Our Wednesday News Analysis | Netanyahu only ever saw the hostages as his path back to genocide

[First published by Middle East Eye]

Israel sustained the West’s support for its slaughter in Gaza for 15 months only through an intensive campaign of lies.

It invented particularly heinous Hamas war crimes, such baby beheadings and mass rape, for which no evidence has ever been produced. Conversely, it played down its own, even graver war crimes in response to Hamas’ attack on Israel.

"There was wall-to-wall outrage at the condition of this small group of Israelis,
when there has been utter indifference
to the even more wretched condition of freed Palestinians.

But in most cases, the released Israelis have looked reasonably healthy, especially given that Israel has denied the entry of food and water into Gaza for 15 months and that most of the captives have had to be held deep underground to keep them safe from the Israeli bombing campaigns that have leveled almost all of Gaza.

Of even more concern to Israel, however,
the captives have emerged mostly looking relaxed around their captors."

With Hamas’ October 2023 crimes ever-more distant in the rear-view mirror, and Israeli crimes still all too visible in Gaza’s complete destruction – amounting to a "plausible" genocide, according to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – Israeli leaders have been desperately trying to shift attention to a fresh narrative battleground.

They need a new set of lies to justify resuming the slaughter. And as ever, the Western establishment media are actively assisting.

Both Hamas and Israel are playing a predictable propaganda game, using the regular exchanges of Israeli and Palestinian hostages in the ceasefire’s first phase to seize the moral high ground.

Israel once again has all the cards, care of rock-solid western support, and yet once again it is failing to win the public relations war.

Which explains why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw another of his temper tantrums at the weekend, this time blaming Hamas for stage-managing the release of Israelis in what he called "demeaning" and "humiliating ceremonies".

Israel and its supporters were particularly incensed, it seems, by one of the captives, released on Saturday, beaming on stage as he warmly kissed two of his captors on the forehead...

Read more: Netanyahu only ever saw the hostages as his path back to genocide

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WHY HAS ISRAEL SCRAPPED GAZA CEASEFIRE AND BLOCKED AID REACHING CIVILIANS?

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/why-has-israel-scrapped-gaza-ceasefire-and-blocked-aid-reaching-civilians/

By Robert Inlakesh
Published February 2, 2025

Israel has decided to block all aid to Gaza. (Photo: via UNRWA)

Israel stalls Gaza ceasefire implementation while preparing to escalate the war, driven by political survival and supremacist policies.

Israel has shifted its primary war tactic to collective punishment through starvation and restriction of basic necessities. After failing to achieve any of their military objectives, an embarrassed Israeli Prime Minister is prepared to expand the war once again to ensure his political survival.

"… we will continue to see the same racist arrogance driving US-Israeli policy across the region, which will, in one way or another, ignite more tensions.

It remains to be seen whether this will translate to a complete collapse
of the Gaza ceasefire in the short term."

The Gaza ceasefire agreement/prisoner exchange was set to be implemented in three primary phases, the first of which has now met its deadline. While Israel was supposed to have begun negotiations on the implementation of phase 2, some two weeks ago, it has instead dragged its feet and called for an extension to the first phase and the release of more prisoners instead.

When Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to the Gaza ceasefire deal, he did so while pledging to return to the war whenever he chose and to destroy Hamas.

Although his former security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, decided to step down from his cabinet position, he did not choose to try and collapse Netanyahu’s fragile coalition. However, the threat was issued by Ben Gvir and his extremist ally, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, that if Israel entered phase II, they would collapse the coalition...

Read more: Why Has Israel Scrapped Gaza Ceasefire and Blocked Aid Reaching Civilians?
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GAZA HAS SURVIVED FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. IT CANNOT BE ERASED BY TRUMP AND ISRAEL

Source: Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-survived-thousands-years-cannot-erased-trump-israel

By Soumaya Ghannoushi
Published February 25, 2025

Palestinians will stay on their land, because to abandon it would be to betray all those who walked before them

Palestinians who were displaced to the south make their way on foot as they return to their homes in northern Gaza on 27 January, 2025 (Reuters)

"This is the same cold calculus that justified the slaughter
of millions of Indigenous people in the Americas.

The same ruthless hand wiped ancient nations from the earth in Australia,
always in the name of civilization and progress.

Cities were turned to dust, languages swallowed by silence,
histories rewritten by the conqueror’s pen."

US President Donald Trump, never one for historical nuance, says the best plan for Gaza is to “level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings”, paving the way for an American takeover and redevelopment project.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has made equally ignorant remarks, imagining a Gaza with “casinos and nightlife”, speaking with the casual entitlement of a coloniser who believes history begins with his indulgence.

This is the logic of conquest. First, invade and destroy; then, stand upon the ruins and declare the land empty.

The long, blood-soaked tradition of colonialism speaks through these politicians - settlers arriving on ravaged shores, massacring the natives, then announcing their discovery of a terra nova, a land with no past.

But Gaza is not empty. Gaza has never been empty.

What is unfolding before the world’s eyes is not just war but cultural genocide - a calculated attempt to erase Gaza’s past so that its people’s claim to the future can be denied.

Israel’s assault has targeted not only the living, but history itself. More than 200 heritage sites have been obliterated - not by accident, nor as collateral damage, but through a deliberate campaign to sever Gaza from its past...

Read more: Gaza has survived for thousands of years. It cannot be erased by Trump and Israel