Palestine

By Maysa Mustafa
Published date: 26 March 2025 21:35 GMT

"After an article reported that Rachel Zegler “trashed” the production of Disney's Snow White due to her stance on Palestine, thousands online are applauding her vocal stance this week despite the pressures of working with Disney and former Israeli army soldier Gal Gadot."

By Syma Mohammed
Published date: 26 March 2025 21:18 GMT

"Masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (#ICE) agents approached and physically restrained the #Tufts University doctoral student while on the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Wednesday before taking her into custody for “pro-Palestine” views. She is being held at the South Louisiana Processing Center."

The Wise And Brilliant Israel Apologist

• Caitlin Johnstone

I used to be pro-Palestinian, you know. I thought Israel was wrong for carpet bombing Gaza and using siege warfare on civilians.

But then I ran into a very wise Israel apologist who changed my way of looking at things forever.

I was walking down the street and I saw him leaning against a lamp post, smoking a pipe as wise men do.

“Your shirt says Free Palestine,” he said from behind a plume of smoke.

“Yep!” I replied.

“So I guess that means you love Hamas then?” spake he.

I stopped in my tracks. I’d never thought of it that way before.

Could it be? Could my opposition to murdering civilians really be indicative of a deep affection for a Gazan militant group? Maybe I really did love Hamas and think everything it did on October 7 was great and wonderful?

“Is this really how I want to live my life?” I thought to myself.

“I — I — I…” I said out loud.

“Or perhaps,” he said with a raised eyebrow, “you just HATE JEWS??”

I fell to my knees.

Oh my God. He really had a point. What possible reason could anyone have for opposing military explosives being dropped on buildings full of children besides a seething lifelong hatred of adherents to the religion of Judaism? How could anyone possibly oppose siege warfare tactics which cut off civilians from food and water and electricity and fuel and medical supplies unless they harbored dangerously negative opinions about members of a small Abrahamic faith?

“Who… who are you?” I asked.

“That’s of no consequence,” he said, casually blowing a smoke ring through another larger smoke ring.

“But… but the children,” I stammered as my entire worldview crumbled before my eyes. “The civilians! They’re dying! Isn’t it bad that they’re dying?”

And then he delivered the coup de grâce.

“Have you considered,” he said before a pregnant pause, “… that all of those deaths are the fault of Hamas?”

It was like a 50 megaton nuclear explosion went off inside my brain.

I fell flat on my back. The world was spinning. A trickle of blood ran down into my hair from my ear.

I felt all the anti-colonialism leaving my body. I suddenly could no longer remember why I thought it was bad to rain down military explosives on a densely populated concentration camp.

Everything went black.

When I finally came to, the mysterious stranger was gone. But his wisdom and profound insights into Israel and Gaza will always live on in my heart.

Archive Link w.o. paywall: https://archive.ph/avu0l

Lorenzo Tondo and agencies Tue 25 Mar 2025 16.00 EDT

"An Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was attacked by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces has been released from detention.

Hamdan Ballal and two other Palestinians left a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, where they were being held on Tuesday. Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes."

Abbas’ first engagement, with Ahmed Abuhassira, took place before the war began, specifically on 27 August 2023.

The young couple had set their wedding date for 23 October 2023.

“I met him for the last time on 6 October 2023, then the war started the following day, and I was unable to meet him again until the date of his death on 26 October 2023,” Abbas, 20, told Middle East Eye.

Abbas found out that her fiance had been killed in an Israeli air strike on his home through the news.

“I was watching Al Jazeera and saw on the news ticker that the Abuhassira family’s house had been bombed. They were describing the location of my fiance’s house,” she recalled.

“I later learned that my fiance had been killed along with his entire family in an air strike that completely destroyed their home in the west of Gaza.”

As the Israeli blockade and bombardment worsened, Abbas isolated herself for months, and her relatives and friends assumed she was struggling with depression.

However, during this year’s Ramadan, Abbas began attending Taraweeh, the voluntary nightly prayers performed during the holy month, at the mosque. It was there that a woman, who would later become her mother-in-law, noticed her and was impressed.

"A few days later, she visited my family’s house and asked if I would marry her son. I met him, we talked, and I accepted his proposal,” Abbas said.

“I told him about the immense grief I had experienced, and he promised to make up for everything I had lost and everything I had gone through. He told me he wished he had known me a long time ago.”

Abbas and Shobaki signed their marriage contract, known as "Katb al-Kitab," a custom for couples in Palestine and some Islamic countries.

Abbas’ family organised a small gathering to celebrate the engagement, during which Shobaki and some family members presented the "mahr," a dowry from the groom to the bride, typically given in cash.

Shobaki returned late at night and called Abbas first thing in the morning when he woke up.

“He called me at around 10am and asked me to get ready to have an iftar meal with his family that day. I dressed up and eagerly waited for a call from him to tell me that he had arrived to pick me up, but it was past 3:15pm and he had not called yet,” Abbas said.

“I tried calling him multiple times, but his phone was unreachable, so I sent a message to his mother to ask about him, but she didn’t respond.

“I kept on trying to reach him until my cousin called and told me he had been killed.”

· Hamdan has been released!! But is in the Hospital · Change.org (2025-03-26)

https://www.change.org/p/global-filmmakers-call-for-the-release-of-hamdan-ballal/u/33368154

#NoOtherLand #HamdanBallal
@[email protected] @[email protected] @israel

Israeli violence is rapidly emptying Jordan Valley of Palestinians (+972 Magazine, 2025-03-19)

https://www.972mag.com/jordan-valley-khirbet-samra-settler-violence/
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#WestBank
“Khirbet Samra is one of the few remaining Palestinian shepherding communities in Area C of the northern Jordan Valley, which falls under complete Israeli control. Like many other #Bedouin communities in the area, its residents have faced escalating settler violence since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023…”

”From large-scale livestock theft, to home raids and beatings, the violence and displacement spiked in the Jordan Valley after the Israeli military launched ‘Operation Iron Wall’ in January”

“… Trump’s return and the new military assault in the West Bank, [the founder of Kerem Navot Dror] Etkes continued, provided ‘a clear sign for the settlers to escalate their violence to expel more Palestinians.’

“Now, Israel’s takeover of the Jordan Valley is almost complete…”

#KeremNavot #SettlerViolence
@[email protected] @[email protected] @israel

Statement from Drop Site News on Israel’s Murder of Our Colleague Hossam Shabat: We Hold Both Israel and the U.S. Government Responsible (2025-03-24)

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/statement-israel-killing-hossam-shabat-journalist-gaza
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“Today, March 24, 2025, Israel killed journalist Hossam Shabat, a reporter for Al Jazeera Mubasher and a contributing reporter to Drop Site News, in what witnesses described as a targeted strike. Hossam was a tremendous young journalist who exhibited remarkable courage and tenacity as he documented the U.S.-facilitated genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. One of the few journalists who didn’t leave the northern Gaza Strip, Hossam was murdered in Beit Lahia, the site of some of the most intense Israeli bombing and mass killing operations.

“Drop Site News holds Israel and the U.S. responsible for killing Hossam...”

#HossamShabat #ProtectTheJournalists
@[email protected] @[email protected] @israel

CPJ denounces Israel’s killing of 2 more Gaza journalists in return to war - Committee to Protect Journalists (2025-03-24)

https://cpj.org/2025/03/cpj-denounces-israels-killing-of-2-more-gaza-journalists-in-return-to-war/
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"The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Monday’s killing in Gaza of Palestinian reporters Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour by the Israel Defense Forces and calls for an independent international investigation into whether they were deliberately targeted."

"On October 23, the IDF accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working with Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. CPJ has called on Israel to stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press."

"More than 170 journalists and media workers have been killed since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023."

#HossamShabat #MohammedMansour
#protectTheJournalists #WarCrime
@[email protected] @[email protected] @israel

The Intercept Briefing March 24 2025, 6:00 a.m.

"“Anything that shows solidarity of Palestine is being mischaracterized quite erroneously as antisemitism. That’s the way in which they are trying to get us to stop speaking about Palestine,” says Momodou Taal, a Cornell University graduate student and activist now facing deportation after challenging the Trump administration in court.

The risks of political speech have escalated dramatically for international students like Taal. He spoke to The Intercept Briefing yesterday, underscoring the chilling reality he and his peers now face. “It’s not just that you might get kicked out of school or suspended,” says Taal, “but you are threatened with deportation and ICE custody now. That’s what’s at stake here.” "

Paramedics injured as Israeli forces target ambulances in Gaza’s Rafah (Anadolu, 2025-03-23)

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/paramedics-injured-as-israeli-forces-target-ambulances-in-gaza-s-rafah/3517730
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" The [Palestinian Civil Defense] agency said Israeli forces besieged several ambulances as paramedics responded to casualties after Israeli airstrikes in the Al-Hashashin area in Rafah.

"It said several paramedics were injured, without specifying their number.

"The agency said it also lost contact with one of its rescue teams as they attempted to reach out to ambulances targeted by Israeli forces in Rafah.

"Meanwhile, the Israeli army issued an evacuation order for Palestinians in the Tel al-Sultan area of western Rafah..."

#CrimeAgainstHumanity #WarCrime #EndOccupation
@[email protected] @[email protected] @israel

Hossam Shabat’s Last Article - Drop Site News (2025-03-24)

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/hossam-shabat-journalist-killed-gaza-last-article

#HossamShabat #ProtectTheJournalists

@[email protected] @[email protected] @israel

Victims of UCLA Mob Attack Sue to “Hold the Aggressors Accountable” (The Intercept, 2025-03-20)

https://theintercept.com/2025/03/20/ucla-palestine-israel-campus-protest-lawsuit/
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“In Late April 2024, a mob attacked a pro-Palestinian student encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles. Police and campus security stood by and watched the assault for nearly five hours before intervening. Pleas to university officials went nowhere. And the next day police returned, only to violently and unlawfully clear the encampment and arrest protesters. These are the allegations of a group of students and faculty who are suing the people they blame for the attack, law enforcement agencies, and university officials for violating their civil rights.

“The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, comes as the federal government deploys all of its might to restrict speech on Palestine in the name of eradicating antisemitism on college campuses...”

#USPol #proPalestineEncampment #UCLA
@[email protected] @[email protected] @israel

Daniel Estrin, Daniel Wood, Abu Bakr Bashir, Anas Baba, Ahmad Abuhamda, Mahmoud Rehan, Connie Hanzhang Jin

March 24, 2025

"An Israeli strike on a Gaza apartment building killed 132 members of one family in October 2024. It was one of the deadliest Israeli strikes of the Israel-Hamas war. The few survivors documented the dead."

from The Intercept [may have paywall]
Jonah Valdez, Jessica Washington
March 21 2025, 5:34 p.m.

Jonah Valdez, Akela Lacy
March 20 2025, 1:46 p.m.