A Bold Faced Liar

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On July 28, 2025: Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, was asked about reports of chronic malnutrition and starvation in Gaza. He responded, “What a bold-faced lie. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza.”

However, on that same day, Associated Press reported that the UN and the World Health Organization declared on Sunday, July 27, 2025, “There have been 63 malnutrition related deaths in Gaza this month, including 24 children under the age of 5 – up from 11 deaths total the previous six months of the year.” Gaza’s Health Ministry reported 14 deaths over the last 24 hours alone.

The bold-faced liar here is Benny the Butcher, as he is known to Palestinians suffering in Gaza and the West Bank. He continues to lie to the people of Israel and the world. His goal, and the goal of his far-right and ultra-orthodox supporters is not the elimination of Hamas. It is the complete elimination of Palestine and all the Palestinian peoples barely surviving in the open-air prisons of Gaza and the West Bank.

The international Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, “the leading authority of food crises” according to AP, has been warning of famine in Gaza for months, but has been unable to formally declare a famine because Israeli authorities, under orders from Netanyahu, restrict access to the Palestinian Territory.

When issuing arrest warrants for the war crimes charges against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former Defence Minister, the International Criminal Court stated that “both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity, from at least 8 October 2023 to 20 May 2024.”

Since October 2023, an estimated over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed. A United Nations committee found Israeli’s methods of warfare in the Gaza Strip to be “consistent with genocide” but the ICC has stopped short of calling Israel out on this front, saying that the court “could not determine that all elements of the crime against humanity of extermination were met.”

Benjamin Netanyahu is dangerously deceiving the people of Israel and spreading bold-faced lies to the rest of the world. He is a war criminal, an intentional accomplice in the murder of thousands of men, women and children, and he will face justice in this world or the next.

I hope the survivors of this conflict find peace and choose not to seek revenge. After all, “the best vengeance is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” We need a lot more shalom. The way I see it.

 

 

 

The Punishment and Killing of Palestine

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Mordechai Vanunu and Gideon Levy are two Israelis whose courage and humanity should be remembered and honoured.

Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle in 1986 on Israel’s illegal nuclear enrichment program. In the 1950’s the secret Negev Nuclear Facility was hidden in the desert near Dimona far from the prying eyes of UN inspectors, making Israel the first rogue nuclear state in the Middle East. For his efforts to save the world from nuclear weapons proliferation, Vanunu was declared a traitor, lured out of England and illegally abducted from Italy by Mossad agents, and jailed for 18 years. He is still under house arrest in Israel.

Gideon Levy is a reporter for Haaretz, the longest running daily newspaper in Israel. He is also the author of two non-fiction books, The Punishment of Gaza, 2010, and The Killing of Gaza, Reports on a Catastrophe, 2024. While most of the western press is hobbled by holocaust guilt and the fear that criticizing Israel’s actions in Palestine will lead to charges of antisemitism, Levy bears no such burden. The Israelis and the Palestinians are both Semitic races and Levy is Jewish, “an Israeli dedicated to saving his country’s honour,” as noted by Guardian literary critic Nicholas Lezard.

Levy is also a truth-telling journalist. He had been covering Gaza for many years, and when he left in the 1990’s, he thought that the Israeli occupation had ended. He bid Gaza a loving farewell. But when Israeli forces later returned to Gaza, Levy reported that, “The occupation did not end. On the contrary, it is more cruel, criminal, and inhuman today than ever before. Ten years later, in 2005, when Israel disengaged from Gaza, we were much wiser: this time we knew that the occupation had simply changed form. The jailer pulled out of the jail and was now holding its prisoners captive from without. Yes, Gaza was, and still is, the largest prison on Earth, a gruesome experiment performed on living human beings.”

The Punishment of Gaza is a series of articles beginning June 1, 2006, with a simple report about the IDF’s (Israeli Defense Force) cavalier attitude to collateral damage – blow up one Jihadist, kill an entire family in a nearby vehicle. It is preceded by a story of moral double standards: it’s legitimate for Israel to boycott the Palestinian Authority, but illegitimate for anyone to boycott Israel’s government or institutions.

Then the horror begins – one chapter is titled “Making Monsters of Our Finest Young Men” and describes how young pilots go on indiscriminate bombing run training flights:

“In four days they killed 375 people. They did not, and could not, distinguish between a Hamas official and his children, between a traffic cop and a Qassam launch operator, between a weapons cache and a health clinic, between the first and second floors of a densely populated apartment building with dozens of children inside.”

The book continues every month from June 2006 through to the summer of 2009, with each report being more devastating and horrendous than the one before. He concludes his first book with this reflection:

“The Israelis don’t pay any price for the injustice of the occupation, so the occupation will never end. It will not end a moment before the Israelis understand the connection between the occupation and price they will be forced to pay. They will never shake it off on their own initiative, and why should they?

Even the cruelest terrorist attacks to befall the country haven’t instilled an understanding among the Israelis about the connection between cause and effect, between occupation and terrorism. Thanks to the media and politicians – two of the worst agents for dumbing down and blinding Israeli society – we learned that Arabs were born to kill, the whole world is against us, anti-Semitism determines how Israel is dealt with and there is no connection between our actions and the price we pay.”

Gaza and the West Bank were powder kegs primed to explode since 1948. And then came Saturday, October 7, 2023.

As the sun was rising that morning, Gideon Levy was jogging through a park near his home in northern Tel Aviv. Suddenly the missile alert sirens began wailing. He had been about to release an editorial that morning, recalling the fall of the Berlin Wall and writing hopefully that the walls around the world’s largest ghetto would soon be crumbling before their very eyes. But when he arrived home his editor called him “with the news of horrifying actions being reported from the south, including mass murder and the abduction of hundreds of Israeli citizens to Gaza.”

In response, he wrote the following editorial: “Behind all this lies Israeli arrogance; the idea that we can do whatever we like, that we’ll never pay the price and be punished for it. We’ll carry on undisturbed. We’ll arrest, kill , harass, dispossess, and we’ll protect the settlers busy with their pogroms. We’ll visit Joseph’s Tomb, Othniel’s Tomb, and Joshua’s Altar in the Palestinian territories, and, of course, the Temple Mount – over 5,000 Jews on Sukkot alone.

We’ll fire at innocent people, take out people’s eyes, smash their faces, expel, confiscate, rob, grab people from their beds, carry out ethnic cleansing and of course continue with the unbelievable siege of the Gaza Strip, and everything will be all right.”

Gideon Levy wrote “The Killing of Gaza, Reports on a Catastrophe” in 2024. Part 1 documents the horrors of each year from 2017 to 2022. In Part 2, each chapter documents the vengeful brutality of every month from October 2023 until June 2024. He concluded his novel with a reflection on the Israeli reaction to the news that four hostages had just been rescued.

“Obviously the moving rescue should have been celebrated. Israelis deserve a moment of joy for the hell they’ve been living in for months, which isn’t over yet. But one cannot ignore the price paid by Palestinians, even if there are people who believe that the price was unavoidable or even entirely justified.

A society that ignores so blatantly the price paid by tens of thousands of people, with their lives, bodies, souls and property, for the rescue of four of its hostages and for a moment of joy for its members, is a society that is missing something vital. It is a society that has lost its conscience.”

We are bearing witness to some of the greatest atrocities we have seen since the horrors of World War 2 were revealed to the world. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, deliberate targeting of aid centres, denying aid to the point of starving the survivors of endless missile, drone, tank, and sniper attacks with total disregard for collateral damage to non-combatant  innocent men, women, and children.

In our silence, we are also a society that has lost its conscience. The way I see it.

***

Footnote:

Since Israel’s punishment of Palestine began in 1948, over 65,00 Palestinians and 17,000 Israelis have died, with over 102,000 Palestinians and 30,000 Israelis injured or missing. In the recent conflict since October 7, 2023, an estimated 2000 Israelis and 36,000 Palestinians have died. That is not a biblical “eye for an eye” revenge. That is a kill ratio of 1:18.

*data averaged from: Jewish Virtual Library, Wikipedia, VOX.com, Quora, Britannica

 

UK, France, Canada Full Joint Statement on Gaza

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“We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. This must include engaging with the UN to ensure a return to delivery of aid in line with humanitarian principles. We call on Hamas to release immediately the remaining hostages they have so cruelly held since 7 October 2023.

The Israeli Government’s denial of essential humanitarian assistance to the civilian population is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law. We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent forced displacement is a breach of international humanitarian law.

Israel suffered a heinous attack on October 7. We have always supported Israel’s right to defend Israelis against terrorism. But this escalation is wholly disproportionate.

We will not stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.

We oppose any attempt to expand settlements in the West Bank. Israel must halt settlements which are illegal and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state and the security of both Israelis and Palestinians.  We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions.

We strongly support the efforts led by the United States, Qatar and Egypt to secure an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It is a ceasefire, the release of all remaining hostages and a long-term political solution that offer the best hope of ending the agony of the hostages and their families, alleviating the suffering of civilians in Gaza, ending Hamas’ control of Gaza and achieving a pathway to a two-state solution, consistent with the goals of the 18 June conference in New York co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France. These negotiations need to succeed, and we must all work towards the implementation of a two-state solution, which is the only way to bring long-lasting peace and security that both Israelis and Palestinians deserve, and ensure long-term stability in the region.

We will continue to work with the Palestinian Authority, regional partners, Israel and the United States to finalise consensus on arrangements for Gaza’s future, building on the Arab plan. We affirm the important role of the High-level Two-State Solution Conference at the UN in June in building international consensus around this aim. And we are committed to recognising a Palestinian state as a contribution to achieving a two-state solution and are prepared to work with others to this end.”