Our Wednesday News Analysis | Dear world: This is what Palestinian unity looks like

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, displaced by Israel forces, return their houses through Al-Rashid Street on the coastal strip following the ceasefire agreement in Gaza City, Gaza on January 27, 2025. [Stringer – Anadolu Agency]

"Some prayed atop concrete slabs, some sang in large, growing crowds, and others cried but insisted that no power could ever uproot them from Palestine again.

Palestinians in Gaza know that they cannot afford to grieve in the usual way.

So, they emphasize their identity, unity, and defiance as ways to overcome grief.

They are Gazzawiyya—Palestinians from Gaza, and nothing else.

This true unity must now form the foundation of a new discourse."

Even those of us who have long emphasised the importance of the Palestinian people’s voice, experience, and collective action in Palestinian history must have been shocked by the cultural revolution resulting from the Israeli war against the people in Gaza. By cultural revolution, I mean the defiant and rebellious narrative evolving in Gaza, where people see themselves as active participants in the popular resistance, not just mere victims of the Israeli war machine.

When the ceasefire was announced on the 471st day of the Israeli genocide, The Palestinians in Gaza rushed onto the streets in celebration. Media outlets reported that they were celebrating the ceasefire, but judging by their chants, songs, and symbolisms they were celebrating their collective victory, steadfastness (sumud) and resilience against the powerful Israeli army, which has been and remains supported by the US and other Western countries.

Using basic tools, they hurried to clean their streets, clearing debris to allow the displaced to search for homes. Although their homes were probably destroyed by Israel – 90 per cent of Gaza’s housing units were, according to the United Nations – they were still happy, even if they could only sit on the rubble. Some prayed atop concrete slabs, some sang in large, growing crowds, and others cried but insisted that no power could ever uproot them from Palestine again.

Social media was flooded with Palestinians expressing a mix of emotions, although they were mostly defiant, expressing their resolve not just in political terms, but also in other ways, including humour...

Read more: Dear world: This is what Palestinian unity looks like

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HOW THE WEST HIDES ITS GAZA GENOCIDE GUILT BEHIND HOLOCAUST DAY REMEMBRANCE

Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/west-hides-gaza-genocide-guilt-holocaust-day-how

By Jonathan Cook
Published January 31, 2025

The ghosts of thousands of Palestinian children crushed by Israeli bombs loomed over this year's Auschwitz commemorations

Displaced Palestinians make their way from the southern to the northern parts of the Gaza Strip on 29 January 2025 (Omar al-Qattaa/AFP)

"Russia, so visibly absent, was responsible for liberating Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 - the date that eventually came to be marked as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Had those Western leaders heard the message of “never again?”

… the children shredded by US-supplied bombs; the children who slowly suffocated under the rubble of their destroyed homes; the children whose bodies were left to rot, picked apart by feral dogs, because snipers shot at anyone who tried to retrieve them; the children who starved to death because they were seen as “human animals,” denied all food and water; the homeless babies who froze to death in plunging winter temperatures; and the premature babies left to die in their incubators after soldiers invaded hospitals and cut off the power.

Western leaders were determined to look back at the crimes of the past
but not to look at the crimes of the present -
crimes they have been so profoundly complicit in perpetrating.

The ghosts of those children were every bit as present at the ceremony as the mountains of shoes and suitcases - separated forever from their owners - lining the corridors of the Auschwitz museum.

An entirely mendacious message lay at the heart of this week’s coverage by the BBC of the 80th Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations.

The British state broadcaster asserted throughout the day that the voices of the few remaining survivors of the Nazi extermination programme were still being heard “loud and clear” in Western capitals. Those survivors - now in their 80s and 90s - warned that the genocide of a people must “never again” be allowed to take place.

As if to bolster its claim, the BBC showed western leaders - from Britain’s King Charles III, to Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron of France - prominently in attendance at the main ceremony at Auschwitz, the most notorious of the death camps, where more than a million Jews, Roma and other stigmatised groups were burned in ovens.

As a counterpoint, the BBC highlighted the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been excluded from the ceremony for ordering the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Steve Rosenberg, the corporation’s Moscow correspondent, underscored the irony that Russia, so visibly absent, was responsible for liberating Auschwitz on 27 January 1945 - the date that eventually came to be marked as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But hanging over the proceedings - and the coverage - was a heavy cloud of unreality. Had those western leaders really heard the message of “never again”? Had media outlets like the BBC?

There was an unwanted ghost at the commemorations. In fact, tens of thousands of ghosts.

Read more: How the West hides its Gaza genocide guilt behind Holocaust Day remembrance
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THE WAR WILL ONLY END WHEN ISRAELIS UNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLE TRUTH

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/the-war-will-only-end-when-israelis-understand-this-simple-truth/

Orly Noy writes in +972 on 24 January 2025

Most Israelis now support a Gaza ceasefire. But they still fail to realize that where there is oppression there will always be resistance.

Demonstrators call for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, outside Hakirya Base in Tel Aviv, January 18, 2025. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)

"...the profoundly human tweet by the Palestinian-Israeli Knesset member Ayman Odeh — which expressed joy over the release of both the hostages and prisoners while adding that

‘We must free both peoples from the burden of occupation.
We were all born free'— provoked an eruption of racist backlash.
Now, efforts are already underway to have him expelled from the Knesset.

Only we Judeo-Israelis are allowed to rejoice."

There was hardly a dry eye left at the emotional reunion of Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, and Emily Damari with their loved ones after they returned home from more than 15 months of captivity in Gaza. An entire nation seemed to hold its breath until they were seen stepping out of the Red Cross into Israeli custody, at which point the floodgates burst open — one of the few collective moments of joy in well over a year.

Our Palestinian neighbors also experienced a bittersweet moment of joy last Sunday amid widespread death and destruction: they, too, celebrated the return of released prisoners who had survived Israel’s torture camps. One needed only look at the face of Palestinian parliamentarian Khalida Jarrar, released from prolonged administrative detention and so broken that she was almost unrecognizable, to imagine what they endured during their imprisonment. “There is no life in prison,” 23-year old Janin Amro, one of the freed Palestinian prisoners, told +972’s Oren Ziv. “It was essentially a cemetery.”

In Israel, the only force that could match the intensity of public joy over the hostages’ release was the outrage at Palestinians’ joy for their freed prisoners, who are categorically labeled as “terrorists” despite most having never been convicted of a crime. It’s a tautological mindset in which a Palestinian becomes a terrorist simply by virtue of being detained by Israel.

Consequently, their people are forbidden from celebrating their release, to the extent that the profoundly human tweet by the Palestinian Knesset member Ayman Odeh — which expressed joy over the release of both the hostages and prisoners, while adding that “we must free both peoples from the burden of occupation. We were all born free” — provoked an eruption of racist backlash. Now, efforts are already underway to have him expelled from the Knesset...

Read more: The war will only end when Israelis understand this simple truth