from Israel’s forced starvation, while 1.1 million children remain at serious risk of starving. The World Food Programme (WFP) announced that its warehouses are barren, and the few operational soup kitchens are severely rationing their last stocks. Back in early April, WFP announced that all of the bakeries it supports had been forced to shut down due to a lack of flour and fuel. Since fuel is needed to run the desalination plants that provide Gaza’s drinking water, an estimated 91% of the population also faces increasingly acute water insecurity. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Gaza is now entering the longest period without relief aid over the last 19 months.

The images are too painful to look at. I think back to my days living in Gaza, and to Palestinian culture in general. Our lives and events are bookended by food: whether festivals celebrating our lettuce, our apricots, our unique cauliflower, or festivities surrounding the olive harvest and the sumptuous meals prepared to showcase these new crops, or the meals cooked to mark times of happiness and sorrow. So much of Palestinian culture centers around the food and the joy that comes with imbibing the bounty of our land. Anyone who has ever come to Palestine knows this well. I cannot imagine what Maram, her siblings, and her mother, Sarah, are going through, spending their days struggling to find the most basic means of survival.

What Do I Tell Her?

After a bit of back-and-forth messaging, Sarah gets on the phone. “Diana, tell me. What do Israelis say about what they have done to Gaza and about what they are doing to us and our children?”

Read more

“What is the use, Diana? Why do we have to keep displaying our dead? Can’t we just die in dignity?” These were the words sent to me by one of my friends in Gaza. After nearly 18 months of witnessing Israel kill more than 60,000 Palestinians, flatten buildings, mosques, and schools, and bomb hospitals and universities, it was Israel’s killing of Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers that led him to send me those words.

Subscribe now

It is obvious why. Yes, the Israeli army kills paramedics and rescue workers, just as it targets journalists, doctors, professors, teachers, and just about anyone else. But this time, it was different: the Israeli army gunned down 15 rescue workers last month but only after reportedly making sure that at least some of their hands and legs were tied, unable to move. In other words, Israeli soldiers executed these rescue workers at point-blank range; they were reportedly found with approximately 20 gunshot wounds (each) to the head and chest. But the soldiers did not just tie up and then execute them. No, this time, the ambulances and firetrucks that these rescue workers were in – vehicles that were on their way to rescue other Palestinians in Rafah that Israel had decided to bomb – were flattened and then buried in the sand by the Israeli army. It took days to find them, and one remains missing.

I have had a difficult time even writing these words because I cannot stop thinking about the level of evil needed to carry this out. First, they had to stop the ambulance, the UN vehicle, and the fire truck. Then, they had to tie up the rescue workers. Then, they had to shoot them (repeatedly). Then, they had to flatten the vehicles they were in, and then they had to use a bulldozer to bury the vehicles. This isn’t the work of one “rogue” soldier – as Palestinians are always led to believe, but the work of a group of soldiers – soldiers who have been told time and again that their actions in Gaza have no consequences and that they can do as they please.

The H-Word ‘Justification’

Read more

Much of our mainstream media, across the West, seems intent on ignoring what is happening in the Occupied Palestinian Territories these days, and especially events in the West Bank. Zeteo, however, remains committed to covering the ongoing occupation and Israel’s atrocities, and we are proud to have the well-informed Diana Buttu, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and former PLO legal adviser, writing for us. Please do become a paid subscriber to Zeteo so you can read her columns, in full, without a paywall, and support independent journalism.

- Mehdi

When Israeli tanks invaded Jenin last weekend, a friend in Bethlehem called me to say, “Is this really happening, again? At least we know what to do this time!” She was trying to sound upbeat, but I knew that she was masking what we felt back in 2002 when we saw tanks invade our city of Ramallah. I still remember the moment that the Israeli army forced me out of my home in the middle of the night in Ramallah and running to avoid live bullets at 2 am. I was not allowed back into my home for days. This time around, it is different. The 40,000 people who have been forced out of their homes in West Bank cities like Jenin and Tulkarm will not be allowed to return – ever – and the army has said it will stay for a year.

Subscribe now

In Tulkarm, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, late last week, made sure to post a picture of himself seated in the house of a Palestinian family. On the walls of that home, the Israeli army put up the Israeli flag and the flag of the Israeli army brigade that took over the house. Netanyahu and his army generals casually sat on their living room furniture and made themselves at home in a place that is not their home, a place to which they were not invited and in which they do not belong.

This image is strikingly similar to the hundreds, if not thousands, of images that Israeli soldiers have proudly displayed over 15 months of genocide in Gaza, with Israeli soldiers making themselves at home in the homes of Palestinians from Gaza who have fled Israel’s bombs. (Not ironically, this is precisely what Israelis did in 1948 – “make themselves at home” in places that were not, in fact, their homes.)

But the similarities between what Israel did to Palestinians in 1948, what it did in Gaza, and what it is starting to do in the West Bank are not simply pictures. Netanyahu and his ministers have declared precisely what they intend to do in the West Bank.

Read more

“Diana, sorry to bother you. Can you help me find my friend? He was last seen on his way to Rafah to help rescue people from beneath the rubble, and did not return. Can you check to see if he is being held in Sde Teiman?

“Diana spread the word to find my relatives. They were last seen near Kamal Adwan hospital. We do not know if they are dead or alive. If you have contact with the lawyers who are visiting the prison or with the ICRC please ask them.”

These are just some of the many messages I received from friends in Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the commencement of the “ceasefire” on Jan. 19. Friends, finally relieved that Israeli bombs have stopped dropping on their heads, are now in the midst of processing what they have experienced during the past 15 months of Israel’s genocide. Israel has killed more than 47,400 Palestinians – likely a vast undercount – and injured more than 111,500 others. Just as Palestinians in Gaza broadcast the genocide side – documenting it for the entire world to see – so too they are documenting what it means for this phase of the genocide to end – and another to begin.

Subscribe now

The Genocide Continues

Yes, Israel’s bombs have stopped, but the genocide is not over. With a destroyed and collapsed healthcare system, we will continue to see more Palestinians die, as they are unable to get the treatment necessary to be able to survive the devastation that Israel (with US bombs and help, of course) meted out against them. Israel’s bombs targeted virtually all hospitals leaving only half of Gaza’s hospitals partially – not fully – functional and with thousands in need of medical care. Gaza is now the site of the most child amputees in the world.

But it isn’t just the collapse of the medical system. Israel has targeted all of the Gaza Strip. No place was safe; no place remains unaffected, and it’s unclear if the extremely fragile, three-phase ceasefire deal will even lead to an end to the 15-month war (many expect it won't). Israeli leaders made it clear throughout their bombing campaign that they intended to make Gaza unlivable. In voicing his opposition to the ceasefire arrangement, ultranationalist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – never one to miss an opportunity to show how racist and fascist he is – took to social media to assure his supporters that Gaza “is ruined and disintegrated, uninhabitable, and it will remain that way. Don't be impressed by the forced joy of our enemy. This is an animalistic society that sanctifies death. Very soon, we will erase their smile again and replace it with cries of grief and the wails of those who were left with nothing.”

He isn’t wrong about the destruction. Satellite images from the northern city of Beit Hanoun show the extent of Israel’s destruction – and its cruelty.

Read more

In major Israeli cities, including Haifa, where I live, “Trump/Vance 2024” campaign signs have been quickly replaced by signs congratulating Donald Trump on his election victory. “Make Israel Great,” reads one sign. “Now is the Time For Sovereignty,” reads another (referring to Israeli annexation of the West Bank), with an image of the Star of David over the occupied West Bank and a picture of Trump.

Israeli support for Trump is not new, of course. Back in 2016, settlers campaigned for Trump, hosting parties and encouraging Israeli Americans to vote for him. By the end of his term, he had higher approval ratings in Israel than in the US. Israeli settlers viewed in him the opportunity to shape US policy towards Israel to their benefit. And they weren’t wrong. From recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital to moving the US embassy, to recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights to stating that settlements do not violate international law, Trump spent his first term fulfilling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wishlist. 

On the day after this month’s US election, my Israeli neighbor – a member of the so-called “left” – was giddy. “Finally, someone who will be good for us!” she said. 

Subscribe now

I was puzzled. “I don’t understand. Are you saying that Biden was bad for Israel?” I was certain that she would answer “no” to my (rhetorical) question given that the US has funded more than 70% of the weaponry used in this genocide and given that it has provided Israel with endless diplomatic cover.

My certainty was misplaced. “Yes! He was horrible. He allowed the world to criticize Israel,” she said. Lost on her – and on the rest of Israel – is that the world is critical because of the genocide and war crimes the country is carrying out. But, as I have written about before, Israelis are oblivious to what they have done and continue to do to Palestinians. All that matters to them is how they are perceived globally, irrespective of what they do to Palestinians. They do not care that their government is committing genocide; they are just angry that the world is not fully supporting them as they do it.

Netanyahu Taps Hardline Settler Activist

With Trump as president for a second time, Netanyahu is going for gold.

He will push for the full closure of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) and will either keep the strangle on or kill the Palestinian Authority – whichever is more expedient for him. But the big item on Netanyahu’s wishlist this time around is annexation, and who better to push for it than the newly appointed Israeli ambassador to the United States, who happens to be… wait for it… both an American and reportedly a former member of a group that was for years deemed by the FBI to be a terrorist organization.

Born in Pennsylvania, Yechiel Leiter in his youth was a member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), per the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The US-based organization was later listed on the FBI terrorist list for carrying out more than a dozen bombings and planning others, including a plot to bomb a field office of Congressman Darrell Issa (who is of Lebanese descent). It was removed from the list in 2022 due to inactivity.

Baruch Goldstein, the man who massacred 29 Palestinians in 1994 in Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, was a member of the JDL, with the organization reportedly announcing, “We are not ashamed to say that Goldstein was a charter member of the Jewish Defense League.” Leiter was also a member of the Israeli Kach party. Both the JDL and Kach were established by Rabbi Meir Kahane, a Jewish supremacist who called for the enslavement and expulsion of Palestinians and who was even outlawed by Israel for being fascist (given how fascist Israel is, Kach surpassed a very high bar).

When Leiter moved to Israel, he went to live as a settler in the heart of Hebron, where hundreds of settlers terrorize Palestinians daily. Leiter was subsequently appointed as “mayor” of the illegal settlement, per reports, and helped establish the Hebron Fund Inc., which has raised millions of tax-deductible dollars in the US to fund Israeli settlement activity in Hebron. He later reportedly moved to another settlement in the occupied West Bank. His appointment by Netanyahu sends a clear message: the settlements are here to stay. 

“Make Israel Great(er)”

Trump’s nominees – from Marco Rubio for secretary of state to Pete Hegseth for Pentagon chief – are shaping up to help fulfill Netanyahu’s wishlist. Far from being an “America First” group, the nominees have, to date, one common thread: “Israel First.” And while Netanyahu plans for his wishlist to be fulfilled in the hope that he will avoid domestic prosecution, the so-called Israeli “left” continues to flail, as they always have. 

More than a year into Israel’s genocide, the “left” has yet to utter a word about it – about Israeli war crimes, about the legality of blowing up people carrying pagers, about bombing another country. It has yet to make statements about Netanyahu’s ongoing starvation of Palestinians in the north of Gaza and the plans on the part of Israeli settlers to build settlements in Gaza. Instead, they are too busy kicking out members of the actual left for daring to say a word in opposition to the war and passing even more laws that further highlight just how fascist Israel is. 

This week, opposition leader Yair Lapid unveiled his “plan” to end Israel’s attacks in Gaza and Lebanon. His plan isn’t even worth reporting on because it is like every other “plan” that has ever been put forward by any Israeli official: expansionist, racist, and laden with Israeli control over Palestinian and Lebanese lives and land. But while Lapid’s plan is a big yawn, his comments regarding the ICC’s move to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant were fascinating.

A member of the true opposition would have used the arrest warrants to ostracize these two individuals for carrying out war crimes, for (forever) staining the image of the country and declaring them unfit to lead. Instead, in true (non) opposition fashion, Lapid and virtually everyone else in the country came out in unison, rushing to Netanyahu’s and Gallant’s defense, chastising the court for daring to indict Israeli leaders for practically wiping Gaza off the map, for killing and wounding 10% of Gaza’s population, for starving Palestinians, for attacking hospitals and schools and for inflicting untold damage to generations of Palestinians. 

So, with a settler serving as the ambassador to the US, an “Israel First” Trump Cabinet, a non-existent opposition in Israel, and international inaction (apart from handwringing) over what to do about Netanyahu’s arrest warrant as well as all of the above, settlers, and many other Israelis, are rejoicing more than ever before, for they will push to finally Make Israel Great(er) – in size.

Make sure you’re signed up to receive ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel’ in your inbox every month. Catch up on some of her previous essays below:

Subscribers can now listen to Diana’s essay in her own words through the ‘listen to post’ button above.

One year. I cannot believe that it has been one year. One year of witnessing Palestinians try to retrieve mangled bodies from the sites of Israeli bombs – whether they be homes, hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, or even tents. One year of seeing children scream in fear, in physical pain, in emotional pain, knowing that the world is and always will be cruel. One year of watching one of the most vibrant Palestinian cities, Gaza City, turned into rubble. One year of worrying about friends and futures. One year of explaining over and over again that Palestinians deserve to live and to be free; that Oct. 7 is the result of decades of Israeli brutality and oppression; and that nothing – absolutely nothing – justifies genocide.

Yet, Israeli society has been drunk on perpetrating crimes. Unlike in the West, where Israelis try to portray themselves as victims, in Israel, the image is the exact opposite: that of strong, undefeatable soldiers who assert their superiority over Palestinians. This is what explains the many TikToks proudly showing Israeli soldiers blowing up Palestinian universities and homes. This is what explains the desire to show them torturing Palestinians and the endless videos of Israelis dressed in hijab and with dirt on their faces mocking Palestinian women and children who have survived Israel’s relentless bombs. Israel is the place where superiority (and cruelty) is on full display. 

Subscribe now

Throughout the past year, I have been asked what it is like to live in Haifa, among Israelis. Thinking about my answer, I find myself thinking about my parents, who were both born before the Nakba but were raised in Nazareth, a city that was taken over and became part of Israel. I find myself thinking about my late father, and what it was like for him to live among the very people who perpetrated the Nakba, who were apologists for the Nakba, or who denied the Nakba. I find myself thinking about how invisible Palestinians were then – and now – to Israelis, how dehumanized we were then and now. I think about the ways my parents – and the 150,000 other Palestinians who remained in what became Israel – maneuvered their fragile existence among the criminals and their cheerleaders. Their homeland was sacrificed and transformed into a large Israeli military base, while their bodies became the repositories of Israeli cruelty. Israeli policies are premised on the idea that what cannot be achieved through force can only be achieved through more force.

I think about this because that pattern of invisibility and disregard for Palestinian lives continues to this very day, including in Haifa. It is part of the ethos of the state. Today, as Israel makes daily raids on Palestinian cities and towns, imprisoning (and, of course, torturing) thousands, destroying homes, and tearing up cities with bulldozers, Israel’s cruelty and short-sightedness are on full display. As Israelis discuss why all Hamas leaders have not yet been assassinated (as though that were legal), toast one another on TV after Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination, and joke about blowing people up during Israel’s pager attack, little thought, if any, is given to any of the consequences of such actions. For them, the flattening of six buildings in Beirut, the killing of about 2,000 Lebanese people over the past month, and the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians mean absolutely nothing. There are no major protests demanding that Israel stop the genocide; just protests (which have all but completely died down) demanding that Israel strike a deal to bring back the Israeli captives.

As an example of what it is like to live in Israel, one only needs to look to the experience of a 12-year-old girl.

While in a class discussion, the seventh-grader said that small children were starving and suffering in Gaza. In response, dozens (if not hundreds) of students from her school formed a mob, screaming and dancing one of Israel’s most known chants: “May your village burn!” (of course, posted on TikTok). She was suspended from school; her tormentors were not.

Israel’s so-called “democratic institutions” are equally complicit. In late September, Israel’s highest court approved the continued detention of Walid Daqqah’s dead body. Yes, dead body. Walid was a 62-year-old Palestinian political prisoner – a Palestinian citizen of Israel – who spent 37 years in prison. He suffered from a rare form of cancer, and though he was supposed to be released in March 2023, Israeli authorities, tacked on an additional two years to his prison term. For the last six months of his life, Walid was tortured, beaten, and denied medical treatment. He was denied the ability to speak to his wife and his 4-year-old daughter (who only ever met him once). On April 7, Walid died, and Israeli authorities have held his body ever since, denying his family the right to bury him. In its ruling, the court said that Walid’s body could be used as a political bargaining chip like the other Palestinian bodies that Israel has refused to hand over and the thousands of Palestinians illegally held hostage in Israeli prisons. 

Share

I expect no less from the state or from Israelis. In fact, the only way that the Nakba could have been carried out and this decades-long occupation justified is through the wholesale dehumanization and demonization of Palestinians. How else can one justify stealing the homes and lands of another? How else can one justify genocide and ethnic cleansing?

Today, Israelis are on a demonic high after Nasrallah’s assassination and after a year of genocide. Israelis are now advertising for the purchase of homes in southern Lebanon and offering boat tours to view the destruction in Gaza (with potential sites for construction pointed out, of course). None of this would have been possible without the impunity that the West, particularly the “axis of genocide” – Israel, the US, and Western Europe – has given Israel.

As we mark one year since the start of this genocide, the only message that Israelis will take away from this year is that Palestinians truly are invisible – not only to them but to the rest of the world. Genocide and torture are permissible (in fact, they can be cool and fun!), and blowing up buildings is a great way to build up a social media presence. Palestinian bodies are made to have the latest Israeli technology used on them or to be political bargaining chips, with the stamp of approval from Israel’s courts. Just as my parents had to endure the criminals of the Nakba, the Nakba deniers and apologists, so too Palestinians today endure the same. So you ask me, what is it like to live in Haifa among these people? I will let you decide. 

Read more of Zeteo’s special content marking Oct. 7:

They used his body for cover. 

I spoke to Waleed*, a Palestinian from northern Gaza, less than six months after he forcibly became a human shield – not by Hamas, as Israel likes to claim, but by Israeli soldiers themselves. 

It was March, and Waleed, after previously evacuating his wife and young son to Rafah, had taken shelter in Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City – the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip. His home had been destroyed, and he wanted to find a stable internet connection so he could continue working as a freelancer, he explained. In Al Shifa, he also thought he could better take care of a family friend who lost both of his legs as a result of an Israeli bomb.

But on March 18, Waleed, who’s in his thirties, awoke to the sound of heavy gunfire. The Israeli army had invaded the hospital and would not allow anyone to leave. This was the second major invasion of Al Shifa Hospital – the first had occurred in November 2023. 

Subscribe now

“I started hearing gunshots and screaming. I saw a woman and a man who was using crutches, trying to escape,” Waleed told me over the phone from Gaza. “Unfortunately, as they were fleeing, a tank crushed them completely, running over and killing them instantly.” 

He said soldiers fired in every direction. “They didn’t care if their targets were children, women, men, or the elderly. Their aim was to kill. Israeli soldiers were shooting at anything that moved,” he told me. “There were a lot of dead people inside Al Shifa Hospital and others who were trying to escape the gunfire by running.” According to Waleed, the Israeli soldiers intentionally aimed and shot at people’s heads. “To kill [them] instantly,” he said. 

By the third day of the siege, food and water had run out. Waleed said people resorted to drinking toilet water to stay alive. “I say this while feeling disgusted with myself, but that's how things were, and that was the reality,” he explained. “I had to choose between dying from hunger and thirst or feeling disgusted with myself while drinking from the toilet water. I had to drink, even if it was a very small amount.” He shared the last food he had – a portion he said was barely enough for one person – with 18 people, including children, women, and young men. 

By the sixth day, Waleed and a group of five others decided that they could not stay in the hospital any longer. He knew he would not survive. “Most of us were exhausted from hunger and thirst. We couldn’t endure more than three days without water or food, and the children were crying and screaming from hunger and thirst.” Waleed said those he was with heard others on the floor below them yell, “Come down!” 

Waleed and the others believed that if the Israeli army saw them, they would allow them to seek refuge elsewhere as all of them were civilians. “So we all decided to go together, raising the white flag, hoping we would be spared and allowed to go elsewhere,” he said. A woman that was in the group tied her son’s white undershirt around a wooden stick and told Waleed to “carry it.., and lead us.” 

As the group approached the Israeli military, Waleed said an Israeli soldier shouted at them and ordered the men to stand on one side, and the women on the other. Boys under 16 years old were told to stay with their mothers. 

At one point, Israeli soldiers ordered Waleed and other men to strip to their underwear. That’s when Waleed said he was filmed by an Israeli drone, and a soldier took selfies with him and others – for TikTok, the soldier told him. 

Subscribe now

The group was forced to walk towards the reception building. “We were 150-200 people, naked. Many soldiers, many tanks, and many corpses.”  Waleed said he witnessed Israeli soldiers execute six young men who were tied up by shooting them in the head. The soldiers, Waleed told me, claimed that the men “were inside the Green Line on Oct. 7, even though they looked young,” so young that Waleed believed this claim must be false.

“Using Our Bodies as Cover”

The calmness with which Waleed describes his experience sent chills up my spine. By this point, he has witnessed two people crushed by a tank and the execution of six young men. He has not had food in days and has also witnessed the systematic destruction of the hospital. He keeps repeating over and over again, “many tanks, many corpses.”

Eventually, Waleed sees men being divided into two groups: one group is released and ordered to go south on foot. The Palestinians in the other group are handcuffed. Waleed had assumed that those who were handcuffed would be imprisoned because he had heard numerous accounts of the mass arrests happening at the time. Indeed, Israeli forces arrested more than 900 Palestinians during this second Al Shifa Hospital raid. (Many continue to be held in Israeli detention centers that have been turned into torture camps, including the infamous Sde Teiman, which I wrote about a couple of months ago). 

But Waleed later learned that the fate of many around him would actually be much worse. Some of the men who were handcuffed were later forced to wear Israeli army uniforms with cameras strapped to the front. While handcuffed, these men were sent into tunnels to determine whether they contained explosives. Israeli newspaper Haaretz confirmed that the Israeli army had dressed Palestinians in Israeli army uniforms, tied their hands behind their back, and sent them into a tunnel with a camera attached to their bodies. Why, you may ask? Because, according to soldiers interviewed by Haaretz, dogs normally used for such purposes were killed, wounded, or discharged. So Palestinians were, in effect, substituted for dogs by Israel’s forces. 

Waleed felt relieved – he was placed in the group that would be released and ordered to travel south. “It felt like he [the soldier who decided his fate] gave me a new life,” he said. But, he soon learned Israeli soldiers also had different plans for him.

Instead of being released, as Waleed had hoped, he was selected to be part of a smaller group of men (still only wearing their underwear) who were ordered to walk in a line down one of the streets of Gaza City. That’s when he became a human shield. 

The soldiers, Waleed said, were positioned behind the Palestinian men, using them as cover to leave their positions. “They ordered us to walk ahead,” he said. As Waleed looked to the right, he could see that Israeli soldiers were crouched behind him and other men. 

There was a shooting from resistance fighters positioned in a building across the street. Instead of making sure that Palestinians were able to flee, Waleed said Israeli soldiers ducked behind him and the others, using their bodies as shields. “As they advanced, other soldiers opened fire on the building, using our bodies as cover. It was like a Hollywood action movie for them, but for us, it was terrifying. We saw many corpses, killed and scattered in the street. We saw tanks.”

Waleed paused to ask, “Do you know what it is like to see a dead body in the street? Have you ever smelled death?”

Share

Decadeslong Practice

Waleed and those Palestinians sent into tunnels are not alone. Israel’s use of Palestinians as human shields has been an everyday feature of the Israeli military occupation for decades. 

In 2002, during Israel’s invasion of the West Bank, I witnessed Israeli soldiers use my neighbors as human shields as they went door-to-door to kick Palestinians (including me) out of their homes. I still remember the dignity that one of my neighbors mustered up when ringing the doorbell to ask me to open the door to my Ramallah flat. He could have screamed or yelled, but instead, he rang the doorbell.  

Although the use of human shields violates international law, and even the Israeli Supreme Court (hardly a bastion of human rights) has ruled it illegal, the practice persists and, indeed, thrives. It is often done with the full knowledge (and likely encouragement) of Israeli commanders. 

Just this past June, Israeli soldiers were filmed driving through the refugee camp of Jenin with a wounded Palestinian man, Mujahed Abadi, strapped to the hood of an army jeep. It appears no one has been held accountable, and no one ever will.

In Gaza, footage obtained by Al Jazeera shows Israeli soldiers putting cameras on Palestinians – either dressed in Israeli military uniforms or stripped down to their underwear with their hands bound – and sending them into tunnels or badly damaged homes.

Last month, Israeli soldiers through Breaking the Silence, an Israeli veterans group, revealed how they brazenly use Palestinians as human shields. Why? For Israelis, it appears to be quite simple. As Israeli commanders told a soldier, “Our lives are more important than their lives.” 

Share

“I Want to See My Future”

Israeli soldiers finally released Waleed after what he said felt like a lifetime. Hungry, barefoot, and wearing only his underwear, Waleed walked 13km (eight miles) before arriving in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. He is now displaced and living in a tent, in extreme heat, with disease all around. He drinks unclean water and eats only small quantities of food provided by charities. Unable to get to Rafah, he still hasn’t seen his family. 

“I am a person who just wants to live. I want to see my future. Honestly, I want to have a future, a good one,” he said. “I aspire to many things, but now my main goal is just to be okay, and for my family to be okay.  My son is suffering from famine. This little child tells me [over the phone], ‘Father, I want to eat.’” 

At the same time, everything he and others went through at Al Shifa continues to haunt him. By the end of the siege on April 1, Israeli forces had killed at least 300 Palestinians, including medical staff. Several others died because it became impossible for the hospital to provide treatment. Decomposing bodies were found in the courtyard and in the halls of the hospital. Crushed bodies – like those that Waleed described – were found on side streets. Israeli forces burned down the hospital’s departments and destroyed equipment and supplies. The hospital only began receiving patients again on Monday – more than five months after the siege. This is what Israel describes as the “gold standard for urban warfare.”

“The Israeli soldiers are cowardly terrorists. They hold weapons and shoot randomly. They film TikToks to show how strong they are and yet they hide behind me and others for protection,” Waleed said. “All I could think of was my son, my wife, and my mother. I refuse to die to save a soldier.” 

*Zeteo has changed the name of the individual to protect his identity.

Missed previous editions of the ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel’ newsletter? Read some of them out below, and be sure to subscribe and select my newsletter to get it in your inbox every month.

“Half of the Israeli public is no longer in favor of the war,” one friend told me Saturday night as we witnessed thousands of Israelis take to the streets to protest the Israeli government under the slogan, “Elections Now.” “Yes, but the other half is all-in, and REALLY in favor,” responded his wife. “And they are the more powerful group.”

She, of course, is right. For months, reports of torture and rape have emerged from Israel’s military base turned torture camp, Sde Teiman, where Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians without charge. I wrote about it in a previous diary earlier this month. Palestinians who have emerged from this torture camp refer to it as the “slaughterhouse” with horrendous tales of torture, rape, abuse, and sleep deprivation being meted out by Israeli prison guards. Nearly 30 Palestinians have died while in Sde Teiman and other prisons, according to the information provided to date. 

Subscribe now

And while the precise chain of events is unclear, what we do know is that the Israeli military advocate general decided to dispatch the military police to question nine Israeli soldiers on suspicion of gang-raping and sodomizing a Palestinian man from Gaza at Sde Teiman. The man was rushed to the hospital where he exhibited signs of rape, including a ruptured bowel and broken ribs. It would be a mistake to simply think that Israel’s actions in prisons like Sde Teiman came only after October. Since becoming Israel’s national security minister in 2022, ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir has made prisons his target, with him authorizing abuse against Palestinians. He has also called for the death penalty to solve problems of overcrowding.

The arrival of the military police was violently resisted by the soldiers being detained for questioning and by others at the site. The soldiers barricaded themselves inside the camp and pepper-sprayed the military police. Now, to be clear, Israeli investigations are usually “rubber stamps” to Israeli war crimes, with few charges ever laid against Israeli soldiers. But for some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party and his coalition, the idea of merely questioning those accused of gang rape crosses a red line. As a result, they mobilized in defense – not of the gang rape victim – but of the accused rapists.

Crowds stormed the Sde Teiman prison camp with soldiers struggling to expel them. The Israelis who stormed the prison included Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (the man said that dropping a “nuclear bomb” on the Gaza Strip is “an option.”). Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich later expressed his support for the soldiers “I call on the military advocate general, take your hands off our heroic fighters.” Hours later, as the Israeli soldiers were taken to another military base, more than 200 people, including members of Knesset tried to storm the base to release the soldiers being held for questioning.

In protest of the raid, members of the Israeli Knesset announced that they would convene an urgent debate to discuss the arrest of the soldiers – not the abuse that is being meted out to Palestinians. That would be absurd in Israeli think. To highlight the actual absurdity of this position, lawmaker Ahmad Tibi asked, “Is inserting an explosive into the rectum of a person legitimate?” Likud Knesset member Hanoch Milvetsky responded with what has been the position of the right (more than 50% of the Knesset, remember): “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas commando], everything is legitimate.”

Subscribe now

This is what happens when you claim to be a “moral” army or an army that was “forced into” genocide – you can always justify everything. And this is precisely what Israel has done. 

However, unlike in the past where (some) convicted soldiers get a slap on the wrist, these soldiers will likely get a pat on the back, just as Elor Azaria got when he shot a motionless Palestinian man in the head in 2016. He was named “Man of the Year.”

Israeli peace activist and negotiator Gershon Baskin, who is perhaps the only Israeli to have direct contacts with Hamas over the past two decades, will join Mehdi for a live town hall on Thursday morning ET, to react to the Netanyahu government’s assassination of Ismail Haniyeh.

The town hall is reserved for paid subscribers and will include a Q&A with those who join. If you are not a paid subscriber, become one by 4 pm ET today, July 31, to have a chance to participate in this rare conversation. But if you miss that deadline, these unique town halls are a regular feature for paid subscribers, so we still encourage you to become one ASAP – especially in this news cycle!

I still remember the joy I felt seeing Majed Abu Maraheel, the first Palestinian Olympian, as he entered the Olympic arena carrying the Palestinian flag at the 1996 Atlanta Games. The games were carried live on screens in Ramallah, where I had just arrived for the summer. The crowd erupted in cheers seeing the Palestinian team bearing the Palestinian flag for the very first time. 

This was the first Olympic Games after the start of the so-called “peace process” also known as “Oslo,” the name of the capital in which the launch of negotiations was first agreed to. Oslo brought with it so much disaster for Palestinians, including a skyrocketing number of illegal settlements and settlers, Israeli checkpoints, and Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes.

But Oslo also ushered in an era of symbolism, bringing joy to many Palestinians whose very existence had been denied by Israel and its supporters for decades. The Palestinian flag, previously banned by Israel (and hence the symbolism of the watermelon, which was used to display the Palestinian colors instead), could now fly proudly. It was a tacit acknowledgment of the evil of Israel’s occupation and the right to Palestinians’ freedom. Alongside the symbolism, Palestinians were admitted into international organizations, including the Olympics.  

At the same time, however, nothing was done to stop Israel from continuing its crimes so the symbolism of recognizing Palestinians was just that – symbolism. For decades, Western powers have adopted policies that essentially reward and coddle Israel – through providing arms, diplomatic support, trade agreements, or otherwise – for committing day-to-day war crimes while occasionally issuing a slight reprimand for Israel’s egregious war crimes. This “have your cake and eat it too” approach to diplomacy has left Israel empowered and emboldened, able to continue a military occupation, commit war crimes, AND be welcomed into countries around the world.

Subscribe now

With Israel committing what judges on the International Court of Justice have deemed to be a “plausible genocide” in Gaza, and on the heels of the ICJ ruling that Israel’s occupation is plainly illegal, one would have expected that the International Olympic Committee, the body charged with making decisions on the Olympics, would ban Israel from participating in the games in Paris, just as Belarus and Russia have been banned for the war in Ukraine. Only “neutral athletes” from Belarus and Russia can compete without their countries’ national flags or anthems. 

Yet, when it comes to Israel, the rules seem to be different. Rules of neutrality don’t seem to apply. For example, Israel’s flag bearer, Peter Paltchik, in a now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), shared an image of a bomb with his name on it along with the caption, "from me to you with pleasure", as well as "#HamasisISIS" and "#IsraelAtWar."

Read more

“This call is being recorded,” an automated Hebrew voice recording recited when I recently tried to reach Abu Hamza, a friend in Gaza. He had just been released from Israel’s now notorious Sde Teiman prison. He heard the voice recording too. “Every time I speak on the phone, the recording comes on. But I don’t care,” he said.

“How are you?” I asked, painfully aware of how coldly formulaic my query sounded given what I already knew of the unspeakable ordeal he had been through. What do you ask someone somehow surviving amid a genocide? How do you ‘check in’ on someone twice displaced, whose home is destroyed, who now lives in a tent, and who has witnessed massacre after massacre, including the killing of his own family members? 

“Glad to be alive,” he answered. “I just returned from hell.” 

It strains my imagination to conjure what could be worse than what he already has endured, but he began to describe his monthslong detention in the Israeli army base turned torture camp.

Abu Hamza was picked up by the Israeli army after he fled with his wife, children, and grandchildren from the northern Gaza Strip to the south, crossing through what Israel cynically designated a “safe passage.” Far from being safe, he found the road riddled with dead Palestinians. At one “checkpoint” – set up in early November – soldiers ordered him into a ditch at gunpoint and, from there, later transported him, blindfolded and shackled, to the prison camp in Naqab (Negev).

Subscribe now

Abu Hamza told me about months of torture, of being blindfolded, with his body folded – knees and head to the ground for days on end; of being forced to drink urine and salt water whenever he requested water; of being denied food only to be then forced to eat food with maggots (he lost 30 kg – about 66 lbs) during his three-month abduction; of only being permitted to shower once every 50 days; of being forced to wear the same clothes for three straight months; of being beaten with a baton to the point of unconsciousness several times; and of Israeli soldiers breaking his hands and then making him crawl on all fours.

“They enjoyed it,” he said. “I could hear them laughing and howling as they beat us.” He could hear my voice crack as I tried to hold back my tears while speaking with him. “It’s ok,” he told me. “I was lucky. I got out. Others were killed while there.” Throughout our call, the recorded Hebrew warning message repeated again and again.

“Engineered Torture Methods”

Days later, I navigated various new and old checkpoints scattered across the occupied West Bank to visit a friend whose cousin was recently released by Israel from Sde Teiman. Because I am a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, I am among the privileged few who can travel in and out of Israeli checkpoints. The vast majority of Palestinians are denied the Israeli permits required to exit the West Bank. While traveling, I noticed that Israeli settlers had set up a new checkpoint, stopping Palestinian cars (those with green license plates) while letting those with yellow license plates (like mine) pass. 

My friend’s cousin, a young man named Bilal, had, by October 2023, been imprisoned for months. Locked up by Israel repeatedly as a young teen, Bilal, by 19, had spent more than three years of his life in Israeli prisons, always without being charged with any crime. In November 2023, he was “randomly selected” to be sent to the Sde Teiman prison camp, where he, too, endured months of torture. His account is eerily similar to what Abu Hamza told me. Bilal was tortured so severely that his captors offered medical treatment. “The doctor told me he could give me something to ease the pain but then added that it may be the last thing I ever ingest. I knew what he meant, so [I] decided to tolerate the pain of broken ribs and vomiting blood.”

Subscribe now

Bilal said some Palestinians had been injected with foreign substances. He then described what he called the “engineered torture methods” designed to break Palestinians. “What they did to us was methodically studied. They tortured us in ways to demonstrate their superiority and control over us; they were not seeking information. They want to show us that they have the power to determine our lives. At one point, I realized they were counting our daily calorie consumption (1,706 calories) to make sure we had enough.” Israel has similarly counted calories in Gaza, too – and still does. Bilal, too, lost over 30 kg after five months in prison.

“Of Course Israelis See It”

Abu Hamza and Bilal are just two of the thousands of Palestinians Israel has abducted and tortured in Sde Teiman and other prisons.

Far from being a secret, Israeli soldiers have boasted proudly about these prisons and their mistreatment of Palestinians, often posting images and videos of tortured Palestinians on social media. 

During my visit with Bilal, a European international NGO worker also visited to inquire about prison conditions. Clearly appalled and stunned by what she heard, she said: “I am not sure the Israeli public is seeing what is happening.” 

“Not see?” Bilal replied. “Of course they see it. They were joking about whose videos got more views and likes. They want Israelis to see what they are doing to us. They want to show how tough they are with us, how superior they are. That’s the whole point.” 

I cannot help but agree with Bilal. Day after day, well-intentioned people ask me whether Israelis see the endless stream of torture videos displayed on TikTok and Instagram. The assumption behind these inquiries appears to be that if Israelis knew, they would be outraged and would act to halt it. But Israelis do see the videos; they know what is happening, and there is precious little evidence of outrage beyond baseless, boilerplate claims that Israel will “investigate” any wrongdoings. In fact, many Israelis appear proud of this conduct. Indeed, the videos and evident celebration of abuse serve to make many feel superior, even though they are, in fact, losing on all fronts.

Share

After nearly nine genocidal months, Israel has lost much of global public opinion and, on the ground, has demonstrated its inability to achieve any of its stated “goals.” Despite dropping more bombs on Gaza – and at a faster pace – than have been dropped anywhere in modern history (reportedly three times the explosive power that was dropped on Hiroshima), Palestinian resistance (not just Hamas) persists.

It shocks the Israeli public to see that small groups of guerrilla fighters continue to blow up Israeli tanks and not surrender despite being starved and bombed and the fact that Gaza’s health system has collapsed. Israeli leaders are now slowly trying to acclimate Israelis to the reality that they will never “win,” with military officials such as national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi coming out to say that Hamas cannot be defeated. Faced with this knowledge – and knowing that they have lost –  Israelis shroud themselves in the false narrative that they remain strong and superior, an illusion evidently fed by torturing kids like Bilal and older men like Abu Hamza.

‘Blacklisted’

Late last month, in Breach Media, former CBC producer Molly Schumann (who happens to be the child of a Holocaust survivor) penned an explosive piece on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s deliberate silencing of Palestinian voices. The asserted silencing took different forms, ranging from “verifying the deaths” of on-air Palestinian guests’ family members or qualifying with disclaimers in their interviews that the CBC could not independently verify interviewees’ claims. Other methods included allowing Israeli apologists to assert false claims without CBC journalists ever challenging them while conveniently editing out and not airing statements by Palestinians speaking about genocide or starvation.

A blacklist – with my name included among others – also was alleged to have circulated among CBC managers and staff to ensure that bookers did not contact us for interviews. In the piece, Schumann asserts that commotion ensued in the newsroom after I was interviewed for a news piece and that my contact details were deleted from the CBC database.

I was not surprised when this piece was published. Yes, Canadians are friendly and polite, but Canadian media is, at times and in my decades of experience, even more Zionist-leaning than U.S. media. When I saw the article, I contacted the CBC, who assured me that there was no such "blacklist.” But I checked my calendar to see when my last CBC television interview was and whether the timeline sketched in Schumann’s account was correct. Sure enough, it seemed to; my last CBC television interview coincided precisely with the dates Schumann cited.

Share

In rapid response to Schumann’s piece, Brodie Fenlon, CBC News editor-in-chief, claimed in a statement that the article was false, that there is no blacklist, and wrote: “We’ve received hundreds of public complaints through our ombudsman and standards office about our reporting on this conflict since Oct. 7. About 55 per cent of complainants thought CBC was unfair to Israel, and about 45 per cent thought CBC was unfair to Palestinians.” But if that is the CBC “test,” all it demonstrates is that one side is more vocal in voicing complaints, not that there is any bias or other problem with coverage.

To understand what is happening in Gaza is to speak to those affected by the bombs – Palestinians. It is to cover what it means to try to stay alive as the world’s remaining superpower backs the raining down of bombs on the most densely populated place on Earth. It means listening to Palestinians as they describe the sheer hell and impossibility of trying to protect and feed their kids, all while being engaged like combatants and blockaded, with no water, electricity, food, fuel, and medicine. It means to listen to what it means to have a collapsed medical system and the country that seeks your destruction in charge of what meager supplies are allowed in. It means listening to refugees and children whom the world has abandoned. 

As I have watched this genocide unfold for the past eight months, I often find myself thinking about the Nakba in 1948. The Nakba was not televised; genocides are generally not broadcast, and there has always been an excuse that “we didn’t know.” Here, of course, this genocide is being broadcast live, and there is no way that one can say they “didn’t know” – unless one is consuming news media like the CBC, which appears to be trying to make sure that you “don’t know” by suppressing the ugly truth of genocide. History is not going to look favorably on media outlets that chose to hide the truth and give Israel a pass while using the percentage of complaints as a litmus test for fair coverage.

Seen in Israel

Look out for my ‘Diary from a Palestinian in Israel’ every month.

“I’m sure you heard the news,” read the WhatsApp message. “They have taken Nadera,” it said, referring to Israel’s arrest of Palestinian professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian. Nadera was arrested for “incitement” after she (correctly) labeled Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. I had, of course, heard the news because I, like millions of other Palestinians, have been glued to my phone for the past seven months, seeing image after image, video after video, of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza and its unrelenting attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.

Nadera is a well-known professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. But despite being a professor, she is, in the eyes of Israel, a threat – not for anything that she has done, but simply for being. Nadera, like me, is one of the 2 million Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship – non-Jews who live in the apartheid state of Israel (Nadera is also a U.S. citizen, in case Joe Biden cares).

People often ask what it is like to be a Palestinian living in Israel. Here’s what it’s like: We are the remnants and reminders of the 1948 Nakba, people whose nation was destroyed, communities razed, and whose families remain scattered around the world to make way for Jewish immigrants to take over our country and homes. We are the “enemy from within” for whom laws are enacted to enshrine our subservient status while at the same time being told we should be grateful for being “allowed” to live in our homeland.

Subscribe now

As Palestinians in Israel, we must maneuver a system of Jewish supremacy and open racism every day, while living with the very people who perpetrated the Nakba or support it. Israeli politicians have made it clear that we are only here because David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and who spearheaded the Nakba, did not, they say, “finish the job” in 1948, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. 

I’ve lived in Haifa since 2010 after spending my childhood in Canada and later living in Gaza City and Nazareth, as well as Ramallah, where I served as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s. Though I have lived here for many years, not a day goes by when I do not hear anti-Palestinian racist statements from Israeli politicians and ordinary citizens. My well-intending Jewish Israeli friends urge me to brush it off – “You know how Israelis are,” they say, apparently in an attempt to convince themselves these comments are aberrations and not what Palestinians live through daily in Israeli society. But they are not aberrations; racism and threats are commonplace, pervasive, and longstanding.

Genocide Fever

Since Oct. 7, genocide fever has been in full swing. For seven months, Israeli politicians and pundits have spewed genocidal statements on Israeli television and social media on a daily basis. Israel’s far-right heritage minister, a man who early in the war called nuking Gaza an option, recently said that Israel “must find ways [to deal with] Gazans that are more painful than death.” But these are not just statements. They are matched by deeds. 

Israel’s violence has become so commonplace that Israeli soldiers openly brag about killing, wounding, maiming, and torturing Palestinians on social media. Israeli soldiers, who have learned there are no repercussions for their actions, film themselves dedicating the blowing up of Gaza buildings to their children, proposing marriage against the backdrop of Palestinian homes and buildings reduced to rubble, writing “save the date” notices on bombed houses, and gleefully playing with the lingerie of Palestinian women. Killing Palestinians earns Israelis bragging rights, and dating apps are filled with pictures of men brandishing weapons and showing themselves in combat in Gaza.

Subscribe now

But it’s not just Israeli politicians and soldiers. Some of the top-charting songs in Israel (a few even with over 20 million views on YouTube) call for Gaza to be erased and for Palestine’s celebrity supporters, such as Bella Hadid and Dua Lipa, to be killed. Israeli comedian Hen Mizrahi made a comedy routine about Palestinians being killed by food airdrops in Gaza. These airdrops are only necessary because Israel is deliberately starving Palestinians in the besieged enclave. Mizrahi later doubled down on his comments on national TV, repeating the same line uttered by some Israeli politicians and officials: “There are no innocents in Gaza.”

dianabuttu

A post shared by @dianabuttu

It doesn’t stop there. At every turn, a sign can be found promoting Israel’s attacks. Signs in English quoting Nikki Haley’s call for Netanyahu to “finish them” are plastered on storefronts and displayed in apartment windows. Images morphing Adolf Hitler with Hamas leaders can be found on highway overhangs.

But the most popular slogan these days, “Together We Will Win,” is everywhere – on billboards, commercial websites, and business cards. It was even stamped on eggs – yes, eggs – alongside the expiration date, of course.

partnersintorah

A post shared by @partnersintorah

“Your Neighbor Will Just Report You to the Police”

My Israeli neighbor has a “Together We Will Win” bumper sticker on her car.

“What does ‘win’ mean?” I recently asked her. 

“You don’t know what win means?” She replied.

“Not really. I am asking what ‘win’ looks like. So far, more than 35,000 Palestinians killed, including 15,000 kids....”

She shrugged and unabashedly answered, “This is the price.” 

Her response is typical: A recent opinion poll shows that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis – 94% – believe the Israeli military has used “adequate or too little force” in Gaza. About 88% of Jewish Israelis believe the number of Palestinians killed or wounded in Gaza is justified. These are astonishing figures given the apocalyptic scale of death and destruction that Israel has meted out on Gaza and its people. 

A friend warned me not to say anything to my neighbor. “Don’t express dissent,” she told me. “Your neighbor will just report you to the police.” My friend is right to worry. Alongside the genocidal frenzy, Israel has taken measures to crush any domestic dissent, including banning protests, passing a law to shut down Al Jazeera, and going after those who dare speak out against genocide, including professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian.

Subscribe now

Since Oct. 7, hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested for “incitement” and “supporting terrorism” as expressions of solidarity with Gaza are characterized, speaking out against Israeli state crimes, and, in some cases, for writing Quranic verses. Students – ratted out by fellow classmates – have been disciplined by their colleges or universities for “liking” social media posts, while those who openly advocate genocide remain free to do so. Armed militia groups patrol Israel’s streets and social media posts and report Palestinians, including doctors and professors, to police. 

Palestinian neuroscientist and folk singer Dalal Abu Amneh received death threats for posting “There is no victor but God" with a Palestinian flag emoji on social media after Oct. 7. After reporting the threats to the police, she was arrested – not those who threatened her. Following Abu Amneh’s release, her neighbors staged a months-long protest outside her home, with some calling for her expulsion and threatening her with death and rape. The mayor of her town ran his re-election campaign by showing up to the protests, threatening to expel her, and even changing the name of her street to “Israel Defense Forces Street.” That, of course, is permissible, but denouncing genocide is not. 

The reason for the crackdown on Palestinians in Israel is clear: Keep us afraid so we do not dare to speak out. And while the carnage continues in the occupied territories and our families, friends, and nation are battered, we are expected to stay quiet, even as our Israeli neighbors and colleagues treat genocide as entertainment. 

Look out for my ‘Diary from a Palestinian in Israel’ every month. If you aren’t already signed up to receive my newsletter, subscribe now and be sure to select it.