Senior officials in the Israeli government are increasingly open about the genocide they have been carrying out, and the endgame they believe to be within their reach. 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month that the forced expulsion of Palestinians will be the “inevitable outcome” of the destruction of Gaza. 
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an advocate of starvation as a weapon of war, said at a press conference: “We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn’t stopping us”.
The army plans to force Palestinians into the south of Gaza and then to third countries. “This is a change of the course of history—nothing less”, Smotrich said.
And in a piece for Haaretz’s Hebrew edition, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, last week wrote:
“What we are doing in Gaza is a war of extermination: indiscriminate, unrestrained, brutal, and criminal killing of civilians. We are doing this not because of an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a disproportionate outburst of fighters in some unit—but as a result of a policy dictated by the government, knowingly, intentionally, maliciously, with reckless abandon. Yes, we are committing war crimes.”
The liquidation of the Gaza Strip through starvation, disease, relentless bombardment and terrorism would represent Israel’s final solution: the annihilation of the centre of Palestinian national life and the redrawing of the Middle East’s political map. 
It is increasingly clear that this is the crime of the century. Not because it has generated more death or suffering than other atrocities, but because the death and suffering have been backed and justified down the line by those who claim to represent the “civilised” world.
With this war, all the old, purportedly “banished” colonial-era canards about civilisation taming barbarism return with a vengeance to justify the barbaric slaughter and starvation of several million people.
Last week, the governments of Britain, France and Canada—staunch backers of the Zionists’ genocide—finally appeared to waver in the face of a renewed Israeli offensive. In a joint statement, they described conditions in Gaza as intolerable.
“We will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response”, the three governments said.
But this was theatrics. One Israeli official told Haaretz
newspaper that the public pressure was “all part of a planned ambush we knew about”.
Netanyahu has been clear that the resumption of small deliveries of aid to starving Gazans is about “the operational need to enable the expansion of the intense fighting” and to ward off international pressure while the genocide continues.
At any rate, Western politicians cannot claim ignorance. The historical record will inevitably contest any attempt now to rewrite their history of support for these crimes.
From the very beginning in October 2023, the Israelis talked about destroying every last building in Gaza. Within weeks of the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, United Nations officials were warning about ethnic cleansing and a potential genocide.
Western governments not only ignored these warnings. They provided support for the slaughter and to this day continue to slander opponents of the genocide as racists. 
Israeli politicians who attempt to rewrite their place in this gruesome event will also face history’s judgement.
Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, in a now widely reported interview with Kan public radio, recently said Israel was “on the path to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa once was”. He continued: “A sane state does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set goals for itself like the expulsion of a population”.
But like all politicians trying to cover their arses, Golan is up to his neck in these crimes.
“First of all, we need to cut off any supply to Gaza”, he said in October 2023. “I think that in this war, a humanitarian effort should not be allowed. They should be told: Listen, until they [the hostages] are freed, we don’t care if you starve to death. It’s completely legitimate.”
A few months later, on the Haaretz podcast, he said: “We’d all like to wake up one spring morning and find that 7 million Palestinians who live between the sea and the river have simply disappeared”.
This has been the standing position of the Israeli establishment: from the river to the sea, a Jewish ethnostate free of Palestinians. 
Israel’s Western backers knew this then, and they know it now. They have given unconditional support to the Zionist state in full knowledge of its intentions and its crimes against humanity.
As the endgame draws nearer, still they support the government in Tel Aviv.
This shall never be forgotten. And they should never be forgiven.

Editors

Gaza: never forgive, never forget

The most authoritarian campus in the country looks quite nice. The University of Western Australia, situated at the edge of the Swan River in Perth, features Japanese, sunken and Shakespeare gardens, peacocks that strut through the tropical grove, and Romanesque sandstone buildings. 
Yet, far from an idyllic haven of critical inquiry and free debate, UWA managers are turning the place into a sort of Trumpian protectorate. They are imposing a suite of bans and restrictions that undermine progressive activism and free speech on campus—even banning some factual statements—while riding roughshod over clubs and societies in the process. 
The initial rules were announced before first semester began. On 12 February, the student guild and the university sent a joint letter to the Students for Palestine and Socialist Alternative clubs, announcing that putting up posters, handing out leaflets, using chalk on pavements and hanging banners were banned almost everywhere on campus. <a href="https://www.uwa.edu.au/about/leadership-and-governance/integrity-and-standards/conduct-and-integrity#:~:text=In%20doing%20so%2C%20the%20University,the%20Director%20of%20Student%20Life.">Lecture announcements were also forbidden</a>, with a few minor exceptions. 
Many rules were already on the books; the novelty is the move to enforce them. By doing so, university managers outlawed activities fundamental to political activism in one fell swoop. Students have engaged in these activities to promote support for the plebiscite on marriage equality, campaign for a Yes vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum and promote student climate strikes. 
Like any Trump-style offensive, the attack was sweeping and resulted in much collateral damage: the university inadvertently imposed severe restrictions on other clubs and societies that rely on posters, leaflets and lecture announcements to promote their events. 
New rules were also imposed on Students for Palestine and Socialist Alternative clubs. The university informed us that events need approval not just from the student guild but also from campus security and a senior university manager. Applications to hold events must be submitted with at least ten working days’ notice and must include a list of “measures that will be taken to ensure the safety of others” (political discussions now being treated like some fire-throwing festival). 
Ominously, the letters warned that clubs must “refrain from using phrases and slogans that are contrary to the university’s policies”. The university did not initially clarify what specific “phrases and slogans” were questionable. It soon became clear, however, that this was a measure to censor Palestine solidarity speech on campus. 
Students for Palestine organised an event on 19 March, at which activists were going to paint “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” on a banner. The university sent me an email the day before, warning that the slogan was “not a permitted use on UWA Lands”. I didn’t immediately see or respond to the email. So, in a move indicative of the censorious campus atmosphere, the head of security was directed to track me down on campus and deliver a printed copy of the email. The penalty for the banner painting was extreme: the university said that proceeding with it would result in “possible disciplinary proceedings and/or disaffiliation”. 
So while Israel carries out genocide in Gaza, and amid threats of imminent ethnic cleansing and forced displacement coming from far-right Israeli politicians, calling for justice and equal rights for all residents of historic Palestine gets you disciplined, or your club disaffiliated, at UWA. 
At UWA, facts are no defence from discipline. In follow-up correspondence, I inquired about the university’s attitude to the statements “Israel is an apartheid state” and “Israel is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza”. Lisa Goldacre, director of student life and a senior manager, replied that the “use of these slogans even if objectively true, may still cause harm to others”, and, “if your club makes a particular statement (e.g. in an article, flyer, speech, banner, online post, etc, etc), then the fact that statement may be objectively true does not mean that your club’s use of that statement will not breach UWA Policy”. 
Again, it’s not just the Students for Palestine and Socialist Alternative clubs that are affected. Anyone who organises an event that crosses UWA’s red lines is a target. Palestine is one such red line. 
For example, in May last year, the Muslim Students Association was <a href="https://www.instagram.com/uwamsa/p/C6v3QUwP0dT/?locale=ru&amp;hl=am-et">forced to cancel an event featuring influential speaker Sami Hamdi</a> after the administration refused to approve their room booking. UWA disapproved of the speaker. Similarly, the Palestinian Cultural Society was <a href="https://perthvoiceinteractive.com/2024/10/24/students-claim-uwa-tried-to-block-speaker/">forced to cancel an event</a> featuring renowned author Vijay Prashad after UWA rescheduled their booking to a time that clashed with another of Prashad’s speaking events. 
These attacks are not limited to crackdowns on pro-Palestine speech and activists. They open the door to attacks on free speech in general. 
This was demonstrated at the end of March, when UWA disciplined a student for putting up posters related to freedom of speech. Finn Penter put up half a dozen posters at a monthly meeting of clubs and societies. The posters read: “Free speech is under attack” and “Clubs are under attack.” Penter is an elected student representative on the guild council and a member of the Socialist Alternative club. The university initiated disciplinary action against him for putting up the posters and used CCTV to monitor him. Shockingly, Penter was issued an official reprimand from the university for misconduct.
“No wonder students feel like we’re studying in an Orwellian surveillance state”, Penter said. “There are all these attacks against free speech, and if you speak up about it by, for example, putting up a poster, you get punished. This is extreme overreach, and it shows how insistent UWA is to put an end to activism on campus”. 
These attacks come as the Trump administration cracks down on Palestine solidarity activists in the US. Some have faced <a href="https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2025/04/16/protesters-denounce-abduction-of-another-palestinian-student-activist-by-us-immigration/">abduction</a>, threats of <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/us-government-kidnaps-palestinian-student-activist">deportation</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/nyregion/columbia-protest-library-occupied.html">arrest</a>. Republican House Majority leader Steve Scalise has spoken about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/18/trump-education-policies">stripping universities of their accreditation</a> if there have been Palestine solidarity protests on their campuses. Columbia University has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/trump-university-college.html">strengthened its campus security and anti-protest restrictions</a>, among other regressive anti-DEI changes, after the Trump administration cut $400 million in its funding. This is an intensified continuation of the crackdown that started last year. 
The attacks on student activism in the US are much more extreme than anything in Australia. But there is a goal that the managers’ offensive at UWA and the Trumpian crackdown on American universities have in common: eradicate progressive activism on campuses. And use a heavy stick to discipline anyone who does not comply.

Alevine Magila

University of WA bans statements that ‘cause harm’, disciplines student for defending free speech

Babies should be chubby. They should be content and well fed. They should be happy and protected. Gaza’s children are none of these things. They are thin, sometimes to the point of total emaciation. Their bones can be seen through their skin. They are often silent with haunted eyes. 
The UN’s child rights agency (UNICEF) recently reported that around 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition since the start of the year. Al Jazeera recently reported on a five-year-old boy who weighed only nine kilograms. This is the result of human decision-making. It is the conscious policy of the Israeli state, which has blocked all food, fuel and medicines from reaching Palestinians in Gaza since 2 March. 
Much has been made of Israel’s “advanced” and “precise” weapons. It is part of what has made it one of the most profitable weapons manufacturing countries in the world. These weapons have, since January, “precisely” targeted families sheltering in makeshift tents in “humanitarian zones”. 
They have also targeted bulldozers and other equipment intended to allow Gazans to rebuild their homes. It is precision barbarism. At least 2,300 Palestinians have been killed over the past six weeks alone—more than 50 people killed every day on average. More than 740 of the dead are children, according to the director of the Information Unit at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Zaher Al-Wahidi. 
At Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza, Dr Ahmed Abu Nasir said the situation has become “worse than ever”. It is hard to imagine the situation in Gaza getting worse. Worse than whole neighbourhoods, whole cities flattened. Worse than tens of thousands of human bodies ripped apart by bombs, by bullets, by shrapnel. Worse than forced displacement over and over and over again. 
It’s hard to imagine, but true. Since the end of the ceasefire, the Israeli war machine has ramped up its genocidal efforts. Indeed, since 18 March, Israel has launched what can only be described as a scorched earth campaign. “The massacres do not stop. We are being slaughtered from vein to vein”, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif said in a social media post. 
Now Israel is calling up reservists and has indicated a further escalation with Operation Gideon’s Chariots. The Israeli security cabinet has approved a plan for “conquering” the Gaza Strip. On X, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a video declaring that the “population will be moved, for its own protection”. 
Fascist Israeli politician Bezalel Smotrich has finally been let off the leash and is saying what other Israeli politicians have been thinking all along: “We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip. We will stop being afraid of the word ‘occupation’”. The last eighteen months have been leading to this point. The acting head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Jonathan Whittall, said in a statement:
“Land is being annexed from the north, from the east, from the south of the strip as forces advance ... Gaza is being starved, it’s being bombed, it’s being strangled. This looks like the deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life.” 
For over a year, Israeli politicians and their supporters across the West have claimed that the Israeli decimation of Gaza has had something to do with “tackling terror” and “defending democracy”. Red Flag and activists in the Palestine solidarity movement have argued that Israel has had a very different agenda. 
We said that Israel would use the pretext of 7 October to murder, punish and humiliate Palestinians. We said that, if they could get away with it, the Israelis would try to conquer the Gaza strip. This has now come to pass. Even Netanyahu is saying the quiet part out loud. 
US President Trump will visit the Middle East over the next few weeks and will no doubt give his blessing to this explicit effort at 21st-century ethnic cleansing. At the same time, Israel is waging an increasingly violent war on Palestinians living in the West Bank. If it can achieve total victory in Gaza, it will no doubt turn its sights to the total defeat of the Palestinians. 
The Australian media have largely remained silent about these realities. Australia’s federal election campaign only further sidelined the issue of Palestine. 
Over the last eighteen months, the ALP has been steadfast in its determination to maintain political, economic and military ties with Israel, despite the depths of the barbarism we have all witnessed. Labor politicians have been deeply complicit in what is happening. Now that they have been re-elected with a majority, they will feel like they can ignore the genocide. We cannot let this happen.
In a campaign meeting recently in Perth, an activist with family in Gaza reported that, while generations of Palestinians have remained steadfast—have held out hope for their own liberation—they are increasingly exhausted. They feel abandoned by the world. 
It is our responsibility to call out what is happening. We need to maintain pressure on our own government and continue to show solidarity with a population suffering from the most extreme, conscious form of imperial barbarity in the 21st century.

Vashti Fox

The quiet part out loud: Israel announces Gaza takeover

It was a relief when, in December, Israel finally agreed to a ceasefire. It didn’t guarantee Palestinians access to aid and construction materials to rebuild their shattered homes. It didn’t address the structural injustice of millions of Gazans being unable to travel to see their families in the West Bank. It wasn’t going to liberate the thousands of Palestinian hostages being tortured in Israeli prisons. 
Yet it was impossible not to be moved by scenes of Gazans rejoicing at what was supposed to be the end of this historic slaughter, of hundreds of thousands commencing their slow march back to Gaza’s devastated northern region. 
Yet in just a few weeks, Netanyahu has taken any hope that Gaza could return to some semblance of normality and smashed it to pieces. Once again, the bombs are dropping on defenceless refugees. Israel made its intent clear by kicking off with a massacre of 400 people, nearly 200 of them children.
Israel’s military has now directly killed more than 50,000 people, according to the Gaza Ministry for Health. A figure that includes preventable losses due to sickness, starvation and other issues associated with the war and decades-long siege would be far higher, potentially over 200,000.
In typical form, much of the Western media repeated Netanyahu’s lies that it was Hamas that broke the ceasefire. But the truth is clear to anybody who cares to see, and has been discussed widely within Israel’s own press. Netanyahu needs the genocide to continue to keep his governmental coalition together.
In any case, the ceasefire was never real. Israeli forces killed at least 155 Gazans <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-israel-violate-gaza-ceasefire-new-escalation">throughout the truce period</a>. The ceasefire also brought a brutal escalation in Israel’s colonial efforts in the West Bank, with Jenin, Tulkarem and other villages besieged. This represented a crescendo of activity that began in the days after 7 October. A <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5873-israeli-settlements-occupied-palestinian-territory-including">report</a> released by the UN Human Rights Office on 18 March revealed that more than 20,000 new Jewish homes have been approved for construction in occupied East Jerusalem since that time, with another 10,000 more planned for the occupied West Bank. 
The same report also estimated that an unprecedented 49 new illegal outposts have been established, part of the steady integration of the West Bank into Israel. While former US President Joe Biden liked to pretend that these illegal activities are unrelated to official Israeli policy, the report also found that “the line between settler and state violence [has] blurred to a vanishing point”. 
The resumption of the war means attention will return to Gaza, where the possibilities for Israeli barbarism are endless. Well-informed commentators were speculating late last year that Israel was planning to occupy permanently at least some parts of Gaza, if not the whole strip. The topic was openly discussed in <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-11-01/ty-article-opinion/.premium/in-defense-of-the-generals-plan-laying-siege-to-israels-enemy-isnt-a-war-crime/00000192-e406-d2fe-affe-e76f2f410000">Haaretz</a> newspaper, for instance. 
It’s possible that the ceasefire was always conceived of as a momentary pause designed to give Trump a small boost, appease some of the pro-hostage sentiment in Israel and allow for serious preparations for a new attempt at ethnic cleansing. 
The US is certainly no barrier to this fascistic project. Indeed, not long after taking office, President Trump declared himself in favour of the total cleansing of Gaza, later re-posting a psychotic AI-generated video of the territory re-imagined as a holiday resort. Such a move would fit with Trump’s imperial vision of the world, where might makes right. 
The rest of the world has reacted to the renewal of Israel’s genocidal onslaught with utter indifference. Arab and Muslim leaders have said nothing, and done even less. Turkey’s Erdogan is too busy arresting opposition leaders and whipping up anti-refugee racism to speak up for Gaza. In any case, Turkey is part of the US global war machine via its membership of NATO, which makes his government utterly complicit in all that has taken place. 
The European powers are in a similar boat. They are hypocritically using Trump’s undermining of Ukraine to justify a historic boost in military spending while remaining unmoved by an actual genocide in Palestine. 
Here in Australia, the establishment has chosen to ignore the resumption of war. The media have run dead on the issue, and the political class are silent. On one level, it’s understandable, as recent events have made open promotion of Israel’s talking points somewhat difficult. 
It was a bit embarrassing (though unsurprising) when police revealed that the much-hyped surge of antisemitism in NSW was a total hoax. And now their darling Israel has broken yet another peace agreement, preferring to reopen a campaign of mass destruction.
Yet this silence confirms their despicable complicity. 
In light of that, it was heartening to see a substantially increased turnout at the demonstrations against the war across Australia last weekend. It’s never been clearer that it will take an international grassroots movement to win justice for the Palestinians. Each and every act of protest and resistance is important; each one of us can and must play our part.

Omar Hassan

Israel’s renewed Gaza slaughter

Palestinian activist and recent graduate of New York’s Columbia University Mahmoud Khalil has spoken for the first time about his detention at the hands of the US government. Authorities arrested and are attempting to deport Khalil, a permanent resident of the United States and prominent figure in last year’s Columbia’s Gaza solidarity encampment. 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him on the evening of 8 March. They also threatened to arrest his pregnant wife, who is a US citizen. President Trump said Khalil’s case is “the first arrest of many to come”. The goal is to intimidate student activists, undermine the right to free speech and smash all solidarity with Palestine. 
“Even if Khalil is eventually able to prevail, the government may get the short-term win of sending the message to immigrants of every status that they risk arrest, detention and perhaps even removal for having the temerity to speak out in favour of unpopular causes, even if they might win their lawsuit in the end”, Stephen Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, told the New York Times.
Khalil is being held in a detention facility in Louisiana but was able to dictate <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25592020-letter-from-a-palestinian-political-prisoner-in-louisiana-march-18-2025/">the following statement</a> by phone to his friends and family. 
--------------------
Letter from a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana 
Dictated over the phone from ICE Detention 
March 18, 2025 
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law. 
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing. 
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities. 
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours—I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request. 
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom. 
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention—imprisonment without trial or charge—to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza Hospital director and paediatrician Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace. 
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted. 
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns—based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked. 
Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticising Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students—some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation—and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples. 
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change—leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice. 
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all. 
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

Letter from a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana

In a <a href="https://www.afp.gov.au/news-centre/media-statement/afp-deputy-commissioner-national-security-krissy-barrett-statement">bombshell press conference</a> on 10 March, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and NSW Police shredded the entire story that we have been fed about a supposed tsunami of antisemitism gripping society and leading to a wave of violent attacks on Jewish people and property. It has all been based on a pack of lies, a “criminal con job”.
For more than a month, attention has been focused on the discovery in January of a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/dural-caravan-nsw-police-find-explosives-in-caravan-synagogue-targeted-20250130-p5l87g.html">caravan in Dural, Sydney, filled with explosives</a>. It was described as a terrorist plot targeting a synagogue. We now know that it wasn’t.
“Almost immediately, experienced investigators within the Joint Counter Terrorism Team believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot—essentially a criminal con job”, AFP Deputy Commissioner National Security Krissy Barrett said. “Today, I can reveal that the caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit.” 
For this reason, the police never classified the caravan as a terrorism incident. But that didn’t stop the politicians. On 30 January, NSW Premier Chris Minns <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/radio-interview-abc-sydney-10">told ABC radio</a>: “This is the discovery of a potential mass casualty event. There’s only one way of calling it out and that is terrorism”. This is the exact opposite of what the police thought, in their own words, “almost immediately”. It is inconceivable that Minns did not know by this point that he was telling bald-faced lies. In the six weeks since, Minns has never corrected the record nor apologised for his dishonesty. 
In the same ABC interview, Anthony Albanese was asked, “Do you classify this as terrorism as well, prime minister?” He answered, “I certainly do. I agree with Chris Minns. It’s clearly designed to harm people, but it’s also designed to create fear in the community. And that is the very definition”. 
Except that the prime minister surely also knew that the police had immediate and serious doubts and believed it to be a “fake plot” with no plan nor prospect of the caravan or its cargo of 40-year-old explosives harming anyone.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton called it a “grave and sinister escalation in this insidious rise of unchecked antisemitism in our country”. He later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/feb/06/australia-politics-news-live-labor-anti-hate-speech-laws-mandatory-sentences-federal-election-campaign-anthony-albanese-peter-dutton-ntwnfb">claimed</a> that it was “believed to be the biggest planned terrorist attack” in Australia’s history. 
None of this is true. 
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-11/burke-says-dutton-conned-by-caravan-hoax/105033778">accused</a> Dutton of deliberately avoiding police briefings so that he would have more freedom to “continue to make the most outrageous claims. He wanted to make sure that he could stoke the most fear”, Burke said. Dutton’s claims were outrageous, but so were those of Albanese and Minns, who cannot pretend they didn’t know the truth.
Beyond the caravan, the police said they believed all of the high-profile antisemitic attacks in recent times in Sydney, which have resulted in dozens of arrests under Operation Pearl, had a “common source” with the caravan plot. “The caravan job was orchestrated by the same individual or individuals that were orchestrating the Pearl incidents”, said NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson. “None of the individuals we have arrested during Pearl have displayed any form of antisemitic ideology”, he said.
This is an extraordinary revelation, although one that the police had been repeatedly theorising about in press statements for weeks. In the first press conference NSW police gave about the caravan, they speculated that it might be a “set-up”. This was ignored by politicians and the bulk of the media, who instead breathlessly reported that an antisemitic “terrorist” massacre “with a blast radius of 40 metres” had been imminent. 
Indeed, the biggest hoax has not been the one carried out by a few organised criminals looking for bargaining chips with the legal system. The main hoax, the biggest con job of all, has been carried out by the entire political and media establishment. They have cynically used this plot to whip up fear, suspicion and hatred for Muslims and Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement, to justify a hysterical witch-hunt and purge of Palestine supporters throughout many institutions, and to rush through a new set of draconian anti-protest laws.
This campaign was on full display at the recent Sky News
Antisemitism Summit, a conference of right-wing and far-right politicians, activists, media outlets and the pro-Israel lobby. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), Australia’s main pro-Israel lobby group, presented a <a href="https://www.ecaj.org.au/15-steps-to-defeat-antisemitism/">fifteen-point plan</a> for combating antisemitism, beginning with a call to “declare the existence of a National Emergency and establish a Joint Counter-Terrorism Taskforce [to] fight against antisemitic terror”. This was followed by a wish list of extreme censorship, attacks on free speech and the right to protest, and purges of pro-Palestine students and academics. 
ECAJ and other pro-Israel lobby groups, who routinely propagandise in support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and promote the dehumanisation of the Palestinian people, have been given tens of millions of dollars by the Australian government as part of its so-called campaign of combating antisemitism. Jewish organisations that are critical of Israel have not received a cent. 
The attempt to tie what has been confirmed as a criminal plot to the Palestine solidarity movement reached its zenith with the passing of a series of new <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/new-anti-protest-laws-target-opponents-of-genocide">anti-protest laws</a>, especially in NSW. The laws were justified with constant reference to the “antisemitic terror” gripping Australia. 
We now know that Minns, and at least several other senior ministers, clearly knew that they were rushing through these laws based on complete lies. Perhaps they were rushing to beat these revelations coming out. Not only were the attacks not motivated by antisemitism—being in fact, according to the police, a “criminal con job”. There was absolutely no link between these attacks and any protest activity.
Chris Minns must apologise to the people of NSW, and to the Palestine solidarity movement, for using lies and distortions to trample on our democratic rights. He should repeal these laws immediately, and he should resign.
Minns should also apologise to Jewish people in this state. Antisemitism is real and must be opposed, and the actions of these crooks caused legitimate fear among Jewish people. But Minns’ lies, along with those of the media and pro-Israel lobby, who have all made the most of this criminal hoax, have falsely portrayed these criminal acts as a result of a rising tide of antisemitism in society. 
They have deliberately exaggerated the threat posed to Jewish people in a reprehensible and cynical ploy to whip up fear in order to attack and silence opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They were, in effect, the accomplices in this entire hoax.

Josh Lees

The great antisemitism con job

Governments and other institutions have recently been adopting definitions of antisemitism, but not to protect Jews from persecution or discrimination. They’re doing it to justify the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/feb/28/the-national-gallery-censored-parts-of-an-artwork-about-silencing-indigenous-and-oppressed-peoples">repression</a> of people who object to the genocidal policies of the apartheid Israeli state and the foreign policies of governments that support them. And they are attempting to create a moral panic about antisemitism.
In the face of media images of destruction and mass murder in Gaza, governments have had <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/657404/less-half-sympathetic-toward-israelis.aspx">problems</a> convincing their populations that they should back Israel as it engages in genocide. Instead, they are resorting to the naked repression of expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians, barely covered by the tattered loin cloth of these antisemitism definitions.
<a href="https://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/media-item/statement-on-racism/">Universities Australia</a><a href="https://universitiesaustralia.edu.au/media-item/statement-on-racism/"></a> (UA), the peak body of the country’s 39 universities, in late February decided that antisemitism includes “criticism of Israel ... when it calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”. This parallels the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) <a href="https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism">definition</a>, which governments use as an excuse to attack Palestine solidarity activity. The alliance says that is it antisemitic to claim “that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.
That approach has given free licence for the German government to shut down a Palestine solidarity conference, which included many Jews, and ban former Greek Finance Minister <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-germany-bans-and-arrests-israel-critics-including-jews-by-yanis-varoufakis-2024-04">Yanis Varoufakis</a> from speaking at it, even by video link. It enabled police in the United States to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/pro-palestinian-college-protests-encampments.html">break up</a> campus Palestine solidarity encampments, which included a large proportion of anti-Zionist Jews. This kind of “fighting antisemitism” involved arresting, often violently, hundreds of young Jewish people.
It is the reason that the Australian Labor government appointed a Zionist, whose main priority seems to be targeting critics of Israel, as its special envoy to combat antisemitism. The approach led to the absurd situation at Monash University in Melbourne, where security officers told Palestine solidarity activists that using the words “Zionist” or “Zionism” or accusing anyone of supporting genocide contravened university policy. The Australian National University gave a written instruction to socialists that they could not say “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or display a banner with the slogan on it.
The conflation of Zionism with Judaism paints a bullseye on the backs of all Jews. If you object to the genocide Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians then, according to this false proposition, you should hate Jews—because they all ostensibly support the existence of Israel as a racially defined state (under the cover of religion) and, to a greater or lesser extent, its policies.
Zionists may denounce antisemitism and use it to demand that authorities target opponents of Israel. But Zionism assumes that antisemitism is inevitable. The movement to establish a Jewish state was premised on the notion that Jews and non-Jews cannot live together in peace. That remains an important rationale for the existence of Israel as a state in which non-Jews are second-class citizens. But it also apologises for antisemitism because it is, according to Zionists, inevitable and normal for non-Jews to hate Jews.
So it’s fine for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be best mates with Viktor Orban—the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary, who uses antisemitic tropes when it suits him—and for Israel to encourage Christian Zionists. Millions of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical-christians-israel-hamas-war">evangelical Christians</a>, many of them antisemites, are Zionists because they believe that their own countries, especially the United States, should be rid of Jews, and that the gathering of Jews in the “Holy Land” is a sign of “end times” preceding the Apocalypse and the second coming of Christ, when Jews will either convert or be eradicated.
But, of course, the vast majority of non-Jews, of different religions and none, don’t hate Jews. There is a history of Jews being persecuted in particular places and during particular periods. But there is also an extensive history of Jews and non-Jews living together, without violence, for hundreds of years, from <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/29779835">China</a>, through central Asia, the <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/34519?language=en">Arab world</a>, India, Europe (including <a href="https://www.neh.gov/article/ornament-world-and-jews-spain">Spain</a> and <a href="https://www.copernico.eu/en/articles/jews-poland-middle-ages-and-early-modern-times">Poland</a>), to the Americas and, down the bottom of the planet, South Africa and New Zealand.
In Australia, there is undoubtedly a minority with antisemitic attitudes and a tiny number who commit antisemitic acts. But, in a country where there has been a Jewish governor-general and Jews have held and hold senior ministries in Liberal and Labor governments, Jews are not today subject to structural or systematic oppression.
According to the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/10/07/hate-crimes-grow-in-us-since-oct-7-attacks/75501456007/">Anti-Defamation League</a>, a pro-Israel organisation, there were 150 incidents of violence against Jews in the USA in the year after 7 October 2023, during Israel’s war on Gaza. That’s bad, but minor in comparison with <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/what-happened-scholars-disciplined-over-israel-gaza-comments">police</a> and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-30/ucla-moves-to-shut-down-pro-palestinian-encampment-as-unlawful">Zionist violence</a> against participants, many of them Jewish, in the Palestine solidarity encampments at US universities, or with <a href="https://monitor.civicus.org/explore/repression-of-palestine-solidarity-continues-raids-detentions-and-police-brutality/">German police </a>attacks on pro-Palestine events and protests in Germany.
Both the Universities Australia and IHRA definitions assert that Jews have a right to self-determination. The UA definition even claims that “all peoples” have that right: music to the ears of white nationalists. This was a claim made by the apartheid South African government to support white rule. If Jews are a people with the right to self-determination, is that also true of Christians (or members of different Christian sects), Muslims and Buddhists (as argued by religious bigots, not only in Afghanistan but also in <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/comparing-zionism-and-sinhala-buddhist-nationalism">Sri Lanka</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21567689.2023.2216137">Myanmar</a>)?
The conflation of Judaism, a religion, with Zionism, a political ideology, in definitions of antisemitism, is itself antisemitic. No matter that UA acknowledges the existence of non-Zionist Jews, while the IHRA definition is silent about non-Zionist, let alone anti-Zionist, Jews. Defining support for Israel into a Jewish identity that must be accepted, apparently in all its aspects, is racist “identity politics” along the same lines as the self-conceptions of white nationalists and religious bigots. 
Thankfully, increasing numbers of Jews, especially young Jews, are rejecting Zionism, both in Australia and the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/american-jewish-divisions-zionism/">United States</a>.
Rick Kuhn has been a Palestine solidarity activist and socialist since the 1970s. He is Jewish and opposes Zionism.

Rick Kuhn

Conflating Zionism and Judaism is antisemitic

US authorities have arrested Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent figure in last year’s Columbia University’s Gaza solidarity encampment. 
Khalil was reportedly inside his university-owned apartment in Manhattan when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took him on Saturday night. They also threatened to arrest his pregnant wife, according to Khalil’s lawyer Amy Greer.
Khalil is a permanent resident of the United States; his wife is a citizen. Greer told the Associated Press that the ICE agents told her they acted on State Department orders. She also said that Mahmoud’s whereabouts are unknown.
“Given that neither Khalil’s lawyer nor his eight-months-pregnant wife knows where in the United States he is currently being held, ‘detained’ seems like a euphemism. Kidnapped seems more appropriate”, City University of New York professor Corey Robin commented. 
This is the first publicly known deportation effort under President Trump’s promised crackdown on student activists.
The Republican Party’s 2024 election platform promised to “keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America” and to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again”.
Then, in a 30 January executive order, Trump warned: “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before”.
Shortly after the executive order was issued, the Justice Department assembled a multi-agency “Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism”. Its first priority, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-formation-task-force-combat-anti-semitism">according to a media release</a>, “will be to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses”.
The targeting of Mahmoud Khalil has nothing to do with “fighting antisemitism”, which has become little more than a euphemism for waging a war on Palestinians and their supporters.
Deportation Defense in the United States released the following statement. We encourage readers of Red Flag to <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-the-immediate-release-of-columbia-student-pro-palestine-advocate-mahmoud-khalil-from-dhs-detention">sign the petition and share it widely</a>.
--------------------
Demand the Immediate Release of Palestinian Student Activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention
On the evening of March 8, 2025, Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil was detained by the Department of Homeland Security. The arrest comes on the heels of the Department of State’s announcement that it plans to deport students affiliated with pro-Palestine protests. The student, who is Palestinian, is a lawful permanent resident of the U.S.
Columbia University, which recently published a <a href="https://publicsafety.columbia.edu/content/protocol-potential-visits-campus-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-ice-agents" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new protocol</a> on its plans to cooperate with ICE, has targeted Khalil for his Palestinian identity and outspoken activism on multiple occasions over the last 17 months. 
He served as a lead negotiator during the Gaza Solidarity Encampment last spring and has frequently appeared in media interviews and press conferences. Columbia’s continued acquiescence to federal agencies and outside partisan institutions has made this situation possible. 
Like many other Arab and Muslim students, Khalil has been the target of various Zionist harassment campaigns, fuelled by doxxing websites like Canary Mission. This racist targeting serves to instil fear in pro-Palestine activists as well as a warning to others. 
Add your name to demand the immediate release of Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil from DHS detention and a reversal to Columbia University's protocol permitting ICE on campus without a warrant.

US government ‘kidnaps’ Palestinian student activist

Macquarie University Palestinian academic Randa Adbel-Fattah has been the victim of a <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/academics-under-attack-for-supporting-palestine">vicious smear campaign</a> conducted by the Murdoch press, the Labor Government and the Liberal Party. Under pressure from Labor Minister for Education Jason Clare, the Australian Research Council (ARC) has formally suspended Randa’s $870,000 Future Fellowship Grant. 
Clare wrote to the ARC board on 31 January requesting they investigate her research grant as a “matter of priority”. Ironically, it was Clare himself who <a href="https://ministers.education.gov.au/clare/ending-days-political-interference-australian-research-council">celebrated</a> the Albanese government for revising the National Interest Test to supposedly stop politicians from interfering in research grants, saying in March 2024 that he “promised to end the days of ministers using the ARC as a political plaything”.
This stunning backflip shows that Labor is just as happy as the coalition to weaponize research funding for political purposes. 
Abdel-Fattah’s grant, which began in 2023 and aimed to study the history of Arab/Muslim social justice activism in Australia, was targeted by the Australian newspaper after she participated in an anti-racist conference at the Queensland University of Technology, where she said
“The peak of an academic career ... usually means somebody who’s ... written lots of books about genocide but will not sign a statement against [it]. I want no part of that, so I look for ways to bend rules and refuse and subvert them. I challenge the formal circuits of knowledge production and what counts as knowledge.”
In response to this comment, Macquarie University must now prove that the grant has been administered appropriately, otherwise the grant, which also funds Abdel-Fattah’s salary, must be repaid in full.
When pressed by Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi in a recent Senate estimates hearing, the ARC claimed that they are just doing their normal due diligence by investigating the grant. This same line was parroted by Macquarie vice-chancellor Bruce Downton in a staff town hall last week, where he, after casually mentioning staff redundancies several times, stated that the investigation does “not have anything to do with academic freedom or freedom of speech”. They must think we are stupid. 
While Macquarie University has recently become the epicentre of academic repression, the suppression of Palestine supporters on campus is systematic. For example, the peak university lobbying organisation, Universities Australia, recently adopted a new definition of antisemitism which has been widely condemned, including by the <a href="https://www.jewishcouncil.com.au/media/jewish-council-of-australia-slams-universities-adoption-of-dangerous-politicised-and-unworkable-antisemitism-definition">Jewish Council of Australia</a>. 
Mohamed Duar of Amnesty International <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.au/australian-universities-decision-to-adopt-contested-definition-of-antisemitism-is-an-attempt-to-stifle-freedom-of-expression-across-campuses-nationwide/">has said that</a> 
“This dangerous definition will be used to silence students and staff alike, suppress protest, and shut down criticism of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, the unlawful brutal and unlawful military occupation as well as apartheid that we determined to be a crime against humanity.” 
The vilification of Abdel-Fattah and the targeting of her research grant is a part of this broader trend. 
Labor has effectively found a bureaucratic means to sack an academic for their outspoken support of Palestine, something Liberal Shadow Minister for Education Sarah Henderson has been demanding for months. The ARC is doing the ALP’s dirty work and <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/research-grant-suspension-about-probity-not-politics">openly admitted in the Senate</a> that their investigation stemmed from reporting by the
Australian. This whole rotten affair shows that these liberal institutions that supposedly support freedom of inquiry and democratic values are a sham and cannot be counted on to defend our rights.

Steven Hansen

Solidarity with Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah

The West Bank has been the primary region for the Israeli colonisation of Palestine for decades. There, Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and steal their land and homes under the protection of the Israeli military. 
In the mid-1990s, the Oslo Accords divided the territory into zones under Palestinian Authority control, joint Israel-Palestinian Authority administration, and total Israeli control. The last of these zones covers most of the land.
Israeli military violence in the West Bank escalated when the genocide in Gaza began. It has now increased further since the delicate Israel-Hamas ceasefire was signed in January. Far-right Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have openly declared that they want to annex the entire West Bank.
Ghaied Hijaz is a student activist with the Right to Education campaign at Birzeit University, which defends the right of Palestinians to education in the West Bank and Gaza. She spoke to Red Flag
about the current situation. The text has been edited for length and clarity.
--------------------
The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza must have been a great relief. But there are reports that Israel has since escalated its operations in the West Bank. What’s going on?
When the ceasefire was announced, it was of course the moment we’ve all been waiting for, especially for the people in Gaza. It gave this moment of relief and comfort.
But since the beginning of the ceasefire, everything in the West Bank got much worse.
Even though through the last fifteen months of war the West Bank was not technically living in war, we were witnessing daily raids, daily attacks on the villages and towns, daily arrests, daily killings. But when the ceasefire was announced, many troops that were in Gaza came to the West Bank, and they started by completely closing all the checkpoints, the entrances of all cities in the West Bank, and everybody was stuck. 
It was very, very sudden. At my university, we turned to online learning because there was no way anyone could reach the university if they were outside of Ramallah. People were stuck at the checkpoints for hours.
They continued closing everything for two weeks. And then, after two weeks, it started to get a bit easier, but now they’re going back at it again, they are pushing for more troops to go into the West Bank. 
Yesterday [23 February], they decided that they’re going to have tanks inside the cities, especially in Jenin. The last time Palestinians in the West Bank saw Israeli tanks in the middle of our cities and towns was during the Second Intifada in 2002-04. 
Now what we’re seeing is that the war is paused in Gaza because we’re still not sure if the ceasefire is permanent. And we’ve been hearing statements from Israeli officials claiming that they will go back to war very soon, and that they will not go on with the deal and so on. 
But the war in the West Bank is just starting. We’re just starting to see the plans that they have for the refugee camps, especially for the cities inside of the West Bank, to displace people, to change how cities look, to change the structure of cities and towns. 
They started in Tulkarm and Jenin. They are completely wiping out the refugee camps, they’re destroying all houses, they are building new streets, and they loudly say that they will not leave the cities for at least a year, and some say that they will never leave.
So Israeli forces are saying they’re going to be in Palestinian cities in the West Bank long term?
Because of the Oslo Accords the areas in the West Bank are separated into A, B and C areas, and the A area is for the Palestinian Authority, where the Israeli military is not supposed to enter. But of course, that was never a reality—the Israeli military would enter any city or town that is in the Palestinian area anytime they want.
But they were never inside the city or town for a long time. Now they’re saying that they are going to create bases inside the cities and the towns. They demolished most of the homes in the Tulkarm refugee camp and in Nur Shams refugee camp. Just like how they did the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza, they want to do this in the heart of towns and cities and refugee camps, and they don’t want to leave.
They say that this will be the new reality. No A areas, no Palestinian Authority. They’re going to rule everything, which they already did, but this is in a different way. This is more intense. It puts the West Bank in the middle of a war and creates new questions. What’s the future of the Palestinian Authority, if everything that the Palestinian Authority is based on is being torn apart?
Has there been more violence and land theft by Israeli settlers?
Yes. After the ceasefire was announced, with the plans for annexation, with what Trump is saying, with Netanyahu’s promises to Israeli officials on the right wing to increase attacks in the West Bank instead of Gaza, they’ve just got more nerve now. They keep blocking roads for everyone, attacking people in their farms. In the olive picking seasons, we’ve seen settlers go into lands burning trees [and] hurting people.
And they also organise attacks on a city or a town, and they shoot and kill people because they are all armed. And most of the time, that would be with the protection of the IDF [the Israeli military]. So the IDF would be there just to protect settlers from people who are throwing stones at them as they are shooting with their machine guns at everyone.
In many areas, especially the C areas in the West Bank, you would have land. It’s in your name; it’s yours. The Israeli government hasn’t exactly taken it, but you’re not allowed to do anything in it. It’s yours, but you can’t go there, sometimes you need a permit to go there, you can’t remove anything, you can’t grow anything. You can’t even pick the fruits of the trees.
Since the right-wing politicians and officials in the Israeli government refused a ceasefire and didn’t want to halt the attack in Gaza, Netanyahu promised [Bezalel] Smotrich, who is the finance minister and is kind of the de facto ruler of the West Bank, to take the war from Gaza to the West Bank to achieve what they’re planning for annexation and displacement of Palestinians.
The ceasefire deal has included the release of hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli prisons. How has the community responded?
We have been waiting for our detainees and prisoners to be released for years, especially the ones who were sentenced to life sentences. And also many of the women, many of the children who were living under cruel circumstances in Israeli prisons, under torture, starvation and everything.
So it was a moment of happiness that was long waited for. On the first day of the ceasefire, many people gathered to welcome the released Palestinian women and children that day. And even though it was so cold we were waiting in the streets under the threat of Israeli forces attacking. And they did, throwing tear gas, live bullets or rubber bullets.
We needed to give our prisoners the welcome they have long been waiting for. And so even though it was delayed for six hours, there were a lot of people who were not going to let Israeli forces ruin this moment for us. And every week after that, when there’s a release as part of the exchange deal, hundreds gather to welcome their loved ones.
But as we’re seeing people getting out, we’re hearing more horrible stories about the situation they were living in. When they get out of the bus and we see them, sometimes we don’t even recognise them. Like, if you saw Khalida Jarrar—she was right next to me and I didn’t recognise her. She was in such bad shape and bad condition that it was tearing my heart apart. [Jarrar is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was released as part of the prisoner exchanges.]
Last Saturday [22 February], it was supposed to be the last day of prisoner exchange. Six hundred Palestinian prisoners were supposed to be released. More than half of them were women, children, and men who were detained in Gaza after 7 October [2023]. And Israel, after delaying and delaying again and again, at 2am the next day decided they are not going to release the Palestinian prisoners, and they still haven’t released them [as of 25 February].
Has your activism with the Right to Education campaign been able to continue?
There’s a whole discussion in universities whether we should be on campus or just go to online learning because of how bad the situation is, because they always live with the threat of the settler attacks, threat of arrests, killing at checkpoints, and it’s actually dangerous. But what we always say is that getting to the university and moving between cities is a form of defiance and resistance, because what they want is to separate cities, and for every community to live alone, separated, isolated. And we don’t want that to happen.
We want to keep connected, no matter the hardships. And we continued doing that, even though it was becoming more difficult and challenging by the day. But since the ceasefire agreement, it became impossible.
Students were separated again. The campuses are really important for students to gather and communicate, and to organise together, to have the spirit of community. When everyone at home can’t move, that just crushes it.
And so for the past fifteen months, we’ve been on and off. When we go home, we need to come back and rebuild things again, rebuild the spirit, rebuild the organising efforts. But as the Right to Education, we continued working, because our work with advocacy and building alliances is just more online.
Other student groups and campuses have taken really big hits. Most of their activists are currently in prison or just released from prison, traumatised and not able to work or maybe not able to come back to university. So we’re going through difficult times where we’re trying to maintain student activism overall, not just in the Right to Education, but in all universities with all student groups.
US President Donald Trump recently declared his intention to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip. How did people in the West Bank respond?
Palestinians have been living under the threats of displacement, and in the West Bank, annexation, for 75 years. It’s not new. So when Trump said it, it was not really a new thing since in his previous term, he suggested the “deal of the century”, which was not exactly the same, but was leading to the same thing: to liquidate the Palestinian cause and get Palestinians scattered around the world.
It is [now] much more difficult circumstances, in a much more tense environment. But what we know is we’re not leaving. The core of the Palestinian cause is that Palestinians don’t want to leave. Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza are either refugees or they are residents from these cities. If they are refugees, they don’t want to become refugees again. And if they are originally not refugees, they don’t want to become refugees at all.
So, leaving is not an option for us. And it doesn’t matter if Trump said it or not. People are defiant of what Trump is saying. And that is just the stance of everyone. Every single political group, no matter the differences between them, they all say clearly we don’t want to leave.
I personally think that Trump’s plan is not about displacement. And it’s not going to work, because there’s no way to do it unless he wants to take Palestinians to the US, because nobody is willing to take Palestinians in, as we’ve seen statements from around the world. I think that Trump’s plan is about pushing normalisation [with Israel] in an economic trade way, especially with Saudi Arabia.
And I think that’s what’s dangerous about the plan. He’s just proposing something big that would make everybody say no, especially Arab countries, who are not exactly allies, but still hold on some grounds in supporting Palestinians. So he proposes this big thing to achieve other things he wants.
So it seems that, yes, they rejected the displacement plan, but they accepted normalisation with Israel. They accepted increasing cooperation with Israel, which is the kind of peace Trump is looking at. Trump is a businessman who’s just looking at everything and everyone as a profit. So when he’s trying to manipulate the Middle East, he’s just trying to make more profit. 
Is there anything else you would want our readers to know about what’s happening in the West Bank?
I don’t think that what’s happening in the West Bank is getting much coverage or much attention. Right now, I think we have 40,000 people displaced from three refugee camps, and these displaced people went to surrounding cities and towns. And we hear Israelis, what they’re saying is that they’re going to attack them.
It’s not enough for them that they’ve destroyed the refugee camp, that they have destroyed the houses, that they displaced everyone. They want to go after every single refugee. And we see this as they are attacking UNRWA and suspending their services in Jerusalem. 
If we’re still under the threat of displacement and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and in Gaza, and the threat of going back to genocide as Israeli officials want to resume the fighting, the fight is not over. It’s just starting, even though the past fifteen months were mentally exhausting and physically exhausting, and it caused a lot of damage and losses for a lot of people in the West Bank and in Gaza and around the world. People lost their jobs. They were getting harassed by Israeli activists and [the] Israeli government and everything. 
But we still have to keep going, because it’s not over.

Gaza: never forgive, never forget

University of WA bans statements that ‘cause harm’, disciplines student for defending free speech

The quiet part out loud: Israel announces Gaza takeover

Israel’s renewed Gaza slaughter

Letter from a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana

The great antisemitism con job

Conflating Zionism and Judaism is antisemitic

US government ‘kidnaps’ Palestinian student activist

Solidarity with Palestinian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah

The view from the ground in the West Bank

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