Archiv: +972 Magazine (independent media / Israel)


10.11.2025 - 21:28 [ Ori Goldberg / +972 Magazine ]

Both sides of the Sde Teiman leak debate reflect Israel’s moral decay

(November 7, 2025)

Over the past two years, Maj. Gen. Tomer-Yerushalmi — the official responsible for all internal investigations and legal enforcement in the Israeli army — has almost entirely refrained from probing the countless, well-documented allegations against its soldiers. The Sde Teiman guards’ crime, however, as captured in the leaked video, was apparently so blatant and grotesque that authorities had no choice but to issue indictments.

When Israeli military police arrived at Sde Teiman to arrest the suspects, however, they were met by right-wing rioters and soldiers, including several members of Knesset hiding behind their immunity. Attempting to block the arrests, they insisted that the perpetrators did nothing wrong and that their actions were merely part of the Israeli war effort.

Tomer-Yerushalmi leaked the video of the rape soon after, and it quickly spread online. Protests by right-wing Israelis in support of the abusers grew in turn. But while many around the world were aghast at what could only be described as “right to rape” protests, the discussion in Israel quickly faded in favor of daily news of “successes” on the Gazan front. The case was largely forgotten for months, until the investigation into the video’s leak was announced last week.

25.10.2025 - 23:55 [ Yuval Abraham / +972 Magazine ]

One target at a time: The logic that helped Israeli liberals commit genocide

Yet to see the past two years not only through the prism of genocide but also as a second Nakba — a sustained project of erasure aimed at destroying both a people and the space they inhabit — may bring us closer to grasping the nature of Israel’s actions. Whereas genocide is often understood as violence for its own sake, the Nakba represents violence with a purpose: the removal and replacement of a people.

And yet, as a Jewish-Israeli faced with the horrors of the past two years, I cannot help but think in Holocaust terms. The destruction of Gaza has enabled me to better understand not only the stories of the victims but also of the perpetrators — the silent majority who facilitated atrocities through their actions and the stories they tell themselves to justify it all.

25.09.2025 - 21:45 [ +972 Magazine ]

Microsoft revokes cloud services from Israel’s Unit 8200, following +972 exposé

Microsoft has terminated the Israeli army’s access to technology it was using to store vast troves of intelligence on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, the tech giant informed Israel’s Defense Ministry in a letter late last week, according to the Guardian.

The decision followed an exposé last month by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian revealing how Unit 8200, the Israeli army’s elite cyber warfare agency, was housing intercepted recordings of millions of mobile phone calls by Palestinians on Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, creating one of the world’s most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group. According to the joint investigation, this data has been used over the past two years to plan lethal airstrikes in Gaza, as well as to arrest Palestinians in the West Bank.

25.09.2025 - 21:21 [ theGuardian.com ]

Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians

The decision to cut off Unit 8200’s ability to use some of its technology results directly from an investigation published by the Guardian last month. It revealed how Azure was being used to store and process the trove of Palestinian communications in a mass surveillance programme.

In a joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, the Guardian revealed how Microsoft and Unit 8200 had worked together on a plan to move large volumes of sensitive intelligence material into Azure.

23.09.2025 - 19:40 [ +972 Magazine ]

Israel is waging a holocaust in Gaza. Denazification is our only remedy

What Israel is doing in Gaza City is not the tragic byproduct of chaotic events on the ground, but a well-calculated act of annihilation, executed in cold blood by “the people’s army” — that is, the fathers, sons, brothers, and neighbors of us Israelis.

How is it that, despite the mounting testimonies from Gaza’s concentration and extermination camps, no mass refusal movement has taken root in Israel? That after two years of this carnage barely a handful of conscientious objectors sit in prison is truly inconceivable. Even the so-called “gray refusers” — reserve soldiers who do not oppose the war on ideological grounds but are simply exhausted and questioning its purpose — remain far too few to slow the killing machine, let alone bring it to a halt.

Who are these obedient souls who keep this system running? How can a society so deeply fractured — between the religious and the secular, settlers and liberals, kibbutzniks and urbanites, veteran immigrants and new arrivals — unite only in its willingness to slaughter Palestinians without a moment’s hesitation?

19.09.2025 - 03:05 [ +972 Magazine ]

Israel’s opposition is plotting a return to power. But it remains its own worst enemy

Yet such promises count for little at a time when Israel’s current government continues to bomb, shell, and starve Palestinians in Gaza, all while taking rapid steps toward formally annexing the West Bank. Nor has the opposition — neither its parliamentary representatives, like the Democrats, or the protest movement in the streets — shown the ability to turn growing discontent over the government’s handling of the war and abandonment of the hostages into a full-throated defense of Palestinians’ humanity.

Until they do, it is hard to imagine just how different the next government, whoever comprises it, will be when it comes to the prospect of peace and equality for all the people in this land.

26.08.2025 - 22:44 [ +972 Magazine ]

How Israelis turned atrocity denial into an art

(August 22, 2025)

Meanwhile, the reprehensible refusal by the vast majority of the Israeli media to show what is actually happening in Gaza means that when images do manage to slip through, the public response is often little more than a collective shrug of dismissal. Yet almost every time, that shrug is accompanied by “they deserved it,” as denial and justification intertwine in what may seem like a paradox but actually reflects two sides of the same coin.

09.08.2025 - 17:45 [ +972 Magazine ]

Microsoft storing Israeli intelligence trove used to attack Palestinians

Unit 8200, roughly equivalent in function to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), has transferred audio files of millions of calls by Palestinians in the occupied territories onto Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, operationalizing what is likely one of the world’s largest and most intrusive collections of surveillance data over a single population group. This is according to interviews with 11 Microsoft and Israeli intelligence sources in addition to a cache of leaked internal Microsoft documents obtained by the Guardian.

In a meeting at Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle in late 2021, the then-head of Unit 8200, Yossi Sariel, won the support of the tech giant’s CEO, Satya Nadella, to develop a customized and segregated area within Azure that has facilitated the army’s mass surveillance project. According to the sources, Sariel approached Microsoft because the scope of Israel’s intelligence on millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is so vast that it cannot be stored on military servers alone.

03.08.2025 - 12:41 [ +972 Magazine ]

Germany’s angel of history is screaming

How can a country that professes to be a gatekeeper of international law staunchly defend a state that so flagrantly violates it? How does a country that has spent 80 years cultivating a culture of remembrance, responsibility, and moral accountability show ironclad commitment to arresting one international war criminal, while warmly welcoming another? And how can a country that utilizes the image of the ruins of Dresden to teach its schoolchildren about the dangers of dehumanization and fascism be so blind to its own complicity in an unfolding catastrophe?

28.07.2025 - 00:41 [ +972 Magazine ]

Is this Gaza’s ‘bomb the tracks’ moment?

Starving at Bergen-Belsen alongside my mother, perhaps in the same barracks, was Hanna Levy-Hass, mother of Haaretz journalist Amira Hass. Hanna was one of the few people to keep a diary throughout her time at Bergen-Belsen, which survived and was later published.

In February 1945, she wrote: “Hunger crushes the spirit. I feel my physical and intellectual strength diminishing. Things escape me, I can’t think properly, can’t grasp events, can’t realize the full horror of the situation.

“Our hunger has only become fiercer,” the diary entry went on. “Our bodies have been demolished by it, we all drag ourselves around like rags; men literally drop to the ground from exhaustion and end up dying of hunger, simple as that.”

Eighty years later, in a dispatch this week from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, +972 Magazine journalist Ruwaida Amer wrote, “For about a month now, though, I’ve lost the ability to follow the news. My focus is slipping. My body is breaking down.”

15.07.2025 - 22:40 [ +972 Magazine ]

Aid for Gaza’s starving children is right at the gates. Let it in

Israel is blocking 6,000 UNRWA trucks from entering Gaza while children die of hunger. The world can still prevent further catastrophe if it chooses to act.

11.07.2025 - 20:02 [ Washington Post ]

Israeli plans for Gaza draw criticism of ‘concentration camps’

In March, in the wake of the collapse of an earlier ceasefire, Katz had issued a warning to Gaza residents that, if they didn’t release the remaining hostages and “remove Hamas” themselves, Israel would act with “unprecedented force.” Other “options” were possible for Gaza’s population, Katz suggested, including “relocation to other countries,” while threatening “complete destruction and devastation.”

At the time, Meron Rapoport, a left-wing Israeli journalist, parsed the statements coming from prominent lawmakers and officials, as well as connected right-wing Israeli journalists, and came up with this somewhat prescient conclusion: “Israel is preparing to forcibly displace the entire population of Gaza — through a combination of evacuation orders and intense bombardment — into an enclosed and possibly fenced-off area,” he wrote on April 1, suggesting the goal was tantamount to the creation of a large “concentration camp.”

08.07.2025 - 19:29 [ +972 Magazine ]

The Western liberal’s moral collapse in Gaza

On October 24, 2023, two and a half weeks after Hamas’ attack on Israel, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported a grim new record: Israel’s bombardment of the Strip had killed 704 Palestinians in the previous 24 hours alone. The next day, Egyptian-Canadian writer Omar El Akkad posted a now famous sentence on X: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”

That razor-sharp turn of phrase, which has since been viewed more than 10 million times, stayed with El Akkad all the way to February 2025, when it became the title of his third book.

(…)

Faced with the existential threat that Israel’s war on Gaza poses to their self-image, one might expect Western liberals to reckon with El Akkad’s core argument. And yet, outside of the ideological pro-Israel factions who cling to dogma over truth, the self-styled progressive is more likely to acknowledge past injustice only once nothing can be done to change it — when the most they can muster is a weary shrug: “It is what it is,” or, “We had no choice.”

“One remarkable difference between the modern Western conservative and their liberal counterpart,” he writes, “is that the former will gleefully sign their name on the side of the bomb while the latter will just sheepishly initial it.”

07.07.2025 - 17:08 [ +972 Magazine ]

Israel’s latest vision for Gaza has a name: Concentration camp

(April 1, 2025)

Connecting all these dots leads to a fairly clear conclusion: Israel is preparing to forcibly displace the entire population of Gaza — through a combination of evacuation orders and intense bombardment — into an enclosed and possibly fenced-off area. Anyone caught outside its boundaries would be killed, and buildings throughout the rest of the enclave would likely be razed to the ground.

Without mincing words, this “humanitarian zone,” as Magal so kindly put it, in which the army intends to corral Gaza’s 2 million residents, can be summed up in just two words: concentration camp. This is not hyperbole; it is simply the most precise definition to help us better understand what we are facing.

06.07.2025 - 21:32 [ +972 Magazine ]

Legacy of South African Bantustans hangs over Trump deal

(February 9, 2020)

South Africa‘s Bantustans were designed to weaken and fragment the black population. Under Trump‘s plan, Palestine could face a similar fate.

03.07.2025 - 01:25 [ Orly Noy / +972 Magazine ]

The Knesset vs Ayman Odeh

On Monday, the Knesset House Committee voted to impeach Palestinian parliamentarian Ayman Odeh, head of the predominantly Arab Hadash-Ta’al list. His crime? In January, as the two-month Gaza ceasefire came into effect, Odeh tweeted: “I am happy about the release of the [Israeli] hostages and [Palestinian] prisoners. From here, both peoples must be freed from the yoke of the occupation. We were all born free.”

As I watched the committee’s hearing, I felt like my eyes were bleeding. It was physically unbearable. Knesset members from across the political spectrum — who aren’t worthy of the dust on Odeh’s shoes when it comes to humanism, morality, and democratic integrity — competed to see who could spew the vilest rhetoric against him.

No one paid attention to the Knesset’s legal adviser — who, after the obligatory lip service condemning Odeh’s “disgusting statements,” concluded that there was no legal basis for his impeachment. And it goes without saying that no one listened to Odeh’s attorney, Dr. Hassan Jabareen, who explained why the proposal was procedurally flawed, legally unsound, and morally bankrupt.

From the first sentence to the last, the hearing was a farce.

01.07.2025 - 01:40 [ +972 Magazine ]

New Israeli directive expedites ethnic cleansing of Masafer Yatta

(June 25, 2025)

Yunis explained that in recent years, the army focused on denying Palestinian building requests — as opposed to mandating the wholesale expulsion of Palestinian residents — as a way to mitigate international criticism. “They didn’t want the world to see that they’re carrying out ethnic cleansing, so they didn’t do big expulsions, with people being loaded onto trucks,” he told +972 and Local Call. “They’ve been trying to wear us down gradually, preventing us from working, demolishing homes, in the hope that people will become fed up and leave.”

Now, however, wholesale expulsion has become a very realistic prospect.

21.06.2025 - 09:11 [ +972 Magazine ]

‘The Hunger Games’: Inside Israel’s aid death traps for starving Gazans

The day after the massacre on Al-Rashid Street that claimed Hatem Shaldan’s life, even larger crowds gathered in the same spot, including 17-year-old Muhammad Abu Sharia, who arrived with four relatives. The few aid trucks that arrived that week gave a sliver of hope to starving families.

Abu Sharia lives with his family of nine in their partially destroyed home in southern Gaza City, the only son among six sisters. “My family didn’t want me to go at first,” he said. “But we’ve been starving for two months.”

At 10 p.m., he made his way to Al-Rashid Street, where crowds had gathered on the sand near the shore, waiting for aid trucks. People shared warnings in hushed voices: “Stay behind the trucks. Don’t run in front — you might get crushed.”

Abu Sharia was shocked by what he saw. “Elderly people, women, children, all just waiting for a chance at flour.” Then, without warning, artillery shells began falling around them.

Panic broke out. Some fled. Others, like Abu Sharia, sprinted toward the trucks. “People were being killed and wounded, but no one stopped. Everyone just kept running for the flour.”

He managed to grab a bag lying beside a dead body, but only made it a few meters before a gang of four men with knives surrounded him and threatened to kill him if he didn’t hand it over. He let it go.

Still hoping to reach another truck, he waited hours longer. Then he saw people shouting, “More aid has arrived!” The trucks rolled in, barely slowing down as crowds swarmed them. “I saw a man fall under one [truck] and get his head crushed.” With ambulances too far away to approach for fear of Israeli airstrikes, the wounded and dead were dragged away by donkey carts and tuk-tuks.

18.06.2025 - 01:57 [ +972 Magazine ]

Netanyahu’s Iran gambit aimed to realign the world behind Israel. It may backfire

Netanyahu’s claim that the attack was about preventing an immediate threat to Israeli national security is not just facetious, it’s fictitious. I think it was really an attempt to realign the world behind Israel.

The reason Netanyahu felt he had to do that, even at the cost of starting a full-fledged war, was that Israel had exhausted pretty much all of its options in Gaza after a nearly two-year long genocidal campaign. From military action that has failed to return the hostages, to the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “aid centers” [that have so far failed to facilitate widespread ethnic cleansing] — nothing Israel was doing in Gaza seemed to catch on. So Netanyahu did what he has done throughout the past two years: open up another front.

Iran was much easier for him [than other fronts] because the idea that the Islamic Republic must be dealt with using military means is perhaps the broadest, most solid consensus in Israeli politics. I think Netanyahu wanted to make political gains and ensure his personal status and future — above all, postponing his trial — as well as try to drag the world into this conflict by forcing, at the very least, the United States to side with Israel.

16.06.2025 - 15:02 [ +972 Magazine ]

Israel’s greatest threat isn’t Iran or Hamas, but its own hubris

We Israelis must understand — we are not immune. A people whose entire existence depends solely on military might is destined to end up in the darkest corners of destruction, and ultimately, in defeat. If we haven’t learned this most basic lesson from the past two years, let alone the past eighty, then we are truly lost. Not because of Iran’s nuclear program or Palestinian resistance, but because of the blind, arrogant hubris that has taken hold of an entire nation.

14.06.2025 - 15:44 [ +972 Magazine ]

The planned expulsion of Gaza’s population is already underway

Israel is conditioning aid delivery to force Gazans south into ‘concentration zones.’ This scheme has begun to stall, but that only portends greater brutality.

09.06.2025 - 19:31 [ +972 Magazine ]

Israel no longer hides its genocidal aims in Gaza. Will the world keep looking away?

Under international law, the prohibition of genocide is a jus cogens norm — binding on all states without exception. There is a universal obligation to prevent genocide and to ensure accountability. In January 2024, the ICJ found that Israel was at risk of perpetrating a genocide and must take provisional measures to avoid committing the crime. With its subsequent actions, Israel has made a mockery of that order.

In July 2024, the ICJ ruled in a separate case that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories was illegal and must end. In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges related to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Yet the response from the international community has been negligible. While some countries like Colombia and South Africa have taken steps to cut relations and hold Israel accountable, most — including Arab states with formal ties to Israel — have done little beyond issue meaningless condemnations.

29.05.2025 - 23:08 [ +972 Magazine ]

For more Israelis, calling out war crimes is no longer taboo

Recognition of the army’s atrocities in Gaza has moved into mainstream Israeli discourse. This alone cannot end the war — but it‘s a profound shift.

27.05.2025 - 20:14 [ +972 Magazine ]

Israel’s latest vision for Gaza has a name: Concentration camp

(April 1, 2025)

Connecting all these dots leads to a fairly clear conclusion: Israel is preparing to forcibly displace the entire population of Gaza — through a combination of evacuation orders and intense bombardment — into an enclosed and possibly fenced-off area. Anyone caught outside its boundaries would be killed, and buildings throughout the rest of the enclave would likely be razed to the ground.

Without mincing words, this “humanitarian zone,” as Magal so kindly put it, in which the army intends to corral Gaza’s 2 million residents, can be summed up in just two words: concentration camp. This is not hyperbole; it is simply the most precise definition to help us better understand what we are facing.

24.05.2025 - 00:55 [ +972 Magazine ]

What can the Joint List teach us about building Palestinian political power?

Yet Israel’s political chaos between 2019 and 2022, marked by five consecutive elections and an electorate divided almost evenly between pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps, gave the Joint List an unexpected second life. Reconstituted ahead of the September 2019 vote, it immediately regained its 13 seats. Then, in March 2020, it achieved a historic milestone, becoming Israel’s third-largest party with 15 seats — the highest ever for Palestinian representation. Turnout rebounded, while support for Zionist parties among Palestinian voters collapsed from 28 percent to just 12 percent.

18.05.2025 - 23:14 [ +972 Magazine ]

‘Israel burned the ground under our feet’: Hundreds killed in intensified Gaza assault

(May 16, 2025)

Mahmoud Muqbil, 38, lost at least 15 family members after their homes in Jabalia refugee camp were bombed on Thursday night. Ten were buried, and five remain under the rubble. “The Israeli army has intensified its targeting of hospitals and residential buildings to an extreme degree,” he told +972. “It is terrifying. I’ve been trying to calm my children from the sounds of explosions and airstrikes. The noise they make is indescribable.”

As Muqbil and his family mourned their relatives, his neighbor’s home was also struck in an overnight attack. “The Al-Ghandour family’s home, just two houses away from ours, was also targeted. We heard their screams and cries for help but couldn’t save anyone because the army was targeting anyone who moved in the area,” he recalled.

On Friday evening, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement that its field team documented the killing of over 115 Palestinians in northern Gaza alone in under 12 hours. The strikes, it said, hit at least 10 homes in Tel Al-Zaatar in Jabalia and Al-Salateen neighborhood in Beit Lahia, “destroying them entirely while the residents were inside, killing dozens of civilians, including women and children, in massacres that reflect the intensifying pattern of systematic mass killing against Palestinian civilians.”

16.05.2025 - 23:19 [ +972 Magazine ]

‘Render it unusable’: Israel’s mission of total urban destruction

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly endorsed this vision in late March, soon after Israel resumed the war. “Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will see to the general security of the Gaza Strip and allow the realization of the Trump plan for voluntary migration,” Netanyahu affirmed. “This is the plan. We are not hiding it and are ready to discuss it at any time.”

Just this week, Netanyahu made this link between the destruction of civilian buildings and forced displacement more explicit. “We are destroying more and more homes — they have nowhere to return to,” he reportedly said at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. “The only expected result will be a desire for Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip.”

13.05.2025 - 15:46 [ +972 Magazine ]

‘She’s dying in front of my eyes’: The Gazan children starving under Israeli siege

For a little over two months, Israel has prevented all food, goods, and medical supplies from entering the Gaza Strip. The consequences have been catastrophic: According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, over 70,000 children are now hospitalized with acute malnutrition, and 1.1 million lack the daily minimum nutritional requirements for survival.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza reported that, as of May 5, at least 57 children have already died from malnutrition-related health complications since the start of the war, and another 3,500 under the age of five face imminent risk of death from starvation.

11.05.2025 - 20:11 [ Mekomit.co.il ]

דיוקן של מעצר: פרויקט צילום מיוחד

מ‘ ול‘
מגרמניה, סטודנטים ואקטיביסטים

מ‘ ול‘ נעצרו באוקטובר 2024 בא-תוואני בדרום הר חברון, בזמן שליוו את משפחת הורני באדמתם הפרטית. הם ביקשו להישאר בעילום שם, למען ביטחונם ומחשש להשלכות משפטיות בגרמניה. אחרי מעצרם הם נחקרו על ידי היחידה שהקים בן גביר לטיפול בפעילי סולידריות. הם בילו כמה ימים במעצר ואז אולצו לחצות את הגבול לירדן.

לפני שחצו את הגבול שוטרים צילמו אותם, וזמן קצר אחרי שגורשו, השר בן גביר פרסם את הצילום עם טשטוש פנים, וכתב: „2 אנרכיסטים תומכי טרור בעלי אזרחות גרמנית – נכנסו בערב ראש השנה ליישוב חוות מעון בדרום הר חברון הפריעו והתעמתו עם חיילים. צוות מיוחד שהקמתי במשטרת ישראל מיד עם פרוץ המלחמה, פעל בנחישות ובמהירות לעצור ולגרש אותם דרך מעבר אלנבי, ולפעול שלא יוכלו להיכנס לשטח ישראל בשנית. רק ככה זה עובד!“.

ל‘ מספרת: „הכל התחיל כשחייל-מתנחל ניגש אלינו וביקש את הדרכונים שלנו. לא מסרנו אותם מיד. שאלנו אותו – ‚מי אתה בכלל? אתה חייל? יש לך סמכות לעשות את זה?‘ הוא חזר על הבקשה, ואז פשוט התחיל לקרוא לאנשים. הגיעו חיילים, לקחו את הדרכונים שלנו, החזירו אותם ונראה כאילו הכל בסדר. אבל אז הגיע מתנחל שהיו לנו כבר מפגשים איתו, ואמר להם משהו על רמאללה. הוא המשיך להתעקש, וגם רצה לראות שוב את הדרכונים שלנו. הרגשנו שהוא מסית אותם“.

מ‘ ממשיך: „בסופו של דבר האשימו אותנו ב‘הפצת תוכן תומך טרור‘ ברשתות החברתיות או משהו כזה, וזה היה קשור לצילום שלנו בהפגנה ברמאללה. זו היתה התמונה שהמתנחל זיהה, והיא כנראה נלקחה מסרטון שפורסם בפייסבוק של הבחור שנאם שם. הוא העלה תמונה של כל האנשים שעמדו שם בעמוד הפייסבוק הפרטי שלו, שלא היו לו הרבה עוקבים או לייקים, והם איכשהו מצאו את זה והשתמשו בזה כהוכחה נגדנו.

11.05.2025 - 20:09 [ +972 Magazine ]

Portraits of fascism

As in Russell’s case, M. thinks their photo was taken right before being deported – but this time at the Allenby Crossing. “We had completed the whole crossing process and we were just sitting there. Then suddenly a police officer came up to us. They photographed us several times, but the one that got published was the one of us just waiting.”

L. added: “He also told us to look directly into the camera. The photo was published that same day — we found out when we arrived in Amman, and someone said to us: ‘Did you see? Ben Gvir published your photo!’”

“It was so absurd,” M. continued. “My first thought was, how did that photo go from a police officer to the National Security Minister’s office in just two hours? They must have WhatsApp groups where they share everything. Honestly, I was kind of glad they blurred our faces, because that really could have had consequences.”

“In Germany, the Anti-Deutsch do almost exactly what the settlers do — they collect photos of Palestinians and anti-Zionist individuals, and post images from places where we meet people,” L. explained. “And there are attacks too. I feel like it‘s obviously meant to intimidate, to target individuals, to show that ‘we see you, internationals.’ And especially with this entire police apparatus, the goal is for us to be on their radar and to be hunted down.”

02.04.2025 - 17:10 [ +972 Magazine ]

Israel’s latest vision for Gaza has a name: Concentration camp

Unable to immediately expel Gazans en masse, Israel seems intent on forcing them into a confined zone — and letting starvation and desperation do the rest.

22.03.2025 - 13:22 [ +972 Magazine ]

Hostage families left ‘helpless’ after Israel shatters ceasefire

“What works in our favor is that deals are being made above the Israeli government’s head,” Shahar Mor, nephew of Avraham Munder — whose body was retrieved from a tunnel in southern Gaza in August — told +972 two days before Israel broke the ceasefire during a protest outside the military HQ. “In our opinion, this is excellent, because the Israeli government brought us absolutely nothing.”

Now, after Trump signed off on the renewed Israeli assault in Gaza, Mor and other Sha’ar Begin activists have lost hope that Washington will assist in securing their loved ones’ release. “We counted on Trump in the last month, but Netanyahu is toying with him like he toyed with Biden for 15 months,” Mor said on Thursday.

27.02.2025 - 21:42 [ +972 Magazine ]

In its fight against fascism, Israeli academia remains blind to a basic truth

After leading the protest movement against the government’s planned judicial overhaul at the beginning of 2023, Israeli academia quickly fell into line after October 7. From militant speeches and op-eds defending a “just war” to the mass enlistment of Israeli students in the reserve service, the academy broadly supported the war in its first months.

What my academic colleagues fail to grasp, but what my activist friends understand clearly, is that the Israeli government’s ongoing assault on democratic norms and institutions cannot be separated from its genocidal oppression of the Palestinian people. They make up the two lobes of the same right-wing brain.