Our Wednesday News Analysis | From Palestine to Iran: What Arab and Muslim Silence Really Reveals

Artistic interpretation of Arab normalization with Israel amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza. (Design: Palestine Chronicle)

There is also a deeper reason:

The historic failure of the West. Western governments are structurally biased toward Israel,
and many intellectuals, activists, and ordinary people have concluded—reasonably enough—
that if justice will not come from Washington, London, Berlin, or Paris, then surely it must come
from the Arab and Muslim worlds.
The instinct is understandable.
But it confuses the public with the regimes.

That misplaced expectation makes the current war on Iran all the more consequential.

I have always found it interesting, and at times revealing, when seasoned activists and intellectuals in the West, including those who see themselves as deeply committed to Palestine, raise the same familiar point: Arab governments must stand up to Israel and the United States in solidarity with their brethren in Palestine.

The argument often comes wrapped in a perplexed question: why are Arabs and Muslims not doing anything for Palestine?

What makes this particularly puzzling is that the question is often posed by respected analysts and historians—people who should recognize that the issue is far less sentimental than structural.

At first glance, the question may not seem bizarre. Palestinians are tied to their neighbors through history, geography, demography, religion, language, collective memory, and a shared experience of Western domination and Israeli colonial violence.

Additionally, Israeli leaders speak openly in expansionist terms, and they act accordingly, whether in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, or elsewhere. The people on the receiving end of this violence are often the same native communities of the region: Arabs, Muslims, and Christians alike.

Indeed, Arab and Muslim institutions themselves constantly invoke Palestine as a central cause. Arab summits still describe Palestine as a core issue, and public opinion across the region remains overwhelmingly aligned on that point...

Read more: From Palestine to Iran: What Arab and Muslim Silence Really Reveals

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FROM AMMAN, LOOKING TOWARDS PALESTINE

Source: Mercy’s Substack
https://mercyaiken.substack.com/p/from-amman-looking-towards-palestine

By Mercy Aiken
Published March 12, 2026

Amman street art, looking towards Palestine.

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Editor’s Note | I Connect with Israeli Journalist Mercy Aiken

"The region is home.

Inside my soul and within all of my being, I am attached to the splendor of its many colors, their tints and hues, and ALL my people.

I understand intuitively why neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will ever leave."

van Kempen, Abraham A. Christian Zionism ... Enraptured Around a Golden Calf - 2nd Edition: Evangelicals Rediscovering New Testament Revelations (p. 1). Kindle Edition.

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Amman is a city haunted by Palestine. It is filled with Nabulsi soap and Nabulsi kanafe. Stores with names beginning with Ramallah, Jaffa, Palestine, and Al Quds. Kuffieh everywhere. T-shirts depicting Palestine, coupled with slogans of return and longing. Gold pendents in the shape of Palestine hanging from the rear mirrors in taxis. Hand-knit watermelon pins on coats. Bookstores crammed with titles reflecting everything Palestinians and other advocates (Jewish and otherwise) have been saying for so long to a mostly deaf world: Tracing Homelands; Going Home; Looking for Palestine; Stranger in my Own Land; Seeking Palestine; Justice for Some; Perfect Victims; We are Not Numbers…and Gaza. So many titles on Gaza: The World After Gaza; Gaza, an Inquiry into its Martyrdom; A Genocide Foretold; Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza; Genocide in Gaza.

I notice this whenever I come to Jordan. But I am struck by it even more this time.

Everyone here is talking about Palestine, whether foreigners or locals. You overhear it in every cafe, in conversations all around you.

Exile here is like a scent you catch on the breeze. You feel it in the air, the unhealed, ongoing, unending lament and longing. Palestine hangs heavy in the air over Jordan.

Like a lady I met at the Amman Baptist church a few years ago. She told me that she is from Bethlehem. I told her I love Bethlehem and that I’ve lived there from time to time. I saw the pain flash across her eyes. She sighed deeply and told me she wished she could do the same. I felt ashamed of my privilege, my insensitivity.

This undying connection is something I really wish that the Western world understood. And even more so, that Israelis understood.

Any so-called peace deal that does not recognize Palestinian attachment to Palestine, that tries to downplay it, ignore it, shame it, mock it, belittle it, break it, minimize it, scorn it, starve it; erase it, imprison it, bribe it, breadcrumb it, genocide it, apartheid it, red-tape it into oblivion or beat it into submission will fail.

True, the old have died, as Ben Gurion predicted, but the young have not forgotten. And they never will.

And neither will others in the world who see what is happening to them. Especially after Gaza.

All the world’s cutting-edge spyware and facial recognition techniques and AI-empowered killing programs and white phosphorus and dumdum bullets and two thousand pound bombs and double-tap strikes and prevented ambulances and flying checkpoints and new watchtowers and skunk water and teargas and control over undeclared borders and hundreds of new road blockades and humiliating strip searches and armed settler militias and indefinite detentions and torture and burnt olive trees and smashed homes and erased libraries and economic strangleholds and social intimidation and smeared reputations and jobs lost and VISAS withheld and endless “collateral damage,” measured by children’s skulls and baby teeth cannot beat the human spirit into submission...

Read more: From Amman, looking towards Palestine

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THE MESSIANISTS AND NETANYAHU SHARE A DREAM: PERPETUAL WAR

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-03-24/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-messianists-and-netanyahu-share-a-dream-perpetual-war/0000019d-1c1f-d1fb-a7df-1fffac240000

By Noa Limone
Published March 24, 2026

Judging by the religious-messianic atmosphere that is taking hold in our country, the aspiration is that the war won't come to an end. The war is a divine tool for realizing the vision of Greater Israel

A man inspects the wreckage following a Saturday direct hit in southern Israel's Arad, Sunday. Credit: Itai Ron

A Toxic Cocktail — Religious Zealots Doing ‘God’s Work' in Theo-geopolitics; a Time Bomb That Will Spark the Lake of Fire ...

Judging by the religious-messianic atmosphere that is taking hold in our country, which is being polluted by blood and fire, the aspiration is that the war won't come to an end.

For messianic religious Zionism, whose representatives are deeply embedded in the government and in the security services, war isn't a crisis or a disaster. Rather, it's welcome. It destroys metaphysical evil and awakens the Tel Avivians from the coma of normalcy.

War unifies the nation on a path of self-destruction.

Benny Biton, the mayor of Dimona, which suffered a direct hit on Shabbat, is apparently a "the glass is half full" person. There were dozens of casualties, hundreds without a roof over their heads, and extensive destruction of buildings.

Yet, Biton stressed the miraculous dimension of the incident. While speaking to a Channel 14 reporter at the site of the impact, he said with a smile that two pictures miraculously survived inside one of the safe rooms: that of the late Moroccan spiritual leader Baba Sali and that of the prime minister. The two righteous men are truly watching over us.

Right-wing journalist Yinon Magal didn't miss the opportunity at hand. He shared a video of the site with the caption "The miracle in Dimona: Everything destroyed, only Bibi remained," accompanied by a winking emoji. Like believing Christians who see the image of Jesus in toast, or Mary's facial features in a cup of coffee, a ritual of icons seems to be developing here, too.

On the right-wing propaganda station, aka Channel 14, they announced last week that they'll end the news programs "with thanks to the Holy One blessed be He, for the miracles that he performs for us and our soldiers." Anchor Maggie Tabibi, who is becoming more religious, explained they'll continue with this prayer during all of Nissan, the month of redemption, and until the end of the war.

But judging by the religious-messianic atmosphere that is taking hold in our country, which is being polluted by blood and fire, the aspiration is that the war won't come to an end.

For messianic religious Zionism, whose representatives are deeply embedded in the government and in the security services, war isn't a crisis or a disaster. Rather, it's welcome. War unifies the nation. It destroys metaphysical evil and awakens the Tel Avivians from the coma of normalcy.

The war shakes up the heretics from holding onto the crazy idea of a quiet life. It disrupts their childish adherence to an individualistic existence, in which the survival of the individual takes precedence over the survival of the nation...

Read more: The Messianists and Netanyahu Share a Dream: Perpetual War