Showing posts with label Nazi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nazi. Show all posts

11 May 2025

An Open Letter to the Metropolitan Police’s Racist Anti-Palestinian Commissioner, Mark Rowley

You Have Done Your Best To Ban Demonstrations Against Gaza’s Genocide – Using Jews As Your Moral Alibi – That Makes You Not the Protesters anti-Semitic

Emailed to:  mark.rowley@met.police.uk

Dear Sir Mark Rowley,

You do not know me. I am just one of the thousands who have been wrongfully arrested by your officers.

The Battle of Cable Street

On October 4th 2024, the 88th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, when the Met tried to batter their way through 200,000 anti-fascists in order to allow supporters of the British Union of Fascists to march through the Jewish East End, I was arrested at the Swiss Cottage demonstration against Israel’s racist and genocidal Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli. I was accused of having committed a ‘racially aggravated offence’.

My ‘crime’ was having compared the Israeli state to Nazi Germany. I cited an article in which I compared the Nazi holocaust to the Israeli holocaust.



Tony Greenstein arrested for his speech outside the residence of Israels Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli

On 13th November I was informed that you would not be charging me. My arrest was thus unlawful. I told your officers that I was disappointed that I could not challenge in court your attack on freedom of speech and your belief that policing political speech is part of the Met’s duties.

I know that people in your position have no sense of irony but arresting Jewish people for anti-Semitism is like awarding Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tony Greenstein Speech in Liverpool 12 January 2025 at Palestine Solidarity Demo

You have made it clear that that the only Jews who count are racists and Zionists. Anti-Zionist and anti-racist Jews are invisible because we refuse to be the moral alibi for the British government’s complicity in the Genocide in Gaza.

The constant theme when banning Palestinian demonstrations is that solidarity with Palestine is inherently anti-Jewish. That’s why on December 7 your officers surrounded the Jewish Bloc in order to ‘protect’ them from other marchers!

You have now abused your powers once again to ban the demonstration against Israel’s Ambassador over a large part of North London. The pretext is that it’s a ‘Jewish’ area despite only 8.5% of Swiss Cottage residents being Jewish. Again the assumption is that Jews support Genocide. If anyone Sir Mark is an anti-Semite it is you.

It is time that you got it through your thick head that not all Jews support Zionism, Israeli Genocide. Historically Jews have been in the forefront of opposition to racism & fascism.

Mark Rowley's Police State in Action - Demonstrations on Palestine are Banned from the Area in Red

Today there is a growing Jewish revolt against Israel’s neo-Nazi politics of ethnic cleansing. People realise that one of the lessons of the Holocaust is opposition to all forms of racism.

Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz and former President of the Central European University spoke of

a profound existential “Angst” fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the holocaust … that we are the eternal victim. In this ancient belief … I see the tragic and paradoxical victory of Hitler. Two nations, metaphorically speaking, emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz: a minority who assert, “this must never happen again,” and a frightened and haunted majority who assert, “this must never happen to us again.”

Instead of fighting the terrorism that the British state created the Police are chasing political dissidents

The Metropolitan Police Used To Be Institutionally Anti-Semitic - Now It Supports Zionism – Nothing Much Has Changed

When anti-Semitism was prevalent in Britain it was also rife in the Met. During the 1930s there were even exchanges visits between the Nazi police and the Met. Today the Met is pro-Zionist. It is a change without a difference.

Anti-Semites have always supported Zionism as a means to get rid of the Jews in their midst. As A B Yehoshua, an Israeli novelist once said ‘Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist.’  (Jewish Chronicle 22.1.82.)

That is why Tommy Robinson declared that he is a Zionist. That is why the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-right Richard Spencer, said he was a White Zionist. Every bigot and racist today loves Israel – from Marine Le Pen to the neo-Nazi AfD in Germany to Donald Trump. You are not alone Sir Mark.

Special Branch report – on a ‘Jew’ driving a car

In We Fight Fascists Daniel Sonabend, wrote about the 43 Group, which was formed by Jewish ex-servicemen in April 1946 to oppose the resurgence of fascist groups, led by Oswald Moseley. The reaction of the Police to them was extremely hostile. Genuine anti-Semitism not today’s false anti-Semitism has never bothered the Met.

Sonabend described the experiences of David Goldstein who was falsely arrested.



Four police officers leapt on him. He received several blows to the face and was knocked to the ground before being dragged to the nearest police car. The police later claimed Goldstein had provoked them by kicking the superintendent in the balls.

Accusing the victims of police violence of assault is something that Black people have a long experience of. Sonabend describes what happened at the police station.

they encountered the man Goldstein had reportedly attacked,... Superintendent Charles Satterthwaite. ‘Fucking Jew bastard’ Satterthwaite shouted at Silver as he repeatedly beat him, while two of his officers held Silver against the wall... Satterthwaite went for his face, which... was left ‘covered in a mass of blood.’




Satterthwaite was described by one Lennie Rolnick as ‘a first class anti-Semite who would have done well at Belsen.’

Anti-fascists were three times as likely to be arrested as fascists. Sonanbend concluded that ‘widespread anti-Semitism in the Metropolitan Police force’ was the explanation for this disparity in arrest rates. Sonanbend quotes Vidal Sassoon:

Two policemen held one of my comrades., Mo Levy, while a sergeant pounded him, beating him everywhere but the face, at the same time calling us ‘dirty Jew bastards’, ‘fucking Yids who Hitler missed’ and ‘sons of foreign whores.’

Sonanbend described the Met as an ‘institutionally anti-Semitic organisation.’ Ring any bells Sir Mark?

as well as being anti-Semitic and anti-communist, the police also harboured pro-fascist elements.’ ‘Many members of the Commercial Street Police Station ‘openly boast about being members of Jeffrey Hamm’s fascist party.

Metropolitan police assault pro Palestine campaigner Wasseem Yousuf

Nothing much has changed except for the victims. Instead of Jews it’s now Black people and Palestinian supporters like Wasseem Yousuf who are the victims of police violence.



Thugs in uniform attacked Wasseem for the ‘offence’ of carrying a Palestine flag and like the East End Jews of 80 years ago was charged with assaulting the police. Habits die hard Sir Mark. Perjury is nothing new to the Police.

Why are the police targeting Waseem Yousaf?

There is a petition here that can be signed demanding that your thugs are suspended Sir Mark but it should not take a petition for you to do your duty.

The Met Have Decided that Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is a Criminal Offence

You and the Met have taken it upon yourselves to decide what is and is not allowed to be said on the streets of London. You have become a political thought police.

You produced a 17 page Advice Sheet ‘Instructions about tackling the hate speech and actions by HAMAS supporters on the marches’. The title is instructive. Very few Palestinian protesters support Hamas. What we support is the right of the Palestinians, including Hamas, to resist  the violent and illegal occupation of Gaza by Israel.

Page16 of this sheet ‘Israeli Government/Nazism Comparisons’ says:

‘A particularly difficult areas is the comparison of either (a) the Israeli Government or the Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu with (b) either Nazism or Hitler.’

Why is it so difficult? There is more than enough evidence to prove this. Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset said that Israel needs to "separate the children and women and kill the adults in Gaza, we are being too considerate. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said it is moral to starve 2 million people to death. It is a difficulty of your own making.

The sheet speaks of ‘comparisons between the actions of the Israeli Government and the actions of the Nazis (i.e. the holocaust)’. I realise that police officers are not historians. That is why you should keep your nose out of historical disputation – you are not qualified to offer an opinion.

The holocaust began on 22 June 1941 with Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia. The Nazi regime lasted from 1933-1941, so comparisons between the Nazis and the Israeli government/Zionists aren’t just about the holocaust.

Your advice sheet says that ‘There are also frequently oblique comparisons that relate to "genocide" or the phrase "never again.’ That is correct and the comparisons are not oblique. Israel’ attack on Gaza IS a genocide. The International Court of Justice in January 2024 ruled it was ‘plausible’ that a genocide was taking place. Every single human rights organisation from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch believes that Israel is committing a genocide.

If you find calling Israel’s Genocide problematic then it is clear which side you are on. If Srebenica, with 8,000 dead was a genocide then Gaza with hundreds of thousands dead is certainly a genocide. It may be politically inconvenient for you and fellow war criminal Keir Starmer but that is tough. Any arrest you make as a result are political and unlawful.

The Advice Sheet also said that

These comparisons are particularly offensive as it likens the systematic extermination of over 6 million Jews with the military conduct of Israel in the Middle East.

To whom is it offensive? Jews? Many Jews see the parallels all too clearly. But even if Jews were to take offence, so what? Was Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses banned because it offended Muslims? It is clear where you are coming from.

In Redmond-Bate v DPP Stephen Sedley, a Jewish and later Court of Appeal judge, ruled that“Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.” I realise that you find concepts such as freedom of speech difficult to comprehend. The mindset of the average cop and free speech don’t make comfortable bedfellows.

I am therefore writing to you to demand that this Advice Sheet, especially page 16 on Nazi-Zionist comparisons is withdrawn as the advice in it isn’t worth a copper’s nark.

Over recent months you have displayed an increasing hostility to Palestine marches, starting with the banning of the march starting at the BBC on January 18. In my view the organisers should have ignored your dictats and told you to fuck off.

The Court of Appeal has now ruled that your powers to ban marches are less than you once thought. The last Conservative government was hostile to the idea of freedom of association and gave you enormous powers which you then abused.

However Sir Mark, not even the most reactionary and racist cop is beyond reform. I am therefore going to explain why it is that I said Israel is Hitler’s Bastard Offspring.

The IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism states that ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ could be anti-Semitic. This has been widely criticised by leading lawyers and scholars. It was drawn up by the Zionist American Jewish Congress in order to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. It is no surprise that the Met should adopt the IHRA, which isn’t even a definition.

Anti-Semitism is a very simple concept. It is ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews as Jews.’ Anti-Semitism has nothing to do with opposition to Zionism or Israel whereas most anti-Semites love and always have loved Israel and Zionism.

The IHRA ‘definition’ states that it is ‘non-legally binding’. So why is the Met using it as if it had the force of law?

Why the Israeli State is ‘Hitler’s Bastard Offspring’ and Why Nazi-Zionist Comparisons are Legitimate.

1.          When Israel’s war on Gaza began, wanted war criminal Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, called the Palestinians ‘human animals.’ When Heinrich Himmler addressed senior SS Generals in Posnan on October 4 1943 he called all non-Aryans ‘human animals’.

2.          Comparisons between Israel and the Holocaust have been made by numerous holocaust survivors. They are in a better position to form a judgement than you.

3.          When Shlomo Shmelzman, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, wrote a letter to the Israeli press announcing his hunger strike against the 1982 Lebanon War, he stated:

a.            In my childhood I have suffered fear, hunger and humiliation when I passed from the Warsaw Ghetto, through labor camps, to Buchenwald. Today, as a citizen of Israel, I cannot accept the systematic destruction of cities, towns, and refugee camps… I hear too many familiar sounds today…. I hear “dirty Arabs” and I remember “dirty Jews.” I hear about “closed areas” and I remember ghettos and camps. I hear “two-legged beasts” and I remember “Untermenschen.”… Too many things in Israel remind me of too many things from my childhood.

4.          Moshe Zimmerman, a Professor of German History at Tel Aviv University, compared the children of the Hebron settlers to those of the Hitler Youth.

5.          Lawrence Weschler, a contributor to The New Yorker, compared Gaza to Dachau before the Final Solution.

6.          Israeli psychologist Gavriel Solomon wrote that:

a.       The idea of Judenrein (Jew-free zone) or Arabrein is not new. . . . Some might say ‘how can you compare us to Nazis?’ I am not talking about the death camps, but about the year 1935. There were no camps yet, but there were racist laws. And we are heading forward toward these kinds of laws.

7.          Veronika Cohen, 80, a Holocaust survivor who was born in the ghetto in Budapest, said

“I don’t think we can remember our suffering without acknowledging the suffering of Gaza... To me, when I read the stories of their suffering in Gaza, it blends completely into how I feel about the Holocaust.”

8.          In the same article Ruth Vleeschhouwer Falak, 89, who survived the Nazi-occupation of the Netherlands as a child, said she was standing there because

“in the 1930s, if Germans had stood up loudly against the Nazi party, maybe they wouldn’t have been able to do what they did to us. Speaking up is not a choice for me.”

9.          Ilana Drukker Tokotin, 87, who spent her childhood hiding from the Nazis, said that

The saying is never again; that means never again for anybody. That’s really what we’re standing here for”

Stephen Kapos is 5th from the left

10.    More recently Stephen Kapos, a child survivor of the Nazi occupation of Hungary wrote that

a.            ‘Israel’s plan is to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza in order to force as many people as possible to leave. This policy has many differences from Nazi Germany’s plan to destroy Jewish society in Europe – but it also has many similarities. That is why, as a Holocaust survivor, I’ve felt compelled to join various pro-Palestine protests in London.

Recently you interviewed Stephen under caution. In the eyes of you and your officers even holocaust survivors are now criminals. Opposition to genocide is becoming an offence in London’s police state.

11.    Marika Sherwood, a holocaust survivor, academic and anti-racist was barred under the IHRA from giving a talk at Manchester University titled “You’re doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to me.” Israel’s war criminal Ambassador Mark Regev had objected to it.


12.    But it’s not only anti-Zionists who make the comparisons between Israel and the Nazis. It is the Hebron settlers who daub ‘Arabs to the gas chambers’ on a cemetery. Or it’s Elad Barashi, a television producer on Israel’s Channel 14 who wrote on Twitter: ‘Good morning, let there be a Shoah (Holocaust) in Gaza.’ In another post, he wrote,

"I can't understand the people here in the State of Israel who don't want to fill Gaza with gas showers... or train cars... and finish this story! Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza."

Sir Mark Rowley - A Very Sick Man

If you think that bombing hospitals and murdering thousands of children is ‘military conduct’ then you are a very sick man Sir Mark Rowley.

13.    You went out of your way in your advice sheet not to call what’s happening in Gaza a genocide. You referred instead to Israel’s ‘military conduct’.  If you think that bombing hospitals, murdering thousands of children, torturing prisoners, raping women is ‘military conduct’ then you are a very sick man Sir Mark.

Why this leading Israeli Holocaust scholar says it's a genocide in Gaza | The InnerView


14.    Israeli holocaust historians such as Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, Omar Bartov and Daniel Blatman accept that Israel’s actions in Gaza are genocidal. What expertise do you have? Over 55 scholars in holocaust and genocide studies signed a statement that said the same. Over 800 legal scholars said that Israel may be perpetrating the ‘crime of Genocide’ in Gaza. What expertise do you have? Being a bigot and a racist is not a qualification.


So you see Sir Mark there are plenty of Jews who think Nazi-Zionist comparisons are valid in times of genocide. I don’t expect you to agree but that is what freedom of speech is all about. People having the right to say what they want to say without fear of arrest by thugs in uniform. If people take offense so what? People often find the truth offensive.

I realise that a policeman’s mind is a closed mind. You have chosen to keep company with and take counsel from the Zionist Board of Deputies, a group that represents barely 30% of British Jews. They have every right to their racist views. What they don’t have the right to expect is to have the Met become their enforcer. You don’t have the right to arrest those who disagree with your own anti-Palestinian racism.

Rowley’s response to Louise Casey's Report on Racism, Misogyny in the force

The Metropolitan Police’s Institutional Racism

The Met has been called ‘institutionally racist’ by the Stephen Lawrence inquiry and more recently by Baroness Casey’s review. The latter was commissioned after the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, who fellow officers called ‘the rapist’.

You promised to change the behaviour of your officers but given your own racism that is unlikely. Not only should you withdraw your ill-conceived advice sheet on what is anti-Semitic but you should also resign.

An institutionally racist organisation cannot cleanse itself of the stain of racism whilst it is headed by a racist. In your anti-Palestinian actions and behaviour you have proved that you are as bigoted as your predecessor Cressida Dick.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

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8 February 2025

The Zionist Plan for ‘Cleansing’ Gaza of its Palestinians is Not New – Like Many Such Ideas It Originated with their Nazi friends

 There is a German word for what is being proposed – Judenrein or today Arabrein


There is nothing new in Donald Trump and Netanyahu’s plans for the ‘evacuation’ of the Palestinians from Gaza. The Nazis’ devoted much time and energy to a similar ‘problem’.

From 1939 onwards hundreds of thousands  of Jews, Poles and Gypsies, were preventing the Warthegau, that part of Poland which was conquered and incorporated into Greater Germany, being settled with German colonists. Most of them were expelled to the Generalgouvernment, that part of Poland into which they intended to pour all the racial ‘mush’ (Himmler).

Volksdeutsche of Łódź greeting German cavalry in 1939

The Nazis managed, with difficulty, to resettle half a million Volksdeutsche in their place just as Israel hopes to settle Jews in Gaza. 

Hans Frank

Many were the conflicts within the Nazi bureaucracy between the Gauleiter Arthur Greiser and the Governor-General of the Generalgouvernment, Hans Frank. For those who are interested in Nazi resettlement policies you can read Christopher Browning’s article on Nazi resettlement policies.

Arthur Greiser

It was only when the Nazi plans for the resettlement of the Jews to the East were thwarted that they turned to extermination. So it is with Gaza, except that the Zionists reversed the process, first they began the extermination process and only then turned to expulsion.

Palestinian journalists demonstrate outside the Palestinian Authority against the banning of media

Yet despite this that pathetic poodle of US imperialism, Keir Starmer and his contemptible fool of a Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, could not bring themselves to criticise Trump. As the Guardian’s Peter Walker put it, ‘Prime minister and colleagues use political code to push back at proposal without directly criticising US president.’

Even Ed Davey of the Lib Dems criticised the loathsome Trump whilst pushing for the resurrection of that old lame duck, the two-state solution. Starmer has built his career on slavish loyalty to the American Empire and Trump is not going to stop him.

Starmer told us  how he was ‘moved’ by the image of Emily Damari, the Israeli hostage who was reunited with her family. The images of Palestinian hostages, who had been starved, beaten and tortured, did not make any impression on this apology for a human being. However it is doubtful that anything could move Starmer apart from a subsidy from one of his millionaire friends towards his wardrobe.

When Israel was established as a ‘Jewish’ State it fabricated a narrative that the Palestinian refugees had run away, on orders from the Arab regimes, despite pleas from the Zionists to stay. This was comprehensively debunked, first by Erskine Childers and Rashid Khalidi and then Israeli historians Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe.

I was brought up to believe this nonsense.  Israel had closed its archives and even reclassified documents that had been released in order to hide the truth. [see Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs].

Benny Morris explained that ‘Defense Ministry officials apparently hope their actions will raise doubts about the conclusions and credibility of various scholars.’ This enabled people like Israel’s vile Ambassador, Tzipi Hotoveli, to proclaim that stories of the Nakba were an ‘Arab lie’.


Only 3% Of Jewish Israelis Think Trump's Ethnic Cleansing Plan For Gaza Is Immoral

Today there is no pretence. Israelis in their overwhelming majority want the Palestinians of Gaza (and the West Bank) either expelled or  exterminated. Some 82% of Israeli Jews support Trump’s plan and just 3% consider the proposals immoral. The rest think it impractical. This is what memory of the Holocaust has become in Zionist hands.

It is worth bearing in mind that Israelis are far more racist towards the Palestinians than Germans were to Jews. Anti-Semitism in Germany was never respectable. The Nazis had to work hard to persuade Germans and they never succeeded. Anti-Semitism was confined to the core of the Nazi party itself. Between 1930 and 1933 Hitler downplayed anti-Semitism to the point of non-existence.

Of course people will find this difficult to accept given the way the media portrays the reasons why Hitler came to power. However all serious historians agree. For example Ian Kershaw wrote in Popular Opinion and Dissent in the Third Reich that the more than five million extra votes that the Nazis obtained in the 1930 elections ‘were in no sense anti-Semites’. David Cesarani suggested in The Final Solution  that  Hitler’s attacks on Jews ‘diminished to vanishing point’. Even Zionist historian Yehuda Bauer accepted this. 

In 1939 Hitler began to fulfil his desire to create ‘living space’ lebensraum for the German people by conquering first Poland, then Western Europe and finally Russia. That is precisely what Israel is doing. Achieving its Arab-free living space.

For 15 months they carpet bombed Gaza under the pretence that they were seeking to destroy Hamas when it was obvious to anyone, bar Jews for Genocide and that inveterate liar Starmer, that Hamas was the one thing they hadn’t destroyed.

Hospitals, schools, clinics, universities, journalists, residential homes and agricultural land – all were subject to the an intensity of bombing that made the destruction of Nuremberg, Dresden and Hamburg seem like a picnic.

All the while Butcher Biden supplied the 2,000 lb bombs that enabled the devastation. Now Trump comes along and says that of course Palestinians can’t live in the rubble whilst still continuing to supply the 2000 lb bombs. The hypocrisy and mendacity of our rulers knows no bounds.

We have a weak and shaky ceasefire, which hasn’t stopped Israel killing Palestinians in Gaza although the bombing has (temporarily) stopped. There isn’t an agreement that Israel has made that hasn’t been broken and they are still killing people in Lebanon. Netanyahu and much of his coalition would like to restart the slaughter because to the Zionists not enough Palestinians have yet died.

Yet whatever Israel does, as far as Starmer, Trump and our own Jews for Genocide in the form of the Board of Deputies, are concerned it is acting in self-defence. It is an interesting legal concept as to whether an occupying power has the right of self-defence. Perhaps Russia has such a right in Ukraine! Maybe we should consult our favourite ‘human rights lawyer’ Sir Kid Starver.

I fear that Israel will find a pretext to restart the war against Gaza. What Trump has done is to provide Israel with a pretext to break the ceasefire, as Netanyahu has promised, after the first phase, in which case we will see a continuation of the genocide. This is a very real danger. Of course it will be difficult politically to restart the slaughter but that will depend on the American administration. One thing is for certain. The Arab regimes could stop it in a day if they stopped the oil.  And the Arab masses could stop it if they overthrew those regimes.

Israeli military operation in Jenin: Palestinian homes attacked with simultaneous blasts

Instead Israel’s war on the Palestinians has spread to the West Bank. For the past 5 years I have raised funds for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin refugee camp. Three times the Israeli military has deliberately wrecked the interior of the Centre.

Today I have no idea if Al Tafawk is even standing because much of Jenin’s refugee camp has been blown up and numerous people, including children have been killed. Yet still Western leaders have the audacity to about Israel’s ‘self-defence’. If only Goebbels had had such good propagandists as the BBC provide he could have achieved far more without the opprobrium.

Israeli Soldiers Celebrate Destruction in Jenin

Israel’s attack on Jenin we should not forget was preceded by 25 days of violence by the Quisling Palestine Authority. Yet even now organisations like Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign are afraid of calling these Quislings by their name. First Israel banned Al Jazeera and then the PA banned it.

See Two Days after Speaking to the Palestine Chronicle – Jenin Journalist Killed by Palestinian Authority

See The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

Trump’s plan though is unlikely to be carried out. The last thing the Egyptian and Jordanian states want is hundreds of thousands of Palestinians determined to seek their revenge. Despite their role as collaborators, neither regime has a death wish.

If the Zionists cannot achieve an empty Gaza by ethnic cleansing then mass murder and genocide is the alternative and the only thing standing in the way are Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.

This of course is where Britain’s political police come in. They will do their utmost to arrest and persecute anyone who supports resistance to Israel’s genocide. All in the name of ‘the fight against terrorism’. This is the state of British ‘democracy’ today and we can rely on Britain’s compliant judiciary to do their best to help.

There has been one of those absurd ‘debates’ about whether Israel is committing genocide. As if not using the word changes the reality. I suggest people read Yuval Abraham’s article in +972 Magazine, Bomb the area, gas the tunnels: Israel’s unbridled war on Gaza’s underground as to what Israel’s tactics were. Abraham writes that:

The Israeli army intensively bombarded residential areas in Gaza when it lacked intelligence on the exact location of Hamas commanders hiding underground, and intentionally weaponized toxic byproducts of bombs to suffocate militants in their tunnels…

The investigation, based on conversations with 15 Israeli Military Intelligence and Shin Bet officers who have been involved in tunnel-targeting operations since October 7, exposes how this strategy aimed to compensate for the army’s inability to pinpoint targets in Hamas’ subterranean tunnel network. When targeting senior commanders in the group, the Israeli military authorized the killing of “triple-digit numbers” of Palestinian civilians as “collateral damage,” and maintained close real-time coordination with U.S. officials regarding the expected casualty figures.

 So there we have it. Israel was prepared to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians on the off chance that they might kill a member of Hamas.  And then creatures like Lammy & Starmer dare to call Hamas ‘terrorist’.

In the process three Israeli hostages — Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman, and Elia Toledano — were killed by asphyxiation as a result of a Nov. 10, 2023, bombing that targeted Ahmed Ghandour, a Hamas brigade commander in northern Gaza. Even if the bombs didn’t kill them then the carbon monoxide they produced did.

Israel soldiers were not willing to fight in the tunnels but thought that carpet bombing would do the trick. Fortunately it didn’t and at the end of the war Hamas and the Resistance was killing more of Israel’s war criminal military than it was at the beginning.

Imagine if Hamas exploded a bomb in the middle of Tel Aviv because they believed a senior officer of the Israeli army was passing by?  Or Russia bombed a market place because it believed a Ukrainian general was doing his shopping there. The pages of the tabloids would be filled with blood curdling rhetoric.

Israel’s figures of Hamas fighters killed were always phony. Every male civilian they killed was a Hamas ‘terrorist’ but at the end of the day the Zionists ended up fooling themselves, which was why, when the ceasefire came into effect, Israelis were stunned to see hundreds of Hamas fighters in their distinctive olive green uniforms handing over the healthy and well-fed Israeli captives, unlike the emaciated and tortured bodies of the Palestinian captives that Israel had seized.

Israel’s 2,000 lb bombs were supplied by the United States despite knowing how they would be used but ‘bloody’ Blinken stymied any declaration that human rights violations were being carried out. Why?

Because under the Leahy law if the US State Department declared that Israel was committing war crimes then the U.S. Government would have been barred from using funds to assist in those crimes. Instead investigations into Israel’s war crimes never progressed beyond an initial stage.


Netanyahu and his far-right partner Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance Minister,  ‘proud homophobe’ and fascist are itching to get back into the bombing on the grounds that if you haven’t succeeded yet try, try and try again. But what is clear is that Hamas and the Palestinian Resistance has not been defeated and is unlikely to be defeated. 

At the moment Israel’s genocidal lust and desire for more living space is now translating into war on the people of the West Bank.

Even Trump cannot simply declare that he wants Palestinians to leave Gaza because he wants the gas fields in the sea off Gaza. Instead he dresses it up as concern for the Palestinians. He wrote that the Palestinians in Gaza would have "far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region."

There is nothing new in this duplicity. As Abdaljawad Omar wrote:

the same language has been used before. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson justified the Indian Removal Act as a necessary measure for the “happiness” of Native Americans, ethnically cleansing them under the guise of protecting their way of life....

The logic remains unchanged — displacement framed as pragmatism, ethnic cleansing cloaked in the language of order and progress, and for Trump: Palestinians as an obstacle to a beautiful beachfront where everyone could live, including “some Palestinians.”  

In Trump’s impossible Gaza plan can still do a great deal of harm Michelle Plitnick wrote that ‘in one of the cruelest, most repulsive twists of the Trump argument, he actually argued that his plan for ethnic cleansing was intended to benefit the Palestinians.’

This could be so magnificent. But more importantly than that is the people that have been absolutely destroyed that live there now can live in peace in a much better situation because they are living in hell. And those people will now be able to live in peace. We’ll make sure that it’s done world class.

It is noticeable that German leaders have said next to nothing. But why should Germany’s leaders say anything? The worse it gets for Palestinians the more they can come to terms with their own holocausts. After all, if even the Jews perpetrate a holocaust then it can’t be that bad.

Today Gaza is unliveable in because Israel deliberately made it so. For the Palestinians to be removed would be to reward the war criminals. That Trump can suggest it and the media can actually debate it seriously demonstrates how low moral standards have sunk in the western world.

One wonders what Western leaders would say if Putin had carpet bombed Ukraine and then said he was removing the population to save them further trauma and he expected Britain, Germany and France to take them in and foot the bill! All in order that they could have ‘beautiful’ lives free from Russian bombs! Yet this is what Trump is saying and our leaders cannot even spell out the implications for fear of offending his fragile ego.

We are entering a period of great uncertainty. The Palestine solidarity movement has a responsibility to step up its protests and begin to make life uncomfortable for those in power. Instead of allowing the Metropolitan Police to disrupt our protests we should be disrupting the rhythms of London. The first thing we should be doing is to hold the demonstration which was initially planned for the BBC – with or without the agreement of Britain’s political police.

Tony Greenstein

See also 

The Gaza 'war' was a lie, as is the ceasefire. Trump just told you

Jonathan Cook

The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

I witnessed firsthand the PA’s brutality against journalists in Gaza. Its possible return does not bode well for us.

Published On 1 Feb 2025 

A group of Palestinian journalists protest in front of the Palestinian Legislative Council headquarters against the decision of the Palestinian Authority to close Bethlehem-based private TV channel, Al-Roah, in Gaza City on October 17 1999 [File: Mohammad Saber/AFP]

On December 28, 21-year-old journalism student Shatha Al-Sabbagh was assassinated near her home in Jenin. Her family accused snipers from the Palestinian Authority (PA) deployed in the camp of shooting her in the head. Al-Sabbagh had been active on social media, documenting the suffering of Jenin residents during the raids by Israel and the PA.

Just a few days after Al-Sabbagh’s assassination, the authorities in Ramallah banned Al Jazeera from reporting from the occupied West Bank. Three weeks later, PA forces arrested Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamad Atrash.

These developments come as the Israeli occupation has killed more than 200 media workers in Gaza and arrested dozens across the occupied Palestinian territories. It has also banned Al Jazeera and refused to allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza. The fact that the PA’s actions mirror Israel’s reveals a shared agenda to suppress independent journalism and control public opinion.

To Palestinian journalists, that is hardly news. The PA has never been our protector. It has always been a complicit partner in our brutalisation. That is true in the West Bank and it was true in Gaza when the PA was in power there. I witnessed it myself.

Growing up in Gaza, I watched how my people were oppressed by Israeli forces and by the PA. In 1994, the Israeli occupation formally handed over the Strip to the PA to administer under the provisions of the Oslo Accords. The PA remained in power until 2007. During these 13 years, we saw more collaboration with the Israeli occupation than any meaningful attempt at liberation. For journalists, the PA’s presence was not just oppressive, it was life-threatening, as its forces actively stifled voices to maintain its fragile grip on power.

As a journalism student in Gaza, I experienced this suppression firsthand. I walked the streets, witnessing PA security officers looting shops, their arrogance apparent in the brazen act of theft. One day, when I attempted to document this, a Palestinian officer violently grabbed me, ripped my camera from my hands, and smashed it to the ground. This wasn’t just an assault, it was an attack on my right to bear witness. The officer’s aggression only ceased when a group of women intervened, forcing him to retreat in a rare moment of restraint.

I knew the risks of being a journalist in Gaza and like other media workers, I learned to navigate them. But the fear I felt near the PA forces’ ambush points was unlike anything else. That was because there was never logic to their aggressive actions and no way to anticipate when they might turn on you.

Walking near the PA forces felt like stepping into a minefield. One moment, there was the illusion of safety, and the next, you faced the brutality of those who were supposedly there to protect you. This uncertainty and tension made their presence more terrifying than being on a battlefield.

Years later, I would cover the training sessions of Qassam Brigades under the constant hum of Israeli drones and the ever-looming threat of air strikes. It was dangerous but predictable – much more so than the actions of the PA.

Under the PA, we learned to speak in code. Journalists self-censored out of fear of retribution. The PA was often referred to as “cousins of Israeli occupation” – a grim acknowledgement of its complicity.

As the PA was fighting to stay in power in Gaza after losing the 2006 elections to Hamas, its brutality escalated. In May 2007, gunmen in presidential guard uniforms killed journalist Suleiman Abdul-Rahim al-Ashi and media worker Mohammad Matar Abdo. It was an execution meant to send a clear message to those who witnessed it.

When Hamas took over, its government also imposed restrictions on press freedoms, but its censorship was inconsistent. Once, while documenting the new policewomen’s division, I was ordered to show my photos to a Hamas officer so he could censor any image he deemed immodest. I often managed to bypass these restrictions by swapping my memory cards preemptively.

The officers weren’t fond of anyone overriding their orders, but instead of outright punishment, they resorted to petty power plays—investigations, revoked access, or unnecessary provocations. Unlike the PA, Hamas did not operate within a system of coordination with Israeli forces to suppress journalism, but the restrictions journalists faced still created an environment of uncertainty and self-censorship. Any violation on their part, however, was met with swift international condemnation—something the PA rarely faced, despite its far more systematic repression.

After losing control of Gaza, the PA shifted its focus to the West Bank, intensifying its campaign of media suppression. Detentions, violent crackdowns, and the silencing of critical voices became commonplace. Their collaboration with Israel was not passive; it was active. From surveillance to campaigns of violence, they play a crucial role in maintaining the status quo, stifling any dissent that challenges their power and the occupation.

In 2016, the PA’s collusion became even more apparent when they coordinated with Israeli authorities in the arrest of prominent journalist and press freedom advocate Omar Nazzal, who had criticised Ramallah for how it handled the suspected murder of Palestinian citizen Omar al-Naif at its embassy in Bulgaria.

In 2017, the PA launched a campaign of intimidation, arresting five journalists from different outlets.

In 2019, the Palestinian Authority blocked the website of Quds News Network, a youth-led media outlet that has gained immense popularity. This was part of a wider ban imposed by the Ramallah Magistrate’s Court that blocked access to 24 other news websites and social media pages.

In 2021, after the violent death of activist Nizar Banat in the PA’s custody sparked protests, its forces sought to crack down on journalists and media outlets covering them.

In this context, the prospect of the PA returning to Gaza following the ceasefire agreement raises serious concerns for journalists who have already endured the horrors of genocide. For those who survived, this could mean a new chapter of repression that reflects the PA’s history of censorship, arrests and stifling of press freedoms.

Despite the grave threats that Palestinian journalists face from Israel and from those who pretend to represent the Palestinian people, they persevere. Their work transcends borders, reflecting a shared struggle against tyranny. Their resilience speaks not only to the Palestinian cause but to the broader fight for liberation, justice and dignity.

Eman Mohammed is an award-winning Palestinian-American photojournalist and Senior TED fellow currently based in Washington, DC.

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