Gaza

It's hard not to come to the conclusion that the Israelis are liquidising the ghetto.

Not really imo, the logistics facing the israelis is far greater than that faced by the Nazis when they liquidised the ghettos. There are over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza and yet despite the relentless destructive power of Israel they have only managed to kill less than 50,000 of them in the last 18 months. So still another 2 million left.

They have no concentration camps to transport 2 million Palestinians by train to and slowly starving 2 million people with the whole world watching isn't feasible.

They have restarted killing Palestinians in large numbers because that is their usual response to any issues concerning the Palestinians. 

slowly starving 2 million people with the whole world watching isn't feasible.

Apparently it is. 

Sorry I meant starving to death.

What’s to stop them? Trump? Starmer?

liquidising the ghetto

Not to distract from the point, but I think you meant "liquidating"

What’s to stop them? Trump? Starmer?

Im not sure Starmer has any influence whatsoever on the situation and Trump seems to have fully backed this as part of his current policy which is that "All hell will break loose" on Hamas and others who are terrorising Israel & America, realistically America are the only ones that can pressure Israel in to allowing aid in to palestine, but Trump is more keen on bombing them atm.

Posted by: drj

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What’s to stop them? Trump? Starmer?

You think that the world would allow Israel to starve to death over 2 million men women and children so that they can clear out Gaza in the same way that the Nazis cleared out the Jewish ghettos? Well I guess that's your prerogative, if you actually really believe it.

Im not sure Starmer has any influence whatsoever

The UK has a significant influence over the situation in Palestine which is precisely why Starmer is utterly obsessed with not criticising Israel.

Otherwise Starmer would be perfectly happy to allow, for example, his Foreign Secretary to claim that Israel is breaking international law dismissing the comment as irrelevant. Instead David Lammy (who is a member of Labour Friends of Israel) was slapped down and Downing Street insisted that Israel was only at "risk" of breaking international law.

You would think that a renowned barrister and former head of the Crown Prosecution Service knows that withholding humanitarian aid and electricity, as Israel has proudly boasted they are doing, is a war crime. I am sure that Starmer would have no hesitation at all condemning Russia if they were publicly making similar claims concerning Ukraine.

If the UK government's position had no bearing on the situation in Gaza who doubts that Starmer would go along with public opinion and denounce in a meaningful way what Israel is doing in Gaza?

But to do so would put pressure on the UK government to impose sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel, officially recognise the State of Palestine, use its position as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to make the case against the Israeli apartheid regime, etc, all of which would harm Israel.

Starmer does nothing precisely because he knows that doing something would be effective.

Posted by: timba

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liquidising the ghetto

Not to distract from the point, but I think you meant "liquidating"

I did, spellcheck beat me to it and now there’s no edit function.

Posted by: supernova

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Posted by: timba

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liquidising the ghetto

Not to distract from the point, but I think you meant "liquidating"

I did, spellcheck beat me to it and now there’s no edit function.

 

To be fair, I think you described the Israeli approach quite accurately 

You think that the world would allow Israel to starve to death over 2 million men women and children so that they can clear out Gaza in the same way that the Nazis cleared out the Jewish ghettos? Well I guess that's your prerogative, if you actually really believe it.

Well, they stood by and watched nearly a million Rwandans die, and that was when the US was not allied with one of the participants.

Starmer does nothing precisely because he knows that doing something would be effective.

That seems a bit tortured logic. From my POV Starmer does nothing because it is cost-free, whereas actually growing a moral compass would put him at odds with his paymasters. And his mother-in-law.

actually growing a moral compass would put him at odds with his paymasters. 

As I understand it the British people pay Starmer's salary, if you know different would you care to elaborate.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/24/oscar-winning-palestinian-director-attacked-by-israeli-settlers-and-arrested

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-orban-to-discuss-trumps-gaza-plan-in-hungary-this-week-source/

“Netanyahu is trying to build a coalition of as many countries as possible backing Trump’s plan for Gaza,” says the source.

 I'm thinking that shouldn't take him very long. Obviously Netanyahu himself, fellow far-right authoritarian Viktor Orban seems keen, possibly Putin I would have thought, and of course Trump.

Oh and far-right fanatical zionist Milei of Argentina. I can't think of any others. Netanyahu really doesn't seem to have many friends.

I don’t know what the **** is going to happen to Gaza/West Bank over the coming months/years, I read the reports and watch the clips from those in Gaza reporting on the slaughter, I follow the various aid agencies and humanitarian organisations and I’m feeling empty. 

I’m coming to the conclusion that after 80+/- years of violence and terror throughout the occupied land there is only one solution, and there doesn’t appear to be any desire whatsoever by the state of Israel and its current government/political structure to veer from it’s utterly blatant for all to see drive for genocidal extermination of the Palestinian population.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/israel-killed-15-palestinian-paramedics-and-rescue-workers-one-by-one-says-un

“A few minutes later, during the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew. The conversation was about gathering the team, with statements like: ‘Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.’ This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.”

Jens Laerke, an Ocha spokesperson in Geneva, said: “The available information indicates that the first team was killed by Israeli forces on 23 March, and that other emergency and aid crews were struck one after another over several hours as they searched for their missing colleagues.

“They were buried under the sand, alongside their wrecked emergency vehicles – clearly marked ambulances, a fire truck and a UN car.”

This has as much to do with "self-defence" as the Nazi invasion of Poland had. It is genocide.

The tactics the far-right Israeli government government are currently using in Occupied Palestine in 2025 are the tactics which the Nazis used in Occupied Europe in 1945. 

And our current "Labour" government helps and supports them.

No wonder the Israeli government welcomes neo-Nazis with open arms and yet bans without hesitation Jews who are critical of genocidal zionists.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/26/europe/israel-embraces-france-far-right-intl/index.html

I'm thinking that shouldn't take him very long. Obviously Netanyahu himself, fellow far-right authoritarian Viktor Orban seems keen, possibly Putin I would have thought, and of course Trump.

The unfortunate truth is that he doesn't need any of them except Trump, and it's Trump's idea in the first place.  The short-sighted bit is that once the Mar al Gaza resort is built, Trump won't have any use for Netanyahu (or whichever butcher succeeds him) so they will be left at the mercy of however the winds of history blow.

Actually "Trump's plan for Gaza" apart from the fact that it is completely nonsensical is totally dependent on the support of two Arab countries - Egypt and Jordan.

There is zero chance of Egypt and Jordan supporting Trump's idea of ethnically cleansing Gaza and reallocating Palestinians on Egyptian and/or Jordanian territory.

The only other way Trump's plan for Gaza could be a implemented is if Israel goes full Nazi and figures out a way to murder over 2 million Palestinians on an industrial scale. Israeli finance minister and self confessed fascist Bezalel Smotrich is probably looking into that.

Posted by: ernielynch

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Actually "Trump's plan for Gaza" apart from the fact that it is completely nonsensical is totally dependent on the support of two Arab countries - Egypt and Jordan.

There is zero chance of Egypt and Jordan supporting Trump's idea of ethnically cleansing Gaza and reallocating Palestinians on Egyptian and/or Jordanian territory.

The only other way Trump's plan for Gaza could be a implemented is if Israel goes full Nazi and figures out a way to murder over 2 million Palestinians on an industrial scale. Israeli finance minister and self confessed fascist Bezalel Smotrich is probably looking into that.

 

Im of the belief that the IDF and the vast majority of the Israeli government went full genocidal mode quite some time ago.

If it was up to myself I’d give every single settler 1 week to vacate their illegal properties on illegally seized land, a return to the original Israeli borders and if they objected to that then tough, live with it or sod off somewhere else 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/02/israel-announces-intention-seize-large-areas-gaza-strip

Israel Katz said in a statement on Wednesday that “troops will move to clear areas of terrorists and infrastructure, and seize extensive territory that will be added to the state of Israel’s security areas”.

A personal story about what this means in real life:

Mohammed and his family have been displaced again. This is the fifth time. I am speaking about a family of seven people with young children. Mohammed is 18 and the eldest child. He and his four siblings have all missed nearly two years of school and are in a constant struggle for existence.

 

The family immediately returned to northern Gaza during the ceasefire in January and set up a tent next to their destroyed apartment. During the Ceasefire it was quiet and work began on clearing rubble from streets while they built a tent that would protect them a little from the wind and rain.

Over the past weeks, the sound of bombing and fighting began to come closer. They became aware of displacement orders on adjacent neighbourhoods. Quadcopters passed regularly overhead, dropping explosives on rooftops. An Apache helicopter shot at solar panels on rooftops nearby.

 

Yesterday, the feared displacement orders were issued for the family’s neighbourhood. The Al-Radwan Mosque on Al-Muntar Street in Al-Shujaiya neighbourhood was targeted. The mosque is next to the family’s apartment.

 

Mohammed had returned to school on that day, but hearing of the attacks he left the classroom. He sent me this message:

“I woke up and went to class. While I was in class, there were people saying that there was an evacuation in the Shujaiya neighborhood. I heard the news and ran home. My mother was preparing the things and my father was finding someone to take our things. My sisters were nervous, and my little brother Zakaria was scared. We went into the unknown and there was no one to carry the things with us. We did not have a tent to set up and sit in. I was tired all day. A man saw us and he had a tent set up and said he will host us in it until tomorrow. We have nowhere to go and where we are sitting now is not safe. We are really sleeping on the street now and there are a lot of destroyed and bombed houses around us. The bombing is continuing until this moment, and we are still in the early hours of the night.”

 

If you can help Mohammed’s family with a donation they will be very grateful. They have no money and depend completely on donations. The situation has never been more desperate for them.

 

https://gofund.me/77b61261

Israeli finance minister and self confessed fascist Bezalel Smotrich is probably looking into that.

That delightful individual features prominently in the BBC documentary I watched last night about the activities him and the other hardline Israeli settlers in the West Bank, which was one of the most fundamentally depressing pieces of telly I’ve ever watched. It’s on iplayer if you fancy putting yourself through it.

These people are indeed fascists. These hate-filled zealots make no attempt to hide the fact that what they’re doing is ethnic cleansing. They’re completely open that if that involves killing every last Palestinian, then that’s what they’ll do. Apparently that’s fine though because god said so 3,000 years ago

Absolute ****s, the lot of them!  

The only other way Trump's plan for Gaza could be a implemented is if Israel goes full Nazi and figures out a way to murder over 2 million Palestinians on an industrial scale.

I was in Auschwitz I / Auschwitz Birkenau last week, a very harrowing experience. I find what the Israeli regime is doing to the Palestinian people beyond belief. The rest of the world just standing by and watching is shameful. As others have alluded to, this is history repeating itself.

The rest of the world just standing by and watching is shameful

A big part of the problem, and it's huge imo, is that most governments, certainly Western governments, are not prepared to break rank with the United States on geopolitical issues. So as long as it serves US interests to prop up Israel other governments will simply fall in line.

Although all that might be about to change thanks to Donald Trump. Trump has made what was once  unthinkable, ie Western governments rejecting the United States leading role in international and foreign affairs, a real possibility.

Palestine might quite realistically become a beneficiary of this unprecedented global political shift of influence. If Western governments can become hostile towards US policy with regards to Ukraine and international trade then it is reasonable to assume that they could become hostile towards US Middle East policies.

If Western governments can become hostile towards US policy with regards to Ukraine and international trade then it is reasonable to assume that they could become hostile towards US Middle East policies.

Which countries are these? UK and Germany, where pro-Palestinian expression is already verboten ?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/03/germany-deporting-pro-palestine-eu-citizens-chilling-new-step

Yes those are exactly the sort of countries which I am referring to, wealthy Western countries which since WW2 have slavishly towed the United States foreign policy line.

Obviously some countries will find it easier to stand up in opposition to US foreign policy, for example France, and some will find it harder, eg the UK.

But I think one of the legacy of the Trump presidency will be that many countries will in the long-term follow foreign policy stances independent of Washington, or at least less dependant.

Trump has proved that the United States is not necessarily a reliable friend and ally.

wealthy Western countries which since WW2 have slavishly towed the United States foreign policy line.

I don't think Germany and the UK have toed (n.b.) the line - they have been quite happy to provide diplomatic and physical weaponry to Israel for their own purposes. It could be that European governments will be freer to deviate from the Washington diktat in future, but the last Palestinain will be long dead before that makes any difference.

It could be that European governments will be freer to deviate from the Washington diktat in future, but the last Palestinain will be long dead before that makes any difference.

Well Starmer would greatly approve of your dismissive attitude, as would zionists worldwide .However those campaigning tirelessly for the isolation of the apartheid regime recognise the critical role that Western governments play and the very obvious responsibility they have to do whatever necessary to stop the genocide. From respecting the international arrest warrant for Netanyahu, to stopping all arms sales to Israel, to applying comprehensive economic and cultural sanctions.

The UK have had their foot in the door ever since Chaim Weizmann showed them how to make acetone... Cue the Balfour Declaration...

After escaping from Shujaiya neighbourhood with his family yesterday, my friend Mohammed snuck back today to rescue some school books that he had left behind. He took this photo of Israeli tanks perched on the hill above his neighbourhood. Later in the day, there were huge explosions from Shujaiya that were captured in part during an Al Jazeera interview (Hani Mahmoud commented that the noises came from Shujaiya). It appears the area is being flattened by bombardment as have so many other parts of Gaza.

So clear evidence emerges today providing proof of a recent war crime  committed by the IDF. But the BBC, which is terrified of being accused of criticising Israel, won't describe it in clear unambiguous terms

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2z103nqxo

No the video footage doesn't  "appear" to contradict Israeli account of the Gaza medic killings, it very clearly does contradict their account.

But such is the power of screaming "anti-semitism" should anyone dare to criticise the far-right genocidal regime in Tel Aviv. 

I particularly liked this :

Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar earlier this week echoed the army account, saying "the IDF did not randomly attack an ambulance".

Of course they don't, it is deliberate and calculating, after they have carefully identified that it is an ambulance, as are their cover-up stories.

It was rather slack of them to bury the paramedic with his phone after they had murdered him though.

Any government that doesn't call this out - properly call this out, not just "raise a concern" - should be ashamed. And any government continuing to supply military equipment to the Israelis is complicit in war crimes.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/apr/07/ten-britons-accused-of-committing-war-crimes-while-fighting-for-israel-in-gaza

The BBC now saying that the IDF confess to having "made a mistake". We've all been there. One minute you're on your sofa, catching up on the latest STW posts, the next minute you're machine gunning an ambulance and executing paramedics. Anyone can make a mistake.

Don't the Israelis mean that they made the mistake of not retrieving the mobile phones of dead Red Crescent workers after they had executed them?

I believe that the paramedic who was filming, Refat Radwan, started praying even before the attack started. I guess every paramedic and first responder in Gaza will be fully aware of the risk of being murdered by the IDF for doing their job of trying to save lives.

Presumably this why Refat Radwan was filming in the first place.

Edited to give the paramedic his name.

How the crap does a country which is arguably best known for its own genocide of millions get to the point where they are deporting people who are against genocide?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/09/germany-deport-me-eu-citizen-no-crime-standing-palestine

I used to have a Palestinian flag on the back of our van alongside a "**** PTN" sticker in the colours fo the Ukrainian flag. Needless to say, given both myself and the GF have dual citizenship here in Germany the flag was removed prior to crossing back into the Vaterland.

Sickening.

Posted by: alpin

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How the crap does a country which is arguably best known for its own genocide of millions get to the point where they are deporting people who are against genocide?

Because they've disappeared so far up the genocidal zionist arse that daylight is no longer a possibility.

**** them all, **** every card carrying Netanyahu loving zionist

I no longer care if I upset folk with my opinion.

Israel has a long history of exploiting situations where the world's eyes are focused on other things, now is no exception as they intensify their genocide against the Palestinian people.

https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20250411-un-finds-36-israeli-strikes-on-gaza-killed-only-women-and-children

"Between 18 March and 9 April 2025, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people," she told reporters in Geneva.

"In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children," she said.

with Israel only intensifying its attacks and Trump cosying up to netenyahu even harder, its hard to he optimistic, but these guys are worth a follow and theres a link to donate in their bio

https://www.instagram.com/gaza_skate_team?igsh=YXpuZGo0dWYwZmo1

Repairs to a skate park?

at the moment hes rebuilding his house , the skatepark is now being used for tents!

these guys are also worth a follow

https://www.instagram.com/skateistan?igsh=MXU2NTJuODRubncxbQ==

Instagram and meta are actively restricting/deleting pro Palestinian accounts from Gaza, another company that crawls up the arse of the zionist regime.

An interesting article by an Israeli professor of international law 

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/4/10/why-i-dont-cheer-for-israels-pro-democracy-movement

The whole article is worth reading imo but the conclusions are the most relevant 

Finally, on March 27, more than year after the rights organisations had filed the petition, the court issued a verdict. Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit and Justices Noam Sohlberg and David Mintz unanimously ruled that it lacked merit. Justice David Mintz interlaced his response with Jewish religious texts, characterising Israel’s attacks as a war of divine duty

Israel’s Supreme Court – both in the way it handled the judicial process and in its ruling – has ignored Israel’s legal obligation to refrain from depriving a civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival, including by wilfully impeding relief supplies. In effect, the court legitimised the use of starvation as a weapon of war.

This is the court that hundreds of thousands of Israelis are trying to save. Its March 27 ruling – and almost all other rulings involving Palestinians – reveal that the Supreme Court of Israel is a colonial court – one that protects the rights of the settler population, while legitimising the dispossession, displacement and horrific violence perpetrated against the Indigenous Palestinians. And while the Supreme Court might not reflect the values of the existing government – particularly on issues relating to political corruption – it undoubtedly reflects and has always reflected he values of the colonial regime.

Hence, the liberal Zionists who fill Tel Aviv’s streets every weekend are not demonstrating against a judicial overhaul that endangers democracy, but against an overhaul that endangers Jewish democracy. Few of these protesters have any real qualms about the court’s horrific ruling on humanitarian aid, or, for that matter, on how the court has consistently upheld Israeli apartheid and colonial pillars. The regime, in other words, can continue to eliminate Palestinians unhindered as long as the rights of Israel’s Jewish citizenry are secured.

A harsh reality check for those who desperately want to believe that Israel can transformed into a law abiding democracy by simply defeating Netanyahu and his far-right allies.

An account of what life is like for a Gazan family

========

Hello friends, I think you will probably recognize me - I am Mohammed Al-Batniji, from Gaza. Today, I will tell you how we left our home for a second time after the war resumed following six weeks of ceasefire. If you remember, when the ceasefire came, my family returned to northern Gaza from the south where we were staying in a tent. My family was among the many thousands of people that poured back to northern Gaza when the Netzarim Corridor was opened to us. But now, after only two months, our home and neighborhood of Shujaiya became threatened by the Israeli military and we had to leave in a hurry.

On 23 March, Israel broke the ceasefire and the war returned, the destruction returned and everything went back to how it was before the truce. There were people who were displaced immediately, and other people who held out. We were among the people who held out, but not for many days. We began to suffer from lack of water and food. It was difficult to leave our tent. We really suffered in the morning from the lack of water and also, since this was Ramadan, we suffered due to fasting in the tense and difficult atmosphere. At night, we were afraid as we tried to sleep with the constant noise of aircraft and continuous bombing.

We always said the Shahada before sleeping, and when morning came, we thanked God. We checked on our neighbours every morning, fearing that we would lose one of our loved ones and relatives. Ramadan ended and Eid came. It was a sad and boring Eid, even though we bought new clothes with money donated to us, but we have lost many people and we visited the graves of friends and loved ones. After Eid, our lives returned to how they were. We wake up and eat if there is breakfast, and I go to classes and then come home to eat, collect water, study and browse the internet on my phone.

This was my day every day. At night, I slept alone in our destroyed apartment while my family slept in the tent we had built outside. I had reclaimed a room to study in and I slept there every day. On one night, something unexpected happened. It was very dark when an Apache helicopter came and it fired its bullets at our house and at my uncle’s house. My neighbours and I looked out the window (you might not believe it) and we saw part of the horrors and fire. I thought I was really in an action movie. As the bombing was continuing, I went down to the basement. Then I sneaked out of the building, moving carefully for fear that a quadcopter that I could hear overhead would see me and shoot me.

I went down to my grandma and grandpa who were both awake. I told them that the attack was in our house and my uncle Ibrahim's house. I was panting with stress. It was a very hard experience - I thought I was really going to die. The smell of gunpowder was everywhere and my family was in the tent and I was afraid for them. When the morning came I woke up to see where they were bombing and it turned out that they were hitting every house that had a solar energy panel because Ben Gvir had ordered to cut off electricity to the entire Gaza Strip. I filmed a clip of the attack on my phone but it is not very clear, and I discovered pieces of shrapnel on the ground from when the helicopter was shooting.

It disgusts me the way Western leaders talk about he war in Ukraine in that Russia is breaking international and humanitarian law in a way that almost convinces you that they believe the words they say, but as ever, or a token gesture mutter a few words about this genocide in the State of Palestine.

There has always been a very significant Jewish presence, both in terms of Jewish organisations and individual Jews, at all the national pro-palestine demos of the last 18 months, as there undoubtedly will be on this Saturday's demo.

But I never thought that I would see the day when members of the staunchly Zionist Board of Deputies of British Jews would start to turn against Israel.

And not least at a time when Israel is supposedly "at war", if you can call the genocidal turkey shoot which is currently taking place in Gaza that.

https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/more-damage-being-done-to-zionism-by-netanyahu-than-by-hamas-deputy-tells-bbc/

Asked for his response to the horrendous scenes in Gaza, including the “number of children who have been killed or harmed” Goldenberg said: “It’s awful and it’s a total breach of Jewish ethical values".

How long before members of the Board of Deputies are accused of being anti-semitic and apologists for Hamas  just like anyone else who dares to criticise Israel?

self hating jew is the phrase i have seen deployed against jews or israelis that oppose the genocide

Yup, the suggestion is that any Jew who is opposed to Palestinians being driven off their lands and slaughtered has some sort of psychological issue. 

The white supremacists during the apartheid era in South Africa missed a trick by not accusing those who supported the rights of black people of being self-hating whites.

Labour Friends of Genocide up to their tricks again - Lammy secret meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister, covered up by the BBC. I was going to say it is unbelievable. Sadly it's not. Outrageous, disgusting, contemptible. But not unbelievable.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-did-uk-media-ignore-lammys-secret-meeting-israeli-foreign-minister

. I was going to say it is unbelievable. Sadly it's not.

Well I am seriously struggling to believe just how far the current Labour leadership is prepared to go to protect a far-right neo-fascist genocidal regime who has murdered tens of thousands of innocent men, women, and children, in the last 18 months.

I find it incomprehensible.