A Palestinian refugee. She is wearing a T-shirt imprinted with the image of the revolutionary Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani.

above all, the war prevents mourning. it prevents the world—the leadership of the world in particular—from humanizing palestinians. they are only humans when they are victims, and the war allows israel to maintain the illusion that this is a war with two sides, that these soldiers are fighting a symmetrical war with an opposing army, rather than a war of extermination against an entire people. you end the war, you end the illusion.

the idea that continuing the war will allow hamas to recoup or launch another attack is a joke—hamas don't need to. the damage israel will take once this is assessed in sober hindsight will be astounding. not just for the international community, but for israelis themselves. all those idf soldiers sniping babies in the head will have to go home and think about what they've done. and they'll talk about what they've done. they've filmed it, they've recorded it, but it will look very different when the war ends. this is also why israel continues to escalate. they are the only ones who benefit from a regional war. lebanon and iran know this well. so does the united states. politically and tactically, israel will not be the same once the war is over. this has always been true, and it has always been why it needed the occupation in the first place—it is a country that requires perpetual war to maintain itself. how can israelis live if they do not feel threatened? what is israel if it is not surrounded by enemies, but by victims and allies?

53.5% support a deal for the release of all hostages and full withdrawal, and 28.5% support a deal for the release of some hostages and a temporary ceasefire.

That is 82% of Israel that supports ceasefire in some form.

A total of 57% of Israelis oppose the U.S.-mediated deal being negotiated with Hamas, according to a JNS/Direct Polls survey of public opinion carried out on July 9 (this one was for the three-phase deal with a permanent ceasefire)

the poll for 63% supporting a hostage deal in august 2024 does not outline what ceasefire that entails, but refers to "the current negotiations in qatar" which came after the assassination of haniyeh and so is the deal netanyahu has heavily amended. this deal refuses a ceasefire, refuses withdrawal and includes sectioning gaza and violating the camp david accords.

generally, my opinions on israeli trends are not formed merely by the genocide, but also by the repeated polls taken during the genocide, such as the enlightening one from may, where 34% of israelis say the genocide is not far enough, while 39% are happy with the amount of genocide (and of the 19% the gone too far number, the majority are palestinians with israeli citizenship)

but this is kind of what i meant anyway because a "ceasefire in some form" is not actually a ceasefire, just like there wasn't a ceasefire in place before october 7th. all you're talking about is high intensity war or low intensity war, active settlement or merely occupation. it's kind of like the argument about whether the west bank would be annexed (to most palestinians, the west bank is de-facto annexed).

but polls aside, i am also referring to how the majority of protests against the israeli government/netanyahu/for the hostages are not protests against the genocide, but protests for the hostages. if you had read the article i linked in the screenshot, it's written by an israeli (as i understand you simply won't accept commentary on the increasing radicalization of the israeli public from an arab) and covers that quite succintly in comparison to public opinion during the invasion of lebanon or the first and second intifadas.

the last 20k in their 80k campaign is specifically saved for displacement, which Wafaa had hoped they would not have to use. but the family was forced to yesterday, with a new round of intensified bombings around Khan Younis, making them raising the full 80k now EXTREMELY NECESSARY

Sliman Mansour, The Flight to Egypt (1984)

Democrats gesture at basic human rights to pander to the base and do nothing to actually protect those rights.

Posted by Palestinian Youth Movement:

Human remains were so scattered at the site of Al-Tabeen School Massacre that the parademics counted each 70kg remains as 1 martyr and returned a 70 kg of remains to the surviving family members of each martyr, asking them to bury the bag and pray over it as though it were the whole body of their loved one.

Why is Gaza not one issue, but rather the issue, of our time? Because the reports emerging, today and every day for the last 10 months, tell of horrors at a scale and degree that are impossible for any human being of conscience to witness and not feel spurred by to take immediate action. These senseless crimes are filled with such depravity, that there is no fathomable way to forget or turn a blind eye to the suffering inflicted upon our people. Such horror was on full display yesterday at the site of the Al Tabaeen Massacre in Gaza City, where after several hours of removing mangled and unidentifiable human remains, paramedics made an almost incomprehensible decision. The bomb dropped by Israel on the school, which instantly martyred over 100 Palestinians who had been mid-prayer there, split the ground beneath them and scattered their bodies to such a degree that not a single body of a martyr was found in its entirety.

Confronted with a massacre that claimed 100 lives, without a single whole corpse to identify, paramedics began to gather and weigh the human remains, splitting them into bags that weigh the average human weight of 70 kg. They then handed one bag of remains to each family of a martyr and asked them to bury the bag and pray over it as though it were the whole body of their loved one.

The bombs used in these massacres in Gaza are manufactured in the USA, Canada, and the UK. Their component parts are developed by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, assembly completed by US engineers, and transportation to Gaza completed by European shipping giant Maersk. These bombs, that leave our martyrs limbless and unidentifiable due to the incomprehensible amount of destruction they were created to cause, are all co-signed and cheered for by the US Congress and UK and Canadian parliaments.

In an election year no less, Gaza is the issue of our time because our complicity should not, and cannot, allow us to sleep peacefully at night. Not only our complicity, but our collective ability to put a stop to the pipeline of these horrors, should shake each and every one of us to our very core, every day until this nightmare ends. The struggle continues.