In Occupied Palestine
Zionism in practice
Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Land
08:00, 17 November until 08:00, 18 November 2024
[Source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group]
Gaza Strip
Attacks: There are no safe places for the militarily-dominated population in Gaza, who find themselves subjected to airstrikes and other missile attacks on buildings, homes and many essentialfacilities, as well as constant gunfire and invasions by Israeli forces. The Israeli Navy continues to fire missiles, targeting facilities and buildings along the entire Gaza shoreline.
Victims: 76 more people have been killed within the past 48 hours, bringing the total number killed in Gaza, since 7 October, to at least 43,922. Another 158 have been wounded, bringing that total up to 103,898. The daily average number of men, women and children killed in Gaza is at least 107 and, of those injured, that is now more than 254.
The New Zionist Ideal:
A Generation of Israelis Devoid of Shame Over the Gaza War
Gideon Levy |17 November 2024
Yair Weigler, an educator and CEO of an organisation called “Teachers for Change”, has just returned from a lengthy stint in the reserves.
“We saw action in various neighbourhoods and refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, as well as spending some time on its beaches, followed by action in Lebanon . . . we were settlers, Tel Avivians, people evacuated from the [Gaza Strip’s] Katif Bloc in 2005; we were brothers in arms, people in education and in high-tech . . . one tank company,” he said poetically, as if he were a young man returning from a post-army trip overseas, singing the praises of locations he had visited. Oh, Shujaiyeh, oh, what unity. What an army, what a people.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett rushed to share the words of the educator: “A generation of lions has arisen in Israel. I have no doubt that these guys, the combatants and the reservists, will return to civilian life as more idealistic people, people who are more compassionate, and they are the people who will rebuild this country for the next 50 years. There is hope!”
- Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza is on display for all to see
- Israel is unleashing an apocalypse in northern Gaza
- When the Gaza war ends, Israel’s mainstream media will have a lot to answer for
Even if we ignore the cloying pathos exhibited by the tiny knitted skullcap-wearing politician, one cannot but be appalled by the chaos unfolding before our astounded and helpless eyes. Day is night and night is day. Ethnic cleansing and mass murder are ideals, and war crimes create civilians who are better and more value-driven. That is the meaning of hope in Bennett’s scheme of things.
One reads it in disbelief. This is what a teacher in Israel has to say about his very problematic reserve duty, and that is how a leader of the moderate right wing reacts, a person who embodies hope for an alternative. In 2024 Israel, not only is there no hint of stocktaking regarding what its army has done in Gaza and Lebanon – we’ve grown accustomed to it – now they elevate crimes and brutality to the level of ideals. Civics lessons will now discuss how the massacre of tens of thousands of women and children have become a value. This is how you destroy a strip of land and make Israelis better citizens. Genocide as an educational workshop.
Anyone who expected feelings of guilt, an accounting or ethical question marks is getting the exact opposite. Anyone who expected a generation smitten by trauma over what it has done, with relentless nightmares and crying out in one’s sleep over the atrocities, is receiving national pride. The Zionist ideal is now the war raging in Gaza. A terrible crime that remains to be defined in international courts, a war the entire world is horrified by, justifiably so, a crime now being leveraged into a value. A generation of lions has arisen here.
This generation of lions that will not even for a moment look squarely at its handiwork. It is too cowardly. One can understand the repression and denial – without it, a war like this could not be conducted, a war that is pointless and unbridled. But Israel has taken this into an even more inconceivable place.
Never has such pride been expressed here over such horrific war crimes. Officers walk among the ruins in Gaza in front of TV cameras like inflated peacocks. There is not a single correspondent around to save the dignity of his profession by asking what the meaning of all that destruction is. What was its purpose, its legality, its morality? What right allowed us to perpetrate such destruction? Convoys of the most miserable people trundle back and forth over the sand, in crutches, in wheelchairs, in wagons driven by starving donkeys, people ready to recite to TV correspondent Ohad Hamo anything he asks them to in exchange for a drop of water – and this is called a journalistic coup propping up Hamo’s professional pride.
It’s doubtful that Russian TV would dare broadcast such a shameful sight from Ukraine. Perhaps there, shame would prevent it. Here, there’s no sense of shame. None expressed by Hamo, Channel 12, the media, Weigler or Bennett.
It’s not just that Israel has lost any sense of shame. It is proud of its exploits. It’s not that Israelis view war as a necessary evil, ostensibly condemning us to live with it. Now it is a model for values – war as a pedagogic poem. Transfer in the northern Gaza Strip and the massacre in its south as a national heritage, with the photo albums and museums soon to follow. This will be much harder to recuperate from.
Bennett promises that this generation of lions, devoid of conscience or compass, is the one that will build the country for the next 50 years. Just imagine. There’s something to wait for.
Additional articles
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor documented dozens of deliberate killings and new field executions carried out by Israeli occupation forces against numerous civilians in northern Gaza. These actions are part of the ongoing escalation and the broader framework of genocide perpetrated against Palestinians for over 13 months. For the past 43 days, the Israeli army has been conducting its third incursion and military offensive against northern Gaza and its residents, committing heinous atrocities.
These include killing and terrorising civilians, forcibly evicting them from their homes, and displacing them outside northern Gaza province. This constitutes one of the largest cases of forced displacement in modern history. Among the numerous atrocities committed by Israeli forces — ranging from bombing homes with residents inside, to mass killings of displaced civilians in shelters, and the targeting of gatherings and vehicles — Euro-Med Monitor’s field team documented harrowing incidents of direct killings and extrajudicial executions of civilians by Israeli soldiers, carried out with no justification whatsoever.
The incoming leader of the US Senate has threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) with potential sanctions if it officially seeks arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as other officials. John Thune, who will assume his position when President-Elect Trump takes office in January, said Washington must pass legislation permitting sanctions on the court if it approves of the arrest warrant requests put forward by chief prosecutor Karim Khan.
Thune was referring to the passing of a Republican bill back in June that would impose sanctions on the Hague-based court over its decision to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the now former Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant. If passed, the bill would impose sanctions on people involved in ICC prosecutions of US citizens and of US allies who are not members of the international court, which includes Israel.
Exceptional courage and commitment is needed to spend decades pursuing freedom for your people and to do so with few resources against considerable odds. Ali Kazak has shown courage and commitment. As the key educator and advocate for Palestine in Australia, he has been running up steep sand hills with false history and Israeli tanks tied to his back, but has accepted this weight in readiness for the day when Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians ends and refugees return to their homeland. Ali was born in Haifa. But in 1948, together with hundreds of thousands of other refugees, Ali with his mother finds safety in Syria. Unable to rejoin his father in Palestine, he did not see him again for 48 years.
Public education about war crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon can be derived from articles in Pearls & irritations and from Ali Kazak’s forensic daily blog ‘Don’t say you didn’t know’. For revelations in that journal we can all be grateful. Ali does the research. An interested public must merely wait to read. In that blog and in the journal Arena, Ali reminds that colonisation occurs when the rights of Indigenous people are ignored. He describes the 1947 partitioning of Palestine, a newly minted UN made policy ‘against the wishes of a majority of the people’, at which point, ‘the colonial logic of might is right’ was established for the next 76 years.
West Bank
[Palestinian Monitoring Group]
Israeli Army attack – home invasions: Nablus – 00:30, Israeli Occupation forces, firing live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades, stormed the Balata refugee camp and invaded homes.
Israeli Army property grab for transfer to settlers: Jerusalem – Occupation forces seized a popular café in the Musrara neighbourhood, forcing it to close, in order to facilitate being handed over to Israeli settlers.
Israeli police and settlers’ mosque violation: Jerusalem – 08:00, settler militants, escorted by Israeli police, invaded the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and molested worshippers.
Israeli Army land-grab for transfer to settlers – agricultural sabotage: Salfit – 20:20, Israeli forces issued an order, for the seizure of 875 hectares of Kafr al-Dik agricultural land to facilitate the expansion of the Beduel Occupation settlement. The farmland will be turned into areas of parkland, as well as for industrial use and property development.
Israeli Army support for settler stoning: Jericho – 09:10, while Occupation settlers were stoning a man’s motor vehicle on the al-Ma’arjat Road, the Israeli military took him prisoner.
Israeli Army violence – injury and hospitalisation: Jericho – 18:05, a Balata refuge camp resident, Abdul Rahman Asi, was beaten–up and hospitalised by Israeli soldiers at the Karameh (Allenby) Crossing.
Israeli Army terrorism directed at children – stun grenades fired: Bethlehem – morning, the Israeli Army fired stun grenades at students making their way to the al-Khadr Elementary School.
Occupation settler olive harvest sabotage: Ramallah – 12:10, raiding Israeli Occupation settlers uprooted olive trees, on Turmusaya land.
Occupation settler stoning: Salfit – 15:35, Israelis, from the Kfar Tapuach Occupation settlement, stoned passing vehicles at the entrance to Yasuf village.
Occupation settler olive harvest sabotage: Bethlehem – 13:50, raiding Israeli Occupation settlers uprooted olive trees, near Beit Jallah.
Occupation settler land-grab: Hebron – Israelis, from the Ramat Yishai Occupation settlement outpost, set up camp in order to occupy a family’s land in the Old City Tel Rumeida neighbourhood.
Raid – stun grenades fired: Jerusalem – evening, Israeli Occupation forces, firing stun grenades, raided and patrolled the al-Ram.
Raid: Ramallah – dawn, Israeli forces raided the town of Kobar and broke into its Health Clinic.
Raid: Ramallah – 15:10, the Israeli Army raided and patrolled the village of Kafr Malik.
Raid – 4 taken prisoner: Ramallah – 20:50–03:15, Israeli troops raided the village of al-Mughayir, taking prisoner four people.
Raid: Ramallah – evening, the Israeli Army raided and patrolled the town of Sinjil.
Raid – 4 taken prisoner: Ramallah – dawn, Israeli troops raided the town of Silwad, taking prisoner four people.
Raid – stun grenades fired: Jenin – 20:20, the Israeli military, firing stun grenades, raided the town of Jaba, taking prisoner one person.
Raids: Tulkarem – 19:50–21:50, Israeli soldiers raided and patrolled Beit Lid, as well as the village of Safarin.
Raid: Qalqiliya – 01:40–04:50, Israeli Occupation forces raided and patrolled the city.
Raid – stun grenades fired: Nablus – 18:30-20:20, Israeli forces, firing stun grenades, raided the village of Iraq Burin.
Raid – 2 taken prisoner: Nablus – 21:20-midnight, the Israeli Army raided Beit Furik, taking prisoner two people.
Raid: Nablus – 21:45–02:20, Israeli troops, firing stun grenades, raided Sebastia.
Raid – 2 taken prisoner: Bethlehem – 21:50–00:10, the Israeli military, firing stun grenades, raided al-Khadr, taking prisoner two people.
Raid – 30+ interrogated: Bethlehem – 01:40–06:55, Israeli soldiers raided the Deheishe refugee camp, detaining and interrogating more than 30 people.
Raid – stun grenade fired: Hebron – noon, Israeli Occupation forces, firing stun grenades, raided and patrolled Beit Ummar.
Raid – 1 taken prisoner: Hebron – 13:35, Israeli forces raided al-Samou, taking prisoner one person.
Raid: Hebron – 18:20–20:00, the Israeli Army raided Yatta and invaded a barbershop.