Ugh, as usual, Malinowski skips over so much and barely skims the surface of what is actually happening in Gaza.
Did everyone already forget how the last 'ceasefire' worked out? (Hint: Israel unilaterally ended it, then massively escalated its genocidal campaign in Gaza for several months.)
Here's a bit of what Malinowski leaves out here:
This is what the 'end of the war' has looked like so far in Gaza - 'peacetime' has a very different meaning for the stateless, rightless people who live under Israel military regime in the Occupied Territories:
So far, during this 'ceasefire', 35 Palestinians were killed by Israel the day the 'ceasefire' was announced last Friday, and 72 were wounded. Since then, at least 23 more have been killed by Israel, with at least 122 more wounded, while 400 bodies so far have been recovered from the rubble.
Israel is still severely restricting the aid that are entering the region, and the Rafah border with Egypt is still closed by Israel. Gaza is buried under 50 million tons of rubble, which will take at least 15 years to clear. Virtually every building has been destroyed or heavily damaged. Israel is still holding the bodies of at least 700 Palestinian hostages who died in captivity, including children, including some who died well before October 2023.
Israel also still holds thousands of Palestinian hostages in captivity, including hundreds of children. A least 19 doctors remain hostages, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, along with dozens more nurses and health care workers - not a single one of whom has been charged with anything, and many have been tortured while in captivity.
The IOF has seized nearly 60% of Gaza as a closed and fully depopulated military zone, including most of its agricultural land, pushing the entire surviving population onto an area the size of Brooklyn, where barely a building is standing.
Many of the bodies of Palestinian hostages returned to Gaza arrived with signs of gunshot wounds and their hands and legs cuffed, and some still had blindfolds on, while several of the bodies bore signs of field executions and others were found with tank tracks on them.
Because of Israel's genocide, the birth rate of Palestinians in Gaza has declined by 41 percent, and miscarriages have risen over 300%, while over 60 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are unable to produce milk due to malnutrition.
The Abu Shabab gang, who was responsible for looting much of the UN aid with the blessing of Netanyahu, is now serving as a proxy for the IOF and is launching attacks inside Gaza, including the torture and assassination of Gaza journalist Saleh Al-Jaafrawi.
The IOF, as it withdrew, launched an arson spree, setting fire to civilian infrastructure, including the destruction of an essential sanitation plant. As one Israeli soldier put it: "Every Arab house we entered had olive oil ... We poured the oil on the sofas, on anything flammable in the apartment, and then we ignited [it] or threw in a smoke grenade. This was a common practice,”
Most of the 2000 released Palestinian hostages, many of whom showed signs of torture and starvation, came 'home' to find their entire families massacred, their homes destroyed, and their entire society decimated by Israel's reign of terror.
As it did this past winter, a 'ceasefire' in Gaza means still-daily killings and maiming of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces. Meanwhile, 'peace' in the West Bank means over 1000 killed in the past two years, with thousands more abducted, thousands more driven from their homes by fanatic 'settlers'.
I should add something that has been consistent in The Contrarian's commentary since the 'ceasefire': there is not one word here about any accountability for Israel's genocide in Gaza. and its long list of war crimes. Malinowski only writes about 'what Israelis want" while not saying a word of what the people of Gaza want, neglecting to mention that no Palestinian had any say at all in the development of this 'plan'.
Thanks for that, Jason. While I generally appreciate the writers here for at least not being the cowed, sheep like the majority of the media, they also aren't quite as hard hitting as I would like them to be.
Malinowski writes- "Netanyahu prolonged the war because it was politically useful for him, not because it was militarily necessary."
And Trump tried to finally do what he should/could have done months ago because it was politically and egotistically useful for him...it distracted from the war crimes he was perpetrating on his own citizens AND, because he doesn't understand how the Nobel selection process works, thought he could make a case for himself if he got it done or mostly done before they announced them.
Both of these guys are deeply cynical, congenitally bad people.
Biden and Trump too, *political animals*; they want the Jewish and Evangelical's support/votes/money. Jews here are changing their views about Israel more and more- especially the young. This unconditional support of Israel of some voters, and leaders bowing to that, is a stranglehold on what we do. For instance re Gaza our complicity has been unconscionable ( Biden and Trump). We have lost what reputation in the world we had, especially after WW2. This is one that we did aspire to being: a country that fights for the human rights, the right of self determination, against tyranny, torture, genocide etc. With Trump now it's purely transactional. He wants the medal. We can't have pride anymore that we are on the right, moral side of human events these days.
But some of us do keep the lamp burning for it, thankfully. We are in a dark hour. Thank you.... do not despair, keep it burning.
The task at hand is to build a just and durable peace. It is unlikely that this peace, if achievable at all, will take the form of either an Arab-run state encompassing the entire former British mandate, or a Jewish state in effective control of a population of Arab non-citizens larger in number than the Jewish citizens. In other words, the two-state solution.
If this comes to pass, I hope and believe that both, and the outside world, will for many years and decades focus on making the two states successful economically and politically. Part of that focus will be looking at the present and the future rather than the 100 years of bloodshed and atrocities that forced the outside world to grab the two parties by the throat and say: "Enough! Settle it now! Or else!"
It's unlikely that any figure of prominence in the cliques governing Israel, the PA, or Gaza today will be in any position of authority in the postulated future states. Hopefully they can be peacefully exiled, like Ferdinand Marcos and other deposed dictators, and live out their lives in relative comfort upon their agreement not to interfere in politics.
If in the more distant, settled, and prosperous future, the countries wish to acknowledge their tumultuous past and its excesses, the world would welcome an honest look at their history, the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly.
You didn't point out anything that I said that is wrong.
Everything I wrote is easily verifiable fact, at the time I posted. Not much has changed since then. Israel has continued to kill Palestinians in Gaza; just yesterday an Israeli tank shot a bus full of civilians, killing 11 of them, including several children.
Again, this is what has passed for 'peace' in the Occupied Territories for years, and is the same as this winter's 'ceasefire' where hundreds of Palestinians were killed, and many more injured. The year before October 2023 was one of the deadliest in decades for Palestinians in the West Bank, while killings in Gaza by the IDF have never stopped. It was only a year before then that Israel invaded Gaza (only one of many invasions since 2005), killing 50 people and injuring 350 more...the constant murders, maimings, and abductions during 'peacetime' in the Occupied Territories barely make the news here.
On the other hand, your response has several glaring flaws.
For one, there is no sign whatsoever that there will be any meaningful 'regime change' in Israel, much less any serious moves toward accountability. The US is not calling for it and this was not mentioned at all in the so-called' ceasefire' talks. Netanyahu may lose a future election (or, he may not), but some members of Likud and their even more extremist allies responsible for this genocide will nearly certainly remain in power. The idea that the longest serving prime minister in Israel's history may be 'peacefully exiled, like Ferdinand Marcos' is pure fantasy.
You claim that the 'outside world' has said '"Enough! Settle it now! Or else!"'..who is that, exactly? The US has made no meaningful demands of Israel, and the 'ceasefire agreement' is heavily lopsided toward Israel's interests. While much of the world via the UN, world courts and individual governments have called for accountability for Israel's crimes, the US (and a few others) have worked hard to prevent this from even being discussed. The US continues to veto UN sanctions, continues to sanction the ICC and UN officials, and the indicted war criminal Netanyahu is welcomed into the US with open arms.
You frame your whole argument around 'two parties' as if there is anything remotely resembling balance between Israel, a well armed, wealthy, autonomous state, and the people of the Occupied Territories, who have no rights whatsoever under the occupying regime, have no military, no control of their own borders of trade or telecommunications or utilities, and who have been subjected to constant violence, kidnappings, torture and theft of land and resources by their occupiers.
The 'two sides' framing is pervasive in US discourse, and it only serves to minimize Israel's crimes. There is no metric between the occupied regions and the dominating state that can be remotely compared.
You also promote the dream of the 'two state solution' without acknowledging that at this point, Israel has intentionally made this virtually impossible, with the escalation of the bantusta-style segmentation of the West Bank, and its open intention to fully annex Gaza. Israel has moved in the exact opposite direction from a two-state solution more than ever in recent years. Unless there is a major intervention from a UN peacekeeping force (for instance), along with a massive uprooting of the hundreds of thousands of violent fanatics we like to call 'settlers', there is simply no way this can take place.
Which, again, goes back to the importance of accountability. There can be no justice for the Palestinian people and no way to move forward without this essential component.
"For one, there is no sign whatsoever that there will be any meaningful 'regime change' in Israel, much less any serious moves toward accountability."
The peace will not succeed without regime change in Israel. It's obvious but I should have said so explicitly.
Yes, two sides. There may not be anybody left alive to hold to account for Hamas's crimes--against its own people if not against Israel and Jews-- but I firmly believe that establishing a stable peace trumps any consideration of retribution or accountability. And a precondition for such peace is that all what I called the governing cliques be removed far from any political power.
The peace terms do favor Israel. For one thing, Hamas has lost its international support except for a weakened Iran and a pitiful Greta Thunberg. The Arab states have no love for Hamas, are eager for it to go away, and will help reconstruct Gaza. Hamas must cease to exist as a player in the region. That favors Israel and just about everybody else.
You don't overstate the obstacles to a permanent peace, if anything you understate them. But every effort must be made, under heavy international pressure. Trump may be just the bully to get Israel to do what's necessary, and if the price is an ugly Trump hotel on the Gaza coast and even a Nobel Prize for the bully who sends troops into the cities of his own country, kidnaps people off the streets, blows up fishing boats, etc., etc...it's a small price to pay.
You follow up your first flawed reply with more flaws, again without mentioning a single thing in my initial comment that was '100% wrong'.
I'll focus on two gobsmacking statements you make here:
'The peace terms do favor Israel. For one thing, Hamas has lost its international support except for a weakened Iran and a pitiful Greta Thunberg. '
For one, it is patently ridiculous to assume 'the terms favor Israel' for any reason other than the terms always favor Israel, as it is the dominating state with all the power, and has the full support of the world's biggest military power. This 'agreement' was written without the input of a single Palestinian - not from Hamas, not from the PA, not from anyone else from the Occupied Territories. There was never even the pretense of any intention of addressing Israel's decades of war crimes and oppression. Israel clearly, openly, has every intention of taking all of Gaza, and Trump and his cronies are happy to help to make a buck. The people of the Occupied Territories have no power. Their 'governments' are little more than local administrators. The people of Gaza and the West Bank have never had any means of defense or recourse against the IDF's constant lethal violence, against the marauding 'settlers', or against the ruling parties in Israel who are dedicated to their destruction. This is the same now as ever.
The fact that you would call Greta Thunberg 'pitiful' is ... quite a thing to say. Do you consider the other 500 people on the latest aid flotilla mission that were kidnapped in international waters and violently abused by Israel to also be 'pitiful' for the act of trying to bring aid to a population intentionally starved by Israel? Do you consider those in past flotillas, going back many years, that were beaten and sometimes outright murdered by Israeli forces to also be 'pitiful'? How about the many doctors and nurses executed by Israel? The nearly 300 journalists massacred, the hundreds of murdered aid workers, the thousands of children killed, the several Americans killed by Israel in the West Bank, before and after October 7th...all 'pitiful"?
Your statement puts you right in line with the worst hard right wing Senators and Congressman and women who have mocked these activists and added to their dehumanization that is so commonly inflicted on Palestinians generally.
That statement is still not as outrageous and ridiculous as your last sentence:
"Trump may be just the bully to get Israel to do what's necessary, and if the price is an ugly Trump hotel on the Gaza coast and even a Nobel Prize for the bully who sends troops into the cities of his own country, kidnaps people off the streets, blows up fishing boats, etc., etc...it's a small price to pay"
For one, are you honestly so gullible that you think Trump would only build a single 'ugly Trump hotel on the Gaza coast'? You honestly think that is all Israel would require? I already noted the very open and public plan discussed in the Knesset to fully take over and develop the entire region. Trump has never said he wanted to build a single hotel. He said the US will “take over” and “own” Gaza after resettling Palestinians elsewhere under a redevelopment plan that he claimed could turn the enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
The fact that you can so flippantly say the obvious intent of Israel and Trump's team would be a 'small price to pay' is flabbergasting.
And, it is some kind of irony that you decry Trump, who 'blows up fishing boats' when you just mocked Greta Thunberg and her allies whose boats were firebombed by Israel, and that Israel itself literally bombs fishing boats regularly off the coast of Gaza. As horrible as Trump is, the crimes Israel has committed against the Palestinians people for generations completely dwarf even the worst actions by Trump. Israel 'sends troops (into their neighborhoods and homes) , kidnaps people off the streets, and blows up fishing boats' all the time in the Occupied Territories, before and after October 2023.
Given all this, it is utter foolishness to think for one second that Israel acts in good faith concerning Palestine, or that anything approaching justice or autonomy will come from an agreement drawn out by those who have carried out these massive atrocities without serious, and armed, international intervention, at minimum. It's something like asking a murderer to dictate the terms to the victim's family, where they give up even more freedom and safety in order to survive on a subsistence level, and even that is heavily conditional and subject to change at any moment.
I don't have much hope for a permanent peace but you have even less. If Trump and Israel get away with taking over Gaza, there will be no peace, not even briefly. We will look back longingly on the time when only a few deaths occurred per day.
I prefer to call this the Qatar peace deal. Qatar put pressure on Hamas to sign and told Trump if he wanted the $5.5 billion dollar resort in Qatar for the Trump organization to go through, get Netanyahu to sign. Also. UAE added an extra $2 billion.to buy Trump’s crypto. Trump told Netanyahu that Qatar pay him more so sign the deal. As far as it going through, anyone who thinks Trump will finish the peace deal needs to tell me who their drug dealer is.
We can forget about any "reconstruction" until the deployment of "international and Palestinian security forces to Gaza". While the Hamas killing machine runs amok, not even their "people" are free from violence and fear. Only when Hamas is totally disarmed can anything else be accomplished. As for trump and the signing of the "peace" agreement: now that all the world politicians have had their moment in the sun, what are their plans in the shadows????
One point that needs to be made is that this deal could not have come together much earlier. If Sinwar were still alive, he would have vetoed it, and he had the authority to make it stick. It was also necessary that Hezbollah was kneecapped, Assad fell, and Iran was weakened and embarrassed.
And all those conditions make a cease fire more acceptable to Israel, because they severely inhibit Hamas's ability to reconstitute.
Except for the bombing of Iran,. everything you mention here happened well before the first, so-called 'ceasefire' earlier this year...which Israel unilaterally ended as soon as it got what it wanted at the time, and then eagerly resumed its genocidal campaign at a fever pitch.
Long before this new 'ceasefire', Israel had already assassinated most of Hamas' leadership, as well as those who were involved in negotiations. Even IDF leaders have said for a long time Hamas was functionally destroyed. The pager attacks that killed several children, elderly people, health care workers and civil servants, while maiming hundreds of civilians, did not destroy Hezbollah. Assad fell in 2024, also before the first 'ceasefire'.
For one thing, Israel has always attacked other countries and has committed several assassinations in sovereign states; none of that is all that new. Israel did escalate its violence against neighboring countries since then. It has virtually annexed parts of Lebanon and Syria, and continues to kill civilians in both these countries, as well as in Yemen. Its attacks on Iran only slightly slowed down its nuclear program, as even US intelligence has affirmed.
But its attacks in Qatar likely did have an impact: on Trump, who of course is friends with the Qatari leadership. This leads to one of the reasons this so-called 'ceasefire' has taken place now. In appreciation for the $400 million bribe in the form of a jet given to Trump by Qatar, he actually made Netanyahu apologize for the September attack in Qatar, something I don't believe any US president has ever done to any leader of Israel.
Of course, this isn't because Trump cares one iota about any Palestinians anywhere, but he does take umbrage at what he perceives is a lack of respect.
Another factor is that Israel has become an even-more isolated pariah state after images of starving children became mainstream news this summer, and even sympathetic Western governments were forced to respond. Even though the official support for a Palestinian state by the same countries that were actively supporting Israel's genocide is lagely performative, it did have some impact on the world stage. Setting aside how gross it is that a region's rightful autonomy may be used as a bargaining chip to end their own genocide, this was something Israel couldn't ignore as easily as it usually does regarding any world opinion.
Another big factor is Trump is simply salivating at the prospect of developing Gaza into the 'Riviera of the Mediterranean' and his lackey son-in-law has been hard at work at making that happen. Genocidal maniacs like Bezalel Smotrich are very excited at the idea, and just this summer, members of the Knesset held a conference called ''The Gaza Riviera – from vision to reality' where they openly discussed the ethnic cleansing and resettlement of Gaza.
All of these parties understand that for this plan to take place, the carpet bombing will have to end at some point. By the end of this summer, society in Gaza had been decimated enough that the development and resettlement plan could begin in earnest.
These are much more plausible reasons why this is happening now..but we will see if this last
"Except for the bombing of Iran,. everything you mention here happened well before the first, so-called 'ceasefire' earlier this year...which Israel unilaterally ended as soon as it got what it wanted at the time, and then eagerly resumed its genocidal campaign at a fever pitch."
Yes but.
It took time for the impact of Lebanon and Syria to be felt and understood. The current cease fire deal, the one implemented in January and broken by Israel in February/March, and the one proposed by Biden almost a year ago are practically identical. Is the third time the charm?
This may set up another argument, but there is no genocide (other than October 7). War crimes, certainly. Probably hundreds, maybe thousands. But read the Rome Statute definition of genocide. The only conclusion is: no.
Your explanation that 'it took time for the impact of Lebanon and Syria to be felt and understood' is quite weak, and nowhere near as logical or based on direct and easily verified explanations as the reasons I gave above. . It's curious that you don't seem to have any issue with Israel's annexation of land in both of those countries and its continued murder of civilians on both countries.
Besides that, as I mentioned, just like the first 'ceasefire', Israel continues to kill Palestinians daily, continues to hold thousands of hostages, and remains in full military control of nearly half of the entire Gaza strip, while it continues to severely restrict the aid it promised would be allowed.
And yes, of course it is genocide. If you can claim that October 7th was a genocide and then deny that Israel's systematic destruction of an entire society that will likely result in at last 100,000 deaths, it is clear where your real sympathies lie.
Start with the fact that virtually every international human rights organization has affirmed in detail that Israel has committed genocide. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, Israeli human rights organization B'TSelem, Israeli human rights organization Physicians for Human Rights, and many more have all come to the same conclusion. All of their findings are of course rooted in international law and their conclusions were not made lightly or flippantly.
This is just one example - from a release by the Physicians for Human Rights this summer:
'Today, PHRI is releasing a position paper that documents this assault for what it is: a deliberate, cumulative dismantling of Gaza’s health system, and with it, its people’s ability to survive. This amounts to genocide. Israel’s bombing of hospitals, destruction of medical equipment, and depletion of medications have made medical care – both immediate and long-term – virtually impossible. The system has collapsed under the weight of relentless attacks and blockade.”
A month ago, the UN"s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory released a 70 page report detailing Israel's genocide. The commission 'has been investigating the events on and since 7 October 2023 for the last two years, and concluded that Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.'
The report references the Rome Statue several times as well as other precedents and other relevant international law.
Several dozen national governments and at least two dozen US elected Congressmen and women and Senators have arrived to the same conclusion.
Genocide scholars and historians around the world have affirmed this frankly obvious fact, including many Israelis. Below are just a few examples:
Israeli historian and genocide scholar Omer Bartov wrote this in the NY Times this past summer:
“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”
Then there's this essay from Raz Segal, associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University, called ‘A Textbook Case of Genocide”, written earlier during the ‘conflict’:
“Israel’s campaign to displace Gazans—and potentially expel them altogether into Egypt—is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel. But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes....
Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent. Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared it in no uncertain terms on October 9th: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”.... This dehumanizing language is clearly calculated to justify the wide scale destruction of Palestinian lives; the assertion of “evil,” in its absolutism, elides distinctions between Hamas militants and Gazan civilians, and occludes the broader context of colonization and occupation.”
Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust and genocide researcher at the Hebrew University, wrote this piece titled '“Yes It Is a Genocide”':
“Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain for the “most horrible of crimes,” which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, this is the way it will be viewed in history’s judgment for generations to come.”
You could also add the American president of self-described ‘liberal Zionist’ organization J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, who wrote this summer that “I have ... been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention,”
October 7 was genocide because people were murdered, raped, mutilated and kidnapped because and only because they were Jews or Israelis, or the attackers thought they were. On the other hand, nobody has been killed in Gaza because they were Gazans or Palestinians or Muslims. Use of excessive force, taking insufficient care to avoid civilian casualties, violating cease fire agreements, etc., may be war crimes but they are not genocide. I have to wonder if you and the "others" have actually read the Rome Statutes.
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, there would be a lot fewer Gazans than there are.
I was reluctant to open this can of worms, but this is not a matter of opinion, like how much force is excessive. (Few can argue that Israel did not use excessive force on many occasions.) This is a matter of law and fact. There have been few enough actual instances of genocide recently--Rwanda, South Sudan, the Rohingya -- that we shouldn't dilute the term by using it for excessively violent or deadly or prolonged war or atrocities.
Now you may have a case for some of the worst settler violence in the West Bank, ignored or assisted by the IDF (and I may have one for the worst of the Intifada terrorism).
The many experts and human rights organizations that I quoted above (again, including several from Israel) that you obviously did not read, reference the Rome Statutes you claim to understand, as well as other relevant international law.
I could go on to refute your latest list of falsehoods and assumptions based on nothing but your own feelings with more verifiable facts and figures, lengthy quotes from reports by experts, and reasoned arguments that directly address your outright false claims..but then i though, nah why bother.
I won't respond any further. I see now i have wasted a lot of time here.
Have to believe what Anthony Blinken said when asked about 🍊 plan. He liked it because it was mostly a plan left for incoming administration to work with.i do not believe that anyone is this current administration is capable of coming up with this plan all on their own.
Ugh, as usual, Malinowski skips over so much and barely skims the surface of what is actually happening in Gaza.
Did everyone already forget how the last 'ceasefire' worked out? (Hint: Israel unilaterally ended it, then massively escalated its genocidal campaign in Gaza for several months.)
Here's a bit of what Malinowski leaves out here:
This is what the 'end of the war' has looked like so far in Gaza - 'peacetime' has a very different meaning for the stateless, rightless people who live under Israel military regime in the Occupied Territories:
So far, during this 'ceasefire', 35 Palestinians were killed by Israel the day the 'ceasefire' was announced last Friday, and 72 were wounded. Since then, at least 23 more have been killed by Israel, with at least 122 more wounded, while 400 bodies so far have been recovered from the rubble.
Israel is still severely restricting the aid that are entering the region, and the Rafah border with Egypt is still closed by Israel. Gaza is buried under 50 million tons of rubble, which will take at least 15 years to clear. Virtually every building has been destroyed or heavily damaged. Israel is still holding the bodies of at least 700 Palestinian hostages who died in captivity, including children, including some who died well before October 2023.
Israel also still holds thousands of Palestinian hostages in captivity, including hundreds of children. A least 19 doctors remain hostages, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, along with dozens more nurses and health care workers - not a single one of whom has been charged with anything, and many have been tortured while in captivity.
The IOF has seized nearly 60% of Gaza as a closed and fully depopulated military zone, including most of its agricultural land, pushing the entire surviving population onto an area the size of Brooklyn, where barely a building is standing.
Many of the bodies of Palestinian hostages returned to Gaza arrived with signs of gunshot wounds and their hands and legs cuffed, and some still had blindfolds on, while several of the bodies bore signs of field executions and others were found with tank tracks on them.
Because of Israel's genocide, the birth rate of Palestinians in Gaza has declined by 41 percent, and miscarriages have risen over 300%, while over 60 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are unable to produce milk due to malnutrition.
The Abu Shabab gang, who was responsible for looting much of the UN aid with the blessing of Netanyahu, is now serving as a proxy for the IOF and is launching attacks inside Gaza, including the torture and assassination of Gaza journalist Saleh Al-Jaafrawi.
The IOF, as it withdrew, launched an arson spree, setting fire to civilian infrastructure, including the destruction of an essential sanitation plant. As one Israeli soldier put it: "Every Arab house we entered had olive oil ... We poured the oil on the sofas, on anything flammable in the apartment, and then we ignited [it] or threw in a smoke grenade. This was a common practice,”
Most of the 2000 released Palestinian hostages, many of whom showed signs of torture and starvation, came 'home' to find their entire families massacred, their homes destroyed, and their entire society decimated by Israel's reign of terror.
As it did this past winter, a 'ceasefire' in Gaza means still-daily killings and maiming of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces. Meanwhile, 'peace' in the West Bank means over 1000 killed in the past two years, with thousands more abducted, thousands more driven from their homes by fanatic 'settlers'.
I should add something that has been consistent in The Contrarian's commentary since the 'ceasefire': there is not one word here about any accountability for Israel's genocide in Gaza. and its long list of war crimes. Malinowski only writes about 'what Israelis want" while not saying a word of what the people of Gaza want, neglecting to mention that no Palestinian had any say at all in the development of this 'plan'.
Thank you for this.
Thanks for that, Jason. While I generally appreciate the writers here for at least not being the cowed, sheep like the majority of the media, they also aren't quite as hard hitting as I would like them to be.
Malinowski writes- "Netanyahu prolonged the war because it was politically useful for him, not because it was militarily necessary."
And Trump tried to finally do what he should/could have done months ago because it was politically and egotistically useful for him...it distracted from the war crimes he was perpetrating on his own citizens AND, because he doesn't understand how the Nobel selection process works, thought he could make a case for himself if he got it done or mostly done before they announced them.
Both of these guys are deeply cynical, congenitally bad people.
Malinowski makes many good observations. It’s what he skips over that’s the issue.
The Contrarian severely lacks any Palestinian perspective.
Thanks for filling us in with a much more believable reportage. The comeuppance of Netanyahu can't happen too soon.
This is up to Israeli's and the ICC https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/22/world/middleeast/israel-icc-jurisdiction-explained.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uE8.WGeX.e9DpQxbg1g76&smid=url-share
I would like to see what Israeli's do now that the living hostages are back.
One of the big problems is both Biden, Trump and both of their parties have condemned the ICC for indicting Netanyahu and Gallant.
Instead of being arrested the moment he touched US soil, Netanyahu has been welcomed with open arms several times by Republicans and Democrats.
Biden and Trump too, *political animals*; they want the Jewish and Evangelical's support/votes/money. Jews here are changing their views about Israel more and more- especially the young. This unconditional support of Israel of some voters, and leaders bowing to that, is a stranglehold on what we do. For instance re Gaza our complicity has been unconscionable ( Biden and Trump). We have lost what reputation in the world we had, especially after WW2. This is one that we did aspire to being: a country that fights for the human rights, the right of self determination, against tyranny, torture, genocide etc. With Trump now it's purely transactional. He wants the medal. We can't have pride anymore that we are on the right, moral side of human events these days.
But some of us do keep the lamp burning for it, thankfully. We are in a dark hour. Thank you.... do not despair, keep it burning.
Adding my thanks to others for your tireless efforts to keep us informed and focused on Palestinian suffering.
I'm sorry, you are 100% wrong.
The task at hand is to build a just and durable peace. It is unlikely that this peace, if achievable at all, will take the form of either an Arab-run state encompassing the entire former British mandate, or a Jewish state in effective control of a population of Arab non-citizens larger in number than the Jewish citizens. In other words, the two-state solution.
If this comes to pass, I hope and believe that both, and the outside world, will for many years and decades focus on making the two states successful economically and politically. Part of that focus will be looking at the present and the future rather than the 100 years of bloodshed and atrocities that forced the outside world to grab the two parties by the throat and say: "Enough! Settle it now! Or else!"
It's unlikely that any figure of prominence in the cliques governing Israel, the PA, or Gaza today will be in any position of authority in the postulated future states. Hopefully they can be peacefully exiled, like Ferdinand Marcos and other deposed dictators, and live out their lives in relative comfort upon their agreement not to interfere in politics.
If in the more distant, settled, and prosperous future, the countries wish to acknowledge their tumultuous past and its excesses, the world would welcome an honest look at their history, the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly.
You didn't point out anything that I said that is wrong.
Everything I wrote is easily verifiable fact, at the time I posted. Not much has changed since then. Israel has continued to kill Palestinians in Gaza; just yesterday an Israeli tank shot a bus full of civilians, killing 11 of them, including several children.
Again, this is what has passed for 'peace' in the Occupied Territories for years, and is the same as this winter's 'ceasefire' where hundreds of Palestinians were killed, and many more injured. The year before October 2023 was one of the deadliest in decades for Palestinians in the West Bank, while killings in Gaza by the IDF have never stopped. It was only a year before then that Israel invaded Gaza (only one of many invasions since 2005), killing 50 people and injuring 350 more...the constant murders, maimings, and abductions during 'peacetime' in the Occupied Territories barely make the news here.
On the other hand, your response has several glaring flaws.
For one, there is no sign whatsoever that there will be any meaningful 'regime change' in Israel, much less any serious moves toward accountability. The US is not calling for it and this was not mentioned at all in the so-called' ceasefire' talks. Netanyahu may lose a future election (or, he may not), but some members of Likud and their even more extremist allies responsible for this genocide will nearly certainly remain in power. The idea that the longest serving prime minister in Israel's history may be 'peacefully exiled, like Ferdinand Marcos' is pure fantasy.
You claim that the 'outside world' has said '"Enough! Settle it now! Or else!"'..who is that, exactly? The US has made no meaningful demands of Israel, and the 'ceasefire agreement' is heavily lopsided toward Israel's interests. While much of the world via the UN, world courts and individual governments have called for accountability for Israel's crimes, the US (and a few others) have worked hard to prevent this from even being discussed. The US continues to veto UN sanctions, continues to sanction the ICC and UN officials, and the indicted war criminal Netanyahu is welcomed into the US with open arms.
You frame your whole argument around 'two parties' as if there is anything remotely resembling balance between Israel, a well armed, wealthy, autonomous state, and the people of the Occupied Territories, who have no rights whatsoever under the occupying regime, have no military, no control of their own borders of trade or telecommunications or utilities, and who have been subjected to constant violence, kidnappings, torture and theft of land and resources by their occupiers.
The 'two sides' framing is pervasive in US discourse, and it only serves to minimize Israel's crimes. There is no metric between the occupied regions and the dominating state that can be remotely compared.
You also promote the dream of the 'two state solution' without acknowledging that at this point, Israel has intentionally made this virtually impossible, with the escalation of the bantusta-style segmentation of the West Bank, and its open intention to fully annex Gaza. Israel has moved in the exact opposite direction from a two-state solution more than ever in recent years. Unless there is a major intervention from a UN peacekeeping force (for instance), along with a massive uprooting of the hundreds of thousands of violent fanatics we like to call 'settlers', there is simply no way this can take place.
Which, again, goes back to the importance of accountability. There can be no justice for the Palestinian people and no way to move forward without this essential component.
"For one, there is no sign whatsoever that there will be any meaningful 'regime change' in Israel, much less any serious moves toward accountability."
The peace will not succeed without regime change in Israel. It's obvious but I should have said so explicitly.
Yes, two sides. There may not be anybody left alive to hold to account for Hamas's crimes--against its own people if not against Israel and Jews-- but I firmly believe that establishing a stable peace trumps any consideration of retribution or accountability. And a precondition for such peace is that all what I called the governing cliques be removed far from any political power.
The peace terms do favor Israel. For one thing, Hamas has lost its international support except for a weakened Iran and a pitiful Greta Thunberg. The Arab states have no love for Hamas, are eager for it to go away, and will help reconstruct Gaza. Hamas must cease to exist as a player in the region. That favors Israel and just about everybody else.
You don't overstate the obstacles to a permanent peace, if anything you understate them. But every effort must be made, under heavy international pressure. Trump may be just the bully to get Israel to do what's necessary, and if the price is an ugly Trump hotel on the Gaza coast and even a Nobel Prize for the bully who sends troops into the cities of his own country, kidnaps people off the streets, blows up fishing boats, etc., etc...it's a small price to pay.
You follow up your first flawed reply with more flaws, again without mentioning a single thing in my initial comment that was '100% wrong'.
I'll focus on two gobsmacking statements you make here:
'The peace terms do favor Israel. For one thing, Hamas has lost its international support except for a weakened Iran and a pitiful Greta Thunberg. '
For one, it is patently ridiculous to assume 'the terms favor Israel' for any reason other than the terms always favor Israel, as it is the dominating state with all the power, and has the full support of the world's biggest military power. This 'agreement' was written without the input of a single Palestinian - not from Hamas, not from the PA, not from anyone else from the Occupied Territories. There was never even the pretense of any intention of addressing Israel's decades of war crimes and oppression. Israel clearly, openly, has every intention of taking all of Gaza, and Trump and his cronies are happy to help to make a buck. The people of the Occupied Territories have no power. Their 'governments' are little more than local administrators. The people of Gaza and the West Bank have never had any means of defense or recourse against the IDF's constant lethal violence, against the marauding 'settlers', or against the ruling parties in Israel who are dedicated to their destruction. This is the same now as ever.
The fact that you would call Greta Thunberg 'pitiful' is ... quite a thing to say. Do you consider the other 500 people on the latest aid flotilla mission that were kidnapped in international waters and violently abused by Israel to also be 'pitiful' for the act of trying to bring aid to a population intentionally starved by Israel? Do you consider those in past flotillas, going back many years, that were beaten and sometimes outright murdered by Israeli forces to also be 'pitiful'? How about the many doctors and nurses executed by Israel? The nearly 300 journalists massacred, the hundreds of murdered aid workers, the thousands of children killed, the several Americans killed by Israel in the West Bank, before and after October 7th...all 'pitiful"?
Your statement puts you right in line with the worst hard right wing Senators and Congressman and women who have mocked these activists and added to their dehumanization that is so commonly inflicted on Palestinians generally.
That statement is still not as outrageous and ridiculous as your last sentence:
"Trump may be just the bully to get Israel to do what's necessary, and if the price is an ugly Trump hotel on the Gaza coast and even a Nobel Prize for the bully who sends troops into the cities of his own country, kidnaps people off the streets, blows up fishing boats, etc., etc...it's a small price to pay"
For one, are you honestly so gullible that you think Trump would only build a single 'ugly Trump hotel on the Gaza coast'? You honestly think that is all Israel would require? I already noted the very open and public plan discussed in the Knesset to fully take over and develop the entire region. Trump has never said he wanted to build a single hotel. He said the US will “take over” and “own” Gaza after resettling Palestinians elsewhere under a redevelopment plan that he claimed could turn the enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
The fact that you can so flippantly say the obvious intent of Israel and Trump's team would be a 'small price to pay' is flabbergasting.
And, it is some kind of irony that you decry Trump, who 'blows up fishing boats' when you just mocked Greta Thunberg and her allies whose boats were firebombed by Israel, and that Israel itself literally bombs fishing boats regularly off the coast of Gaza. As horrible as Trump is, the crimes Israel has committed against the Palestinians people for generations completely dwarf even the worst actions by Trump. Israel 'sends troops (into their neighborhoods and homes) , kidnaps people off the streets, and blows up fishing boats' all the time in the Occupied Territories, before and after October 2023.
Given all this, it is utter foolishness to think for one second that Israel acts in good faith concerning Palestine, or that anything approaching justice or autonomy will come from an agreement drawn out by those who have carried out these massive atrocities without serious, and armed, international intervention, at minimum. It's something like asking a murderer to dictate the terms to the victim's family, where they give up even more freedom and safety in order to survive on a subsistence level, and even that is heavily conditional and subject to change at any moment.
I don't have much hope for a permanent peace but you have even less. If Trump and Israel get away with taking over Gaza, there will be no peace, not even briefly. We will look back longingly on the time when only a few deaths occurred per day.
I prefer to call this the Qatar peace deal. Qatar put pressure on Hamas to sign and told Trump if he wanted the $5.5 billion dollar resort in Qatar for the Trump organization to go through, get Netanyahu to sign. Also. UAE added an extra $2 billion.to buy Trump’s crypto. Trump told Netanyahu that Qatar pay him more so sign the deal. As far as it going through, anyone who thinks Trump will finish the peace deal needs to tell me who their drug dealer is.
Yet another support for the genocide of Gaza - if you know how to read between the lines, and possess a minimum of humanity, minimum solidarity for the countless victims of the most horrific ethnical cleansing and the destruction of land and people, rarely seen on this planet. One that has been lasting for decades. If you wish to grasp the amount of twisting the truth and history in this shameful article, take some 15 minutes to hear the honest to god, intelligent, thoughtful, clear, precise analysis by Mehdi Hasan, brilliant journalist: https://zeteo.com/p/you-will-not-silence-me-watch-mehdis?utm_source=podcast-email&publication_id=2325511&post_id=176350559&utm_campaign=email-play-on-substack&utm_content=watch_now_button&r=577q3k&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email.
We can forget about any "reconstruction" until the deployment of "international and Palestinian security forces to Gaza". While the Hamas killing machine runs amok, not even their "people" are free from violence and fear. Only when Hamas is totally disarmed can anything else be accomplished. As for trump and the signing of the "peace" agreement: now that all the world politicians have had their moment in the sun, what are their plans in the shadows????
One point that needs to be made is that this deal could not have come together much earlier. If Sinwar were still alive, he would have vetoed it, and he had the authority to make it stick. It was also necessary that Hezbollah was kneecapped, Assad fell, and Iran was weakened and embarrassed.
And all those conditions make a cease fire more acceptable to Israel, because they severely inhibit Hamas's ability to reconstitute.
Um, yea, no.
Except for the bombing of Iran,. everything you mention here happened well before the first, so-called 'ceasefire' earlier this year...which Israel unilaterally ended as soon as it got what it wanted at the time, and then eagerly resumed its genocidal campaign at a fever pitch.
Long before this new 'ceasefire', Israel had already assassinated most of Hamas' leadership, as well as those who were involved in negotiations. Even IDF leaders have said for a long time Hamas was functionally destroyed. The pager attacks that killed several children, elderly people, health care workers and civil servants, while maiming hundreds of civilians, did not destroy Hezbollah. Assad fell in 2024, also before the first 'ceasefire'.
For one thing, Israel has always attacked other countries and has committed several assassinations in sovereign states; none of that is all that new. Israel did escalate its violence against neighboring countries since then. It has virtually annexed parts of Lebanon and Syria, and continues to kill civilians in both these countries, as well as in Yemen. Its attacks on Iran only slightly slowed down its nuclear program, as even US intelligence has affirmed.
But its attacks in Qatar likely did have an impact: on Trump, who of course is friends with the Qatari leadership. This leads to one of the reasons this so-called 'ceasefire' has taken place now. In appreciation for the $400 million bribe in the form of a jet given to Trump by Qatar, he actually made Netanyahu apologize for the September attack in Qatar, something I don't believe any US president has ever done to any leader of Israel.
Of course, this isn't because Trump cares one iota about any Palestinians anywhere, but he does take umbrage at what he perceives is a lack of respect.
Another factor is that Israel has become an even-more isolated pariah state after images of starving children became mainstream news this summer, and even sympathetic Western governments were forced to respond. Even though the official support for a Palestinian state by the same countries that were actively supporting Israel's genocide is lagely performative, it did have some impact on the world stage. Setting aside how gross it is that a region's rightful autonomy may be used as a bargaining chip to end their own genocide, this was something Israel couldn't ignore as easily as it usually does regarding any world opinion.
Another big factor is Trump is simply salivating at the prospect of developing Gaza into the 'Riviera of the Mediterranean' and his lackey son-in-law has been hard at work at making that happen. Genocidal maniacs like Bezalel Smotrich are very excited at the idea, and just this summer, members of the Knesset held a conference called ''The Gaza Riviera – from vision to reality' where they openly discussed the ethnic cleansing and resettlement of Gaza.
All of these parties understand that for this plan to take place, the carpet bombing will have to end at some point. By the end of this summer, society in Gaza had been decimated enough that the development and resettlement plan could begin in earnest.
These are much more plausible reasons why this is happening now..but we will see if this last
"Except for the bombing of Iran,. everything you mention here happened well before the first, so-called 'ceasefire' earlier this year...which Israel unilaterally ended as soon as it got what it wanted at the time, and then eagerly resumed its genocidal campaign at a fever pitch."
Yes but.
It took time for the impact of Lebanon and Syria to be felt and understood. The current cease fire deal, the one implemented in January and broken by Israel in February/March, and the one proposed by Biden almost a year ago are practically identical. Is the third time the charm?
This may set up another argument, but there is no genocide (other than October 7). War crimes, certainly. Probably hundreds, maybe thousands. But read the Rome Statute definition of genocide. The only conclusion is: no.
Your explanation that 'it took time for the impact of Lebanon and Syria to be felt and understood' is quite weak, and nowhere near as logical or based on direct and easily verified explanations as the reasons I gave above. . It's curious that you don't seem to have any issue with Israel's annexation of land in both of those countries and its continued murder of civilians on both countries.
Besides that, as I mentioned, just like the first 'ceasefire', Israel continues to kill Palestinians daily, continues to hold thousands of hostages, and remains in full military control of nearly half of the entire Gaza strip, while it continues to severely restrict the aid it promised would be allowed.
And yes, of course it is genocide. If you can claim that October 7th was a genocide and then deny that Israel's systematic destruction of an entire society that will likely result in at last 100,000 deaths, it is clear where your real sympathies lie.
Start with the fact that virtually every international human rights organization has affirmed in detail that Israel has committed genocide. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, Israeli human rights organization B'TSelem, Israeli human rights organization Physicians for Human Rights, and many more have all come to the same conclusion. All of their findings are of course rooted in international law and their conclusions were not made lightly or flippantly.
This is just one example - from a release by the Physicians for Human Rights this summer:
'Today, PHRI is releasing a position paper that documents this assault for what it is: a deliberate, cumulative dismantling of Gaza’s health system, and with it, its people’s ability to survive. This amounts to genocide. Israel’s bombing of hospitals, destruction of medical equipment, and depletion of medications have made medical care – both immediate and long-term – virtually impossible. The system has collapsed under the weight of relentless attacks and blockade.”
A month ago, the UN"s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory released a 70 page report detailing Israel's genocide. The commission 'has been investigating the events on and since 7 October 2023 for the last two years, and concluded that Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.'
The report references the Rome Statue several times as well as other precedents and other relevant international law.
Several dozen national governments and at least two dozen US elected Congressmen and women and Senators have arrived to the same conclusion.
Genocide scholars and historians around the world have affirmed this frankly obvious fact, including many Israelis. Below are just a few examples:
Israeli historian and genocide scholar Omer Bartov wrote this in the NY Times this past summer:
“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”
Then there's this essay from Raz Segal, associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and endowed professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University, called ‘A Textbook Case of Genocide”, written earlier during the ‘conflict’:
“Israel’s campaign to displace Gazans—and potentially expel them altogether into Egypt—is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel. But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes....
Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In its murderous attack on Gaza, Israel has loudly proclaimed this intent. Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared it in no uncertain terms on October 9th: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.”.... This dehumanizing language is clearly calculated to justify the wide scale destruction of Palestinian lives; the assertion of “evil,” in its absolutism, elides distinctions between Hamas militants and Gazan civilians, and occludes the broader context of colonization and occupation.”
Amos Goldberg, a Holocaust and genocide researcher at the Hebrew University, wrote this piece titled '“Yes It Is a Genocide”':
“Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain for the “most horrible of crimes,” which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, this is the way it will be viewed in history’s judgment for generations to come.”
You could also add the American president of self-described ‘liberal Zionist’ organization J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, who wrote this summer that “I have ... been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention,”
I could go on....
Yes you could go on, and others have.
October 7 was genocide because people were murdered, raped, mutilated and kidnapped because and only because they were Jews or Israelis, or the attackers thought they were. On the other hand, nobody has been killed in Gaza because they were Gazans or Palestinians or Muslims. Use of excessive force, taking insufficient care to avoid civilian casualties, violating cease fire agreements, etc., may be war crimes but they are not genocide. I have to wonder if you and the "others" have actually read the Rome Statutes.
If Israel wanted to commit genocide, there would be a lot fewer Gazans than there are.
I was reluctant to open this can of worms, but this is not a matter of opinion, like how much force is excessive. (Few can argue that Israel did not use excessive force on many occasions.) This is a matter of law and fact. There have been few enough actual instances of genocide recently--Rwanda, South Sudan, the Rohingya -- that we shouldn't dilute the term by using it for excessively violent or deadly or prolonged war or atrocities.
Now you may have a case for some of the worst settler violence in the West Bank, ignored or assisted by the IDF (and I may have one for the worst of the Intifada terrorism).
The many experts and human rights organizations that I quoted above (again, including several from Israel) that you obviously did not read, reference the Rome Statutes you claim to understand, as well as other relevant international law.
I could go on to refute your latest list of falsehoods and assumptions based on nothing but your own feelings with more verifiable facts and figures, lengthy quotes from reports by experts, and reasoned arguments that directly address your outright false claims..but then i though, nah why bother.
I won't respond any further. I see now i have wasted a lot of time here.
We finally agree on some points:
"then i though[t], nah why bother.
I won't respond any further. I see now i have wasted a lot of time here."
Have to believe what Anthony Blinken said when asked about 🍊 plan. He liked it because it was mostly a plan left for incoming administration to work with.i do not believe that anyone is this current administration is capable of coming up with this plan all on their own.