Our Wednesday News Analysis | In Gaza, western colonialism has been unmasked

A demonstrator holds a placard depicting Israeli Prime Minister as people take part in the "Red Line for Gaza" demonstration in Brussels, Belgium, on 7 September 2025 (Reuters)

At this critical moment, widespread public outrage and grassroots efforts
are bravely challenging long-standing power and corruption.

Artists, athletes, everyday citizens, and veterans are speaking out loudly, making their voices heard in the call for justice and accountability.

The global reaction to the events in Gaza isn't just a humanitarian plea—
it's a heartfelt demand for political change and a shared sense of ethical duty.

Israel’s campaign to eradicate Gaza is about to enter its third year.

This is not just a symbolic moment. It is crunch time, both for those carrying out the enclave’s destruction and for those who oppose it.

Two years in, Western capitals still refuse to name as a genocide the mass slaughter carried out by Israel and the famine it has engineered. They are still blind to the tsunami of crimes against humanity committed by Israel over the past 23 months. Even identifying these atrocities as violations of international law has proved a step too far for most.

Western leaders are not about to reverse course.

Like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, they are "in blood stepped in so far"; they dare not turn back. To do so would be to admit their guilt as co-conspirators in Israel’s genocide, for providing the arms, intelligence, and diplomatic cover that made it possible.

But the difficulties they face denying a reality live-streamed to their domestic populations grow more acute by the day - and not just because emaciated children across Gaza are dying in ever larger numbers.

Last week, the international association that represents genocide scholars voted overwhelmingly that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.

The formal, scholarly consensus has now fully caught up with the popular one - even if western leaders and their compliant media prefer to ignore both.

This is undoubtedly a genocide...

Read more: In Gaza, western colonialism has been unmasked
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OPINION | WE ISRAELIS ARE PART OF A MAFIA CRIME FAMILY. IT'S OUR JOB TO FIGHT AGAINST IT FROM WITHIN

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2025-08-31/ty-article-opinion/.premium/we-israelis-are-part-of-a-crime-family-its-our-job-to-fight-against-it-from-within/00000198-ff06-d2dc-afde-ff1f611a0000

By Michael Sfard
Published August 31, 2025

The criminal, felonious, unforgivable project of Gaza's destruction is an all-Israeli project. It could not have happened without the cooperation – whether through active contribution or silence, of all parts of Jewish Israeli society

A protest against the war in Gaza outside the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem in August.Credit: Oren Ben Hakoon

"That's my family, Kay. It's not me."

When Michael Corleone (played flawlessly by Al Pacino) brings Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) to meet his family at his sister's wedding in the first part of The Godfather trilogy, she is exposed to an alarming story about the family she is marrying into. It appears that the family solves problems through a combination of violence and corruption. When Michael notices that Kay is shocked, he tries to reassure her: "That's my family, Kay, it's not me."

This moral reckoning is not only a call for individual awakening
but also a demand for collective responsibility.

The silence and complicity of institutions reflect a deeper societal malaise, one that cannot be corrected without courageous acts of conscience.

To restore integrity, it is necessary to confront uncomfortable truths,
engage in honest dialogue and build solidarity with those who are willing
to stand up for justice, even when it means opposing one’s own community.

Israel is destroying Gaza. Call it ethnic cleansing, call it erasure, call it genocide, call it whatever you want.

I do not doubt that Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish-Polish jurist who coined the term "genocide," would declare with tears of shame that the Jewish state is committing genocide in Gaza. It is destroying the place and annihilating the human group living there.

The physical destruction of Gaza's built environment is systematic – house after house, public building after public building, infrastructure after infrastructure. Think about your own neighborhood – the kids' school, the local clinic, the shopping center, the playground, the park, the office buildings and the residential blocks. Imagine all of it, absolutely everything, erased. No home, no neighborhood, no community. That is the situation in Gaza.

A place that was home to over two million people has become one vast ground zero. Schools, clinics, shops, water, electricity and sewage infrastructure, roads and sidewalks – all reduced to ash and dust. According to satellite-image analysis, 70 percent of the structures in the Strip have been completely destroyed or damaged beyond use – and that's even before the next phases of the campaign, before the defense minister's promise to rabbis of the religious Zionist movement that "Gaza will look like Beit Hanoun" is realized.

The mass killing of Gazans is more chaotic than the destruction of the physical space: indiscriminate shelling, disproportionate bombing, the devastation of the healthcare system and – horrifically – starvation. The deliberate creation of man-made famine...

Read more: Opinion | We Israelis Are Part of a Mafia Crime Family. It's Our Job to Fight Against It From Within
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FORGET SYMBOLIC STATEHOOD — THE WORLD MUST RECOGNIZE ISRAELI APARTHEID

Source: + 972 Magazine
https://www.972mag.com/palestinian-statehood-israeli-apartheid-recognition/

By Alaa Salama
Published August 29, 2025

The push to recognize a Palestinian state creates the illusion of action, but delays the real remedies: sanctioning and isolating Israel's apartheid regime.

View of graffiti painted by artists of different backgrounds, supporting the Palestinians, seen painted on the separation wall in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, October 21, 2024. Photo by Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90

The Jewish Israelis who live there cast their votes for a government that determines
where I can live, work, and travel, how much water I receive, and
which set of rules and laws apply to me, and which do not.

Like millions of Palestinians, from the West Bank to Gaza, I am ruled by a system that sees me only as an obstacle in the way of its expansionist ethnostate.

To truly address the injustice, international solidarity and coordinated action are essential.

Civil society movements, advocacy groups, and ordinary citizens must pressure their governments and institutions to uphold the principles of human rights and accountability.

Education, dialogue, and persistent activism can help shift perceptions
and inspire meaningful change, both within the region and globally.

The path forward requires courage, empathy, and a steadfast commitment to dignity for all.

My grandmother is 90 years old. Twice exiled, first by Israel during the Nakba, then by Assad’s regime in Syria, her memory is no longer whole. Of her life today in Sweden, she holds only the last few minutes. Of her long decades, flashes.

Yet her childhood in Kfar Sabt, a Palestinian village in the Galilee depopulated in 1948, burns bright. She grins, almost mischievously, as she recalls playing in the fields, running around with the other children, and spying on a Jewish farmer whose sudden arrival in the village — and the noisy tractor that came with him — stirred curiosity and suspicion...

Read more: Forget symbolic statehood — the world must recognize Israeli apartheid