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palestinian rights
'Enough. Have Mercy on Us!' Suffering in Gaza Escalates as 70,000 Tents Destroyed by Floods
“We are poor people in Gaza," said one man whose family of our lost their makeshift home to the storm water. "We want to live. We do not want to die from the bombing or the cold."
Nov 07, 2026
The suffering of the people of Gaza went from horrific and beyond comprehension to something worse on Saturday after storm waters overnight destroyed tens of thousands of tents and flooded tens of thousands of people into further desperation, all while the US and Israeli governments continue to maintain a cruel blockade on life-saving supplies despite a fast-approaching winter and a military occupation with no end in sight.
"At least 70,000 tents have been flooded & blown away by the torrential downpour and tempestuous wind in Gaza since last night," reported Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed, citing statements from health and media officials. "Families are shelterless. Food prices are soaring. Children are starving and shivering with cold. Caravans and mobile homes must enter Gaza now to avert this cataclysm."
Gaza’s Government Media Office on Saturday, holding Israel wholly responsible for the disaster, said initial losses from flooded and destroyed tents were estimated at $3 million and that dozens of walls of homes had collapsed, resulting in injuries, while the threat of broader building collapse remained a serious risk.
In a statement, Palestinian Health Minister Dr. Majed Abu Ramadan said, “What is happening in Gaza is not a passing winter crisis. I urgently call on the international community, the United Nations, and health, humanitarian, and relief organizations to intervene immediately to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the Gaza Strip, following the flooding of thousands of tents with rainwater and the absence of basic safe shelter conditions."
Al-Jazeera reports:
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 950,000 displaced people in Gaza are living in areas exposed to flooding. Low-lying locations and sites near the coast are particularly vulnerable, with more than 400,000 people living in areas considered at high risk of flooding.
About 44,000 Palestinians are living in structurally unsafe buildings, while more than 4,000 buildings across the territory are estimated to require full or partial demolition due to damage caused by Israeli air strikes. About 294,250 families need shelter assistance ahead of winter, but the available supplies cover only 18 percent of their needs.
Ramadan further warned of "a catastrophic deterioration in health and environmental conditions, alongside growing risks of the spread of diseases and epidemics" if an emergency response was not rapidly and comprehensively deployed.
Video footage and eyewitness accounts offered a heartbreaking picture of those hit by the floods.
“We woke up and found ourselves surrounded by water," a man named Mansour al-Sakni, 33, told the Middle East Eye. "The children were crying. I did not know what to do, and I started crying too."
“We stood inside the tarpaulin shelter waiting for the rain to stop so we could try to push the water out of the room,” he said. “We are poor people in Gaza. We want to live. We do not want to die from the bombing or the cold. Enough. Have mercy on us.”
According to NBC News:
The territory’s civil defence service said it had received 1,500 distress calls from displaced residents. Three abandoned houses collapsed without causing injuries, it added.
At a tent encampment in Gaza City, some people tried to repair their tents, while others used sand to reinforce them and prevent water from entering. Some were busy getting their children out of flooded tents.
Olfat Magdoub, a Gaza resident, tried in vain to sweep water away from her tent.
“This is the first day of rain, and of course we are already flooded. What will happen if it rains again the next day? This is only the first day and we’re already overwhelmed,” said the woman.
“Two weeks ago when it rained, I swear to God, I spent four days sleeping on blankets spread on the floor because the rainwater had flooded the bedding. Same now, the mattresses are wet so we sleep on the ground.”
While the flooding devastated the people and families trapped by the blockade of life-saving aid and shelter, fresh ire was pointed at the US government for refusing to rebuke the Israeli government for its wanton disregard for human life and suffering.
On the ground in Gaza, the anguish of Palestinians, including children, was on display in videos of the devastation and ongoing catastrophe posted to social media:
🚨 CATASTROPHIC SCENES IN GAZA RIGHT NOW.Heavy rainfall is flooding displaced Palestinians’ tents, leaving families exposed to the harsh winter with no alternative shelter.This is their fourth winter since Israel destroyed their homes and continues to block essential materials from entering Gaza.
— Gaza Notifications (@gazanotice) November 7, 2026
"How long are we supposed to live like this?" declares the young boy featured in the video. "I swear I don't know what to do. Have mercy on us for God's sake! For the sake of God, have mercy on us!"
Rain is worsening the suffering of Gaza’s children as water pours into homes damaged by Israeli bombardment, soaking bedding and clothes. With no shelter repair materials or tarpaulins available, families are left unable to protect their children from the flooding. https://t.co/OzVMGHzssI
— Government Communication Center (@pal_gcc_en) November 7, 2026
Children are particularly impacted by the rainwater and vulnerable to the increasingly dangerous conditions imposed by the floods
The image of a little girl in Gaza standing in the rain captures a stark, painful contrast: the innocence of childhood set against the harsh reality of life in Gaza. 🍉 The winter rain has transformed the scene into a tableau that blends spontaneous, childlike joy with profound human suffering. Our tattered tents—and everything we own—have been completely submerged today. 🥹💔 Please, speak about us; be our voice to the world. Please share, or leave a comment—even just a dot—to help boost this post. Thank you, from Gaza.
— Sondos Gaza 🍉🇵🇸 (@SondosMurtaja) November 7, 2026
"What remains of Gaza’s homes is collapsing under heavy rain, amid the ongoing genocide and deafening silence," said Ramy Abdul, chairman of the human rights group Euro-Med Monitor.
"For the fourth consecutive year," Abdul added, "Gaza remains under a suffocating Israeli siege that prevents even the recovery of victims’ bodies from beneath the rubble."
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Palestinian Voters Have Given Arab Parties a Chance to Disrupt Israel's Genocide
By uniting around a political program capable of defeating Netanyahu's far-right agenda, and setting aside their factional interests, Arab politicians could achieve something their previous parliamentary efforts failed to accomplish.
Nov 07, 2026
The results of Israel's October 27 elections were welcomed by Palestinian Arab communities in Israel and millions of Palestinians worldwide.
Neither Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing bloc nor that of his rival, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, secured the 61 seats required to form a government. This made the 19 seats won by Arab parties all the more consequential.
In a political system structured to marginalize its Arab minority, the electoral achievement of the Joint List and Ra'am cannot be overstated. Through their relative unity and an extraordinary convergence of political circumstances, Palestinian voters have seemingly managed to beat the system at its own game.
The choice now is not between purity and betrayal, but between paralysis, allowing Netanyahu's wars to continue unchecked, and strategic disruption.
The achievement came despite fearmongering and outright racist rhetoric by mainstream Jewish political parties, including Eisenkot himself.
Netanyahu built much of his campaign around the specter of an Arab political takeover. On election day, he warned, “If we don't wake up now, we'll find ourselves with a government of Mansour Abbas and Ahmed Tibi.”
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir employed similar rhetoric. Alarmed by Arab turnout, he declared, “If you want this country to be Jewish and Zionist, you must go out and vote,” before warning his supporters, “Don't let them win.”
Even Eisenkot, often portrayed in Western media as a more amiable and less hawkish alternative to Netanyahu, rejected the prospect of governing with Arab parties, declaring, “I do not see an Arab party that accepts my principles.”
Whether the electoral deadlock forces him to reconsider that position is another matter. The point is that Eisenkot and his potential allies, including Naftali Bennett and Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman, have rejected Arab participation in governing coalitions.
Imagine this happening in a true democracy, where an entire political community is excluded from government because its members are Black, Irish, or Christian.
This is the crux of Israel's democracy problem. While presenting itself as democratic, Israel has waged political, legal, and constitutional wars against its Palestinian citizens, treating their very identity as a threat to the Jewish character of the state.
Historically, this has been the central point of contention among Palestinian communities in Israel: Why should Arabs participate in elections that validate a system constructed, from its very foundation, to entrench Jewish supremacy and persecute its Palestinian minority?
Consider the Knesset itself. Section 7A of its Basic Law allows electoral lists and candidates to be disqualified for rejecting Israel's existence as a Jewish and democratic state.
Imagine Black American politicians being required to recognize the United States as a white state before being permitted to contest elections.
In 2018, Israel went further, passing the Nation-State Basic Law, which declares that the right to national self-determination in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.”
It is therefore hardly surprising that some Palestinian political movements have refused to participate in what they regard as a political charade, choosing instead to defend their communities' rights outside a fundamentally rigged parliamentary system.
One example is Abnaa al-Balad, which has long advocated boycotting Knesset elections rather than granting legitimacy to the Israeli political order.
This debate resembles the historical disagreement between revolutionary abstentionism, which rejects participation in institutions deemed illegitimate, and socialist parliamentary participation, which argues that refusing parliamentary engagement should not become an absolute principle.
Vladimir Lenin addressed this argument in his 1920 work "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder," rejecting the notion that revolutionary movements should abandon parliamentary participation under all circumstances.
Israel's latest elections have given this debate renewed urgency.
To be clear, although some Arab parties have roots in leftist traditions, none can simply be described as revolutionary.
Ra'am, led by Mansour Abbas, participated in the Zionist coalition government headed by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid in June 2021. Abbas effectively sidelined broader Palestinian national aspirations in favor of municipal budgets, socioeconomic equality, and combating crime within Arab communities in Israel.
Ra'am has now won eight seats, and Abbas has made clear his willingness to pursue the same coalition strategy.
The Joint List, on the other hand, secured 11 seats. Its priorities include removing Netanyahu, defending Palestinian national rights, and advancing social justice for Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Now, more than ever, Palestinians need unity. All are facing extraordinary threats: the ongoing genocide in Gaza, accelerating annexation and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and further suppression of Palestinian communities inside Israel.
By uniting around a political program capable of defeating Netanyahu's far-right agenda, and setting aside their factional interests, Arab politicians could achieve something their previous parliamentary efforts failed to accomplish: Force Israel to change direction, slow down its machinery of death, and remove the wanted war criminal Netanyahu from power.
While one may insist, on principle, that participating in a corrupt political system validates that very system, history occasionally produces moments so dangerous that even such morally defensible positions must be reconsidered, however temporarily.
The choice now is not between purity and betrayal, but between paralysis, allowing Netanyahu's wars to continue unchecked, and strategic disruption.
Certain distinctions, however, must remain absolutely clear. Replacing Netanyahu is not liberation. Eisenkot is no peacemaker, but a committed Zionist whose military record and political positions offer Palestinians little reason to expect justice. A new Israeli government will not erase the crimes of the state or fundamentally dismantle its apartheid system.
What such a change might offer is a disruption of the alliance through which Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have pursued their agenda of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and annexation, potentially slowing Israel's capacity to inflict violence on the current scale.
Real change, on the other hand, can only be achieved through genuine Palestinian unity and resistance on all fronts, sustained global solidarity, legal accountability, and meaningful political action.
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Michigan Voters Repudiate Grotesque Islamophobia Aimed at Abdul El-Sayed
El-Sayed’s defeat of this sleazy prejudice is the most American thing in the world. I have gone blue in the face pointing out that the Founding Fathers explicitly recognized freedom of religion and conscience for Muslims, as well as for Jews, Catholics and others.
Nov 04, 2026
The ugly tactics of the Republican Party in Michigan, targeting Abdul El-Sayed for his Muslim faith, were not unprecedented in American history. Catholics, Jews and other minorities have been dragged through the mud for not being white Protestants. Bigots warned that Jack Kennedy would be a tool of the papacy. American Jews were accused of being greedy bankers and dangerous Communists, often in the same breath. Hatred doesn’t need to be logical or consistent. Indeed, the haze of hatred allows people to believe in dozens of impossible things before breakfast.
In the case of El-Sayed, this exemplary American citizen, born in Rochester Hills, raised by an Egyptian Muslim father and a white Christian step-mother, became a physician, taught medicine at Columbia University, and ran health services in Wayne County, Michigan. He was nevertheless configured by Donald Trump and Mike Rogers, both of whom have committed state terrorism against thousands of victims, as a terrorist sympathizer. Rogers who when he was a congressan was a cheerleader for the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammad Morsi in Egypt, had the nerve to accuse El-Sayed of being a Muslim Brother or receiving support from them. Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalists do not, however, support LGBTQ rights, as El-Sayed does. El-Sayed, a convinced capitalist, was accused of being a Communist, though Communists are typically atheists, so you can’t be both a Communist and a Muslim Brother. It is very like the contradictory charges launched at Jews by antisemites like Henry Ford, Elon Musk’s predecessor.
El-Sayed won a majority of Michigan Jews, who did not buy the GOP smear, perhaps having been sensitized to these sleazy tactics by seeing them deployed by Christian white nationalists against their own community. It has to be admitted, however, that right wing Zionists were among the prominent purveyors of bigoted talking points. The plummeting power of the latter, however, was clearly demonstrated by the bath their candidates took almost across the board. Attempts were made to imply that African-American support for El-Sayed in Detroit and Flint was lukewarm, but it was that vote that will put him over, and in majority-Black precincts he did better than Kamala Harris had.
El-Sayed’s defeat of this sleazy prejudice is the most American thing in the world. I have gone blue in the face pointing out that the Founding Fathers explicitly recognized freedom of religion and conscience for Muslims, as well as for Jews, Catholics and others.
As I previously wrote, the Founding Fathers explicitly mentioned Islam when they spoke of religious freedom. And quoted:
George Washington asked in a March 24, 1784, letter to his aide Tench Tilghman that some craftsmen be hired for him: “If they are good workmen, they may be of Assia, [sic] Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, [Muslims] Jews, or Christian of any Sect – or they may be Atheists …
In his letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, RI, Washington pledged that the “Children of Abraham” would not be made afraid in the United States (implicitly contrasting the new nation’s liberties and personal security with the pogroms of the Old World). It should be noted that Arab Muslims consider themselves, as well, descendants of Abraham through Ishmael:
- The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security.
If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.
The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—-a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my administration and fervent wishes for my felicity.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
Washington underlined that in the new social experiment that is the United States, toleration is not merely the indulgence of one group of people by a dominant elite. It is a right, which requires only that the individual be an upright citizen of the new country, which “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Ben Franklin, the founding father of many important institutions in Philadelphia, a key diplomat and a framer of the US Constitution, wrote in his Autobiography concerning a non-denominational place of public preaching he helped found “so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.” Here is the whole quote:
- And it being found inconvenient to assemble in the open air, subject to its inclemencies, the building of a house to meet in was no sooner propos’d, and persons appointed to receive contributions, but sufficient sums were soon receiv’d to procure the ground and erect the building, which was one hundred feet long and seventy broad, about the size of Westminster Hall; and the work was carried on with such spirit as to be finished in a much shorter time than could have been expected. Both house and ground were vested in trustees, expressly for the use of any preacher of any religious persuasion who might desire to say something to the people at Philadelphia; the design in building not being to accommodate any particular sect, but the inhabitants in general; so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service
Not only did Ben Franklin not want to ban Muslims from coming to the United States, he wanted to invited them!
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1777 Draft of a Bill for Religious Freedom:
- that our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right . . .
The idea of religious liberty enshrined in the First Amendment was based on an act passed in 1786 by the Virginia state legislature that had been authored by Thomas Jefferson, and which said in part:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
One of the arguments raised against this act in the Virginia legislature was precisely that it would allow the free practice of Islam in the Commonwealth. Jefferson’s opponents tried to limit religious freedom to Christianity. Jefferson battled back and won.
James E. Hutson explains:
- Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the “Mahamdan,” the Jew and the “pagan.” Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. “True freedom,” Lee asserted, “embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion.”
In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature “rejected by a great majority” an effort to limit the bill’s scope “in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan.”
Jefferson was ambassador in Paris in 1787 when the Constitution was being drafted, but he corresponded with Madison and strongly urged him to draft a bill of rights that would address religious liberty. Madison was influenced by the 1786 Virginia statute.
That is, the legislative history of the First Amendment demonstrates conclusively that it is rooted in Enlightenment conceptions of religion that saw Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism as all constituting “religions,” belief in which is a matter of conscience over which civil magistrates should have no control. So I would say that the Constitution implicitly recognizes Islam as a religion, even for an originalist who reads it through eighteenth-century eyes.
Here is Jefferson again: “The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.”
Or: “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
The US Senate, full of founding fathers, and the Adams government, approved the Treaty with Tripoli (now Libya) of 1797, which included this language:
“As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
The treaty is important for showing the mindset of the fashioners of the American system.
The second Trump administration has been the most corrupt and crime-ridden in American history. The Trump family has made billions from nepotism and favoritism. He allowed Stephen Miller to reconfigure ICE to illegally assault and detain hundreds of American citizens, to murder American citizens in the street, to engage in racial profiling, and to parade cruelty and sadism before the public. The US military has been misused to murder Latin American and Caribbean fishermen. Trump has launched wars without seeking Congressional approval, which have severely weakened the country’s security posture. Trump has illegally tinkered with tariffs, a Congressional sphere of responsibility, even after the Supreme Court found against him. He has plunged the country into a severe energy crisis from which there is not obvious way to extract it. Trump has also arranged for his political allies to take over major US media, with the Ellisons of Oracle and Skydance fame getting their hands on the throats of CBS News, CNN and TikTok. This is the way that Turkiye’s Tayyip Erdogan tamed Turkish media, by having his cronies take over the major companies. In 2013 when there were street protests in Istanbul, CNN Turk showed documentaries on penguins. We can expect a similar gutting of investigative journalism in the US, with a concomitant nuking of democracy.
The blue tsunami is welcome, but Democrats have to restore the rule of law and reclaim the power of the purse. Trump administration officials who diverted congressionally mandated monies and declined to spend money on the things Congress mandated they be spent on, must be punished. The new big pro-Trump media monopolies have to be broken up. Comity is all very well, but we don’t need fascists to love us, we need them to fear us.
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Rape as a Tool of Empire: Cornell, Palestine, and the Silence of Western Feminists
Just because a woman is brown and Muslim, or just because the man being abused is Palestinian, does not mean their pain should be ignored by the mainstream feminists of today.
Nov 01, 2026
I came across a tweet recently that reads: "Reminder that rape is used a weapon of war on a regular basis because it is one of the most demoralizing, terrifying, and life-changingly traumatic things that can happen to a human being."
This post was in light of the gruesome sexual assault case coming out of Cornell University, and it really stuck with me. I've spent the past few years reading and talking about the experiences of Palestinians as they face every kind of abuse from Israeli soldiers and settlers. It is not lost on me that the vehicles used by the patriarchy to suppress women, like rape, are unfortunately present in every aspect of our society—the same society that has manufactured consent for a genocide in Palestine. From college campuses to Palestine, we are seeing sexual and gendered violence being intentionally used to strip human beings down to the barest parts of themselves.
It is this system of imperial patriarchy that cultivates a world in which two situations are allowed to occur simultaneously: A college girl can be drugged and sexually assaulted for seven hours, and women and men in Palestine can have their bodily autonomy ripped away from them as a tool of genocide. In both cases, the victims have been dehumanized by the outside world to such an extent that they are now an other.
Israel is committing one of the world's greatest acts against feminism right now: dehumanizing Palestinians, men and women both, to such an extreme degree that they are seen as disposable cattle to Israeli soldiers and settlers.
And in both cases, their perpetrators and assailants can leave the crime scene unscathed, with their hands clean.
This summer, the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC) released a report on the harrowing sexual and gendered violence Palestinians have faced during 70-plus years of occupation, and increasingly so in the past three years of accelerated genocide. Israel has always treated its military personnel and settlers with impunity, allowing them free rein to sexually torture Palestinians. With extensive evidence, the report concludes that Israel systemically uses sexual violence as a method of genocide.
The stories that are recounted in "A Predatory State," by both Palestinian men and women, are absolutely terrifying. When read all together, the pattern is plain and clear: Israeli soldiers and personnel operate within a dynamic of power where they believe they have complete authority over another human being. This results in gruesome and grotesque behaviors like sexual coercion, assault, harassment, and even enslavement. Palestinians are subjected to these abuses any time Israelis show up to steal their homes, massacre them, and round them up in mass-imprisonment campaigns.
I think of my family members who have lived in Palestine for generations. What have they experienced? What kind of trauma runs through my veins right now, as I am writing this? It is terrifying to know that as a woman in this world, the threat of sexual assault is always there. In Palestine, you can't really avoid it when the perpetrators are at every checkpoint, storming into your house at night, encroaching on your backyards with their illegal settlements, guarding the prisons, and just being everywhere all at once. It's not a matter of if but a matter of when. It also isn't a matter of man or woman, because in reality it happens to both. In a culture that holds modesty as a core value, I can only imagine the emotional and socioeconomic toll sexual violence takes on Palestinian people and their families.
Bell hooks defines feminism as "a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” I would think anyone would see this situation and resonate with it as a feminist issue. The ideology is not selective, nor is it performative; it's supposed to be something whole and intersectional. Feminism in practice should advocate for every person affected by the oppressive structures of patriarchy. That being said, you would be surprised at how many feminist and women's organizations act otherwise.
The Western feminist space has become one where optics are the only thing that matters. These "feminist" organizations operate as an institution for the institution, yet they brand themselves as global caregivers fighting for gender equality. In reality, they are the fruition of neoliberal co-optation of actual revolutionary ideas. That is why they deem Palestinians as nonhuman, consistently failing to speak up about the sexual and gendered violence they face in genocide. Palestine is too revolutionary for them.
Reading through PFC's report and then researching some of the most influential women's organizations—who have either never said a word about Palestine, despite their decades of existence, or issued a few measly statements here and there—was a painful process. The first target we had identified at CODEPINK was the Center for Reproductive Rights. This global legal organization upholds reproductive and sexual rights for women, not only in courts but also through consultations with other human rights organizations. They are active worldwide, fighting for reproductive and sexual health as a basic human right from the US to Africa to Asia—but somehow Palestine is missing from their picture.
In Palestine, women are facing a maternal health crisis with hardly any functioning hospitals, dangerous sanitation levels, and an overall stressful quality of life. A report was recently published highlighting the unprecedented rise of miscarriages in Gaza under Israel's blockade. In 2022, Gaza reported 57,000 births. In 2024, just one year after Israel's genocidal campaign began, the birth rate in Gaza dropped to a staggering 38,000. Then, from December 2025 to April 2026, in the span of just six months, birth rates in Gaza declined by 67%.
This seems like something the Center for Reproductive Rights should absolutely make noise about, but every single one of our attempts to speak to them has been blocked and ignored. When you look at their board and staff, the answer is pretty clear. When you have an organization run by a culmination of ex-CIA operatives, presidential campaign officials, and venture capitalists, Palestine seems to be the antithesis of the "values" they ascribe to, and the "feminism" they follow.
Israel is committing one of the world's greatest acts against feminism right now: dehumanizing Palestinians, men and women both, to such an extreme degree that they are seen as disposable cattle to Israeli soldiers and settlers. Yet, that does not concern the self-prescribed feminists who work for the state and war economy that is aiding and abetting this tragedy.
I leave Nawal El Saadawi's quote here as a reminder that liberal, white feminism does not seek true liberation for all those the patriarchy oppresses. Just because a woman is brown and Muslim, or just because the man being abused is Palestinian, does not mean their pain should be ignored by the mainstream feminists of today. Feminism is intersectional and whole, and it is beautiful that way. These organizations' hypocrisy in the face of injustice is a horrible stain on the feminist movement. I wish nothing more than for all of us to stand together as women subjected to struggle and scorn against the colonial powers of this world.
“Solidarity between women can be a powerful force of change, and can influence future development in ways favourable not only to women but also to men.”―Nawal El Saadawi, The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World
The US National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or by texting "HOPE" to 64673. Both offer 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
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The Solution Staring Israel in the Face
What is needed from the opposition leaders? Nothing beyond decency. The government that ousts Netanyahu is the one that accepts the votes of Arab citizens.
Oct 30, 2026
Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich decisively lost Israel’s election on October 27. The governing coalition of Likud, the far right, and the ultra-Orthodox parties fell from 64 seats in 2022 to 53, eight short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The other 67 seats went to parties that campaigned to replace the government: 48 to the Jewish-led opposition headed by Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff, and 19 to the two Arab parties. Turnout was 77.9 percent, the highest since 1999, and Arab citizens, who make up about one-fifth of Israel’s population, voted at an estimated rate of about 80 percent, up from 53 percent in 2022. The results make it clear: Israeli voters chose to end the Netanyahu government. The solution to Israel’s political crisis is in plain view. The only thing standing in the way of ousting the government is racism: the refusal of Israel’s Jewish opposition leaders to treat Arab citizens as part of the political community.
The racism is not hidden. On election night Netanyahu claimed a “decisive majority among the Zionist and Jewish public,” a formula that simply subtracts the votes of one citizen in five. His Likud party then viciously and absurdly declared that the election had been “stolen” by the Arab parties and demanded investigations by the police and the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. The purpose, of course, is to brand Arab votes as illegitimate, so that no government resting on them can be accepted.
The tragedy is that the opposition leaders have adopted the same premise. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, has said that the Arab parties “are not Zionist, and therefore we will not rely on them.” Avigdor Liberman has ruled out any government that depends on Arab votes, even a temporary one. Eisenkot has said that Ra’am’s leader “won’t be part of my next government,” and that he does not “see any Arab or Haredi parties who accept” his conditions for partnership. These leaders do not object to anything the Arab parties would do in government. With good will, they could easily negotiate a governing arrangement.
The consequences of the racism are predictable. If the opposition leaders hold to their refusal, only two outcomes remain. Israel will go to another election, with the current murderous government remaining for many more months, or the opposition will join a unity government in which Netanyahu stays in power. Netanyahu has ruled out abandoning his far-right partners. Either way, the opposition leaders would hand Netanyahu and his murderous colleagues the victory that the voters denied him.
There are no real policy obstacles to cooperation. Ra’am, the United Arab List, has already served in an Israeli government. In 2021 it joined the coalition led by Bennett and Yair Lapid, the first independent Arab party ever to do so. The other Arab party, the Joint List, has said it would vote with an Eisenkot-led government to establish an official inquiry into the failures of October 7, which is the opposition’s own first priority. Israel’s voters appear to be ahead of their leaders. A Hebrew University survey on election night found that more than 61 percent of opposition voters want Eisenkot to form a government with Ra’am, while only 20 percent prefer new elections. Arab and Jewish opposition voters want the same thing, which is to oust Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich.
A practical plan should follow directly from the arithmetic. First, when the new Knesset convenes, the 67 members opposed to the Netanyahu government should elect a new Speaker, giving the new majority control of the parliamentary agenda even before a government is formed. Second, Eisenkot should form a true coalition in which Ra’am sits as a full partner with ministerial posts, giving 56 seats, with the Joint List supporting the government from outside to reach 67.
The program of such a government would not be hard to negotiate, because the parties that would be in it already share most of it. The government would establish an official inquiry into the failures of October 7. It would adopt an emergency plan against the crime and violence that have devastated Arab towns, and it would invest in housing and services for Arab communities, including the unrecognized Bedouin villages of the Negev. It would restore the independence of the courts and the attorney general.
The government might last a year. Questions of borders and the Palestinian territories would not be settled by this government, but a non-racist coalition government now would move Israel toward a lasting peaceful solution, perhaps toward a binational democratic state or toward the two-state solution of the long-standing Arab Peace Initiative. In the meantime, and crucially, Netanyahu and the other war criminals would be ousted.
Israel’s leaders should also understand what is at stake beyond Israel’s borders. Israel’s racism and murderous campaign in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have profoundly alienated people all over the world. A Pew Research Center survey of 36 countries this spring found that a median of 67 percent of respondents view Israel unfavorably, including 60 percent of Americans. In Pew’s surveys this year, Israel was viewed more negatively than any other country it asked about. More Americans now sympathize with the Palestinians than with the Israelis. The alienation extends to Jews all over the world. If the politicians double down on their racism now, they will confirm the world’s harshest judgments of Israel.
What is needed from the opposition leaders? Nothing beyond decency. The government that ousts Netanyahu is the one that accepts the votes of Arab citizens. Israel’s president has asked the party leaders to come to his consultations with an open mind. The majority to remove Netanyahu exists, provided that the leaders drop their racism
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Beyond Netanyahu: What Israel’s Election Means for Palestinians
We won't be fooled by those who posture as less extreme than the Netanyahu government, but still aim to crush the right of Palestinian freedom.
Oct 30, 2026
In the past, many Palestinians and Arabs followed Israeli elections closely.
They did so not because they entertained illusions that a Zionist leader would deliver peace and justice, dismantle the occupation or remove illegal settlements. Rather, they feared that some Israeli leaders were worse than others. They hoped to avert the worst-case scenario.
Over time, however, that distinction gave way to the belief that all Israeli leaders were essentially the same. This is not pessimism. It is experience.
Consider, for example, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements during the Oslo peace process under Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Between 1992 and 1995, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, increased from 111,673 to 140,235 - a rise of more than 25 percent, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, drawing on Israeli statistical records.
The same pattern continued under the Labor government of Ehud Barak.
Within his first six months, Barak’s government issued tenders for 3,196 settlement housing units, exceeding the annual average under his right-wing predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.
When Naftali Bennett formed a coalition government in June 2021 that included the Arab party Ra’am, settlement expansion continued unabated.
According to Peace Now, the Bennett–Lapid government advanced plans for 7,292 settlement housing units during its first year, a 26-percent increase over the annual average recorded under previous Netanyahu governments.
The settlements are themselves a driving force behind the occupation. They require land, and therefore land confiscation; protection, and therefore an expanded military presence; water, roads and infrastructure, and therefore the appropriation of Palestinian resources. Together, these elements deepen dispossession and generate further Israeli violence.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the West Bank contained 645 Israeli settlement sites, outposts and other occupation installations by the end of 2025, including 350 settlement outposts.
The Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission reported that Israeli authorities targeted approximately 29,335 dunums of Palestinian land through declarations of so-called “state land” between October 2023 and August 2026—one of the largest waves of such land appropriation since Oslo.
By September 2026, the Commission had also documented the advancement or consideration of plans for more than 18,000 additional settlement housing units across the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
Alongside this expansion is the violence unfolding across the West Bank.
By the end of 2023, the West Bank had experienced its deadliest year for Palestinians since the UN began systematically recording casualties in 2005.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission documented 23,827 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians and their property during 2025 alone. In the first seven months of 2026, settler attacks increased by 63 percent compared with the corresponding period of the previous year.
Typically, this violence, carried out by the Israeli occupation army and armed illegal settlers, is contextualized within the ongoing genocide in Gaza. But violence in the West Bank also serves another purpose beyond collective punishment: the confiscation of Palestinian orchards, the annexation of land, the expansion of settlements and the crushing of Palestinian resistance, including nonviolent opposition to this colonial enterprise.
Any Israeli candidate in the October 27 elections who supports settlement expansion does so with full knowledge of its consequences: further dispossession, military occupation, annexation and violence.
The difference between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and politicians presented as less extreme, is often one of language, strategy and timing.
Former Israeli military chief and Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, for example, openly supports the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite his reputation as a more ‘moderate’ alternative to Netanyahu.
What, then, about Gaza?
Who among Israel’s leading political figures is promising to end the genocide, lift the siege, ensure unrestricted humanitarian aid, restrain the army or investigate violations of international law? None.
Israeli media have spent the past three years reporting on major disagreements between the government, military establishment, intelligence agencies and political opposition over what should happen in Gaza.
Yet, Eisenkot has pledged to end Hamas’ rule in Gaza within 18 months of taking office, whether through the Trump framework or through continued war.
For his part, opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid has proposed placing Gaza under Egyptian administration for 15 years, effectively shifting responsibility for Israel’s actions onto Arab states.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, supports continued Israeli military control until Palestinian groups are disarmed.
The disagreement, therefore, is often over how Israel should achieve its objectives, rather than whether those objectives should change.
Other major disagreements primarily concern Israeli society: the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, judicial reform, accountability for the failures of October 7.
But these disputes should not be confused with the questions that matter most to Palestinians.
If Netanyahu succeeds in forming another right-wing coalition, the policies of occupation, settlement expansion and military confrontation will continue, potentially with renewed momentum.
If Israel produces a broader coalition, its members may reach compromises over judicial reform, conscription and other domestic disputes. The occupation, however, is unlikely to become the central point of disagreement.
More troubling still, even a government leaning toward the center-left might succeed in presenting Israel to the international community as a country ready to move beyond the image it acquired during three years of genocide, without fundamentally changing its conduct on the ground.
The international community must therefore remain vigilant. It cannot allow a future Israeli government to present itself as a peacemaker, or sell the illusion of a newly reformed Israel, while continuing to invest in settlements, occupation, war and genocide.
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US Imperialism and the Language of Erasure in Palestine
The phrase “US imperialism” may sound antique, but the reality is current. It lives in supply chains, military aid, diplomatic vetoes, and the expectation that our media will avoid language that might complicate partnership.
Oct 27, 2026
I grew up believing that fidelity to language is fidelity to truth. Scripture taught me that truth is a form of prayer and that naming is part of justice. Then I learned how language is trained to look away. In the American conversation about the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza and Palestine, words are rinsed until they shine with neutrality, while the bodies they describe grow dim. The result is a strange theology of news, where grief must pass an examination before it is shared, and where power writes the glossary.
In the weeks after October 7, anchors found an ease of speech they rarely grant Palestinians. Faces from southern Israel filled our screens—named and mourned. By mid-October, Israel had killed thousands in Gaza, many of them children. The camera kept its distance. The word that leapt to the teleprompter was caution. Images blurred and numbers hedged, context was treated as suspicion rather than care.
The grief of one people became a national ceremony; the grief of another, a footnote.
I want a common speech that lets readers feel that a child pulled from rubble requires no preface.
If language is a vessel for conscience, these choices matter. A hospital becomes a “compound,” bombardment becomes an “operation,” a family under rubble becomes “collateral.” Such phrasing allows atrocity to appear as policy, and policy to pass as inevitability. We are told this is balance, when in reality it scolds both the arsonist and the burning house.
As the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz once observed, “In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim.” The stakes of language decide whose grief is recognized and whose life is made expendable.
What we call balance often conceals allegiance. The United States supplies weapons, funding, diplomatic cover, and ideological shelter to Israel. Washington fast-tracks munitions while vetoing cease-fire resolutions at the United Nations, demanding the press describe the result as a “cycle.” Institutions obey through habits as much as manufactured consent because the script is already written.
Editors learn which nouns invite trouble. Reporters learn which verbs are preferred. Freelancers learn the cost of clarity.
The money is not incidental. Contracts enrich the usual firms as careers rise in their shadow. The casualties are an afterthought. The ledger sits backstage, while the performance onstage goes by the name of neutrality. The empire supplies language and weapons, while it is language that returns the favor by laundering intent.
Every culture keeps a book of sorrows. In ours, some sorrows earn public sympathy more readily than others. When a Palestinian journalist is killed, headlines bend into the passive voice, and the subject disappears. When a Palestinian American is beaten at a checkpoint or murdered, procedure replaces justice. Families who bury their children must clear a test of civility, then defend the right to weep without a preface.
To mourn openly is treated as a provocation. To ask for equal mourning is to be accused of provocation.
This is how imperial culture works. If Palestinian grief is marginalized, policy can proceed. The audience is soothed by the idea that tragedy has no author, that rubble is a natural event, and that history began yesterday. In such a world, the right dead receive sympathy, while the living must demonstrate moderation.
If the prophets have any lesson for journalism, it is this: Speak without fear where the truth is plain. Refuse to wrap cruelty in fine phrases. Follow conscience where it burns, even when it threatens comfort.
We were told that social media would democratize speech. Instead, many Palestinians and their allies discovered another border regime. Posts vanish without explanation and archives dissolve, as certain words trigger shadow bans. Meanwhile, coordinated networks flood platforms with talking points until the algorithm mistakes noise for truth.
People adapt. They speak in code. They smuggle testimony through poetry. They post with patience. The work continues because memory continues. Forgetting is the most dangerous technology.
Before my essays, I wrote sanctioned paragraphs inside large institutions. I learned how official speech is constructed, and how clarity is stripped from a sentence . . . One is encouraged to prefer symmetry over accuracy.
The effect is spiritual and does violence to one’s soul. Conscience is taught to whisper. The room obeys, when it should sound an alarm.
Our grief must first earn a hearing; our dead are assigned numbers rather than names. Empires hold territory and vocabulary alike. As such, recovering our speech is part of recovering our dignity.
The phrase “U.S. imperialism” may sound antique, but the reality is current. It lives in supply chains, military aid, diplomatic vetoes, and the expectation that our media will avoid language that might complicate partnership. It governs which deaths are described and which are rendered abstract. It shapes curriculum, philanthropy, and the scope of respectable debate. Above all, it trains the public to treat Palestinian life as a question, not a fact.
Imperial culture does not announce its arrival with banners. It moves through careful renaming. It borrows the aura of reason while pruning history. It requests deference in the name of complexity, and it rewards those who provide it with access.
Say occupation where there is an occupation. Say siege where there is a siege. If a journalist is killed, name the bullet and the chain of command. If a neighborhood is erased, name the policy that permits erasure. Then listen to survivors.
Such speech is an act of repair. It gives words back to the people who have lived under them. It restores trust between the public and the page.
There are journalists in the United States who begin from testimony rather than performance; who respect context over an alibi; who resist the symmetry that mistakes management for justice. Chris Hedges and Moustafa Bayoumi are among them. Their work does not flatter power. It honors the living by telling the truth about the dead. It remembers that language can also be occupied, and that freeing it is part of the same struggle.
To name is a civic and spiritual duty. Will you reflect? Will you testify? Will you remember the stranger? These are disciplines of attention. When we choose the word compound for a hospital, or incident for a massacre, we are answering those questions in the negative. When we choose accurate names, we widen the circle of humanity.
I do not write to police the language of others. I write to examine mine. I want a Western vocabulary that does not reduce Palestinians to a problem or political question in need of management. I want a common speech that lets readers feel that a child pulled from rubble requires no preface.
Empire teaches us to treat reality as talking points. Faith teaches the opposite. If the prophets have any lesson for journalism, it is this: Speak without fear where the truth is plain. Refuse to wrap cruelty in fine phrases. Follow conscience where it burns, even when it threatens comfort.
I offer these lines in the name of tenderness and law, memory and justice, which belong together when language is healthy. Violence is asymmetrical, just like truth. The world deserves words that admit as much.
Support journalists who center Palestinian testimony with patience and respect. Hold editors to their standards. Share stories that restore names and faces. Each act strengthens the possibility of a public language that does not betray the people who must live under it.
This is the work of citizens and of writers. It is the work of the heart.
Excerpted from If You Cannot Say GENOCIDE: Essays on Conscience and Witness by Yahia Lababidi. Copyright © 2026 by Yahia Lababidi. All Rights Reserved.
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My 70-Year-Old Father Has Never Voted in an Israeli Election. This Time, He Will.
After a painful political and intellectual struggle, I have also reached a conclusion I never expected. At this stage, Palestinians living in Israel are too weak to carry on our boycott of elections—and our very survival is on the line.
Oct 27, 2026
In almost every interview I have conducted in recent weeks, and in nearly every conversation with Palestinian citizens of Israel on the streets of our towns, I have heard the same fear.
People are no longer talking primarily about civil rights, equality or better living conditions. They are talking about survival, and about whether they will be able to remain on their land.
At the entrances to our towns, Israeli election billboards are everywhere. Among them are those of the Religious Zionism party, whose leaders advocate extending the land seizures and settlement building pursued in the occupied West Bank to the Galilee and the Naqab, or Negev.
These messages confront us on the roads we travel, at the entrances to the places we call home.
How are people supposed to carry on calmly amid such threats?
For many people I have spoken to, voting is not about faith in parliamentary politics or expecting an Israeli government to deliver justice. It is an attempt to protect themselves, or at least to delay what they fear is coming.
As Palestinian political activity inside Israel has faced severe restrictions since 7 October 2023, voting remains one of the few political acts that does not carry the risks associated with protest.
My father is 70 years old. He has never voted in an election to Israel's parliament, the Knesset. This time, he will.
He is the son of a displaced Palestinian family and spent his childhood under Israeli military rule. Now he fears for our future on this land, for his grandchildren, and for the possibility that his family's history could repeat itself. He does not underestimate the danger. Neither do I.
A painful reckoning
Since 2018, I have held a clear ideological position against participating in Israel's Knesset elections.
I believed, and still believe, that our presence in this framework has harmed our political discourse. Too much of our struggle has been reduced to parliamentary work, while building independent political tools and organising ourselves as a community have been pushed aside.
In fundamental ways, this framework contradicts our vision of liberation and an end to the occupation. That is why I chose to boycott.
But today I find myself questioning that decision. After a painful political and intellectual struggle, I reached a conclusion I never expected. At this stage, we are too weak to boycott.
I turned down invitations to join initiatives encouraging Palestinians to vote. How could I ask others to vote when I was unsure myself? As a journalist, I covered the election campaign without calling on anyone to vote or boycott, and I stepped away from the noise to wrestle with my thoughts. It was exhausting.
At this stage, we are too weak to boycott
I have watched Israeli society's shift further towards the far right since 7 October, alongside the weakness and paralysis of Palestinian politics. Even amid a genocide in Gaza that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, the Palestinian political leadership has failed to agree on a decision that could bring us together. Well, except for postponing Palestinian elections.
We are at rock bottom. We cannot even secure the simple right to harvest our olives safely. We lack effective political tools, a unifying national project and a clear way out of this devastation. There is nothing wrong with admitting it.
For me, boycott is not a moral position that can simply hang in the air. It is a political tool. It must have meaning, impact and a place within a larger political project, or at least offer an alternative.
An individual's refusal to participate can express a principle. A collective boycott that can challenge a system requires organisation, shared objectives and a way to turn refusal into political power.
The politics of remaining
I am not questioning the legitimacy of boycott. I am questioning what it can achieve now, when that collective project is missing. If participation cannot liberate us, and boycott offers no practical alternative, what do we do with the few possibilities that remain?
I have listened to people who want to vote even if all they hope for is to delay the demolition of a single home. Yet the fear now reaches beyond demolitions to displacement from the Naqab and the Galilee. "We're next," I hear everywhere.
When people fear losing their homes and land, how can I dismiss their concerns from the comfort of political theory?
We are a frightened community, and I do not think we fully understand the political and moral meaning of simply remaining: holding on to our place, surviving and enduring in the face of war and killing. That, too, is resistance.
How many around us have considered leaving? How many already have? How many of us have quietly wondered whether we can go on living here? The right to remain is no longer something we can take for granted.
We need reasons and resources to remain. I do not believe the Knesset itself can provide them. What matters is whether people coming together around Arab electoral lists might also rebuild collective political action beyond parliament.
Our crisis will not be solved by a few more Knesset seats. We need to rebuild ourselves politically and socially, far beyond any election.
I will vote.
I know that any alternative government would be no dove of peace. Changing governments will not end the occupation, dismantle colonial structures or transform a system built on Jewish supremacy. I have no illusions about that.
But I cannot bear the thought of Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir remaining in power for another year. I want to see these blood-soaked men defeated, even if only for a moment. Anger is not a political strategy, but neither can I pretend it plays no part in my decision.
Voting without illusions
I understand the argument that Palestinian participation can help Israel present itself as a democracy while concealing structures of domination and inequality. Yet after all this bloodshed, I struggle to see how my ballot could restore the state's moral legitimacy. Participating does not mean endorsing the system; it means making a choice within the narrow space still available.
Perhaps political change will not prevent catastrophe. Perhaps it will only delay it, giving people a moment to breathe. When possibilities are so scarce, I do not want to let even one slip away.
I will vote for the slightest possibility that conditions might improve for Palestinian prisoners, even though their cause does not receive the place it deserves on Arab parties' electoral platforms.
And I cannot turn away from the pleas of Palestinians on the other side of the wall: "For God's sake, get this government off our backs. We just need to breathe, even if only for a little while."
I am not presenting voting as salvation. My reservations remain. I still believe liberation will not come through the Israeli parliament, but through our ability to build institutions, organize collectively and act as a people. Yet political convictions must remain accountable to the lives of those in whose name we hold them.
I think of my father, who lived seven decades without voting in an Israeli election and now plans to do so because he fears for his grandchildren. I cannot dismiss what that means, or the concerns of the many others who see a ballot as one remaining attempt to protect their place on this land.
I will go to the ballot box carrying all my old doubts with me. And at this rock bottom, I do not want to leave a single stone unturned.
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In Defense of Avi Lewis, a Principled Voice in the Shadow of Genocide
Lewis’ track record of defending Palestinian rights reverberates with many in the Jewish community and with countless others across Canada and beyond.
Oct 20, 2026
One of the really likeable things about Canada, along with public health care and politeness, is our penchant for reasoned debate as a way to settle our political differences.
So it’s been jarring to see the level of vitriol recently directed toward Avi Lewis, federal leader of the New Democratic Party, who has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s assault on Gaza and Palestinians.
Lewis, who is Jewish, has come under harsh attack from several prominent critics, especially in response to a recent social media post on the eve of Yom Kippur.
Globe and Mail columnist Robyn Urback accused Lewis of engaging in “antisemitism,” and public finance economist Jack Mintz denounced Lewis at an award ceremony, saying that anti-Israel critics “soon turn to antisemitism.”
Most unsettling however was an article in the National Post, written by Yoni Goldstein, former editor of the Canadian Jewish News, which accused Lewis of “endanger(ing) Jews everywhere in Canada,” and insisting that “(w)hen the community is endangered from the inside, reasoned debate and private conversations are no longer options.”
Instead of reasoned debate, Goldstein suggests Biblical law provides guidance for handling the threat allegedly posed by Lewis. Under the headline “Jewish law tells us how to deal with Avi Lewis,” Goldstein’s article recounts the story of God punishing the Biblical dissenter Korach, burning him and his followers alive, after Korach endangered the Jewish community.
While the article doesn’t directly call for violence against Lewis, it certainly hints at it.
Surely, any suggestion that religious law justifies bloodshed against political dissenters — or anyone else — is completely out of sync with Canadian values, no matter what the religion.
Lewis enraged some in the Jewish community by writing on the eve of a Jewish holy day: “For Jewish people, the personal has always been political and the political always personal. This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name.”
When accused of suggesting some sort of collective responsibility, Lewis clarified: “I spoke as a Jewish Canadian from a place of profound sadness. … Many Jews have said that we have not done enough as Jewish people, among a family of faiths and communities around the world.”
In The Breach, Judy Rebick pointed out that Lewis’ comment was reminiscent of the conscientious men who created the White Ribbon campaign (which opposed violence against women) because they felt a special responsibility as men to address such violence.
Lewis says that, as a Jew, he feels particularly strongly about Israel’s actions against Palestinians, since Israel sometimes claims to act on behalf of the Jewish people.
As a political leader with a megaphone, Lewis really does represent a danger — namely, to the fiercely pro-Israel voices that have long managed to suppress criticism of Israel both inside and outside the community.
The response in some quarters has been extreme, not only smearing Lewis, but even hinting at violence against him.
Lewis comes from an honourable tradition of dissent within the Jewish community. He’s proud that his great-grandfather, Moishe Losz, was a leader of the Jewish Labour Bund, a trade union and political movement that battled antisemitism in Poland, while strongly resisting Zionist calls to solve the problem of Jewish dispossession by taking land from Palestinians.
The struggle between the Bund and the Zionists was bitter, with Zionists ultimately triumphing and managing to establish the state of Israel on land formerly occupied by Palestinians. However, the plight of the Palestinians has remained a central focus for a segment of the Jewish community.
Lewis’s track record of defending Palestinian rights reverberates with this segment of Jewish opinion, and with many other Canadians. His stand for Palestinian justice is a principled one — and all the more laudable given the ferocity — and occasional menace — of his critics.
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Decoding Pro-Israel Buzzwords in a Time of Genocide
From claims of "antisemitism" to understanding what "peace process" has really come to mean, language matters.
Oct 19, 2026
Nearly two years ago, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International released in-depth reports documenting that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Months later, Israeli human rights groups did likewise. Support for Israel has declined steeply among Americans, but its defenders continue to maintain a siege of buzzwords against Palestinian rights.
As historian Rashid Khalidi emphasized in his book Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, “language matters.” Standard terms and tropes “are the essential building blocks of a lofty and solid edifice of denial of an entire narrative, of the existence of an entire people, which is basic to the affirmation of a formidable counterreality.”
Prominent groups, notably the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC and Christians United for Israel—along with allies in Congress, the Executive Branch and the punditocracy—rely on the same buzzwords to defame critics of Israel and deny its systematic crimes against Palestinian people. For instance:
“Antisemitic”
At the top in the rhetorical toolbox, a blunt instrument for smearing Israel’s critics no matter how true their accusations—and no matter the absence of evidence of bigotry against Jewish people.
“Blood libel”
A high-dudgeon epithet for equating valid condemnations of Israel with 900-year-old antisemitic craziness.
“Held to a higher standard”
A catchphrase to evade realities of Israel’s ongoing large-scale crimes against humanity and the fact that Israel uses enormous US military aid to impose apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide as matters of policy.
“Homeland for the Jewish people”
In other words: Palestinians will not replace us.
“Indigenous”
So, even Jewish Americans who recently moved to Israel are indigenous, unlike Palestinians whose ancestors have been living in Palestine for hundreds of years.
“Jewish and democratic state”
It can’t be oxymoronic just because it’s an oxymoron.
“Peace process”
The process of Israeli expansion that has brought war and more war, with the US government functioning as “Israel’s lawyer” while arming Israel with massive quantities of weapons and continuing to make Israel (in the words of a recent Congressional Research Service report) “the largest cumulative recipient of US foreign assistance since World War II.”
“Self-defense”
A term reserved for Israelis but certainly not Palestinians.
“Terrorism”
When Palestinians kill Israeli civilians but not when Israelis kill Palestinian civilians in vastly greater numbers.
“Renounce violence”
A demand routinely made of Palestinian organizations but not of the Israeli government.
“Israel’s right to exist”
The standard gotcha question “Do you believe Israel has a right to exist?” can be answered with clear questions: “Do you think apartheid South Africa had a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think ethnic cleansing has a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think genocide has a right to exist?” . . . “Do you think the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military had a right to exist?”
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