We stand firmly against injustice in all its forms. Nothing can justify the current war crimes committed by Israel in occupied Palestine. Equally, nothing can excuse the continued support offered by other nations to this apartheid regime. If you believe in human rights, dignity, and justice, then we urge you to boycott this rogue state. Silence is complicity, do what’s right.
Two years passed before a word was exchanged between them. They had only met at huge weddings of mutual acquaintances and swapped looks from across big halls. Hassan asked about Samira via one of her cousins. He found out she was a very serious girl, dedicated to her studies and determined to become an architect. Hassan knew very little about architecture, but read up on the subject.
In one second-hand architecture book he found a postcard of London Bridge, probably used as a book marker. He sent her the post card, merely stating she had been in his thoughts ever since seeing her at the wedding of Ahmed and Fatima two years ago. He described the dress she was wearing and wished her and her family well. That was all. He was surprised he could hold his hand steady long enough to write her these five sentences. He doubted she remembered.
Her cousin slipped her the postcard in a crowd at the local market when he thought nobody was looking. Hassan received an answer. She greeted him and reminded him he had done some card tricks for the kids at the wedding and at every other wedding they had attended together. She remembered him. Hassan was overjoyed. He literally jumped for joy until his father asked him if he had lost his mind.
His joy did not last long.
The next time Hassan saw Samira was in his professional capacity. Hassan is an ambulance driver.
Even with her rib cage crushed by debris from her family’s home in Gaza she still looked like the most beautiful sight his eyes had ever met.
He found out via her cousin she had kept the postcard in her prayer book and had looked at it five times a day.
Hassan, as an ambulance driver, carries a lot of pain inside him. He rarely smiles and will do anything to make kids laugh. Heaviest is the weight of all the may have beens.
We threw the Gazan prisoner to the ground, crushed him on his stomach, beat him violently, then stripped him of all his clothes, lifted his buttocks up, blindfolded and shackled by his feet and hands, then surprised us with a hose that was ejected from his back, opened the test valve completely and forcefully, water was forced deep inside him, we silenced his screams by stepping on his mouth with a sledgehammer, raped him with the fireman’s hose, a shock in the body from bottom to top, the hose is still pumping and destroying the tunnels of the prisoner’s body, the tunnels of Gaza and its being, its being and its dreams, it is the amazing discovery in the Sde Teiman camp, and we were happy, laughing, enjoying and praying, reading the verse of the extermination of the Amalekites, not only by sword and cannon, the new sexual torture, the prisoner dies a thousand times during the performance of this sixth Talmudic ritual, it is the will of the Lord who called us to kill and exterminate their offspring because they are human, barbaric, criminal and subhuman.
No, I discovered the pipe pumping into the prisoner’s body, we sent the pictures to Ben Gvir’s office and took control of the Christian parties, all the living people of Israel heard the screams of the Gazan prisoner, we are the executioners of heaven, the sons of light and divine will, for the Lord has a war with the giants of Palestine from generation to generation, choose our war of independence second, we will fight on land, sea and air comprehensively, a beautiful lady was completed in this desert, the voice of the prisoner was silenced, he drowned and suffocated, and did not swell and stagger and be silent and be silent until the end, we have accomplished our historical mission, and destroyed his body will not control the organs and the will of knowledge, nor will we be completely destroyed.
Hello, hello, can you hear us, the military unit in the Israeli army (Force 100) that is responsible for torturing and guarding Palestinian prisoners in the Sde Teiman camp? We are the living people of Israel, we are the government, the ministers, the members of the Knesset, the police, the intelligence, and the judges, we are the academics, the institutions, and the media, we are on the line with you and we are waiting for the Gazan prisoner’s entrails, liver, spleen, veins, and internal tissues to explode. Hello, hello.. We hear him writhe, scream, curl up and convulse, we still watch him as he disintegrates, we raped him in an innovative and modern way that even European executioners in the dark ages of brutality did not discover, we stuffed a telephone inside him through his anus, and we are in contact with his depths, the device is still ringing inside him, telling us that the Gazan prisoner is being torn apart little by little, bleeding profusely, we are erasing Gaza from existence, not only by dropping thousands of tons of bombs and missiles on people’s heads, but by raping its men and women, its ideas, its soul and its identity, what a wonderful scene this is, we celebrated and danced and sang, we felt lust, satisfaction and sexual ecstasy, and now the telephone has fallen silent and the prisoner has fallen silent as well, we have won and our agitated instincts have subsided.
O living people of Israel, we are the most moral IDF in the world. We tortured the Gazan prisoner and broke his bones. We tightened the plastic handcuffs on his hands until one of them was amputated. The blood flowed, awakening all desires in us. We saw him relieve himself in a diaper, crawling on his feet and hands and barking loudly, and the party grew louder and more complete. We stuffed a stick in his buttocks once, and a bottle and a gun barrel another time. Naked, shackled, he writhed and vomited and bled. We reconstructed his human structure to become a primitive animal, eaten by scabies, worms and hallucinations from lack of sleep, hunger, epilepsy and electric shocks. We raped him and craniated everything in his stomach, not to extract confessions or information, but for fun, entertainment and revenge. These are our iron swords. There are no rules of engagement, no laws. We are the bloody militias, we are the armed Torah. Here is God’s slaughterhouse, here is the excitement. And lust, violence and sexual orgies.
O living people of Israel, we are the force (100) in the Sde Teiman camp, we rape male and female prisoners in order to revive our state from the shock of October 7 and the fall of its walls and arrogance, and we give you good news that we have set a superior record in the torture record that no prison in the world has reached, even in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. We have killed 60 prisoners in ten months, we have practiced mass rape of male and female prisoners, and the Gaza Holocaust has become more horrific than the Nazi Holocaust. In order for the state of Israel to live, Palestine must die, Palestine must be erased, and Gaza must burn.
What a wonderful pleasure this summer night in the Sde Timan camp, we released one of our dogs trained to have sex on one of the Gazan prisoners, and it was a horrific and dramatic scene, biting, raping, biting and predation, a night of horror that reminds us of the bloody scenes in the Roman amphitheaters in the Middle Ages, devouring the body and tearing its flesh and bones, the dog having sex with the prisoner and we cheered and applauded and broadcasted the pictures as they happened. It is a tempting scene, to see the prisoner in the most extreme state of humiliation, pain and weakness, to die internally is better than his external and physical death, and the dog is still on top of the prisoner, breathing into him all forms of animal obscenity and his hungry secretions, we enjoyed, hysteria and madness and shaking and screaming, it is the most despicable chapter in the war of extermination that we are waging, the destruction of human life, extinguishing the prisoner of all his values, energies and vitality and stripping him of his humanity, destroying him and stripping him of his dignity and distorting it forever and ever, we are the force (100), Hitler’s armed battalions in the Sde Teman camp.
O living people of Israel, the results of the poll conducted by Channel 12, which says that 47% of the Israeli people support and endorse the rape of prisoners, confirm that there is support for the practice of rape and sexual violence against prisoners. It is a legitimate means of torture and a more effective tool than firearms.
Thank you to our state, which has become a state of rape, prostitution and tyranny in the Middle East. It is immunity and protection for us from prosecution and accountability. Thank you to the activists who arrived at the Sde Teiman camp to protect us from arrest. The people are with us, and the government with all its facilities and apparatuses is with us. We are national heroes. Thank you for the promotions we have received and the medals. Thank you to Ben Gvir, who is working to enact legislation to protect our actions, crimes and despicable practices.
O living people of Israel, we continue to rape the prisoners by all means, we strip them naked, torture them, beat them on their genitals, tighten the clamps on them and castrate them, we continue until we can slaughter the red cow and the temple is built, we continue to demolish the temple of the prisoner and burn his body in torture, abuse and rape, we are the troubled and perverted soldiers, afflicted with all psychological and mental illnesses, we are the mafia working in the Sde Teiman camp, we are still at the crime scene, drinking blood, practicing execution and concealment, satisfying our sexual desires for revenge, we are above the law, and the rules of warfare set by the United Nations and civilized nations do not apply to us, nothing scares us, we will take off the masks, our faces are clear.
O living people of Israel, we are the force (100) in the Sde Teiman camp, we have excelled in discovering brilliant theories of sexual torture, we tame the prisoners by beating them daily, we put out cigarettes on their bodies, we starve them, curse them and tie them up around the clock, we drag them and make them sleep naked on the ground, no clothes, no showers and no ventilation, we lead them to the theatre of military operations as human shields, we carry out Ben Gvir’s instructions to execute the prisoners by shooting them in the head and not improving their conditions, the prisoners are crammed into cages, and each cage has a name: the cage of hell, , the cage of the barn, the cage of rape and sexual pleasure, insects devour their bodies, diseases and foul odors, mold and bodies decomposing, fascist and barbaric chaos, satanic parties, music and death and kicking and violence and howling, their bodies turn into a pressure cooker and a melting pot, they are excellent targets for achieving victory (dirty Arabushim), we give them meals from sexual torture, we are an army of cold-blooded rapists, that’s really the magical beauty of this dirty war.
You have stood here longer than memory — your roots gripping the earth like an ancient prayer. I see your silver leaves shimmer in the morning sun, whispering to the wind that carries the scent of thyme and soil. Generations have rested beneath your shade, and in their silence, you have listened — to laughter, to songs of harvest, and to the soft cries of farewell.
You are not merely a tree; you are the heart of Palestine. In your gnarled trunk lives the story of endurance. Through drought and storm, through the ache of loss and the quiet hope of dawn, you remain — steadfast, patient, unyielding. Each olive you bear is a promise, a reminder that life continues even when the world forgets to notice.
I write to you as one writes to a beloved — with longing, with gratitude, with the ache of distance. For though borders may divide and time may scatter us, your roots remind me that we all grow from the same soil of memory. You are the keeper of our names, the witness to our seasons, the living symbol of what it means to belong.
And so, I begin these letters — not to mourn, but to remember; not to grieve, but to celebrate the love that endures as surely as your branches reach for the light.
Years after it was deemed illegal by a UN court, the wall continues to cut through and divide Palestinian communities.
About 85 percent of the wall falls within the West Bank rather than running along the internationally recognised 1967 boundary, known as the Green Line. [Al Jazeera]
Published On 8 Jul 20208 Jul 2020
Thursday marks the 16th anniversary since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) deemed Israel’s separation wall illegal.
In 2002, Israel started constructing the wall, slicing through Palestinian communities, agricultural fields, and farmland at the height of the second Intifada.
The wall has been described by Israeli officials as a necessary security precaution against “terrorism”.
Palestinians, however, have decried it as an Israeli mechanism to annex Palestinian territory as it is built deep within the West Bank and not along the 1967 Green Line, the generally recognised boundary between Israel and the West Bank.
While the ICJ’s decision is non-binding, it found the wall violates international law and called for its dismantlement. It also ruled Israel should pay reparations for any damage caused.
A month after the ICJ decision, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted overwhelmingly to demand Israel to comply with the UN’s highest legal body.
The vote called on UN member states “not to recognise the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and around East Jerusalem“, and “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction”.
The Israeli separation barrier divides East Jerusalem and the Palestinian West Bank town of Qalandia. [File: Thomas Coex/AFP]Israel’s separation barrier covered in graffiti, one depicting the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the Qalandiya checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah. [File: Sebastian Scheiner/AP]The Israeli settlement of Pisgat Zeev (left), built in a suburb of the mostly Arab East Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Shuafat refugee camp behind Israel’s controversial separation wall. [File: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP]The wall separating East Jerusalem from the Palestinian village of Abu Dis. [File: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP]A Palestinian man rides his motorcycle past a mural of US President Donald Trump on Israel’s controversial separation barrier in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. [File: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP]Palestinian farmers harvest their olives in the southern West Bank village of the monastery of Samet, near the Israeli separation wall in Hebron. [Abed al-Hashlamoun/EPA]A man walks along a road by Israel’s controversial separation barrier between the occupied West Bank village of Nazlat Issa (left) and the Arab-Israeli town of Baqa al-Gharbiya (right) in northern Israel. [File: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP]The Israeli barrier at the Palestinian town of Abu Dis in the Israeli-occupied West Bank east of Jerusalem. [Ammar Awad/Reuters]A segregated Israeli highway near Jerusalem that features a large concrete wall segregating Israeli and Palestinian traffic. Critics have branded the road an ‘apartheid highway’, saying it is part of a planned segregated road system that would benefit Israelis exclusively. [Mahmoud Illean/AP]
Before 1948 (the Nakba), when the State of Israel was established after committing many massacres against the Palestinian people and displacing them from their cities and villages, Palestine was under British colonialism. During this time, the currency used was the Palestinian pound. The Palestinian pound was introduced in 1927 and served as the official currency until the establishment of the Zionist occupation state.
The Palestinian pound was linked to the British pound sterling, and both currencies circulated in the region. Banknotes and coins issued for the Palestinian pound included various symbols and images related to the region.
The Palestine Pound was replaced by the Israeli Pound. The economic and political changes in the region influenced the currency choices in different areas, with the Jordanian Dinar being used in certain territories, and the Israeli Shekel becoming the official currency in Israel.
The Palestinian Pound was subdivided into 1,000 mils. Mils were used as a subunit for both coins and banknotes. Mils were commonly used in smaller denominations of coins, such as 1 mil, 2 mills, 5 mils, 10 mils, 20 mils, 50 mills, and 100 mils.Pounds were used for larger denominations, such as 1 Pound, 5 Pounds, 10 Pounds, 50 Pounds, and 100 Pounds.
Background:
Olive trees carry more than an economic significance in the lives of Palestinians. They are not just like any another trees, they are symbolic of Palestinians’ attachment to their land.
Olive groves beneath the Palestinian sun,
Symbolic bastions in a battle not yet won.
Draught-resistant, in struggles deeply sown,
They epitomize resilience, a people's own.
Through the annals, witnesses steadfast and true,
To Palestinian history, steadfast and imbued.
Tended meticulously, through generations vast,
Yet, the Israeli occupation looms, an ominous cast.
Settlers' relentless assaults, a ceaseless plight,
Permits and tribulations, an ongoing fight.
Harvest season's joy, tinged with disquiet,
Families gather, resilience put to the test.
In the crucible of challenges, they endure,
Olive branches reaching, a symbol demure.
From ancient groves to distant shores,
A narrative of tenacity, echoing forevermore.
For more than seven decades, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been one of the most painful and unresolved struggles in modern history. At its heart lies a simple, haunting question: How can the Israeli nation expect peace while denying it to the Palestinians?
The world has watched as Palestinians have lost their homes, lands, hospitals, universities, schools and freedom — not through natural misfortune but through racist policies of Israeli occupation, illegal settlement expansion, and brutal Israeli military force. Entire neighborhoods in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been demolished by Israeli occupation forces to make way for settlements declared illegal under international law. Palestinian families who have lived on the same land for generations are displaced overnight, told their ancestral homes were “promised” to Jews by divine right.
The moral contradiction is staggering. Israel presents itself as a victim — a nation under constant threat — while exercising brutal military power over a stateless, occupied Palestinian population. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed or injured by Israeli occupation forces , and millions more are confined behind walls, checkpoints, and blockades that control their movement, access to work, healthcare, and even water.
This is not self-defense. It is systemic domination, what many human rights organizations — including Israeli ones — have called Israeli apartheid. The creation of hundreds of settlements and the building of separation barriers on Palestinian land carve the West Bank into disconnected fragments, preventing Palestinians from building a viable state or even living normal lives.
Israeli nation must understand that it cannot build peace through walls and weapons while creating despair on the Palestinian side. Peace requires empathy, justice, and recognition of shared humanity — values that cannot coexist with illegal occupation or collective punishment.
To feel safe, Israelis must allow Palestinians to feel safe. To find peace, they must recognize the Palestinians’ equal right to live freely, securely, and with dignity on their own land. No amount of military strength or theological justification or endless American support can substitute for moral responsibility.
Until justice is done, there can be no real peace — not for Palestine, and not for Israel.
In 2024, humanity has been stained by genocide in Gaza, war, and the climate crisis. And while signs of hope persist, the future is bleak, says Owen Jones.
The West’s moral claims — used to justify its global hegemony — were buried in the rubble of Gaza, alongside countless, and uncounted, thousands of Palestinians, writes Owen Jones [photo credit: Getty Images]
For those who fear that our species is taking a gruesome wrong turn, 2024 was a year which offered no shortage of evidence.
Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza, of course, is the most hideous case study.
Much of the world never took seriously the so-called ‘rules-based order’, noting how the world is rigged in favour of the US and former European colonisers, with the recent examples of the Iraq war or indeed Israel before October 7 underlining how the West picks and chooses international law as it deems convenient.
But witnessing the world’s first live-streamed genocide, armed and facilitated by the US and its allies, shocked even those who had few existing illusions.
The West’s moral claims — used to justify its global hegemony — were buried in the rubble of Gaza, alongside countless, and uncounted, thousands of Palestinians.
2024 left those who facilitated — or denied — one of the worst crimes of our age with nowhere to hide.
In January, South Africa’s case alleging genocide was heard at the International Court of Justice: presenting the devastating evidence, Irish lawyer Blinne Ni Gralaigh declared this was “the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real-time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something.”
The ICJ issued provisional ordersdemanding Israel refrain from acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, not least ensuring the provision of humanitarian aid, which were grievously flouted.
In May, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and in November, they were finally issued.
By the end of the year, a consensus had been forged that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, from academics specialising in genocide such as Professor Omer Bartov to Amnesty International in a report issued in December.
Israel committed some of the most depraved atrocities imaginable on a daily basis in a tiny strip of land already largely reduced to apocalyptic ruin when the year began.
Most infrastructure was left severely damaged or destroyed. Almost every school was attacked, some repeatedly, like the al-Tabin school in August in which over 100 Palestinians were killed. Gaza’s hospitals were violently dismantled, with the flagship Al-Shifa hospital left in ruins in April.
Children were routinely butchered by the Israeli army, like 5-year-old Hind Rajab, slaughtered in her car alongside her relatives, including her four cousins, after phoning the Red Crescent begging for help: the paramedics sent to save her were slaughtered by the Israeli military, too.
The Israeli military systematically prevented aid from getting in, with two US government agencies concluding by April that this was deliberate. Joe Biden declared an Israeli assault on Rafah was a red line Israel must not cross: after it was subjected to military assault, no action was taken.
Famine spread throughout Gaza. Babies were freezing to death by the end of the year. The official death toll — more than 45,000 — was widely accepted as a drastic undercount, with thousands missing under rubble and deaths from indirect causes not included, and the counting system imploding along with Gaza’s healthcare system. Estimates of the real death toll varied: three public health experts estimated 186,000 in the Lancet medical journal in July.
Despite most of the world repulsed by this genocidal mayhem in Gaza, Israel retained the support of the world’s only superpower, ensuring it enjoyed impunity.
Pogroms escalated in the West Bank, while Israel’s butchery extended to Lebanon, and it invaded Syria. The Israeli leadership became consumed with triumphalism, with Hamas leaders killed, not least Yahya Sinwar in October, and Hezbollah left decimated by exploding pagers in September and the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah.
The West’s facilitation of Israel’s barbarism underlined its moral collapse, but there were other symptoms, not least a growing right-wing authoritarian wave. Donald Trump’s election underlined that his 2016 victory was not an aberration, but an epochal shift. His victorious incarnation was more extreme and vengeful, leaving question marks over US democracy.
From Austria — where the far-right Freedom Party topped the polls — to the United Kingdom — where right-wing populist Nigel Farage’s Reform surged — the trend is clear. The fragility of ‘centrism’was underlined by the disintegration of Emmanuel Macron in France, the collapse of Germany’s government, and elections in Britain.
There, the ruling Conservatives imploded amidst scandal, collapsing public services and plummeting living standards, but Keir Starmer’s Labour party secured little more than a third of the vote. By the end of the year, an absence of vision for a crisis-ridden country left the Labour leader with the worst ratings of any prime minister recorded at this point into their rule.
There were moments of hope: the lightning removal of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship in Syria led to jubilation there, even though the nation’s future is far from certain or stable.
India’s Hindu nationalist government suffered a setback in elections, weakening its rule. But the overall picture was bleak. The war in Ukraine remained a hideous meat grinder, with a Russian victory appearing ever likelier. And climate scientists repeatedly revealed data underlining the existential menace facing humanity, with one report in October warning “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster.”
War, genocide, a right-wing surge and looming existential crisis: the vital signs of humanity are not good. But at the same time, growing numbers have become increasingly stripped of their illusions, a precondition for change.
Gaza has been the greatest catalyst, leaving growing numbers to ask how their leaders could facilitate such a grotesque crime, and mainstream media outlets’ failure to accurately report on such an abomination exposed.
In Britain’s elections, the surge of the Green Party and anti-genocide independent candidates spoke to this politicisation. Whether enough will develop to offer a counterweight to the terrifying direction of travel is another question. There are no guarantees, and 2025 will reveal whether there are new signs of hope — or whether humanity’s descent into the abyss remains the norm.
Owen Jones is a British journalist, columnist, and political activist. He is the author of Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class and The Establishment – And How They Get Away With It.
