Yet another orphan born in Gaza, cut from her dead mother's womb. Another example of the bestiality of the "Where's Daddy" AI atrocities committed every single day. Enough of the Open Air Prison that is Gaza. Enough of every single Palestinian being treated like lab rats to test another weapon. Enough of the oppression, brutalising, and subjugation of a civilian population on their own land! Enough of the land grabs and murderous mobs of illegal settlers running amok! Israel's reward for daily abominations and inhumanity - another 26 Billion for an ethnic cleansing well done! Genocide Joe Biden needs to added to the arrest warrants to be issued by the ICJ. Sidenote - has anyone seen hide nor hair of Karim Khan? Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court - when did he become the Invisible Man? The Court's jurisdiction was established ages ago. The least of his crimes - derelictiom of duty! This Madness must STOP - if not, the whole world is guilty. Not in my name. FREE PALESTINE.
Biden is flawed. Trump is catastrophic. Biden's record on the environment isn't perfect but he has brought into effect many policies that give hope for a better future. Trump is "Drill baby drill". To reject Biden and his flaws is to cut off your nose to spite your face. Even to simply not vote gives Trump a better chance at winning. If you love this planet, vote for Biden while letting him know your criticisms. Who knows - we may be able to get him to change course on supporting Netanyahu between now and November. You will never change Trump but he will destroy American democracy along with life on this planet.
If you want to argue that Genocide Joe is going to be better on the environment than the MAGA-lomaniac, then leave it at that.
But don't gaslight people into thinking that he can somehow be persuaded to change his thinking on unconditionally supporting Israel. He's been an ardent Zionist throughout his political career. So much so that there was a time when even Menachem Begin, hardly a dove when it came to the Palestinians, had disassociate himself from the callous remarks of a certain Senator Joseph R. Biden because they were too extreme (see: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/4/2/biden-is-still-the-best-us-president-israel-could-wish-for). And 42 years on, there's virtually nothing to suggest that his thinking on this subject has substantively moderated (I think the past six months provides ample proof of that).
There are some people who simply cannot, in good conscience, vote for Biden come November, no matter what it entails. And in the face of a plausible genocide, that's a perfectly reasonable moral position to take without being maligned or smeared.
Too true, a leopard cannot change their spots. Either in hock to the Gun Lobby by deliberately not renewing his Automatic Weapons ban from back in the day, to being the Military Industrial Complex's, and Israel's faithful lapdog. I thought there was laws against being a foreign power's puppet - isn't that treason?
You have not been maligned or smeared by me. I, too, am appalled by Biden's unconditional support for Israel's clearly-genocidal war. Life necessitates making difficult choices. I respect your right to your decision. I ask that you respect my right to mine.
So how exactly is someone supposed to interpret "to reject Biden despite his flaws is to cut off your nose to spite your face," or not voting for Biden means you don't love the planet (even though there is a Green Party candidate on the ballot in many states)?
Nowhere in my response have I questioned your choice - vote for whoever you want. But I will certainly object to the misleading suggestion that people should vote for him despite his complicity thus far because he can somehow be persuaded to stop supporting Israel so unconditionally. This is an absurd line of reasoning based on falsehoods.
Just because it's unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible. With Trump, it is impossible that he would ever support basic human rights for Palestinians or pressure Netanyahu to stop the genocide. Trump would never agree that what Netanyahu is doing is genocide, either.
First up, I’m not arguing that Trump would have been better than Biden when it comes to Gaza. But if we are entertaining remote possibilities and hypotheticals, then there’s a much higher chance that Don the Despot would dump Bibi (or anyone else that follows him) compared to Genocide Joe. Jared Kushner runs Trump’s Middle East policy. This specimen of despicability is undeniably an ideologue when it comes to Israel. And the policies implemented between 2017-2021 (most notably the Abraham Accords) were a disaster for the Palestinians – without a shadow of a doubt. Trump, however, doesn’t have an ideological commitment to anything other than himself. So in the highly unlikely event that it becomes politically inconvenient to remain so resolutely aligned with Tel Aviv, I suspect the MAGA-lomaniac would distance himself from them in a heartbeat.
Joe Biden on the other hand is unwaveringly committed to America’s unconditional support for Israel. As I’d already mentioned in my previous comment, this has been a constant throughout his political career. According to Reuters, the sitting POTUS, “has long been a top recipient of the pro-Israel lobby, receiving of $5.2 million in support over the last 34 years, the most of any Congressional recipient” (https://www.reuters.com/world/pressure-rises-biden-democrats-reject-aipac-funds-2024-03-12/). You don’t become a “top recipient” without being wholly devoted to the cause.
If the article referenced in my last comment wasn’t sufficiently convincing, here’s another piece to show how far back his ideological dedication to the current status quo goes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJDhnwc-YVQ). He openly, proudly, talks about how firm his ideological attachment to Israel has been since he was a young man. And this explains why he’s staunchly backed the Israelis to the hilt, no matter what they do, for half a year. The carnage of the last six months, the mass slaughter, the mass graves, famine, a plausible genocide remains insufficient in bringing about a meaningful change in this administration’s thinking and policy. Even polling data over the past couple of months - which shows that a substantial majority of Democrats oppose Israel's actions in Gaza - hasn't caused the needle to shift. It is patently obvious that nothing will. Even if his dementia goes full blown.
The fact of the matter is Biden doesn't believe he'll be punished electorally for the US' complicity in the most abhorrent of crimes of our time come November because in his calculation, enough Americans have bought into "vote blue no matter who" mantra with DJT on the ballot. That enough people will be persuaded that Trump would've been worse than him on Gaza. That he might do a complete U-turn on the Israel policy in his second term. I think he's going to be in for a rude shock.
Yes, you are correct. I have been a Democrat all my life even while growing up in India. In November of last year and after watching the slaughter of innocents in Gaza, I registered as an Independent. I live in California and for the first time since I became a citizen (1991) I wrote in candidate (Mickey Mouse) during the primaries. I have been constantly wrestling voting third party or staying home comem November; however, even though I could afford voting that way here in California (Heavily Democrat State) I would be throwing my vote away for a more evil and a bigger monster in Trump. So between these two sick SOBs, I have to take a chance with Biden. We will still have Democracy, albeit it has been eroded in the recent months with our first amendment rights to free speech being curtailed in Universities and yesterday with the possible banning of TikTok.
It will take time for post-industrial societies to wean off oil. Until they do, the world can not function without petroleum products.... including plastics, let alone petroleum fuels. For now, would you want petroleum products in an old terminal with rusty tanks that may leak or equipment that could explode? Can you imagine what your life would be like if all oil production stopped tomorrow? Capitalism is making tons of money off of our addiction to oil. Can we overcome that addiction before we wreck the entire planet? How long do we have before the Atlantic Meridonal Overturning Cirulation fails? Somehow we must connect our daily decisions meaningful in the face of ecological catastrophe, including our political choices in our respective countries. That is what we must be contemplating as we go to the polls everywhere.
"Globally, more voters than ever in history will head to the polls as at least 64 countries (plus the European Union)—representing a combined population of about 49% of the people in the world—are meant to hold national elections, the results of which, for many, will prove consequential for years to come."
You have my full support mehdi. You have inspired me for many years. privileged to be part of something like Zeteo, where truth comes first. #TruthAboveAll
I watched your interview with AOC and I thought it was excellent. I posted it to my Facebook page, and I got absolutely no response. Maybe everyone is tired of these conversations - I don't know. My kitten photos always get a lot of likes.
I am so happy to get this valuable information from Mehdi. My heart breaks for all of the Palestinians born orphans & the 34,000 people, human beings, murdered by Israel. These killings are unbelievable!
I’m reading Mehdi’s Monday memo, while listening to a ghazal sung by Mehdi Hassan, the classical Dhrupad maestro.. poetic in a way. He sings of heartbreak and misery, and Mehdi illuminates the misery of many suffering in Gaza. Always empathetic, always impactful, both of them…
Thanks so much for your courage and thanks for having Rania Khalek on your program. She has been trying to get the truth for years now much to the dismay of the corporate media.
Is there anything that the Palestinians and the other enemies of Israel can do to make it reasonable for Israelis not to feel they are fighting for their survival.
However the world got to the way it is now, no matter how unfair, peace will come when all sides accept each other’s right to exist.
I hope you realise that it's the Palestinians who've been systematically displaced and dispossessed through a settler colonial project over the last 100 years known as Zionism. I hope you're aware and understand that from the get go, mainstream Zionism has always been a project to build a state with an ~80% Jewish majority on a land that was between 90% and 95% Palestinian Arab for at least 700 years (from 1200 to 1900). I hope you can acknowledge and recognise that the only way to socially engineer such an outcome over the last 100+ years is with brutal violence.
Of course, none of this would've been possible without the patronage of first Britain and later the US. In the eyes of such imperialists, it is perfectly acceptable to continue punishing the Palestinians for the sins of Europe. As the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote, "(from 1947 onwards) the message from the world to Israel was that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which was well known in the West, was acceptable - mainly as compensation for the Holocaust and the centuries of antisemitism that had plagued Europe" (https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-nakba-destroyed-twelve-months-gone-on-75-years).
Although Hilary 'hogwash' Clinton would have you believe otherwise, at no point throughout the past 76 years has there been any interest on the part of the Israelis to offer a truly sovereign and contiguous Palestinian state. And the reason is simple - mainstream Zionism covets all of the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea for a majority Jewish state. Based on Ben-Gurion's 80% majority formula, there are 2 million too many Palestinians in Gaza and another 3.5 million too many in the West Bank that have to be gotten rid of. But don't take my word for it, go read the Likud Party platform, books and lectures by pro-Zionist historians such as Benny Morris who argue that Israel didn't go far enough by expelling 750,000 Palestinian Arabs in 1947-49 and another 300,000 in June 1967.
There's so much more I could say regarding the life under occupation, the blockade of Gaza, how non-violent protests and uprisings were brutally suppressed and so on. But I think I've made my point. Who exactly is making who feel insecure should be pretty obvious for anyone that approaches this topic with intellectual honesty.
As long as the US' unfettered support for Israel continues, we're going to be moving forward pretty much the same way we have for the past six months. Let me explain.
To the Israeli establishment, October 7th shattered the myth that a crippling regime of Apartheid (a term used by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem, Yesh Din to describe the manner by which Palestinians have been systematically subjugated over the past 56 years) brutally enforced at the end of a rifle barrel could be sustained indefinitely with minimal cost. The “violent equilibrium” maintained by Hamas and Israel for ~15 years, where the Iron Dome would easily repel primitive rockets launched from the “world’s largest open air prison” following which the IOF would bomb the besieged enclave for one or two weeks to “restore deterrence” became unviable. But like 9/11, where the Bush administration had a "unique opportunity" to transform the Middle East, the Israelis now have a "unique opportunity" to significantly alter the status quo in favour of the Zionist aspiration (i.e. controlling all of the land with as few Palestinians as possible). Aside from massacring tens if not hundreds of thousands of Gazans, this is being accomplished by levelling Gaza to make it completely unlivable so that its inhabitants (whoever survives) have no other choice than to leave. This is why Yoav Gallant imposed a complete blockade (no food, no water, no fuel, no electricity, no medicines, no nothing) on October 9th, because it would invariably lead to famine. This is why the water purification infrastructure were amongst the first installations to be bombarded. This is why 75 percent of the housing stock has been destroyed. This is why all of the facilities and amenities that make a civil society (mosques, churches, schools, universities) have been flattened. This is why virtually every hospital and healthcare facility was ferociously attacked repeatedly. This is why hundreds 2,000 lb dumb bombs, which have a lethal fragmentation radius of 365 metres (each bomb kills ~2,500 people on average, going by Gaza’s pre-October 7th population density), have been indiscriminately dropped throughout the past six months. This is why the civilian “kill rate” in Gaza is the highest seen since the Rwandan genocide. This is why the ICJ has called it a plausible genocide.
The future looks just as bleak. The Israelis will likely go into Rafah and destroy it the same way it has the rest of the enclave. Aside from “thinning out” the population even more, they’ll raze majority of the housing stock, civil and healthcare infrastructure to the ground. Once they’re satisfied with the death and destruction they’ve wreaked, they’ll withdraw and impose a blockade that is markedly tighter than the one in place until October 6th. From there, Israel, backed by its Western patrons, will not allow Gaza to rebuild in any meaningful way. The flow of food and medical aid will not be restored anywhere close to the 500 trucks a day that used to go in before this carnage began. UNWRA will be pushed out of Gaza altogether so that distributing whatever little aid does get in becomes a logistical nightmare and schools no longer function. The Israelis will then sit back and hope that this new reality gradually sinks in over the next few months, and Gazans will realise that they have two choices. Stay in Gaza and live a condemned life, depending on morsels of handouts to survive with no hope for a future whatsoever, or pack up and leave.
What can the Palestinian people do? Not much.. The international community needs to pressure Israel to stop acting like their "fight against Hamas" which it is not, it's a genocidal campaign against Palestinian people, is a fight for survival. Israels existence isn't threatened in any way and they need to understand that. The Palestinian Authority, no matter how flawed, accepted Israels "right to exist" so did Hamas. Both parties offered a two state solution in the borders of 1967. PLO already ended any resistance, Hamas offered to do the same when Israel accepts a Palestinian state. Every Israeli government in history rejected this offer and they still do.
I don't know who else youre talking about when you say enemies of Israel. I guess Iran. They basically said the same thing, two state solution, no occupation, no Apartheid.
If he's committed to "democracy" he has a funny way of showing it. For the last three months, at least 60% of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, have supported a ceasefire. Yet this administration went to great lengths to block (veto) repeated attempts pass such a resolution in the security council, and when it finally abstained, it then went onto argue that it was "non-binding" on Israel (which is nonsense, all UNSC resolutions are binding under international law).
So far, I've seen no indication of a substantive shift in JRB's thinking on the subject and highly doubt it'll ever come. Like I said in my previous post, his calculation seems to be that voters' disdain for DJT will trump their disapproval of his Gaza policy.
Also, one point of information, Netanyahu's plan isn't to eradicate Hamas. Hamas is just a pretext to eradicate all of Gaza and it's people. I was responding to "DK Brooklyn" below in the comments section explaining why this is the case. Please give it a read. Perhaps once you get an idea of the ideological nature of the state of Israel, what it stands for and how it goes about implementing and accomplishing it's vision, you'll see why many people, not just in America, but around the world deeply resent the US' unconditional support over the last five decades.
Mehdi, is there a way to go after MS media for their lies, cover up and bias reporting in favor of a criminal Zionist Israel? Two days ago MSNBC and CNN were actually condemning student protest in universities without real evidence of hate speech or perhaps a few isolated incidents that have not been fully corroborated.
Becoming a paid subscriber here at Zeteo was one of the best decisions I've made in recent months and seeing what has happened so far I was right. The contributors so far are phenomenal, some of whom I never heard of before but wrote very interesting pieces. Thank you Mehdi and everyone involved, thank you so much. I was wondering what Mehdi would do after he "left" MSNBC and a platform like zeteo is so desperately needed in times like this. Especially for me, here in Germany. Our media landscape is as terrible as it can be, a race to the bottom. Especially when it comes to covering Gaza, Palestine and Israel but coverage about US politics for example is not good as well.
What needs to happen for this mayhem in Gaza to stop ? Netanyahu is a rogue child of successive U.S. administrations and the only way to get rid of him is for the current administration and more specifically Biden to cut off all arms support as well as support in all international forums including at the international court of justice in the Hague.
Mehdi's voice is one of the only ones I trust anymore. This story is unbearably painful. We must be careful not to look away. The future is watching.
Yet another orphan born in Gaza, cut from her dead mother's womb. Another example of the bestiality of the "Where's Daddy" AI atrocities committed every single day. Enough of the Open Air Prison that is Gaza. Enough of every single Palestinian being treated like lab rats to test another weapon. Enough of the oppression, brutalising, and subjugation of a civilian population on their own land! Enough of the land grabs and murderous mobs of illegal settlers running amok! Israel's reward for daily abominations and inhumanity - another 26 Billion for an ethnic cleansing well done! Genocide Joe Biden needs to added to the arrest warrants to be issued by the ICJ. Sidenote - has anyone seen hide nor hair of Karim Khan? Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court - when did he become the Invisible Man? The Court's jurisdiction was established ages ago. The least of his crimes - derelictiom of duty! This Madness must STOP - if not, the whole world is guilty. Not in my name. FREE PALESTINE.
Biden is flawed. Trump is catastrophic. Biden's record on the environment isn't perfect but he has brought into effect many policies that give hope for a better future. Trump is "Drill baby drill". To reject Biden and his flaws is to cut off your nose to spite your face. Even to simply not vote gives Trump a better chance at winning. If you love this planet, vote for Biden while letting him know your criticisms. Who knows - we may be able to get him to change course on supporting Netanyahu between now and November. You will never change Trump but he will destroy American democracy along with life on this planet.
If you want to argue that Genocide Joe is going to be better on the environment than the MAGA-lomaniac, then leave it at that.
But don't gaslight people into thinking that he can somehow be persuaded to change his thinking on unconditionally supporting Israel. He's been an ardent Zionist throughout his political career. So much so that there was a time when even Menachem Begin, hardly a dove when it came to the Palestinians, had disassociate himself from the callous remarks of a certain Senator Joseph R. Biden because they were too extreme (see: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/4/2/biden-is-still-the-best-us-president-israel-could-wish-for). And 42 years on, there's virtually nothing to suggest that his thinking on this subject has substantively moderated (I think the past six months provides ample proof of that).
There are some people who simply cannot, in good conscience, vote for Biden come November, no matter what it entails. And in the face of a plausible genocide, that's a perfectly reasonable moral position to take without being maligned or smeared.
Too true, a leopard cannot change their spots. Either in hock to the Gun Lobby by deliberately not renewing his Automatic Weapons ban from back in the day, to being the Military Industrial Complex's, and Israel's faithful lapdog. I thought there was laws against being a foreign power's puppet - isn't that treason?
You have not been maligned or smeared by me. I, too, am appalled by Biden's unconditional support for Israel's clearly-genocidal war. Life necessitates making difficult choices. I respect your right to your decision. I ask that you respect my right to mine.
So how exactly is someone supposed to interpret "to reject Biden despite his flaws is to cut off your nose to spite your face," or not voting for Biden means you don't love the planet (even though there is a Green Party candidate on the ballot in many states)?
Nowhere in my response have I questioned your choice - vote for whoever you want. But I will certainly object to the misleading suggestion that people should vote for him despite his complicity thus far because he can somehow be persuaded to stop supporting Israel so unconditionally. This is an absurd line of reasoning based on falsehoods.
Just because it's unlikely doesn't mean it's impossible. With Trump, it is impossible that he would ever support basic human rights for Palestinians or pressure Netanyahu to stop the genocide. Trump would never agree that what Netanyahu is doing is genocide, either.
First up, I’m not arguing that Trump would have been better than Biden when it comes to Gaza. But if we are entertaining remote possibilities and hypotheticals, then there’s a much higher chance that Don the Despot would dump Bibi (or anyone else that follows him) compared to Genocide Joe. Jared Kushner runs Trump’s Middle East policy. This specimen of despicability is undeniably an ideologue when it comes to Israel. And the policies implemented between 2017-2021 (most notably the Abraham Accords) were a disaster for the Palestinians – without a shadow of a doubt. Trump, however, doesn’t have an ideological commitment to anything other than himself. So in the highly unlikely event that it becomes politically inconvenient to remain so resolutely aligned with Tel Aviv, I suspect the MAGA-lomaniac would distance himself from them in a heartbeat.
Joe Biden on the other hand is unwaveringly committed to America’s unconditional support for Israel. As I’d already mentioned in my previous comment, this has been a constant throughout his political career. According to Reuters, the sitting POTUS, “has long been a top recipient of the pro-Israel lobby, receiving of $5.2 million in support over the last 34 years, the most of any Congressional recipient” (https://www.reuters.com/world/pressure-rises-biden-democrats-reject-aipac-funds-2024-03-12/). You don’t become a “top recipient” without being wholly devoted to the cause.
If the article referenced in my last comment wasn’t sufficiently convincing, here’s another piece to show how far back his ideological dedication to the current status quo goes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJDhnwc-YVQ). He openly, proudly, talks about how firm his ideological attachment to Israel has been since he was a young man. And this explains why he’s staunchly backed the Israelis to the hilt, no matter what they do, for half a year. The carnage of the last six months, the mass slaughter, the mass graves, famine, a plausible genocide remains insufficient in bringing about a meaningful change in this administration’s thinking and policy. Even polling data over the past couple of months - which shows that a substantial majority of Democrats oppose Israel's actions in Gaza - hasn't caused the needle to shift. It is patently obvious that nothing will. Even if his dementia goes full blown.
The fact of the matter is Biden doesn't believe he'll be punished electorally for the US' complicity in the most abhorrent of crimes of our time come November because in his calculation, enough Americans have bought into "vote blue no matter who" mantra with DJT on the ballot. That enough people will be persuaded that Trump would've been worse than him on Gaza. That he might do a complete U-turn on the Israel policy in his second term. I think he's going to be in for a rude shock.
Yes, you are correct. I have been a Democrat all my life even while growing up in India. In November of last year and after watching the slaughter of innocents in Gaza, I registered as an Independent. I live in California and for the first time since I became a citizen (1991) I wrote in candidate (Mickey Mouse) during the primaries. I have been constantly wrestling voting third party or staying home comem November; however, even though I could afford voting that way here in California (Heavily Democrat State) I would be throwing my vote away for a more evil and a bigger monster in Trump. So between these two sick SOBs, I have to take a chance with Biden. We will still have Democracy, albeit it has been eroded in the recent months with our first amendment rights to free speech being curtailed in Universities and yesterday with the possible banning of TikTok.
Biden just approved the biggest oil terminal in US history..
It will take time for post-industrial societies to wean off oil. Until they do, the world can not function without petroleum products.... including plastics, let alone petroleum fuels. For now, would you want petroleum products in an old terminal with rusty tanks that may leak or equipment that could explode? Can you imagine what your life would be like if all oil production stopped tomorrow? Capitalism is making tons of money off of our addiction to oil. Can we overcome that addiction before we wreck the entire planet? How long do we have before the Atlantic Meridonal Overturning Cirulation fails? Somehow we must connect our daily decisions meaningful in the face of ecological catastrophe, including our political choices in our respective countries. That is what we must be contemplating as we go to the polls everywhere.
"Globally, more voters than ever in history will head to the polls as at least 64 countries (plus the European Union)—representing a combined population of about 49% of the people in the world—are meant to hold national elections, the results of which, for many, will prove consequential for years to come."
https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/
This is heartbreaking. And what’s worst is that the world doesn’t care. Especially the US that continues sending weapons to kill women and children.
You have my full support mehdi. You have inspired me for many years. privileged to be part of something like Zeteo, where truth comes first. #TruthAboveAll
I watched your interview with AOC and I thought it was excellent. I posted it to my Facebook page, and I got absolutely no response. Maybe everyone is tired of these conversations - I don't know. My kitten photos always get a lot of likes.
I am so happy to get this valuable information from Mehdi. My heart breaks for all of the Palestinians born orphans & the 34,000 people, human beings, murdered by Israel. These killings are unbelievable!
Thanks for your voice. I’m proud to be one of the earliest subscribers. I look forward to seeing your amazing work/content and journey!
Thanks for posting the videos and photos from your launch event Medhi
I appreciate your hard work and your staff’s excellent job. I’m proud to be a paid subscriber. Your voice is needed!
Merci and peace
I’m reading Mehdi’s Monday memo, while listening to a ghazal sung by Mehdi Hassan, the classical Dhrupad maestro.. poetic in a way. He sings of heartbreak and misery, and Mehdi illuminates the misery of many suffering in Gaza. Always empathetic, always impactful, both of them…
Thanks so much for your courage and thanks for having Rania Khalek on your program. She has been trying to get the truth for years now much to the dismay of the corporate media.
Is there anything that the Palestinians and the other enemies of Israel can do to make it reasonable for Israelis not to feel they are fighting for their survival.
However the world got to the way it is now, no matter how unfair, peace will come when all sides accept each other’s right to exist.
I hope you realise that it's the Palestinians who've been systematically displaced and dispossessed through a settler colonial project over the last 100 years known as Zionism. I hope you're aware and understand that from the get go, mainstream Zionism has always been a project to build a state with an ~80% Jewish majority on a land that was between 90% and 95% Palestinian Arab for at least 700 years (from 1200 to 1900). I hope you can acknowledge and recognise that the only way to socially engineer such an outcome over the last 100+ years is with brutal violence.
Of course, none of this would've been possible without the patronage of first Britain and later the US. In the eyes of such imperialists, it is perfectly acceptable to continue punishing the Palestinians for the sins of Europe. As the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote, "(from 1947 onwards) the message from the world to Israel was that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which was well known in the West, was acceptable - mainly as compensation for the Holocaust and the centuries of antisemitism that had plagued Europe" (https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-nakba-destroyed-twelve-months-gone-on-75-years).
Although Hilary 'hogwash' Clinton would have you believe otherwise, at no point throughout the past 76 years has there been any interest on the part of the Israelis to offer a truly sovereign and contiguous Palestinian state. And the reason is simple - mainstream Zionism covets all of the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea for a majority Jewish state. Based on Ben-Gurion's 80% majority formula, there are 2 million too many Palestinians in Gaza and another 3.5 million too many in the West Bank that have to be gotten rid of. But don't take my word for it, go read the Likud Party platform, books and lectures by pro-Zionist historians such as Benny Morris who argue that Israel didn't go far enough by expelling 750,000 Palestinian Arabs in 1947-49 and another 300,000 in June 1967.
There's so much more I could say regarding the life under occupation, the blockade of Gaza, how non-violent protests and uprisings were brutally suppressed and so on. But I think I've made my point. Who exactly is making who feel insecure should be pretty obvious for anyone that approaches this topic with intellectual honesty.
So how do we move forward?
As long as the US' unfettered support for Israel continues, we're going to be moving forward pretty much the same way we have for the past six months. Let me explain.
To the Israeli establishment, October 7th shattered the myth that a crippling regime of Apartheid (a term used by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem, Yesh Din to describe the manner by which Palestinians have been systematically subjugated over the past 56 years) brutally enforced at the end of a rifle barrel could be sustained indefinitely with minimal cost. The “violent equilibrium” maintained by Hamas and Israel for ~15 years, where the Iron Dome would easily repel primitive rockets launched from the “world’s largest open air prison” following which the IOF would bomb the besieged enclave for one or two weeks to “restore deterrence” became unviable. But like 9/11, where the Bush administration had a "unique opportunity" to transform the Middle East, the Israelis now have a "unique opportunity" to significantly alter the status quo in favour of the Zionist aspiration (i.e. controlling all of the land with as few Palestinians as possible). Aside from massacring tens if not hundreds of thousands of Gazans, this is being accomplished by levelling Gaza to make it completely unlivable so that its inhabitants (whoever survives) have no other choice than to leave. This is why Yoav Gallant imposed a complete blockade (no food, no water, no fuel, no electricity, no medicines, no nothing) on October 9th, because it would invariably lead to famine. This is why the water purification infrastructure were amongst the first installations to be bombarded. This is why 75 percent of the housing stock has been destroyed. This is why all of the facilities and amenities that make a civil society (mosques, churches, schools, universities) have been flattened. This is why virtually every hospital and healthcare facility was ferociously attacked repeatedly. This is why hundreds 2,000 lb dumb bombs, which have a lethal fragmentation radius of 365 metres (each bomb kills ~2,500 people on average, going by Gaza’s pre-October 7th population density), have been indiscriminately dropped throughout the past six months. This is why the civilian “kill rate” in Gaza is the highest seen since the Rwandan genocide. This is why the ICJ has called it a plausible genocide.
The future looks just as bleak. The Israelis will likely go into Rafah and destroy it the same way it has the rest of the enclave. Aside from “thinning out” the population even more, they’ll raze majority of the housing stock, civil and healthcare infrastructure to the ground. Once they’re satisfied with the death and destruction they’ve wreaked, they’ll withdraw and impose a blockade that is markedly tighter than the one in place until October 6th. From there, Israel, backed by its Western patrons, will not allow Gaza to rebuild in any meaningful way. The flow of food and medical aid will not be restored anywhere close to the 500 trucks a day that used to go in before this carnage began. UNWRA will be pushed out of Gaza altogether so that distributing whatever little aid does get in becomes a logistical nightmare and schools no longer function. The Israelis will then sit back and hope that this new reality gradually sinks in over the next few months, and Gazans will realise that they have two choices. Stay in Gaza and live a condemned life, depending on morsels of handouts to survive with no hope for a future whatsoever, or pack up and leave.
What can the Palestinian people do? Not much.. The international community needs to pressure Israel to stop acting like their "fight against Hamas" which it is not, it's a genocidal campaign against Palestinian people, is a fight for survival. Israels existence isn't threatened in any way and they need to understand that. The Palestinian Authority, no matter how flawed, accepted Israels "right to exist" so did Hamas. Both parties offered a two state solution in the borders of 1967. PLO already ended any resistance, Hamas offered to do the same when Israel accepts a Palestinian state. Every Israeli government in history rejected this offer and they still do.
I don't know who else youre talking about when you say enemies of Israel. I guess Iran. They basically said the same thing, two state solution, no occupation, no Apartheid.
If he's committed to "democracy" he has a funny way of showing it. For the last three months, at least 60% of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, have supported a ceasefire. Yet this administration went to great lengths to block (veto) repeated attempts pass such a resolution in the security council, and when it finally abstained, it then went onto argue that it was "non-binding" on Israel (which is nonsense, all UNSC resolutions are binding under international law).
So far, I've seen no indication of a substantive shift in JRB's thinking on the subject and highly doubt it'll ever come. Like I said in my previous post, his calculation seems to be that voters' disdain for DJT will trump their disapproval of his Gaza policy.
Also, one point of information, Netanyahu's plan isn't to eradicate Hamas. Hamas is just a pretext to eradicate all of Gaza and it's people. I was responding to "DK Brooklyn" below in the comments section explaining why this is the case. Please give it a read. Perhaps once you get an idea of the ideological nature of the state of Israel, what it stands for and how it goes about implementing and accomplishing it's vision, you'll see why many people, not just in America, but around the world deeply resent the US' unconditional support over the last five decades.
Mehdi, is there a way to go after MS media for their lies, cover up and bias reporting in favor of a criminal Zionist Israel? Two days ago MSNBC and CNN were actually condemning student protest in universities without real evidence of hate speech or perhaps a few isolated incidents that have not been fully corroborated.
Becoming a paid subscriber here at Zeteo was one of the best decisions I've made in recent months and seeing what has happened so far I was right. The contributors so far are phenomenal, some of whom I never heard of before but wrote very interesting pieces. Thank you Mehdi and everyone involved, thank you so much. I was wondering what Mehdi would do after he "left" MSNBC and a platform like zeteo is so desperately needed in times like this. Especially for me, here in Germany. Our media landscape is as terrible as it can be, a race to the bottom. Especially when it comes to covering Gaza, Palestine and Israel but coverage about US politics for example is not good as well.
This will be great..
I wish to be in a position to adopt.
What needs to happen for this mayhem in Gaza to stop ? Netanyahu is a rogue child of successive U.S. administrations and the only way to get rid of him is for the current administration and more specifically Biden to cut off all arms support as well as support in all international forums including at the international court of justice in the Hague.