Archiv: +972 Magazine (independent media)


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.

23.01.2025 - 22:18 [ +972 Magazine ]

Leaked documents expose deep ties between Israeli army and Microsoft

The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months — including units in the air, ground, and naval forces, as well as the elite intelligence squad, Unit 8200. Microsoft has also provided the military with extensive access to OpenAI’s GPT-4 language model, the engine behind ChatGPT, thanks to the close partnership between the two companies.

These revelations are the product of an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call in collaboration with The Guardian.

04.12.2024 - 19:25 [ +972 Magazine ]

The West Bank villages wiped off the map by Israeli settler violence

According to new data gathered by the left-wing Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, which monitors Israel’s dispossession of Palestinian land in the West Bank, at least 57 Palestinian communities have been forced to flee their homes since October 7 as a result of Israeli settler attacks. Of these, seven have been partially displaced — meaning the expulsion of at least one residential cluster, located several hundred meters away from the next — and 50 have been wiped off the map entirely.

24.10.2024 - 11:15 [ +972 Magazine ]

The ‘pact of silence’ between Israelis and their media

(October 16, 2024)

Israel’s long-subservient media has spent the past year imbuing the public with a sense of righteousness over the Gaza war. Reversing this indoctrination, says media observer Oren Persico, could take decades.

20.10.2024 - 10:31 [ +972 Magazine ]

A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam

(September 17, 2024)

Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant remain tight-lipped about the real goals of the operation, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, as well as other ministers on the far right, declare them openly. Here, they cite a program that the “Forum of Reserve Commanders and Fighters,” spearheaded by Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland, proposed just a few weeks ago: ordering all residents of northern Gaza to leave within a week, before imposing a full siege on the area, including shutting off all supplies of water, food, and fuel, until those who remain surrender or die of starvation.

Other prominent Israelis, in recent months, have also called on the military to carry out mass extermination in northern Gaza. “Remove the entire civilian population from the north, and whoever remains there will be lawfully sentenced as a terrorist and subjected to a process of starvation or extermination,” Prof. Uzi Rabi, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University, elaborated in a radio interview on Sept. 15. And in August, according to a report in Ynet, government ministers had already started pressuring Netanyahu to “cleanse” northern Gaza of its inhabitants.

31.08.2024 - 22:50 [ +972 Magazine ]

‘If you try to defend yourself, you’re dead’: A West Bank village’s night of terror

Now, Palestinians in the area are increasingly fearful about what’s to come. “The settlers have always used the road belonging to the village [to get to their outpost], but now they are being more aggressive, provoking the residents,” Zawahra said. “In a few days when the academic year begins, the children will have to use this road to get to school. How can we make sure they are not attacked?”

Zawahra also explained how the latest attack has forced village residents to reevaluate what they held to be true: that there is safety in numbers. “We thought that the more people there are [when settlers enter a village], the lower the chance that they will attack. But they shot randomly. If you try to defend yourself, you’re dead.”

13.03.2024 - 21:00 [ +972 Magazine ]

Strangled by Israel for decades, Gaza’s future must begin with free movement

The catastrophic situation today must be understood within the context of Israel’s pre-October 7 policies, including vis-à-vis Palestinians’ freedom of movement between Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank. Over more than half a century, the violence of Israel’s ongoing occupation, repeated military assaults, and “separation policy” between Gaza and the West Bank have created a broken and bleeding stretch of land. These policies have manufactured and maintained a humanitarian disaster; separated Palestinians in Gaza from those in Israel and the West Bank; and promoted Israel’s illegitimate political and demographic objectives.

18.01.2024 - 00:13 [ 972mag.com ]

‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza

(November 30, 2023)

“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”

10.12.2023 - 16:55 [ 972mag.com ]

Netanyahu is prolonging the war to save his life’s mission

(November 17, 2023)

While an endless military operation allows the prime minister to cling to power, it also fulfills a larger ideological goal: preventing Palestinian statehood.

10.12.2023 - 02:10 [ 972mag.com ]

‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza

(November 30, 2023)

“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”

According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”

10.12.2023 - 02:02 [ Arnaud Bertrand / Twitter ]

WOW, this might be THE most important piece of journalism on the war on Gaza since it began, by Israeli newspaper @972mag Essentially they confirm, with unimpeachable sourcing, that the killing of civilians was all calculated and intentional.

(30.11.2023)

Their investigation is „based on conversations with seven current and former members of Israel’s intelligence community — including military intelligence and air force personnel who were involved in Israeli operations in the besieged Strip — in addition to Palestinian testimonies, data, and documentation from the Gaza Strip, and official statements by the IDF Spokesperson and other Israeli state institutions.“