Israel and Palestine

My reflections on the last five days of horrors, from Donald Trump’s expletive-filled post threatening Iran on Easter Sunday to his even more disturbing post on April 7 when he threatened Iran with nuclear annihilation, stating, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, and the widespread revulsion that greeted both posts, to the ceasefire deal agreed that evening, brokered with Pakistan, establishing a two-week period for negotiations aimed at ensuring a lasting peace. Israel, excluded from the negotiations, immediately launched attacks on Lebanon of unprecedented savagery, even though ending its hostilities in Lebanon was included in the ceasefire deal, either in an effort to sabotage the deal or to indulge in a last burst of sickening genocidal fury before complying. My feeling, as I describe it, is that, “Whatever comes next, it seems pretty clear that Iran has won, and that both Trump and Netanyahu have suffered spectacularly resounding defeats”, from which neither may recover. I can only hope that this will happen. As I explain, although it “wouldn’t fundamentally change the juggernauts of horror in either country, it might be enough of a break to pull us back from what, otherwise, looks like nothing less than an ever-growing and all-compassing darkness of bottomless depravity.”

Linking to and discussing my interview with Chuck Mertz for his weekly show “This Is Hell!”, a Chicago-based “long-form political interview program”, now in its 30th year. Chuck is a well-prepared and knowledgeable host, and the hour-long format is conducive to detailed analysis and commentary, so it was an absolute delight to have the opportunity to discuss my recent articles, “900 Days of Genocide in Gaza”, and, in particular, another recent article, “The Horrors of AI-Driven Military Targeting, From Gaza to Iran”, in a live setting, thinking out loud rather than writing in seclusion, which I always find exhilarating. I was particularly pleased to have been given the time to spell out in detail how Israel’s use of AI-driven military targeting was largely responsible for creating human carnage beyond imagining, as was revealed in the early months of the genocide by Israel’s +972 Magazine, whose reporters spoke to insiders who confirmed how AI was able to generate targets at a speed that was hundreds or thousands of times faster than humans could achieve — but only through sweeping definitions of who was a valid target, which were overbroad and error-strewn, and which, crucially, were subjected to almost no meaningful human oversight whatsoever. This model, eviscerating existing models regulating the conduct of warfare, to falsely justify colossal damage to civilian infrastructure and disproportionate civilian deaths, has now, of course, spread to Iran, with full US commitment, and also to Lebanon.

My analysis of the shameful decision yesterday, by Israel’s Knesset, to pass a new law making the death penalty mandatory for Palestinians convicted of killings in circumstances regarded as terrorism. The law, pushed in particular by Israel’s far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, doesn’t apply retroactively, meaning that it cannot be applied to the 1,329 Palestinian prisoners currently serving prison sentences on “security” grounds, including Marwan Barghouti, “the Palestinian Mandela”, imprisoned since 2002 after a blatantly unfair trial, for whom Ben-Gvir has a particular hatred. At present, however, no one knows how many of the many thousands of other Palestinian prisoners currently undergoing legal proceedings, or held without charge or trial under various lawless states of “exception”, might end up being targeted for execution. It’s also important to recognize that, if this new law isn’t struck down by Israel’s Supreme Court, or via international pressure, it’s reasonable to assume that further laws will be passed extending the death penalty’s reach. It’s also crucial to note that forthcoming legislation — dealing with the “Prosecution of Participants in October 7 Massacre events” — passed its first legislative hurdle on March 24, and is intended to establish special military tribunals for those accused of involvement in the October 7 attacks. This bill, as Amnesty International has explained, “authorizes the tribunal to impose the death penalty on those convicted and allows it to significantly deviate from standard procedural rules and evidentiary laws if it is ‘deemed necessary for the clarification of the truth and performance of justice.’” While the passage of this legislation cannot even begin to overshadow the horrors of Israel’s genocide over the last two and a half years, or the unparalleled brutality of its prisons, where over 9,000 Palestinians are currently held — and where over a hundred have been murdered without even the pretext of a death penalty bill — it does seem to me that this particular gesture, with its specific contempt for so much of the world’s retreat from capital punishment as a brutal anachronism, ought to cement Israel’s status as a pariah state that must no longer be indulged.

Today marks 900 days since Israel began its genocide in the Gaza Strip, a sustained assault of such naked and self-glorifying depravity, shamefully supported by most of the west, that it has left billions of us struggling to cope with what the very notion of our humanity means. It also marks the first anniversary of Israel’s targeted assassination in Gaza of Hossam Shabat, one of over 270 Palestinian journalists murdered by Israel. To mark these grim anniversaries, I cycle though Israel’s atrocities, almost unbroken for two years, with the exception of a six-week ceasefire in January and February last year, noting how every red line regarding appropriate conduct in war has been eviscerated, and how Israel’s crimes are so numerous that it’s hard to even remember them all. I also update the story of Gaza since a supposedly permanent ceasefire was declared on October 10 last year. This brought to an end Israel’s relentless carpet-bombing, but in every other respect the genocide has continued, albeit more slowly. Crucially, humanitarian aid — and especially medical supplies — are still severely restricted, and Israel has retained complete control of 60% of the Gaza Strip, hemming the surviving Palestinian population into the remaining 40%, where they largely live in subsistence-level squalor. Crucially, I note how the template of Gaza’s extermination — the relentless killing of civilians and the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure — has now expanded to Iran, since the US-Israeli “war” began three weeks ago, while Israel also seeks to replicate the Gaza model in Lebanon, and has also stepped up its violence in the West Bank. Where we go from here is still unknown. While Israel has very clearly descended into a psychotic mania that seeks the death of their “enemies” at every moment, I suggest that Trump’s supreme folly was allowing himself to be talked into joining Netanyahu in his deranged 40-year dream of destroying Iran, and wonder if there can be an “off-ramp” before he is held responsible for what, through the massive disruption to oil and gas supplies, is looking like a looming global economic crisis on an unprecedented scale.

My detailed analysis of a burning topic that ought to be of huge concern to us all — the rise of AI-driven targeting in warfare, which generates military targets hundreds or thousands of times faster than human analysts, but which is both unreliable, and dependent on parameters for targeting that are overly broad, and which, crucially, are generated so fast that, to secure “results”, the essential need for significant human oversight is being ignored. I trace the development of AI in warfare from its roots in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, as revealed through groundbreaking reports by Israel’s +972 Magazine, which showed how any sense of proportionality in wartime — avoiding the targeting of civilians in military actions, or their deaths as “collateral damage” — has been completely swept aside, along with almost all human checks on the AI’s targeting, leading to an unparalleled situation in which, according to the Israeli military, 83% of those killed in Gaza were civilians — although my own assessment is that it may be closer to 95%. I also examine the deep involvement of US tech and AI companies in Israel’s genocide — including Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Anthropic and Palantir — and bring the story up to date with the US’s direct participation in the genocidal Gaza model of AI targeting in its war on Iran, with inaccurate targeting exposed on the very first day of hostilities, when an elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran, was hit, killing at least 168 people, most of them children, girls aged seven to 12. I conclude by stating that none of the major tech and AI companies can be trusted, because they are all, to varying degrees, embedded within our governments, and are all complicit in implementing, or seeking to implement sweeping programs of surveillance and control, which, as I describe it, “redefine not only war, but also peace; a peace that will not exist unless everyone in the countries they control live lives of quiet and docile obedience, with no dissent allowed.”

As the illegal US-Israeli “war” on Iran continues, with, last night, horrific attacks on Tehran’s oil refineries that enveloped the city in a toxic, apocalyptic black fossil fuel cloud, I examine what has led to this point: the grotesque convergence of the two most malignant ideologies in the world today — Zionism, under the malignant leadership of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Christian Zionism, its absurd but deadly offshoot in the US, whose adherents believe that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine and the wider Levant region is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. In prayer meetings in the White House, Christian Zionists lay hands on Trump and worship him as though he is Christ reborn, but while the godless Trump gave the go-ahead for the US to join Israel in its deadly crusade, he is growing noticeably more incoherent, and it is Pete Hegseth, the woefully unqualified Secretary of Defense (rebranded as the Secretary of War), who has become the more prominent face of the “war”, embracing Christian Zionism, and delivering grotesquely vile and violent speeches at press conferences, enthusing about the genocidal slaughter of the entire Iranian people. Can anyone rein in these dark forces before they collapse the global economy, through the massive disruption to the production of, and distribution of the fossil fuels on which the entire edifice of global civilization depends, or are we witnessing an unprecedented manifestation of extreme evil, which, between Trump, the Zionists and the Christian Zionists, now exists solely to rain down apocalyptic genocidal extermination not only on Iran and the rest of the Middle East, but on the whole world?

My report about the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” in Washington, D.C. last week, the day after Ramadan began, when the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip sought to bring their devastated homeland back to joyful life with lanterns, lights and celebrations. The meeting of Trump’s would-be alternative to the UN — whose newly-recruited members include autocrats, those seeking to curry favor with Trump, and the Gulf and Muslim countries determined to maintain influence over the “peace process” — was notable for its expansion of the vile, heartless and profit-obsessed techno-futuristic plans for a “New Gaza” that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, unveiled at Davos last month, dressed up as opportunities for peace and stability. Of particular concern was the revelation that the entire plan had originated in the earliest days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza by Yakir Gabay, an Israeli-Cypriot real estate billionaire, who, with the help of his good friend Kushner, had then sought out similarly-minded opportunists to make his grotesque plan a reality. Also deeply troubling was a presentation by the former Israeli intelligence official Liran Tancman, for the development, in Gaza, of a “cashless society” of total digital control, from which, of course, as I describe it, “anyone regarded as unwanted, for whatever reason, could be completely cut off from all economic activity — a scenario of ‘blackmail and pacification’, as described by the Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada”, and one that numerous governments worldwide will be keeping a close eye on, as they seek to replicate it on their own populations. While Israel’s voracious hunger to resume its genocide is still largely being kept at bay, it continues to push against the rosy visions of the billionaire developers, but all their hopes require the disarmament of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions, which Israel has failed to achieve, and which Hamas itself has wisely refused to contemplate, offering only to hand over political control — and its weapons — to a Palestinian body empowered to establish autonomy; in other words, the Palestinian technocratic committee that is part of the peace process, but which everyone involved wants to keep sidelined. As I explain, however, “No other solution can bring the peace that all parties claim to want, and any alternative course of action will only expose the truth behind their masks: on the one hand, on Israel’s part, the most grotesque enthusiasm for genocide that any of us have seen in our lifetimes, and, on the other, the repulsive greed of the western investors who only ever see the world through the prism of dollar signs.”

My examination of Israel’s begrudging and belated re-opening of the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt — the only route in and out of Gaza that doesn’t pass through Israeli territory — in which I reflect on how “Israel has done all it can to to turn the re-opening into yet another example of its obsessive desire to control every aspect of the sealed death camp it has created in Gaza over the last 28 months, and its equally obsessive desire to humiliate Palestinians — when not killing them directly — at every opportunity.” After procrastinating for months, Israel nominally agreed to allow 50 wounded Palestinians (plus 100 companions) to leave Gaza for Egypt every day, and also to allow 50 vetted Palestinians to return from Egypt, where 100,000 Palestinians fled, generally at great expense, in the seven months of genocide until Israel closed the crossing in May 2024. Despite Israel’s promises, however, the numbers allowed in and out of Gaza, in the first few days, have been far less than those promised, and many of the women who have been allowed to return to date have stated that they were blindfolded, subjected to abusive interrogations and urged to become informants, with Abu Shabab gang members involved as they reached Gaza. The women also explained that everything that they brought with them was taken off them, except for one bag of clothes and a mobile phone, which was clearly unnecessary and intentionally cruel. I also look back on the history of the crossing, and focus particularly on how its closure in May 2024 exposed Israel’s lies about encouraging “voluntary migration”, as it deliberately sealed off the only route that made that possible, confirming that what it “clearly intended to do was to ruthlessly cut off Gaza from the outside world, turning what had long been an ‘open-air prison’ into a sealed death camp.” With Donald Trump only interested in Gaza when it serves his purpose to get world leaders together to fawn over him as a “peacemaker”, it remains to be seen if any meaningful pressure can be exerted on Israel to significantly increase the numbers of arrivals and departures, especially as it will otherwise take many years for the 20,000 people in need of medical care to leave, and for the 30,000 to come home who have registered their intent to return, and also because it is reasonable to assume that Israel will find any excuse it can to shut the whole process down.

My response to the unveiling of a grotesque vision for the “regeneration” of Gaza, presented by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a prominent real estate investor, at the launch of Trump’s “Board of Peace” at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 22. Kushner’s vision — of “New Gaza”, a futuristic high-rise coastal tourist resort on Gaza’s shoreline, “New Rafah”, a brand-new city for 100,000 people, and other new residential areas flanked by industrial complexes featuring “data centers” and “advanced manufacturing” — was dreamt up with other real estate developers involved in Trump’s “Board of Peace”, and is the vilest manifestation of the mania for “regeneration” that has dominated so much of the global economy for the last two decades. Never before, however, has this kind of “regeneration” been proposed for the site of a genocide, and yet this, sickeningly, is what Kushner’s vision involves, in a plan that also, crucially, sidelines the two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, almost as though they don’t exist. There are reasons for doubting that Kushner’s plan will succeed — not least because efforts by the US and Israel to displace the Palestinians have proven impossible to achieve — but its unveiling confirms that the Palestinians are now trapped between Israel, which still seeks to erase them entirely, and the most soulless real estate developers in history. What hope there is rests with Hamas and the other Palestinian factions, whose disarmament is a prerequisite not only for the “stability” that Kushner needs for investors, but also, according to its own stated aims, for the State of Israel. On this front, it seems to me, the only realistic way forward lies with the Palestinian technocratic committee, appointed as part of Trump’s “Peace Plan”, who can liaise successfully with Hamas if they are given genuine administrative power, with the support of the Gulf and Middle Eastern countries who have long been involved in negotiations for peace in Gaza; in particular, Qatar and Egypt. The committee has already declared its own commitment to Egypt’s five-year regeneration plan, launched last year, which envisages the immediate provision of temporary housing units for 1.5 million Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip, along with the restoration of “the essential services that form the bedrock of human dignity such as electricity, water, healthcare, and education.”

In my latest analysis of the situation in the Gaza Strip, I look at how the surviving Palestinians are caught between, on the one hand, Israel, which still occupies 58% of Gaza, and still hopes to actively resume its genocidal assault, and a US-led colonial project, which claims to want to bring peace, but is disturbingly led by mostly US politicians and businessmen who only seem interested in its future as a real estate and business opportunity, in which the Palestinians are regarded as either peripheral or irrelevant. Although some hope must rest with the appointment of the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the technocratic committee charged with the day-to-day running of Gaza, it is alarming that, above it are not one, but two largely US-led organizations — the Board of Peace, led by Trump, and featuring only Americans, apart from the inclusion of Tony Blair, and the Gaza Economic Board, which also, at least, includes representatives of the Gulf and Middle Eastern countries who have played a major part in the long negotiations for peace. In addition to doubts about the sincerity or ability of these organizations to bring peace, questions also remain about the extent to which Israel has been excluded, and how much, if at all, it will seek to insist that it has the right to put its own security first, and to press ahead with efforts to resume its genocidal assault on Gaza. More than anything, this, in particular, must not be allowed.