THE SET-UP: We may finally found the line—it’s manufactured starvation.
Now, after 11 weeks of denying Gazans food (among other things) and a particularly brutal string of Israeli bombings that killed children in bunches, the levee has been breached.
“Enough is enough,” proclaimed former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an op-ed for Ha’aretz:
What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We're not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it's the result of government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.
After months spent defending Israel against the charge of genocide, the former Prime Minister admitted, “In recent weeks I've been no longer able to do so.” That’s because the Israeli government’s intentions are now clear. Like more and more leaders and observers around the world, he’s responding to Netanyahu’s nearly three month-long effort to starve the Strip. Said Olmert in an early morning appearance on CNN, “What is it if not a war crime?”
That’s a major crack in the levee, both domestically in Israel and internationally. It was followed up by a tearful plea before the UN Security Council by Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour. British Quakers and Belgium’s Foreign Minister both used the “G-word.” And they were all joined by writers and artists in Ireland and the UK who separately added their collective outrage to 1,200 Israeli academics who called for the war to end.
In a bid to hijack the newscycle, the Israeli government announced they’d killed the brother of the deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Actually, reports of Mohammed Sinwar’s death started appearing after a March 13th airstrike and had been claimed in the weeks since … but today, they injected it back into the newscycle … perhaps making it easier for US media to ignore Olmert or, at least, to blunt his impact.
Yes, the levee is breached … but it hasn’t broken … yet.
Both ethnic cleansing and genocide hinge on intent. Olmert looks at the conduct of the post-ceasefire campaign—called “Operation Gideon’s Chariots”—and clearly sees intent to commit war crimes. And, IMHO, he’s not wrong. I would simply suggest he examine investigations into the IDF’s Rules of Engagement … because I think he will find evidence of intent goes back to the early days of the war.
Also important is incitement. Because the way to this result has been paved by government incitement … by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bibi Netanyahu. Bibi in particular has repeatedly likened the population of Gaza to Amalek—an Old Testament foe of both Saul and David. Saul got the assignment, but he disobeyed God by NOT completing the divinely-ordained genocide of the Amalekites. He spared their king. That was a stain on Saul’s record. So, when David got his shot at completing God’s to-do list, he “finished the job.”
And just in case there’s any doubt about the “job” God first assigned to Saul, here’s God’s commandment. It’s found in the Book of Samuel. Here’s the King James translation of 1 Samuel 15:3:
Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
Unlike Saul, Bibi has repeatedly vowed “finish the job.” The question is … what’s the job? If, as Bibi has said from the start, Gaza is Amalek, the job is clear. And so is the intent of his incitement. - jp
TITLE: Yes to Transfer: 82% of Jewish Israelis Back Expelling Gazans
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-magazine/.premium/yes-to-transfer-82-of-jewish-israelis-back-expelling-gazans/00000197-12a4-df22-a9d7-9ef6af930000
EXCERPTS: A recent survey of Israeli Jews reveals a growing comfort with the idea of forcibly expelling Palestinians – both from Gaza and from within Israel's borders. The poll also found that a significant minority supports the mass killing of civilians in enemy cities captured by the Israeli army.
Commissioned in March by Pennsylvania State University and conducted by Tamir Sorek for the Israeli polling firm Geocartography Knowledge Group, the survey polled a representative sample of 1,005 Jewish Israelis. It posed a series of "impolite" questions – topics typically avoided in mainstream Israeli polling – about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
According to the results, 82 percent of respondents supported the expulsion of Gaza's residents, while 56 percent favored expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel. These figures mark a sharp rise from a 2003 survey, in which support for such expulsions stood at 45 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
Religious interpretations play a key role in shaping these views. Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents agreed that "when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command – killing all its inhabitants." Sixty-five percent said they believed in the existence of a modern-day incarnation of Amalek, the Israelite biblical enemy whom God commanded to wipe out in Deuteronomy 25:19. Among those believers, 93 percent said the commandment to erase Amalek's memory remains relevant today.
One of the most influential figures to call for such policies is Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Ginsburgh gained notoriety for his pamphlet "Baruch Hagever" ("Baruch the Man"), which praised Baruch Goldstein, the settler who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994. Following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, Ginsburgh was placed under administrative detention. He later endorsed a book that sanctioned the killing of non-Jewish women and children.
Born in the United States in 1944, Ginsburgh began his rabbinic career in the Chabad movement. Though he still resides in Kfar Chabad, his greatest influence is among nationalist Haredi Jews within the religious Zionist movement. His teachings blend Hasidic mysticism with messianic nationalism, drawing inspiration from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and the Revisionist Zionist movement. His appeal even extends to some secular Israelis, drawn to his New Age-inflected ideas and his concept of "Jewish psychology."
The most radical followers of Ginsburgh's ideology are the so-called "hilltop youth" – violent, young settlers from illegal outposts – who now form an armed militia responsible for frequent attacks and occasional killings in West Bank villages. Unlike the early leaders of the Gush Emunim settler movement, who at least nominally accepted the idea that Palestinians could remain in the land as a ger toshav (a halakhic term for a non-Jew living in the Land of Israel) without political rights, Ginsburgh views any Palestinian presence in the Land of Israel as a desecration of God's name.
In his "nut cracking" sermon, Ginsburgh likened the State of Israel to a nut with four shells encasing the fruit – the Jewish people. Drawing on Kabbalistic concepts, he described these shells (kelipot) as spiritual impurities, remnants of creation that must be shattered to release divine sparks. While some shells may contain traces of holiness, most are aligned with evil – the sitra achra, Aramaic for "other side."
The cracking of these three shells is nearing completion, with the rapid pace of regime change stemming from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial overhaul, the crushing of the education system and the widespread abandonment of the professional ethos within the Israeli media.
Initially, Ginsburgh argued, these shells were necessary for the Jewish people's development. But now, he claimed, they have become obstacles. To bring about redemption, the shells must be broken. The first three – the media, the judiciary, and government institutions – are irredeemably impure and must be destroyed. The fourth, the military, can be salvaged, but only if its moral foundations are purged.
As early as 2005, Ginsburgh articulated a clear vision upon which his followers should act. But the plan required a window of opportunity to crack open the nut, a time when vengeance could be spontaneously and organically applied to the Gentiles so that the divine substance would be released from the shell. At that point, all that would then remain would be the fruit, the people of Israel, ready to take on the time of salvation. At the moment of vengeance, Ginsburgh believes, the avengers can also free themselves from the shackles of halakha, or Jewish religious law, which restricts bloodshed.
The opportunity presented itself on October 7, 2023, following the Hamas massacre of civilians in Israel. "The wicked acts of the people of Gaza underscores their Amalek-like features," he wrote in his "Niflaot" pamphlet on the weekly Torah portion a few weeks after the massacre. These features, he added, "demands that we observe the command 'Blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven, you shall not forget it' – total annihilation, not sifting," meaning not checking who is innocent and who is guilty. Sacrificing the hostages by refusing any deal to secure their release is a reasonable price to pay for what the rabbi, like Netanyahu, calls "total victory."
The secular public's widespread adoption of positions in support of ethnic cleansing and genocide is more evidence of the realization of Ginsburgh's vision. That public has failed to articulate an alternative vision to messianic Zionism in the form of human rights for all. Thus, 69 percent of secular Israelis in the Penn State survey supported the expulsion of Gazans, while 31 percent of them considered Joshua's extermination of Jericho's residents as a precedent that the IDF should adopt.
Some see the shock and anxiety that gripped the Israeli public in the wake of October 7 as the only explanation for this radicalization. But it seems the massacre only unleashed demons that had been nurtured for decades in the media and the legal and educational systems. Zionism, besides being a national movement, is also a movement of immigrant-settlers, seeking to displace the local population. Settler-immigrant societies always encounter indiscriminate violent resistance from indigenous groups. The desire for absolute and permanent security can lead to an aspiration to eliminate the resisting population. Therefore, virtually every settlement project has the potential for ethnic cleansing and genocide, as indeed happened in North America in the 17th through 19th centuries or in Namibia in the early 1900s.
To be sure, Ginzburg is not the cause of Israel's moral collapse. But the nationalist Haredi movement, with Ginsburgh as one of its most prominent leaders, offers Israelis a religious veneer for erasing Palestinian indigeneity. It provides a language and a plan of action for both observant and secular Israeli Jews who seek a solution to the conflict that doesn't force them to cede the privileges granted by a regime of Jewish supremacy.
TITLE: In a single week, a new settler outpost erases an entire Palestinian community
https://www.972mag.com/israeli-settlers-outpost-maghayer-al-dir/
EXCERPTS: On the morning of May 18, Israeli settlers established an illegal outpost inside the Palestinian shepherding community of Maghayer Al-Dir in Area C of the West Bank, just 100 meters from residents’ homes.
By midweek, before any violent confrontations or incidents of livestock theft, about half the Palestinian villagers had packed up their belongings and fled, with the rest preparing to do the same: families began loading sheep, furniture, animal feed and water tanks onto trucks under the setters’ watchful eyes.
But on Saturday afternoon, the settlers’ routine “walking tour” through the village escalated into an organized attack. Four settlers began shoving young Palestinians standing on the roofs of structures being dismantled. “[The settlers] were looking for a fight,” said Avishay Mohar, an activist and photographer who was on the scene.
The settlers and Palestinians began throwing stones at each other. Just when the confrontation seemed to have ended, the settlers called reinforcements: about 25 additional settlers — some masked, many armed with assault rifles and clubs — joined the attack on residents and international activists, who began fighting back.
After the army finally showed up and called ambulances, the search for the 12 wounded — some of whom were found between 500 and 600 meters from the village — continued into the night. By the next morning, not a single resident remained in Maghayer Al-Dir. All 23 families, totaling around 150 people, had been forced to flee.
“The attack sent a message to Palestinian communities across the West Bank,” said Mohar. “Not only can you not stay — you can’t even leave quietly.”
Since October 2023, over 60 Palestinian shepherding communities in the West Bank have been displaced, with at least 14 new outposts built on or near their ruins. One violently expelled community — Wadi Al-Siq — faced abuse that included sexual assault, leading to the disbandment of the Israeli army’s “Desert Frontier” unit.
As in the case of Maghayer Al-Dir, the establishment of pastoral settler outposts has been the primary factor driving Palestinians out of their homes in Area C. According to a recent report by NGOs Peace Now and Kerem Navot, Israeli settlers have used shepherding outposts to seize at least 786,000 dunams of land — about 14 percent of the entire area of the West Bank. In the last two and a half years, seven Palestinian shepherding communities neighboring Maghayer Al-Dir have been depopulated.
Maghayer Al-Dir was the last remaining Palestinian community in the Ramallah periphery located east of the Allon Road, a strategic north-south highway built by Israel in the 1970s to link settlements and prepare for the potential annexation of territory east of the road, along the Jordanian border. Originally from the Naqab/Negev, Maghayer Al-Dir’s families were expelled in 1948 to a different part of the Jordan Valley, before the state decided to construct a military base and displaced them once again to their most recent site.
In video footage taken by activist Itamar Greenberg on the day settlers established the new outpost, one settler can be heard boasting about the ethnic cleansing of Maghayer Al-Dir. “This is the last remaining spot — thank God we’ve driven everyone out … All of this area is just Jews,” the settler explained while gesturing towards the expanse to his left. Then the camera focuses on the site where the hilltop youth are busily constructing the outpost. “Here too there will be Jews.”
As +972 reported in August 2023, most of the communities in the territory between Ramallah and Jericho, an area of 150,000 dunams, were forced to flee during the previous months as settlers began rapidly constructing herding outposts and violently descending on residents, all with the backing of the Israeli army and state institutions. Now, only two Palestinian communities — M’arajat and Ras Al-Auja — remain in the entire southern Jordan Valley.
Even before the latest outpost was built, Maghayer Al-Dir was completely hemmed in by Israeli settlements and outposts. To the north lies the semi-authorized outpost of Mitzpe Dani; to the east, Ruach Ha’aretz (“Spirit of the Land”), established shortly before the war and later expanded; and to the south, near the now-depopulated village of Wadi Al-Siq, stands one of Neria Ben Pazi’s outposts. Though Ben Pazi was sanctioned by the British government last week for his role in building illegal outposts and forcing Palestinian Bedouin families from their homes, he was seen patrolling the village in the days leading up to the community’s forced departure.
“The settlers came prepared, with a plan, to take the land and expel us,” said one village resident who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal from settlers.
TITLE: Israel approves 22 new West Bank settlements in ‘secret vote’
https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/israel-approves-new-west-bank-settlements-gsbrsu72
EXCERPTS: Israel's Security Cabinet has approved 22 new settlements in the West Bank, including two that were previously demolished during the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, a key settler leader has claimed.
Israel Ganz, the leader of the settlement umbrella group the Yesha Council, said the “dramatic” decision represented an unprecedented “deepening [of] the Israeli settlement” of the territory.
"Led by Finance Minister and Minister in the Defence Ministry Bezalel Smotrich, together with Defence Minister Israel Katz – and with the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and all government ministers – the Israeli government has decided to establish 22 new towns" he said.
According to a report by Ynet on Tuesday night, the Security Cabinet approved the move in secret around two weeks ago.
The villages span across regional councils throughout the West Bank, including Mount Hebron and the Jordan Valley.
Some of the villages listed are existing outposts that had, thus far, been illegal under Israeli law, while others will be newly constructed.
According to Israel Hayom, the government intends to use some of the new towns to bolster its presence around Route 443, which connects Jerusalem and Tel Aviv through Modi'in.
The cabinet was also reported to have green-lit the re-establishment of Homesh and Sa-Nur, communities in the northern West Bank that were forcibly evacuated and demolished during the 2005 withdrawal.
Many of these settlements have been re-established in the years since in defiance of Israeli law. More generally, a large proportion of West Bank settlements are widely considered to violate international law, including by the UK government.
"This historic decision sends a clear message," Ganz declared, adding: "We are here not only to stay, but to firmly establish the State of Israel in this area – for all its residents – and to strengthen its security."