Our Wednesday News Analysis | How Israel’s narrative collides with the carnage in Gaza

Israel is more desperate than ever to provide any rationale to justify its extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza (AFP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a skilled salesperson, though the product he peddles is deeply flawed. His current challenge is to convince himself, his people, the region and the world that, despite significant setbacks, he is winning the strategic war against his adversaries.

Former Israeli national security officials, while employing different terminology, essentially convey the same message. They describe Netanyahu as a “master tactician” but “not a master strategist,” as reported by CNN. Above a March article detailing another of Netanyahu’s grandiose, yet hollow, pronouncements of aspiring to control the Middle East, CNN’s headline declared that “The endgame is unclear as ever.”

Netanyahu and his extremist allies are acting in defiance of reality. They either believe, or wish to believe, that the endgame is perfectly clear.

According to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Israel is operating under a grand military strategy, one that will culminate in “Syria being dismantled, Hezbollah being severely defeated, Iran being stripped of its nuclear threat, Gaza being cleansed of Hamas, and hundreds of thousands of Gazans being displaced to other countries.”

Smotrich’s extensive list, communicated at the end of April, concluded with Israel emerging “stronger and more prosperous.” This wish list aligns closely with the one presented by Netanyahu in March.

Israel is more desperate than ever to provide any rationale, however feeble, to justify its extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza

Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Read more: How Israel’s narrative collides with the carnage in Gaza

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A HISTORIC HAMAS-US DEAL – WHAT ARE ITS POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS?

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-historic-hamas-us-deal-what-are-its-potential-implications/

By Robert Inlakesh
Published May 12, 2025

Do we employ Occam’s Razor and assume the obvious, or is the American President up to some broader agenda that is being shrouded in obscurity?

US President Donald Trump and the spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

Taken at face value, the deal between the United States and Hamas represents a baffling historic policy pivot, not only from the Trump administration’s hardline Zionist position that appeared ironclad only weeks ago, but would be the most significant Palestine-Israel shift in Washington since 1967.

While crowds have gathered in Gaza to celebrate, others watched on with cautious optimism.

This Sunday’s announcement from the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas, that they had not only been dealing once again with US President Donald Trump’s negotiating team, but that they had struck an agreement to release American-Israeli soldier, Edan Alexander, from captivity, sent shockwaves across the region.

According to the Hamas movement, the US has agreed to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip after Israel decided to cut it off completely in mid-March and that they were awaiting an announcement from Washington that would signal the beginning of intensive negotiations aimed at reaching a lasting ceasefire.

Israeli Hebrew media then slowly began releasing details relevant to the deal, while Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, confirmed that Monday will be the day when the captured Israeli soldier – who is an American citizen – will be released.

Some Hebrew media outlets indicated the US has requested that Israel adhere to a temporary ceasefire in order to allow for the release of Alexander, while Axios claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was previously notified of the agreement. Finally Trump weighed in and confirmed the deal was taking place.

As has become a general rule when it comes to Donald Trump’s announcements and deals, it is best not to jump the gun before seeing tangible results first. It could so happen that the Hamas-US deal fails, especially given the possibility of Israel taking measures which kill the agreement before it enters into effect...

Read more: A Historic Hamas-US Deal – What are Its Potential Implications?
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I WAS IN THE BBC DOCUMENTARY ‘THE SETTLERS.’ THIS IS THE PART OF MY STORY THEY DIDN’T TELL.

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/i-was-in-the-bbc-documentary-the-settlers-this-is-the-part-of-my-story-they-didnt-tell/

By Mohammad Hureini
Published May 6, 2025

I met Louis Theroux to share my story as a Palestinian under the constant threat of displacement. While the film is an important look into the Israeli settlers trying to erase us, there is one crucial part of our story that was left out.

Mohammed Hureini speaking to British journalist Louis Theroux in the BBC documentary film, ‘The Settlers’. (Screenshot, ‘The Settlers’)

The BBC documentary ‘The Settlers,” directed by Josh Baker and written by Louis Theroux, has recently aired to much international attention. It aims to give Western viewers an inside look into the minds of Israeli settlers – those who occupy Palestinian land in the West Bank, often with an open ideological commitment to ethnic cleansing and supremacy.

The film achieves its goal to a certain extent, as it exposed the raw, unfiltered language of settlers who speak brazenly about displacing Palestinians from their ancestral homes.

But while the documentary was willing to give settlers the microphone to lay out their dangerous visions for the future, it fell painfully short in giving equal weight to the lived reality of those whose lives are being shattered by those very ideologies.

I know this firsthand, because I was in the documentary.

"Can we call the police?" "Which police?" In the BBC documentary The Settlers, Louis Theroux meets 20-year-old Palestinian activist Mohammad Hureini@MohammadHureini , who brings him to the village of At-Tuwani in Hebron. There, Louis witnesses the brutal reality of settler… pic.twitter.com/XtKVNi7rTn

— Translating Falasteen (Palestine) (@translatingpal) May 3, 2025

I met Josh and Louis and shared my personal story as a Palestinian from Masafer Yatta, a community under constant threat of displacement. I also spoke about the deeper history that Western audiences almost never hear: how my grandparents were violently uprooted from their homes in 1948 by Zionist militias during the Nakba. I spoke of our long journey as refugees, of how we ended up in the South Hebron Hills, of how the Nakba never ended; it simply changed. Bulldozers have replaced rifles, and legal orders have replaced expulsion notices, but the goal remains the same: to erase us from our land...

Read more: I was in the BBC documentary ‘The Settlers.’ This is the part of my story they didn’t tell.