Habib Siddiqui

  They are watching us. At least, they were. Before they became overwhelmed with grief, before they collapsed, wounded, dazed by hunger, confusion and fear. By now, they must have completely given up on our world of voyeurs, including those taking a moment to glimpse that relentless slaughter day-after-day-after-day over there. They know how we live—our pools and malls, our raucous ball games. Gazan graduates win scholarships to study here. Women and men locked in that smoldering prison have relatives in the US, families who managed to emigrate war-after-war since 1967. They know how determinedly relatives toiling overseas month-after-month send some savings back to Jabalia, back to Khan Younis, back to Rafah, back to Deir al-Balah, to Beit Lahia and Gaza City. They drink Fanta and Coke and Maxwell coffee; they buy foreign-made diapers for their infants and children’s outfits embossed with American brand names. They welcome secondhand clothes shipped by charities from church-after-...

  On Saturday, October 7 2023, a significant shift occurred in the Palestinian-Israeli narrative. A normalised, gradual genocide over 76 years of Zionist colonialism, peppered by savage episodes of “mowing the lawn”, obscured by liberal Zionist  propaganda  and backed by imperial Washington, became an unapologetic, even gleeful mass murder of Palestinians, grotesquely captured on video for the world to witness. Throughout its history, the Zionist movement  has exploited  fear-mongering and the lure of land and resource theft to subjugate and entice its populace into compliance. In the aftermath of October 7, Israeli propagandists escalated their  gaslighting  of Palestinians and their allies, silenced opposing viewpoints in  the media , concocted atrocity propaganda to justify Israel’s brutality and rallied support for extensive military action utilising Judaic  motifs of revenge  and trauma. For nearly eight months, Israel’s settler col...

  Even the most optimistic of political analysts did not expect that the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor would be  uttering  these words: “I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu (…) and Yoav Gallant (…) bear criminal responsibility for (…) war crimes and crimes against humanity …” Aside from the two Israelis, Karim Khan has  included  three Palestinians on his application requesting arrest warrants from the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber. That is important, but we must remember that, per western thinking, Palestinians have always been the guilty party. Evidence of the above claim is that the west has long portrayed Israel as a country at war in self-defense. Consequently, Palestinians – though occupied, dispossessed and disinherited – are the aggressors. This bizarre logic is not strange if seen within the larger power paradigm which has defined the west’s relationship with Palestine and, by extension, the Global South. For example...

  “Oh hell, what do mine eyes with grief behold?” – John Milton,  Paradise Lost People were saying their evening prayers when the IDF attacked the refuge camp at Tel al-Sultan in southern Gaza, where thousands had fled from the Israeli invasion of Rafah. They were told by the Israelis this was a safe zone, a secure place to shelter their children and grandparents.   “For your safety, the Israeli Defense Force is asking you to leave these areas immediately and to go to known shelters in Deir el Balah or the humanitarian area in Tel al-Sultan through Beach Road,” read one of the leaflets dropped in Rafah a few days before. “Don’t blame us after we warned you.” The safe zone was a tent city amid the dunes–one of dozens scattered along more than 16 kilometers up the Gaza coast. The tents were made of plastic, which whipped and frayed in the coastal winds–a thin layer of protection against the sun and sand that soon turned into a death trap.   The lure of safety was the o...