Hidden History -- In The Making

HAVING A MILITARY UNIT DEDICATED TO EXCUSING ATROCITIES TELLS YOU HOW EVIL ISRAEL IS

If Israel Was On The Side Of Truth And Morality It Would Not Have A Military Unit Dedicated To Manipulating The Public Narrative About Actions Which People See As Evil.

Israel is so evil that it has a military unit dedicated to coming up with excuses for the IDF’s atrocities. It has been reported that the IDF has a special unit it calls the “Legitimization Cell”, because it is tasked with finding justifications to legitimize the assassination of journalists and other war crimes for the purpose of “public relations”.

Probably goes without saying, but if Israel was on the side of truth and morality it would not have a military unit dedicated to manipulating the public narrative about actions which normal people would see as extremely evil.

Israel: We can’t allow Palestinian journalists to remain alive in Gaza because all the Palestinian journalists are Hamas.

Western journalists: Okay so let us in, that way there can be journalists documenting what’s happening in Gaza who aren’t Hamas.

Israel: [long pause] … No.

We have alienated various readers and online factions over the years with the things we have written, but that has usually been unintentional; normally we don’t like to alienate people who resonate with our work. Gaza was the first time we didn’t really care if we lost someone who disagreed with us.

It’s a sign of developing maturity to be able to see both sides of an issue, but it’s a sign of further maturity to understand that just because you can see both sides doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take sides on important and relevant moral issues with a clear right and wrong side. Stop fence-sitting on a genocide and grow up.

Nothing creates support for Hamas more than Israel’s actions in Gaza. Nothing creates hatred of Israel more than Israel’s actions in Gaza. Nothing creates hatred of Jews more than Israel’s actions in Gaza. Everything Israel’s supporters complain most about is caused by Israel.

The strongest argument that Israel is committing genocide is that all major human rights groups say it’s a genocide, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Israeli rights groups like B’Tselem, along with the overwhelming majority of genocide scholars and human rights experts. The debate is over. This is a settled matter.

The hasbara machine hasn’t come up with a counter-argument for this. They hate it. Whenever it is used they always try to push the debate in some other direction where they have a counter-argument they’ve been trained to regurgitate, but when we stick to the universal consensus among human rights groups they always get mad.

It’s so undignified how western governments and news outlets keep talking about Israel’s officially stated reasons for its actions in Gaza like we don’t all know they want to get rid of the Palestinians who live there and have been trying to get rid of them for generations.

It is cool when Israel is criticized for something and someone goes “Oh yeah well America does that too!” Like that’s a defense. It’s like yes, those are both evil states who do evil things constantly, and they work in conjunction with each other and are not meaningfully separate.

Being an ally of Israel or the United States is immoral for many reasons, but this is especially the case during their joint genocide project in Gaza. They should both be made pariah states.

Start recognizing Palestinian humanity and then maybe you will be taken seriously when you talk about recognizing a Palestinian state.

Opposition to the Gaza holocaust has always been led from the bottom up. It started with Palestinians documenting their own genocide, then ordinary westerners saw this and began opposing it, then slowly the media and mainstream human rights organizations began following the leadership of the people and applying scrutiny to Israel’s atrocities, and then, even more slowly, western governments began feebly pushing back on Israel.

This has all happened in response to widespread public outcry forcing the western political/media class to respond. The mass media cannot retain its legitimacy in the eyes of the public if it keeps churning out brazen genocide propaganda without ever scrutinizing Israel. Governments cannot retain the consent of the governed if they completely ignore a mass atrocity that the public cares deeply about. So they were forced to start moving, or else risk the public turning on them.

The primary lesson here is that we must keep pushing this issue as hard as we can, because it’s working. They can’t ignore us anymore, and they’re feeling the pressure. Their response has been painfully weak and inadequate, but it’s infinitely more than we were seeing in the early months of the genocide. We need to keep hammering this thing.

The second lesson here is that our “leaders” are not actually our leaders. We are leading them on the most important moral issue of our time, and they are following us. It is an absolute certainty that western governments and media would be ignoring Gaza if the public had ignored it too. They definitely wanted us to ignore it, and for a long time it really seemed like they expected us to get exhausted and drop it. It wasn’t until we made it clear that this isn’t getting shuffled down the memory hole with the daily news churn that we really began to see things change.

We are leading this dance. So we need to keep leading. Keep driving. Keep pushing. The louder our voices get, the more movement we see from them.

So don’t stop!

THE AMERICAN REGIME TREATS ISRAELI PEDOPHILES BETTER THAN WOUNDED PALESTINIAN KIDS

In America The Only Way To Get Wounded Palestinian Children In The United States For Medical Treatment These Days Would Be To Disguise Them As Israeli Pedophiles.

Antiwar has a story out right now with the headline “Rep. Greene: US Should Let Gaza Children in for Medical Treatment, Prosecute Israeli Child Predators.”

It’s a headline that says so much about what’s going on in the world in just a few words. Is the American regime really not letting Gaza children in for medical treatment? Is the American regime really failing to prosecute Israelis who prey on children? Why are these necessary things to say? And why is it being left to Marjorie Taylor Greene to say them?

What’s crazy is that these are entirely true and legitimate grievances, as Dave DeCamp explains:

“The Georgia representative was referring to a recent State Department decision to block visas for Palestinians from Gaza in response to outrage from pro-Trump activist Laura Loomer over wounded Palestinian children arriving for medical treatment, and the case of Tom Alexandrovich, a senior Israeli cybersecurity official who was arrested in a sting operation in Nevada for attempting to lure a child for sexual purposes but was allowed to go back to Israel.”

Things are so screwed up that the only way to get wounded Palestinian children in and out of the United States for medical treatment these days would be to disguise them as Israeli pedophiles.

Israel apologists are still trying to make “we’re not starving children, we’re starving SICK children” work. Bari Weiss’s media outlet The Free Press has a new genocide apologia article out noting that twelve of the emaciated children we’ve seen in photos distributed by the mainstream press have had preexisting conditions like “cystic fibrosis, rickets, or other serious ailments.”

This argument is exactly the same as starting a fire in a crowded building and then claiming you can’t be guilty of murder by arson because many of the people who died in the fire were handicapped and elderly individuals who couldn’t escape quickly enough. Everyone knows the people who suffer first and worst in a famine are small children, the elderly, and the sick.

As others have pointed out, it really shows how desperate the Israel spinmeisters are getting that they would cite “rickets” as a pre-existing condition in their argument to dismiss concerns about starvation in Gaza, given that rickets is a condition caused by malnutrition.

Israel: We have to kill all the journalists in Gaza because they’re Hamas.

Western journalists: Okay so let us in so at least someone’s there to report what’s happening in Gaza.

Israel: We can’t, it’s not safe for you.

Western journalists: Why not?

Israel: Because then YOU’D be Hamas.

A tweet from former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett complaining that “Europe is becoming Islamized,” fearmongering about the number of Muslims who now live in some of Europe’s major cities.

Israelis are something else, man. They don’t want Muslims to live in the middle east, they don’t want Muslims to live in Europe. Kinda seems like they just don’t want Muslims to live.

The New York Post has an article out with the headline “Queens bodega named ‘Gaza Deli and Grill’ ignites fear among Jewish New Yorkers — including Oct. 7^th survivor: ‘I’m still not safe’”.

It’s just as ridiculous as it sounds. There’s a bodega in New York called “Gaza Deli and Grill” and Jewish locals are saying it makes them feel unsafe. This happens as an active genocide continues in Gaza, with Israel calling upon 60,000 IDF reservists in preparation for the planned ethnic cleansing of a million civilians from Gaza City.

Whenever you see the western press centering the feelings of western Jews with extreme aggression, it’s a safe bet that Israel has something especially ugly in the works.

It really seems to have taken the empire by surprise that the public has not played along with this. They really expected us to forget about Gaza within the first few weeks and let it fade into the background. The fact that the outcry has only gotten louder says encouraging things about ordinary members of the public, and about the future of the human species.

AN EXTREME TURN HAS TAKEN PLACE IN NETANYAHU’S “TOTAL VICTORY” RHETORIC

From Throwing His Military Under The Bus To His Expanded ‘Greater Israel’ Vision, The Prime Minister Has Observers Worried That Even Worse Policies Will Follow.

As Israel’s war on Gaza escalates with IDF troops now moving to take over Gaza City, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been deploying more extreme language than usual to describe his plans for “total” victory over Hamas. He has eschewed ceasefire talks, and is instead leaning into his expansive vision for a “Greater Israel,” which not only includes an Israeli takeover of Gaza but of neighboring territories too.

His public remarks and media appearances over the last week have caused some to observe that the prime minister may be taking his approach, which is already heavily influenced by the hardline right wing in his cabinet, to an even more maximalist level.

For example, Netanyahu completely dismissed the idea of a political solution for Gaza at a Newsmax conference hosted in Jerusalem last week.

“In the search for an alternative to victory, this idea emerged — what they call a ‘political solution,’ which is nothing more than another term for defeat and surrender. That will not happen,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew.

During the same remarks, Netanyahu appeared to be throwing his own military under the bus, suggesting IDF chiefs who had been calling for the Gaza campaign to end have lost their commitment to “victory.” “I will not give up on victory. The people of Israel will not give up on victory,” Netanyahu proclaimed, alleging that “victory” was now the last word in the army’s lexicon.

Appearing on an Israeli media channel last week, Netanyahu also said that Israel was looking for other countries to take in Palestinians, just as Trump had proposed to do back in Spring. “I think that the right thing to do, even according to the laws of war as I know them, is to allow the population to leave, and then you go in with all your might against the enemy who remains there,” Netanyahu said.

During an interview, Netanyahu also endorsed the Greater Israel vision, which calls for Israel to expand to include other Middle Eastern countries. Arab nations widely condemned his comments, alleging that Netanyahu’s support for that idea threatens their security, and risks peace prospects in general.

And at the Newsmax conference, moreover, he also said there was “no starvation” in Gaza. “Hamas needs ozempic,” Netanyahu mused, referring to the popular weight loss drug.

Some spoke with experts about what Netanyahu’s more recent rhetoric means for his political trajectory, and for the future of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. Broadly, observers suggest his amped up language points to a grim reality in which Netanyahu’s government has stripped away any pretense of a political solution and is closer than ever to carrying out a maximalist endgame of absolute control over the Gaza strip, with no regard for the Palestinians who live there.

UNPACKING NETANYAHU’S RHETORIC

Israeli political analyst Ori Goldberg said Netanyahu, as a political leader, operates on a complex duality: his long-term reign as prime minister gives him a veneer of political stability, but also gives him leeway to make hard, even risky, choices for the sake of Israel’s future.

In this respect, Netanyahu’s recent rhetoric, which Goldberg describes as “more extreme” than usual, showcases his willingness to commit to these high-stakes choices — even if they are irreversible, or otherwise risk Israel’s security or international standing.

Netanyahu “is going for broke, he’s committed. He doesn’t have any other options,” Goldberg observed. “He is playing ‘chicken’ with the international community. He has made his choice and will be happy to let both Israel and Palestine go down in flames.”

Israel is reportedly in talks to send Gazans to South Sudan, and Israel is sending aid to the impoverished country as a likely sweetener. Whether the transfer of Gazans materializes does not matter, said Goldberg.

“It’s about making noise,” he charged. “It goes to show that Israel still has some international clout,” and that it has partners it can make political deals with, “even if [it has] to bribe them into it.”

Carol Daniel-Kasbari, Quincy Institute non-resident fellow and senior associate director of the Conflict Resolution Program at the Carter Center, said that Netanyahu’s rhetoric “point[s] to an endgame of open-ended Israeli security dominance, shrinking space for a two-state outcome, and a coalition calculus that rewards ideological consistency over diplomatic compromise.”

Daniel-Kasbari said Netanyahu “governs with partners to his right whose agendas prioritize settlement expansion and permanent Israeli control.” Considering this political reality, “rejecting a negotiated track for Gaza and hinting at Gazan ‘emigration’ are not rhetorical flourishes; they’re policy signals,” she said, also highlighting Netanyahu’s historical opposition to a sovereign Palestinian state west of the Jordan river.

Daniel Levy, President of the American Middle East Project, said the Israeli prime minister has always supported this “Greater Israel” vision and cautioned not to over-interpret his comments.

As per the interview, however, Netanyahu now seems to be endorsing an “expansive definition which has been more regularly referenced by [Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich,” Levy pointed out. Smotrich has repeatedly advocated for a Greater Israel that would include parts of Palestine, Syria, and Jordan.

Nevertheless, Levy said Netanyahu has always “been very clear, including presenting bills to the Israeli parliament, that he opposes a Palestinian state, seeks to expand Israel’s borders, and he has acted on these intentions, including the intention to annex Palestinian territories.”

“This is indeed a decades-long project,” he said.

WILL ISRAEL ANNEX GAZA?

Israel is now positioning itself to force Palestinians out of Gaza City, where the IDF, pursuing a plan the Israeli security cabinet approved earlier this month, aims to displace about one million people. To that end, many Israelis are critical of such plans because of their perceived capacity to harm the remaining hostages, further weaken the IDF, and worsen the humanitarian crisis on the ground.

“Will Israel take this next step and carry out crimes against humanity after they have been officially approved by the Israeli government?” Goldberg asked, noting the obvious American regime’s complicity — where Washington has unconditionally transferred bombs, guns, ammo, and other supplies necessary for an Israeli military incursion and occupation. “Without being armed by the United States, nothing will happen.”

For its part, Washington has frequently deferred to Jerusalem regarding its possible plans for the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Early this month, Trump said it was “pretty much up to Israel,” to decide whether it would pursue occupying the territory.

Netanyahu said earlier this month that Israel would proceed with this takeover, deeming it “the best way to end the war and the best way to end it speedily.”

“If Israel decides to do this, the images will be horrible,” said Goldberg, who doubts that a complete takeover is possible, given the practical and logistical hurdles Israel would need to clear to achieve that goal.

“But then again…Netanyahu is so committed to this course, he has no other option. The Israeli military is desperate for a win,” he added.

“All of this may happen. And if it does, then, there really is no going back.”

AS MANY PEOPLE CAN BE KILLED BY SANCTIONS AS BY WARS

Economic Coercion Doesn’t Receive As Much Attention As Military Conflict — But It Can Be Just As Deadly And Just As Racist And Evil.

Amir Hossein Naroi was an Iranian boy afflicted with thalassaemia, an inherited blood disease that is treatable with transfusions and drugs that reduce toxic concentrations of iron. These drugs are produced by Novartis, a Swiss-American company, which stopped shipping them to Iran after President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions in May 2018. Four years later, Naroi died at the age of 10 due to complications caused by his lack of treatment. Naroi is one of nearly 150 patients that have died annually of the disease in Iran, where it is prevalent due to genetic factors, compared to fewer than 40 a year prior to the reimposition of sanctions.

Similar examples abound. Humanitarian agencies in Venezuela had their American bank accounts closed shortly after the American regime imposed oil sanctions on the country in 2019, hampering efforts to deliver food assistance to vulnerable people. Efforts to assist victims of the 2023 earthquake in Syria were hampered when banks refused to process donations for fear of being found in violation of American sanctions. A 2023 WHO-sponsored review found consistent adverse effects of sanctions on health and health systems in low and middle income countries.

Proponents of sanctions often dismiss these findings as inconclusive. Correlation does not imply causation, they argue. Mismanagement and corruption of governments under sanctions are frequently blamed as the primary culprits of socio-economic collapse. American regime officials routinely claim that sanctions include humanitarian exceptions, and typically refer to any humanitarian consequences of sanctions policies as “unintended” and resulting from “overcompliance” by financial institutions and other economic actors.

In an article published this month in The Lancet Global Health with co-authors Silvio Rendón and Mark Weisbrot, these claims were addressed by analysing the causal effect of international sanctions on age-specific mortality rates in a panel dataset of sanctions episodes for 152 countries between 1971 and 2021. A battery of econometric methods were applied that specifically designed to identify causal effects from observational data.

There was robust evidence of a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality across most age groups, with particularly pronounced effects for infants and young children. Being subjected to sanctions, for example, leads to an estimated 8 per cent increase in the mortality rate of children under five in the affected countries. This framework was used to quantify the number of deaths attributable to sanctions in targeted countries. It was estimated that, over the past decade, sanctions were associated with approximately 564,000 excess deaths annually. This death toll is comparable to current estimates of civilian and battle deaths from armed conflict during those years.

The deadliest sanctions are those imposed outside the multilateral UN framework — and particularly those imposed by the American regime. One possible explanation is that American sanctions often explicitly aim to cause a deterioration in living standards in target countries under the assumption that worsening socio-economic conditions will cause regime change. The use of so-called “smart sanctions” that target specific wrongdoers rather than entire populations often replicate the effects of comprehensive sanctions by focusing on central banks and state-owned enterprises that play vital roles in the functioning of the economy. These targeted sanctions can have effects — including excess deaths of civilians — nearly as damaging as those of less targeted measures.

Over the past few decades, the use of economic sanctions has expanded dramatically. The share of the global economy subject to unilateral sanctions grew from 5 per cent in the 1960s to 25 per cent between 2010 and 2022. The findings suggest that these measures cause direct harm and many excess deaths. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any other policy instrument with such severe adverse effects on human life that is used so pervasively.

Woodrow Wilson once described sanctions as “more tremendous than war”, a “silent, deadly remedy” that no nation would be able to withstand. He believed their sheer destructiveness would lead them to be used sparingly. A century later, the opposite has happened: sanctions have become a default weapon of statecraft, wielded routinely. But a policy that kills hundreds of thousands of civilians is neither peaceful nor defensible. It is an economic weapon of mass destruction — used by the very powers that claim to uphold global norms.

PRISONER MONITORS SAY THAT PALESTINIANS FROM GAZA ARE ‘ENDURING HELL’ IN ISRAELI CUSTODY

According To The Monitors, Several Detainees Showed Up To Lawyers’ Visits “Weeping And Terrorised”.

Palestinians seized from Gaza and placed in Israeli detention are enduring “the worst levels of torture and abuse” compared with other detainees, two prisoner rights monitors have said.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs have published a report collecting testimonies of lawyers of prisoners that showcase ongoing “severe crimes”.

Titled “Enduring Hell: Gaza Detainees Face Severe Israeli Torture and Terror Behind Bars”, the report is based on accounts from Ramla prison and the Sde Teiman military camp. The testimonies from Ramla come specifically from the underground Rakevet section, where detainees are reportedly held in total isolation and subjected to psychological torture.

According to the monitors, several detainees appeared at meetings with their lawyers “weeping and terrorised”.

In one case, a prisoner appeared severely beaten and unable to express what happened to him, communicating only with his eyes.

“His case is not isolated; all detainees showed severe psychological distress, with fear dominating the entire lawyers’ visit,” the rights groups said. The Commission of Detainees and PPS note that all prisoners were subjected to beatings and threats before seeing their lawyers, with prison guards often forcing them to lie and say they were being kept in “excellent” conditions.

Meanwhile, lawyers are not allowed to share any information with the detainees regarding their relatives.

FINGER-BREAKING, ISOLATION AND STRESS POSITIONS

The latest testimonies reveal Palestinians from Gaza are enduring torture methods including finger-breaking, isolation, humiliation and being placed in stress positions for long periods.

“The interrogation period stands out as one of the clearest reflections of the level of torture and grave violations inflicted by interrogators against detainees abducted from occupied Gaza,” the report said.

‘I was beaten daily for 30 days straight. I currently suffer from torn chest muscles’

– Prisoner ‘AY’

According to the monitors, the detainees are only allowed in the yard for 20 minutes every other day, and denied sunlight for the rest of the time.

One prisoner, identified as AY, said he was held in a cell for a month “without knowing day from night”.

“They would strap me to a chair and then throw me to the ground while my hands and feet were bound. I was beaten daily for 30 days straight. I currently suffer from torn chest muscles and severe pain due to prolonged shackling of my arms behind my back,” he is quoted as saying.

Another detainee, identified as YD, described violent interrogation methods, where he was placed in a “disco” room – where detainees are psychologically abused through blaring music – and forced into stress positions.

“The beating was so violent that my handcuffs came off twice… Now I suffer from rib fractures and I can’t sleep. The torture also caused a tear in my left ear, vision impairment, and kidney pain,” he said.

Detainee AB recalled similar abuse, noting that during his interrogation he was placed in the “banana” stress position and beaten.

“The interrogators would grab my testicles and beat me on them, trying to pressure me into confessing,” AB added.

Several former detainees have told the United Nations and the media that they were routinely beaten on their genitals or other sensitive parts of their body.

After AB’s transfer to Ramla prison, guards broke his fingers.

“FAMINE” IN ISRAELI DETENTION

The monitors said all the testimonies confirmed that prisoners endured starvation, with one describing it as a “famine”.

Food portions are extremely small and often inedible, with the amount of food given to several prisoners sharing a cell less than a meal for one person.

“Most are experiencing severe weight loss, emaciation, and extreme exhaustion, along with worsening illnesses and health conditions,” the report said.

Additionally, diseases and infections continue to torment prisoners, with scabies becoming one of the most pressing health issues among detainees.

The two monitors stressed that the prison system’s deprivation of basic hygiene and medical care is exacerbating the spread of diseases.

ZIONISM IS EXACTLY WHAT IT DOES

Zionism Means Exactly What We See Before Us Today. Genocide. Ethnic Cleansing. Apartheid. Nonstop Violence And Abuse. That’s What Zionism Means. And Anti-Zionism Means Opposing These Things.

Israel apologists always attack anti-Zionists by saying “Zionism just means self-determination for Jews! If you hate Zionism then you hate Jews!”

No, that’s not what Zionism means. Zionism means exactly what we see before us today. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Nonstop violence and abuse. That’s what Zionism means. And anti-Zionism means opposing these things.

There is simply no argument to the contrary. This is indisputably what Zionism looks like. There is no other alternate reality iteration of Zionism you can point to where genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and nonstop violence and abuse are not happening. This is the only way Zionism looks. The Zionist experiment has been run, and these are the results.

Trying to argue that Zionism doesn’t mean genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and nonstop violence and abuse is exactly the same as trying to argue that Nazism doesn’t mean all the things that happened when the Nazism experiment was run. Nazism means all the things that happened under Nazism. You can’t legitimately say “No, actually, Nazism just means a safe and prosperous homeland for the German people.” We’ve seen what Nazism looks like, and we’ve seen what Zionism looks like. To argue otherwise is to argue with reality.

It’s just so obnoxious how Israel supporters are like “Zionism means these nice things and nice words, so if you’re against Zionism you’re against the nice things and nice words!” No, that’s not how it works. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own reality.

Israel is what it does. Zionism is what it does. You can’t separate them from their actions. The debate about the true nature of these things has been settled by the reality of what is happening.

It doesn’t matter if you believe Israel just wants to live in peace. It doesn’t matter if you believe Zionism is just the idea that Jews deserve self-determination. Reality says you’re wrong. Reality says Israel and Zionism mean nonstop violence and abuse. Reality says Israel and Zionism necessarily entail genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Because that’s the reality on the ground.

Them’s the facts. If you disagree with them, you are objectively wrong.

LEARN HOW PRO-PALESTINE YOUTH ARE RESPONDING TO ONLINE CENSORSHIP

Faced With Digital Fatigue And Heightened Surveillance, Gen Z And Millennial Organizers Are Turning To Zines, Posters, Stickers And Embroidery To Express Solidarity With Palestine.

When Israel initiated plans to evict Palestinians from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem to make way for illegal settlers, millions of young people around the world got involved in a high-profile social media campaign to raise awareness.

Using the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah, more than 40 million people joined in, forming part of a wave of online organizing that set the stage for a new era of pro-Palestine digital activism.

That trend continued as Israel launched its ongoing genocide in Gaza in October 2023 with activists dedicating their instagram feeds and TikTok reels to spreading awareness of Israeli atrocities.

But mounting censorship on social media, digital fatigue and a hunger for deeper forms of engagement, are forcing organizers to shift gears and adopt new modes of activism.

Many Gen Z and millennial activists are going analog, turning to tangible and material means of information sharing.

This buregoning shift allows them to overcome surveillance on social media platforms and lets them share their message directly with people in the “real world” in ways that feel more personal and engaging.

In south-east London, the Peckham Keffiyeh collective sells hand block–printed tote bags and scarves to raise funds for Gaza while spreading political messages.

Their latest design features the slogan “Make proscription unenforceable”, a reference to the UK’s crackdown on pro-Palestine direct action group Palestine Action.

The artwork includes drawings of police cars, a keffiyeh-print border, and images of balaclavas, a nod to Irish hip-hop group trio Kneecap, whose member Liam Og O hAnnaidh is facing terrorism charges in the UK after allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag during a concert.

Elsewhere, Maqam Books, a nomadic community bookshop run by Mahmoud Masoud, brings rarely available Arabic and English titles on Palestine to pop-up art events and creative gatherings across the UK.

By curating literature often absent from mainstream bookstores, Masoud offers young audiences an entry point into Palestinian history, politics, and storytelling.

“SENSE OF PURPOSE”

“With social media, posting something will take you two seconds,” says Naiema, a student at University College London.

“But crafting something and putting in that extra effort makes you feel more connected to the cause. It gives me a sense of purpose, like I’m actually doing something rather than sitting around.”

Naiema incorporates analog forms of activism in several ways, from designing calligraphic posters and distributing leaflets to baking Palestine-themed cupcakes.

“Crafting something and putting in that extra effort makes you feel more connected to the cause. It gives me a sense of purpose”

– Naiema, student at UCL

In the second year of a degree in History and Politics, Naiema said social media often feels fleeting, with posts easily swiped past and forgotten.

In contrast, a leaflet or banner demands attention and engagement, confronting people in ways that are harder to ignore.

She cites the impact of stickers, which she frequently sees plastered across London’s public transport network and she displays on her own belongings.

“My laptop is completely covered in them,” she said. “I’ve had people approach me about my stickers, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. Regardless, it sparks a conversation.”

Naiema said she draws inspiration from her grandfather, who fought for Bangladesh’s liberation from Pakistan in 1971 and relied heavily on analog forms of resistance.

“It’s important not to stop using those older methods, because they were still very effective. Analog media is something that can’t be censored as easily as social media,” she said.

STIFLING ACTIVISM ONLINE

Through social media, Palestinians in Gaza, and their supporters across the globe, have challenged mainstream media narratives by documenting Israel’s brutality.

They have captured everything from Israel’s bombardment of designated safe zones to the kidnapping of doctors treating patients in hospitals.

But young activists are increasingly facing algorithmic shadow bans and the removal of pro-Palestinian content by major social media platforms.

The New York-based art collective, 8-Ball, reported that its fundraising campaigns for families in Gaza have been suppressed on Instagram.

In December 2023, Human Rights Watch released a 51-page report detailing how Meta’s content moderation policies on Instagram and Facebook have increasingly censored pro-Palestinian voices.

Meanwhile, TikTok has come under criticism for its July 2025 hiring of Erica Mindel, a former American State Department contractor and Israeli army instructor, to oversee hate-speech policies.

Responding to accusations of censorship, a Meta spokesperson said: “We have been public about the fact that we adopted a number of temporary product and policy measures in response to this conflict, and we also have broader policies on recommendability and demotion that can impact pages like this.

“We acknowledge we make mistakes, but any implication that we deliberately suppress a particular voice is unequivocally false.”

As part of its initiatives, 8-Ball has been distributing Palestine zines at fairs and running pro-Palestine zine-making workshops.

“Zines let you reach people directly, without algorithms, and it feels safer,” one volunteer, who requested anonymity, explained.

“Plus, they break out of social media’s echo chambers. You can bring them anywhere, leave them anonymously, and reach different age groups and communities. That kind of autonomy makes them powerful.”

DIY zines, small, self-published pamphlets that are easy to circulate, were popularised during the feminist movements of the 1980s and ’90s. They have since seen a strong resurgence within Palestinian activism

The volunteer attributed a renewed popularity in zines to a growing desire for community and tangible connection.

“Online, we’re overloaded with information – something profound followed instantly by something trivial. It’s hard to internalise. Analog slows things down.”

STATE-SPONSORED CENSORSHIP

Posting on social media has also become an particular source of anxiety for international students in America, many of whom have faced threats of deportation over their pro-Palestine activism since the Trump administration took office.

In June, the American State Department announced that all student visa applicants would be required to set their social media profiles to “public”.

“We’re under constant surveillance online,” another 8-Ball volunteer added.

“Every gesture is tracked: what you scroll past, how long you linger. Platforms like Instagram don’t have our best interests in mind, and relying on them as the primary source of information feels dangerous. They can be useful tools, but they shouldn’t be the only ones we use.”

According to scholars Alice Mattoni and Diego Ceccobelli, young activists are instead turning to face-to-face organizing as a way to secure greater privacy and evade surveillance.

Sharing physical space for meetings, they noted, has become a valued activity in itself.

Within these gatherings, the creation and circulation of physical media about Palestine is common.

Activists prepare banners and other art work for demonstrations and write the names of slain Palestinians for posters, a practice intended to counter desensitisation to the rising death toll in Gaza.

“Global crises feel overwhelming, but at the community level things feel more manageable. It might sound cheesy, but community and reciprocity go a long way in sustaining activism,” the 8-Ball volunteer said.

Gen Z and Millennial consumers have driven the resurgence of analog products in recent years, from vinyl, to film cameras to CDs.

ANALOG APPEAL

While once dismissed as nostalgia tied to retro trends in entertainment and fashion, researchers suggest this shift reflects the tactile appeal of analog objects, which foster deeper, more immersive, and emotionally fulfilling experiences than digital screens.

“I think young people like to have analog mementos of culturally significant events or moments, something they can hold on to and reflect on, as opposed to reading Instagram captions or insipid Instagram graphics,” said Jynann Ong, a member of Baesianz, a London-based collective that fosters cultural awareness and solidarity of Asian identities.

“Pamphlets, posters, leaflets, flyers, stickers, help young people feel like they are part of something. It is a reminder that they were there and stood up for something they believed in and had the courage, freedom, and energy to say something with their chest,” she added.

GAZA NEEDS OUR ANGER NOT OUR TEARS

This Isn’t Sad, It’s Enraging. Celebrities Are Finally Speaking Out About Gaza After Two Years Of Genocide, But There’s Been Something Off About It That Hasn’t Been Sitting Right.

A Palestinian named Maria Odeh Fakhouri made a great point on Instagram which put her finger on it:

Notice how celebrities speaking up now aren’t really all that angry. Their statements are about “heartbreak” and sadness.

They are modeling passivity to the masses as we enter into this next stage of societal awareness.

They communicate to their fans: be sad about genocide but ignore it for awhile first. And then start talking about how sad it is a couple of years later.

They are agents of colonial brainwashing.

Gaza doesn’t need our sadness, it needs out anger. It needs our rage. That’s the only appropriate response to a live-streamed genocide supported by your own government.

Sadness and grief are for natural disasters. Cancer diagnoses. Terrible accidents. This is not something that has passively happened to the people of Gaza, it’s something that’s been done to them by other people, and the people who are doing it have names and faces. It’s not a tragedy, it’s a crime. A crime that is still currently being perpetrated and urgently needs to be stopped, by any means necessary.

The correct response is rage. Rage toward the people who are responsible for this mass atrocity. The officials of the Israeli government and all their western allies. Their apologists and propagandists in the mainstream press. The war profiteers who are benefiting from an active genocide. Individual members of the IDF. The hasbarists who swarm social media and pollute our information ecosystem with manipulation and lies.

Celebrities and influencers who urge us to weep for Gaza are pushing us into passivity and defeatism by urging us to treat this like an unavoidable tragedy that has already happened instead of an unforgivable atrocity that is still underway. This is power-serving propaganda, and it deserves nothing but scorn.

People often use anger in unwholesome ways in our society, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a healthy place for it. Every human emotion has healthy applications and unhealthy applications, and anger is no different. When someone is crossing a line which does harm to someone else, anger is an entirely appropriate and correct response in that moment, and when it’s applied consciously and with care it can yield very positive results. Sometimes people need to be pushed back to the other side of the line they are crossing with red hot heat.

Emotions are tools; they only become unhealthy when those tools are pointed at things other than their intended purpose. Anger at someone who made an innocent mistake. Delight in the suffering of others. Sadness and heartbreak in the face of monstrous injustice. These are emotions applied incorrectly.

Do not weep for Gaza. Rage for Gaza. Protest for Gaza. Take direct action for Gaza. Ruin people’s day for Gaza. Ruin people’s careers for Gaza. Don’t let the facilitators of this nightmare have a moment’s peace. Don’t let them go on with their lives like what they did was no big deal. This isn’t sad, it’s enraging. And it deserves a response of unmitigated forceful aggression.

AMERICAN SANCTIONS ON ICC JUDGES AND DEPUTY PROSECUTORS WERE REJECTED BY THE ICC

The International Criminal Court Calls Those Measures A “Flagrant Attack” On Judicial Independence And International Order.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Wednesday strongly rejected new American sanctions targeting four of its judges and deputy prosecutors, calling the measures an assault on judicial independence and the rules-based international order.

“The International Criminal Court deplores the announcement of new designations for sanctions by the US administration against ICC Judges Kimberly Prost (Canada), Judge Nicolas Guillou (France), Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan (Fiji) and Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang (Senegal),” the court said in a statement.

The additional designations follow the earlier designation of four other judges and the ICC prosecutor.

“These sanctions are a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution which operates under the mandate from 125 States Parties from all regions. They constitute also an affront against the Court’s States Parties, the rules-based international order and, above all, millions of innocent victims across the world,” it added.

The ICC stressed that it will continue fulfilling its mandate in strict accordance with its legal framework as adopted by the states parties and “without regard to any restriction, pressure or threat.”

It further urged governments to back the court’s mission, saying: “The Court calls upon States Parties and all those who share the values of humanity and the rule of law to provide firm and consistent support to the Court and its work carried out in the sole interest of victims of international crimes.”

The American regime sanctioned four ICC officials on Wednesday, including a judge who authorized the arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Israel has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, devastating the enclave, which faces famine. Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

AMERICA WAS BETRAYED BY ISRAEL’S MAN INSIDE THE CIA

James Angleton Shaped The Relationship In Secrecy. Newly Files Shed Light On His Wanton Betrayal Of His Country To Assist Israel’s Theft Of American Nuclear Material And Global Spying Operations.

Veteran CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton secretly oversaw a top-level spy ring involving Jewish émigrés and Israeli operatives without “any clearances” from Congress or Langley itself, according to recently declassified documents published as part of the Trump administration’s pledge to disclose all available information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The files provide a fresh and often disturbing look at a spy described by historian Jefferson Morley as “a leading architect of America’s strategic relationship with Israel,” detailing Angleton’s role in transforming the Mossad into a fearsome agency with global reach, while assisting Israel’s theft of American nuclear material and protecting Zionist terrorists.

Angleton established the Jewish emigre spying network in the aftermath of WWII, with the apparent goal of infiltrating the Soviet Union. But as the files show, the spymaster considered his “most important” task to be maintaining the supply of Jewish immigrants flowing from the Soviet Union towards the burgeoning Israeli state.

According to Angelton, his Jewish assets were responsible for 22,000 reports on the USSR, generating several intelligence masterstrokes. Chief among them was the publication of Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Kruschev’s famous 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin, which the spymaster boasted “practically created revolutions in Hungary and Poland.” Elsewhere, Angleton bragged that his arrangement with Israel had produced “500 Polish intelligence officers who were Jewish” who “knew more about Polish intelligence than the Poles.”

Other passages appear to show Angleton taking credit for securing the “release” of several Zionist terrorists affiliated with the Irgun militia before they could be convicted for bombing the British embassy in Rome. Though the group had been captured by Italian authorities, the newly-disclosed files indicate the terror cell was freed on the orders of the CIA.

The information was originally divulged in 1975 to senators serving on the Church Committee, which probed widespread abuses by American intelligence in the decades prior. Congress was particularly interested in claims by New York Times foreign correspondent Tad Szulc, who testified under oath that Angleton had personally informed him that America provided technical information on nuclear devices to Israel in the late 1950s. The new documents show that Angleton was deceptive under questioning, and evaded questions on Israel’s nuclear espionage efforts on the record.

Additional unsealed FBI documents, which refer to Israel’s Mossad as Angleton’s “primary source” of information, confirm that the CIA’s head of counterintelligence relied heavily on Tel Aviv to solidify his position within the Agency – and also add to the growing body of evidence that Angleton may not have been operating with American interests in mind throughout his 21-year tenure.

Other newly declassified files from the FBI have shown that Angleton maintained a wildly lopsided relationship with the Bureau, which saw federal agents deferring to the CIA counterintelligence chief after they caught him surveilling the correspondence of huge numbers of Americans. The files show Angleton openly admitting he would have been fired if Langley caught wind of his leaks to the Bureau.

A side-by-side analysis of the now-unredacted Church Committee files compared with their previously-released versions from 2018 demonstrates that even after 70 years, Washington felt compelled to conceal details of its real relationship with Israel’s founders. Over a dozen references to “Israel,” “Tel Aviv,” or descriptions of figures as “Jewish,” which were scrubbed from the 2018 release, can now be viewed on the National Archives site.

The documents reveal that Angleton repeatedly lied to multiple Congressional bodies, including the Church Committee, which investigated CIA abuses, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which probed the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Angleton was similarly evasive when interrogated over Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and about CIA knowledge or complicity in the scheme.

Those documents also reveal that Angleton’s CIA counterintelligence staff ordered Lee Harvey Oswald’s removal from federal watchlists six weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, despite his classification as a high security risk. The surveillance of Oswald was personally overseen by a member of Angleton’s intelligence network of Jewish emigres, Reuben Efron, a CIA spy from Lithuania. Angleton had placed Efron in charge of an Agency program called HT/Lingual which intercepted and read correspondences between Oswald and his family.

Numerous historians have questioned why the CIA counterintelligence chief insisted for decades on personally overseeing what he described as the “Israeli account.” Though several off-the-record interactions remain impossible to parse, the documents show that when grilled about his “unusually close” connections to the Israeli Mossad, Angleton acknowledged forming an “arrangement” in which, “in most simplistic terms, [the Israelis] were informed that we would not work with them against the Arabs, [but] that we would work with them on Soviet bloc Intelligence and communism.”

FREEING ZIONIST TERRORISTS

One of the earliest instances of Angleton’s cooperation with Zionist elements came as Zionist militants embarked on a terrorist campaign to pressure the British colonial authorities to leave Mandate Palestine.

In October 1946, three months after they bombed the British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, members of the right-wing Irgun militia planted explosives in the British embassy in Rome in a failed bid to assassinate the UK’s ambassador to Italy.

According to Angleton, after the Irgun “blew up the British embassy in Rome” in 1946, the CIA intervened to ensure they escaped Italy without prosecution.

“We had the members of the group, and then we had the dilemma again as to whether we turned them over to the British authorities,” noted Angleton, who had served as counterintelligence chief for the Italian branch of the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA’s predecessor. “And we were in a position to make the decision one way or the other. And eventually we came down on the side of releasing them.”

A SECRET DEAL WITH THE MOSSAD

As Washington sought to manage the political ruptures caused by the creation of Israel, and monitor the wave of Soviet migrants pouring into the self-proclaimed Jewish state, Angleton framed his takeover of “the Israeli account” as a convenient way for American intelligence to kill two birds with one stone.

“The other side of the Israeli problem was that you had thousands coming from the Soviet Union and you had the Soviets making use of the immigration for the purpose of sending illegal agents into the West and breaking down all the travel control, identifications and so on. And so there was both a security problem and a political problem.”

To manage these “problems,” the American regime and Israelis brokered a deal involving the secret exchange of “papers and signals, communications intelligence, [and] the other products of intelligence action,” Angleton stated. The spy chief claimed the only records of the 1951 arrangement held by the American side would be in the possession of the Agency, and admitted America’s Congress had been left in the dark, telling senators, “I don’t think there were any clearances obtained from the Hill.”

Asked by one legislator how it was “possible for succeeding directors of the intelligence agency to understand what the agreements were between” America and Israeli intelligence, Angleton responded: “Very simple. They saw the production to begin with. And they met with directors or the head of Israeli intelligence. And they met with Ambassadors and prime ministers. And they were very much involved.”