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.
Israel’s reputation in the world steadily declines to that of a non-grata state, credit rating has dropped, the poverty index and the cost of living are flourishing, overloaded public services are collapsing, and the government (regime) is scratching its back while blaming everyone for the situation.
More than 130 prisoners are still in Gaza, and their families are consumed with lies, manipulations, and humiliations. Settlers of the northern and western Negev are refugees in their “own [occupied] land” and don’t know when they will return home, if there is a home left. In Gaza, there millions hungry and tens of thousands dead, most of them uninvolved, including 12,000 children – but Hamas is still alive and kicking; and every day, more israeli soldiers return in coffins to families whose world has collapsed.
Forgive me, but I’ve sworn quite a lot in this at @Keir_Starmer today as he had the brass neck to sit in parliament and not call what’s happening in Gaza a genocide.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, criticised British Foreign Secretary David Lammy for refusing to label the Israeli war on Gaza as genocide during his address in the UK Parliament last month. pic.twitter.com/JSpBxHJ0Vm
Handala (hands clasped behind his back, back to the reader):
You stand in a uniform and call it order. Tell me — what name do you give the empty cup you hand a man who asks only for water?
Israeli Guard (tight, practiced smile):
Procedure. Discipline. Measures for security.
Handala:
Procedure is a word people use to hide what they will not admit to their conscience. Do you feel secure when you deny another human the basics of life?
Israeli Guard:
We do what is necessary. The orders come from above, mainly from Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu.
Handala:
“Above” is a place for commands, not for conscience. When the ones above praise humiliation and racism as policy, whose face do you have to wash before you sleep?
Israeli Guard (bristles):
You speak as if you know the world of decisions. We protect Jewish citizens.
Handala:
Protection of one ethnic group that strips dignity from another becomes the very thing it pretends to guard against. If protection means turning a person into a lesson, who taught you that lesson?
Israeli Guard:
Leaders set the rules. We carry them out. Loyalty matters.
Handala:
Loyalty to apartheid and racist laws! Loyalty to cruelty! There is a line between following an order and becoming the instrument of someone’s cruelty. Do you draw that line or blur it?
Israeli Guard (low):
We’re told the stakes are existential for our nation. The rhetoric is hot; the streets demand toughness and iron hand against our enemies.
Handala:
Rhetoric is a fire that warms Israelis and burns Palestinians. When your nazi leaders stoke flames with words that dehumanise, do you not notice that smoke in your own lungs?
Israeli Guard:
Politics is complicated. People in power say hard things.
Handala:
“Complicated” is a comfortable coat to wear when you’re standing barefoot over someone else’s life. When a policy promises nothing but humiliation and discrimination and racism, is that protection — or punishment dressed as policy?
Israeli Guard (shifts):
We follow the legal chain. If there are problems, they are for the courts to resolve.
Handala:
Which courts? Israeli courts are part of this illegal apartheid. They have never punish Israeli war criminals but punished the victims and stripped them from their rights. Who speaks for the silent, for the ones who can no longer speak because the rules were too racist? If you were the one cuffed, who would bet that the same chain would loosen?
Israeli Guard:
There are checks. There are reports.
Handala:
Reports written by the perpetrators are lies — and lies written on paper burn easily.
Who strikes the match when accountability is turned into politics?
When leaders cheer the breaking of human spirits, is that justice — or just theatre?
Israeli Guard (voice cracks):
You accuse my nation, you are anti-Semite.
Handala:
I accuse these acts — criminal, inhumane, and racist — for what they are.
And don’t hide behind your tired propaganda; remember, I am Semitic too.
Nations are built by many hands: some create, some destroy.
You chose which hand to be — the one that breaks, not the one that builds.
Israeli Guard:
I am only one. What can one man do against a whole machine?
Handala:
One man can refuse to be the cog that grinds. One man can tell the truth in the corridor where the loud mouths boast. One man can hand a cup back, or stop a chained joke. Courage is small at first; its echo is large. What do you whisper to your kids in the evening about these tortures?
Israeli Guard (quiet):
And if I speak? If I refuse?
Handala:
Then you will be alone for a while and the right thing will be right forever. You will not be free of consequence — but you will be free of complicity.
Israeli Guard:
They will call me traitor.
Handala:
They will call many names, but many will call you hero for standing against the illegal and inhumane practices.
History calls them witnesses. Which name would you rather hear when the children come looking for answers — “he obeyed” or “he stopped”?
Israeli Guard (after a silence):
The orders… come from powerful men who promise safety, and they reward those who obey and punish those who refuse.
Handala:
Power that buys obedience with promises of false safety is cheap and corrupted power. True safety is built when mercy and equal law walk together — not when the occupier stomps people under occupation.
Israeli Guard:
And those above? They speak loudly. They have followers.
Handala:
Loud mouths are not the same as right hands. Followers that cheer humiliation and racism will one day need forgiveness. Will you be the hand that offers it, or the hand that tightens the lash?
Israeli Guard (looking away):
I have a uniform, a family, fear.
Handala:
So did the first man who refused an unjust order. Courage asks less than the conscience demands; it only asks you to remember you are a human when you no longer see one across from you.
Israeli Guard:
You speak as if you know forgiveness.
Handala:
I speak as if I know memory. Memory is the bank where we deposit our deeds. What you put in there you will one day withdraw.
Israeli Guard (a breath):
If I told the truth, what would change?
Handala:
Truth is a small seed that grows stubborn. It forces inquiries, protects witnesses, makes courts listen and may save victims. It does not erase what was done, but it stops the next hand from repeating the same act.
Israeli Guard:
They’ll silence me. They’ll punish me for exposing orders.
Handala:
Then let it not be said you were silent because it was easy. Let it be said you were silent because you feared. Fear is human. Regret is heavier. Choose which burden you will carry.
Israeli Guard (quietly, almost to himself):
If I refuse to obey an order to humiliate, will that make me a criminal to my people?
Handala:
Not to the people who build a future worth living in. You might be a criminal to a moment’s politics. But history forgives the man who saves another’s dignity more readily than it forgives the man who kept his badge and lost his humanity.
Israeli Guard (hands unclench):
And if the orders are from the very ministers who celebrate violence and torture?
Handala:
Ministers wore garments of authority — others wore bones of consequence. When ministers reward torture, they expose not strength but fragility. Strength does not need to humiliate.
Israeli Guard:
You will not turn. You will always stand with your back to the reader, unbowed.
Handala (still turned away):
My back faces the world that turned its back on justice. My posture is not surrender but a promise: that I will not look away until the hand that breaks is held to account.
Israeli Guard (softly):
And if I walk with you?
Handala:
Then the burden will be shared. Then the story will change — from a catalogue of brokenness to one of repair. Walk, but first empty your pockets of excuses.
Israeli Guard:
I will carry nothing but truth.
Handala:
Then begin by naming what you know. Names have weight. Once named, things can be fixed.
Israeli Guard (nods, a small, uncertain resolve):
I will… speak.
Handala (no fanfare, just the fixed posture of a child who will not be pulled in):
Speak and make your silence a bargain for life, not a receipt for shame.
The NYT, BBC, CNN, among others emphasized the attacks on Israeli fans, while minimizing the anti-Arab racism that seemingly provoked much of the violence.
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans stage a pro-Israel demonstration ahead of the UEFA Europa League match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on Nov. 7, 2024. Photo by Mouneb Taim/Anadolu via Getty Images
When violence erupted around a soccer match in Amsterdam this week between fans of Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv and Dutch club Ajax, Western media outlets rushed to frame it mostly as an antisemitic attack on Israeli fans. But a closer examination of the coverage reveals troubling patterns in how racial violence is reported; not only is anti-Arab violence and racism marginalized and minimized, but violence against Israelis is amplified and reduced to antisemitism.
Consider this paradox: The New York Timesran the headline, “Israeli soccer fans injured in attacks linked to antisemitism in Amsterdam,” but the body article contained only verified evidence of anti-Arab racism. Its lede emphasized antisemitic motivation, while the body of the article cited footage by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans chanting anti-Arab and racist slogans – footage that the New York Times had actually verified. The only basis at the time for claiming antisemitism came from a single tweet by the Dutch prime minister, while the linked Amsterdam police’s own statement made no such attribution (subsequent police statements did condemn “antisemitic behavior”).
The New York Times was not alone in minimizing Israeli fan violence and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. Other mainstream outlets like NBC, CBS, CNN, and the BBC, all ran almost identical headlines that read like Israeli press releases, emphasizing that Israelis had been “attacked.”
The language was incendiary, suggesting that there had been some one-sided planned ethnic cleansing of Amsterdam. President Isaac Herzog used the word “pogrom” to describe what happened, a loaded term that was then picked up by other commentators. Reuters used the phrase “antisemitic attack squads,” while the Telegraph quoted the Dutch king in its headline, leading with “We failed Jews during football attacks as we did under Nazis.” The invocation of Nazism did not stop there, the US-based Anti-Defamation League emphasized that the attacks happened on the night before the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1938. One commentator posted a photo of Anne Frank. Subscribe
Despite no Israelis being killed, a media system loathe to use the term genocide to describe the deaths of over 43,000 Palestinians seemed happy to use terminology redolent of the Holocaust. Suddenly, incidents of soccer hooliganism and anti-Israeli violence seemingly provoked by anti-Arab racism were being reduced to antisemitic pogroms.
Burying the Lede
Buried or omitted in most accounts was verified evidence of anti-Arab racism that had occurred prior to these events, including footage of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans tearing down Palestinian flags, attacking taxi drivers, and chanting explicitly racist slogans like “Death to the Arabs” and “Let the IDF fuck the Arabs.”
So marginalized were stories attempting to explain violence from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans that one Amsterdam resident took to social media to call out the media bias. She described hiding in fear as Israeli supporters attacked her home for displaying a Palestinian flag, stating in Dutch, “I hardly see anything in the media about my experience – that letting loose agitated football hooligans with war traumas, from a country that commits genocide and engages in extreme dehumanization, in the city *regardless of whether there are counter-protests* is not a good idea.”
This demotion of non-Israeli experiences and suffering in the media was evident in other outlets such as the Washington Post and Channel 4 News. On Instagram, their headlines emphasized the attacks on Israeli fans. Only in the accompanying text did they clarify the context, with Channel 4 news writing “that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were involved in two days of violence in the city, including footage of them singing anti-Arab and racist chants.”
Minimizing anti-Arab racism and the provocations by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans was not subtle. The BBC’s extensive live blog of the unfolding events quoted 13 Israeli and Jewish sources while allowing just one or two alternative perspectives. Injuries to Israeli fans received detailed documentation and personal accounts, while the impact of racist abuse on local Arab and Muslim residents went largely unexplored.
My snap quantitative analysis of the BBC’s live coverage reveals the stark imbalance.
Marc Owen Jones, Associate Professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, is an award-winning expert on disinformation, media analytics and Middle East politics. His latest book is titled ‘Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East’.
Posted inMedia, Palestinian history|TaggedAmsterdam, Bbc|Comments Off on Innocent Israelis, Bad Arabs? How the Media Scripted Amsterdam’s Soccer Violence
The dispossession of Palestinian land is not merely an economic or political act—it is a profound erasure of identity, memory, and belonging. The occupation is not just about military control; it is about the systematic dismantling of Palestinian history, culture, and geography. Land, in this context, is not just soil—it is memory, lineage, and the soul of a people.
For centuries, Palestinian families lived on ancestral lands, tending olive groves, building homes, and passing down stories from generation to generation. Yet, under Israeli military occupation, this connection has been severed. Land has been expropriated, settlements have been built on stolen soil, and historical sites have been bulldozed or erased.
The dispossession is brutal in its physicality. Villages have been emptied, homes destroyed, and farms confiscated under the guise of “security” or “development.” In many cases, Palestinians are forced to leave their homes with no compensation—sometimes with a single bag, sometimes with nothing at all.
But perhaps the most insidious form of dispossession is the erasure of memory. When land is taken, the stories tied to it vanish. When villages are razed, the names of streets, the songs sung at weddings, the names of ancestors, and the rituals of harvest are lost. Palestinian children grow up without knowing the names of the fields their grandparents once farmed, or the stories of the wells their great-grandmothers once drew water from. The land is not just lost—it is forgotten.
This erasure is not accidental. It is deliberate. Occupation is not just about preventing resistance—it is about rewriting history. By removing Palestinians from their land, Israel removes them from their narrative. By constructing settlements and imposing checkpoints, it replaces Palestinian memory with Israeli presence. Yet, despite this erasure, Palestinians continue to remember. They hold onto the names of villages, the songs of their elders, the stories of their grandparents. They plant olive trees in memory of those lost, and they gather in homes and mosques to pass down traditions. Memory is not just a remnant—it is resistance.
The dispossession of land is not just a loss of property—it is a loss of self. For Palestinians, memory is not a luxury—it is survival. And as long as land is stolen, memory will fight back. The struggle to reclaim land is not just for the future—it is for the past, for the present, and for the soul of a people who refuse to be erased.
Western governments, particularly the United Kingdom, often present themselves as defenders of democracy and human rights. However, their policies, especially regarding the Israeli occupation, reveal a striking inconsistency between rhetoric and action. This double standard has profound implications for their credibility and the well-being of those affected by the conflict.
The Inconsistent Approach to Human Rights
The British government, like many of its Western counterparts, vocally supports human rights in international forums. Yet, this commitment is inconsistently applied when addressing issues in occupied Palestine. While acts of resistance by Palestinians are swiftly condemned, Israeli atrocities of killing innocent civilians and violating international law, are often met with muted responses or are justified under the banner of self-defense. This disparity illustrates a prioritization of political alliances over the consistent application of human rights principles.
Selective Condemnation and Political Interests
The UK’s reluctance to criticize the racist Israeli policies, including illegal settlement, separation wall, starvation and genocide in Gaza, contrasts sharply with its approach to similar actions by other nations. This selective condemnation often aligns with strategic interests, reinforcing a double standard that undermines the UK’s credibility as an impartial advocate for human rights.
Media and Public Perception
The British media’s portrayal of the Israeli apartheid frequently reflects these double standards, shaping public perception. Coverage tends to emphasize Israeli security concerns while downplaying or contextualizing the suffering of Palestinians. This biased narrative further entrenches the unequal treatment and limits public scrutiny of government policies.
The UK’s approach to the Israeli occupation exemplifies the double standards that mar Western foreign policy. To rebuild trust and credibility, the British government must apply its stated principles of human rights consistently, ensuring that its actions align with its values. Only then can it hope to foster a fair and lasting resolution for the indigenous Palestinian people.
Sir Kid Starver stands with words sharp and sly, A human rights lawyer, a mask, a lie. In Gaza, two million, starved and confined, Children and mothers left shattered, maligned.
He denies the siege, turns away from the cries, Beneath falling rubble and bomb-stricken skies. “We defend the just,” he proclaims with pride, Yet supplies the arms that fuel genocide.
Israeli occupation’s steel in his hand, Feeds the flames that consume a lost land. But truth rises fierce, though silenced and blurred; No lie can hold back the reckoning stirred.
