Category Archives: Israel

A Ceasefire Deal (As The Bombs Fall), But Not a Peace Agreement: What Will Happen in Gaza After Israeli POW And Scant Few Palestinian Hostages Are Released?

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Judaism & Jews, Middle East, Palestinians

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SUPERB DISSECTION OF WHAT IS “A Ceasefire Deal, But Not a Peace Agreement: What Will Happen in Gaza After Hostages Are Released?”

Or, how I re-wrote the title, “A Ceasefire Deal (As The Bombs Fall), But Not a Peace Agreement: What Will Happen in Gaza After [Israeli POW] And Scant Few Palestinian Hostages Are Released

What an unusual assembly of excellent minds that speak truth: Mouin Rabbani, a Palestinian Middle East analyst favored greatly in my Gaza Essays, Muhammad Shehada, writer and analyst from Gaza whom I greatly esteem as well, and the best surprise: Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political analyst and scholar, and the first good intellect I’ve heard out of Israel since 2023. I mean it.

MOUIN RABBANI:

… this is an agreement. It’s not a peace agreement. It’s a ceasefire agreement, and a partial one. And given Israel’s previous conduct, and even more importantly, U.S. indulgence for Israel’s conduct, the indulgence of the West as a whole, this is a situation where Israel, should it so choose — and it will so choose, I suspect — will find a method to abrogate this agreement and ensure it is only of a temporary nature.

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA:

Well, the main thing that explains it is that tomorrow is the day where the Nobel Prize Committee will announce the Nobel Peace Prize winner. So, that’s the main thing that comes to mind. Otherwise, the second thing is Qatar. After Israel bombed Doha so viciously, Qatar has been demanding a price from the Trump administration. And Trump’s security reassurances that he gave in this executive order are practically worth nothing….
… This morning, Israel even intensified the bombing way more than before. It’s like they are in a rush, in a hurry, to kill as many people as possible and destroy much of the urban space as much as possible. They’ve been detonating those robotic suicide vehicles since yesterday. They’ve been bombing Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah, Gaza City, Al-Sabra, Tel al-Hawa, al-Shati camp. I just saw footage where Israeli tanks are literally bombing people alive on television on the beach, the people that were trying to go back to their homes. One of our colleagues, Motasem Dalloul in Gaza, just lost his third son today, that was murdered by the IDF.

PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO WHAT ORI GOLD SAYS, and with whom I agree, about true politcal power in Israeli society:

… Netanyahu is not an aberration. He’s not an anomaly. He’s the quintessential Israeli prime minister. That’s why he keeps winning, not because he’s a magician who pulls cards out of his sleeve, because he knows this, this is what Israelis approve of. And consistent polling shows that he’s right. While Israelis may have protested his government, while certain sectors of Israeli society did not see themselves aligned with his ministers, the great majority of Israeli Jews supported his government’s policies in Gaza. That is not something that can be wished away. That is still true. His would-be competitors, his would-be heirs from the opposition have never said anything that differed significantly from the genocidal policies we’ve seen for the past two years in Gaza. Netanyahu knows this, and he is using this, as any savvy politician would, to situate himself for further battles….

… it’s more important to talk about Netanyahu himself and why this deal is good for him, not bad for him, because Netanyahu can now be the complete package. Netanyahu was the fearless leader who fought the difficult, inevitable war, but he is now the fearless leader who brings the difficult, inevitable deal. And he is the grown-up in the room. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are the adolescents. You know, they do whatever they want. They’re juvenile. They have no responsibility. Netanyahu knows what’s what. And he was able to bring the hostages back. And should a snap election be called in Israel over the next six months — there’s very good chance that it will — that makes Netanyahu perhaps the most favored candidate to win the prime ministership again. …
…   the Israeli public considers itself to have undergone the very difficult two years, sees itself as unrightfully victimized by its own government and by every global leader out there, an Israeli public that just wants to get back to normal, which means to repress the fact of the occupation and to return to life as a Jewish and democratic state, effectively an ethnocracy built on Jewish supremacy. …

The rest. 

Image courtesy WAFA NEWS

NEW ESSAY (NEWS 10/6): Free Speech After Charlie Kirk: An American Lesson For Pam Bondi, Donald Trump & Netanyahu

America, Anti-Semitism, Argument, Constitution, Donald Trump, Fascism, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, GAZA, Government, Individual Rights, Israel, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Middle East, Natural Law, Palestinians, Racism, The State

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Freedom needs no justification. It is an end unto itself. You are deficient in American solidarity if you don’t stand up for non-violent protest and all speech ~ilana 

New essay is “Free Speech After Charlie Kirk: An American Lesson For Pam Bondi, Donald Trump & Netanyahu.” It is featured on The Unz Review (as a leading essay), on The New American, and on LewRockwell.com, anti-state, anti-war, pro-market.

You can now read it on IlanaMercer.com.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2025/10/free-speech-charlie-kirk-american-lesson-pam-bondi-donlad-trump-netanyahu/

Excerpt:

Let us be clear about what freedom of speech à la America truly means:

The words people speak, chant, write and tweet; the beliefs they are known to hold, the flags they fly or burn, the symbolic, non-violent ceremonies and rituals they enact, the insignia, paraphernalia; the goose-stepping, Hitler salutes they muck around with—provided no physical aggression is involved (violence against animals included), all this counts as protected speech, licit in natural law.

So long as oddities and idiosyncrasies, whether performed alone or in groups, thoughts harbored privately or shared in public—so long as no violence accompanies such speech or behavior; so long as your mitts stop at the next man’s face (or at the next mutt’s fury face, Kristi Noem): SPEECH. It’s all speech. It should be free, unfettered and as wild and as wanton as can be.

At their worst, expressions of ostensible antisemitism, Naziism, racisms or other antipathies amount to thought crimes, nothing more, if expressed as a belief system severally or collectively, rather than in palpably violent actions.  Whether your thoughts are spoken, chanted, written or preached; be they impolite or impolitic: they are, at worst, no more than thought crimes.

Thought crimes are nobody’s business in a free society. Thought crimes ought to be ferociously protected by a free people. By logical extension, any accusations of antisemitism, Naziism or other antipathies and racisms, are especially suspect when emitted as a meme from American institutionalized power structures.

One such obscenely wealthy and worthless power structure is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), or Defamation League—a more apt moniker once suggested by Elon Musk, before he joined the ADL in severely censoring some speech on the X platform. The ADL is a meddlesome shakedown operation, in the mold of the Southern Poverty Law Center (“Smear Artists for the Total State,” wrote Tom DiLorenzo). It has taken it upon itself to decide who lives and who dies socially and financially on the basis of the unfortunate individual’s ideas, spoken and written.

In the American tradition, thoughts and words spoken or written that are politically impolite—again, racism; Naziism, antisemitism—retain protected status as speech beyond the adjudication of law-makers, bureaucrats, mediacrats, educrats and technocrats.

Sniffing out racists or anti-Semites is an absolute no-no for any and all self-respecting, libertarian-minded Americans, or any American, for that matter. Like creedal libertarians, Americans don’t, or should not, prosecute thought crimes or persecute thought “criminals.”

…    Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, RIP, got it. On May 2, 2024, Kirk wrote the following: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi doesn’t get it. No wonder even Glenn Greenwald, once a practicing constitutional attorney—and a man of manners and decorum—regularly appends “dumb” and “lacking any grasp of constitutional law” to any mention of Bondi, who said this after Kirk’s murder:

The Justice Department would “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech…

…  Left, Right and libertarian; we can and must, then, join in unapologetically rejecting the very idea of policing, purging, persecuting or prosecuting people for holding and expressing politically unpopular ideas in action or in speech.

THE REST:  “Free Speech After Charlie Kirk: An American Lesson For Pam Bondi, Donald Trump & Netanyahu” is featured on The Unz Review (as a leading essay), on The New American, and on LewRockwell.com

Read it on IlanaMercer.com.

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2025/10/free-speech-charlie-kirk-american-lesson-pam-bondi-donlad-trump-netanyahu/

NEWS UPDATE (10/6):  Jeremy Scahill
“Hamas’s Strategic Gamble” by the dedicated and able Jeremy Scahill: “While President Trump enthusiastically welcomed Hamas’s response to his Gaza plan, the White House and Israel deal in deception.” (Drop Site News)

News (10/4) & New Gaza Genocide Essay: The Coverup Begins. Johnny-Come-Lately Journos & Politicos Start Covering Keister

Foreign Policy, Iraq, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Journalism, Logic, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Reason, Terrorism, War

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There was no need for the AWOL, Missing-In-Action Piers Morgan Media, which was never in Gaza, never stood up for Gaza, and never broke down barriers to reach and report about Palestinians sequestered in genocide. Thanks not to the MIA Media, but to Palestinian journalists, the living and the martyred, The Truth about genocide in Gaza continues to be conveyed faithfully and meticulously. ~ilana

New Essay is “Gaza Genocide: The Coverup Begins. Johnny-Come-Lately Journos & Politicos Start Covering Keister.” It is featured on The Unz Review, and LewRockwell.com,  anti-state, anti-war, pro-market.

And now on IlanaMercer.com. 

With the Genocide of Gaza accomplished; a convoluted coverup has begun. The Johnny-Come-Lately culprits, the professional liars in media, politics, in advocacy and in the tech industry—also the custodians of The Narrative—have commenced their dull recital of excuse-making.

A dull mediocrity which was fully behind Israel—or, alternatively, had confined itself to occasional quips about mass murder in Gaza being antithetical to the American “national interest”—is suddenly simulating belated passion for the truth. Or, versions thereof. All to sanitize their sins.

Having carved out “a place of massive impunity” for Netanyahu and his complicit countrymen, these sinecured, “credentialed” Western elites have duly begun to hijack storylines—even chronology—to absolve themselves of the genocide of Gaza. The same “perpetrator block,” wading in the blood of Palestinians, intends, for now, to remain mum about the territorial asphyxiation of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There, strategic adaptations of the Twenty-First Century Gaza Holocaust are rapidly and energetically underway. Pursuant to popular demand in Israel proper, Jewish-Israeli thieves and murderers are purloining Palestinian land and lives in the West Bank.

I had imagined that the media organ’s formulaic production had reached a nadir in Iraq, when my own passion burned as hot as a Babylonian kiln against that war. The “Truth” about Iraq, I had then observed incredulously, arrived officially only once the Empire’s agents declared it so, and released it in massaged, flattering form. And only as exigencies of power allowed. The sizeable dissident community did not rate a mention.

The current crop of Israel apostles who’ve connived and colluded to suppress truth include, broadly speaking, the Western news, commentary, advocacy and policy-making classes; the overarching tentacular corporate media and its clientele—the military-media-congressional-industrial complex, if you will. In a word, the international Imperial Comitatus: the foot soldiers who share in the loot or aspire to do so (like “Washington’s Arab puppets, whose sound and fury signify nothing”).

The international Imperial Comitatus make themselves known by affinity and affiliation, but mainly by what they do: They “ravage, slaughter, usurp … and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” Originally by Tacitus, the words were popularized by economist Jeffrey Sachs in an epic essay about these influencers, Israel’s co-belligerents.

Israel’s helpers had covered up the Crime of The Century, and now it could out. And although they’ve made excellent time—Palestinian erasure is near complete—these special interests wish, nevertheless, to salvage their standing in the world. They’re doing PR (public relations).

“Gaza panics the pro-Israel media,” said Owen Jones, a dogged British media critic. The genocide-era journalists are “creating a record that’ll allow them to say one day, ‘Here is proof that we denounced and tried to stop the genocide,’” remarked Laith Marouf, a Lebanese geopolitical reporter and commentator. They waited until now, because the genocide comported, broadly, with their worldview. “Media has manufactured consent for the genocide with atrocity propaganda,” seconds Hamza Yusuf, a British-Palestinian writer and journalist. “They did this.” “Western media is Israel’s Iron Dome,” averred Bassem Youssef, commentator, comic and former surgeon.

Although Israel’s abominations have been watched by humanity for the best part of two years; and despite Israel’s industrious, industrial-scale mass murder playing interminably, on a loop—the truth watered-down will only be permitted to come into being, officially, on the say-so of gatekeeping interests and personalities.

Such as Piers Morgan and the Missing-In-Action Morgan Media (shall we call it?).

And so, with pomp and Piers, forever slow on the uptake, those in control of The Storyline prepare to “excavate” a modified version of “the truth” about the Gaza Holocaust.

In attempting to clear his name, Morgan, a spirited evangelist for Israel’s right to practice state terrorism—he calls it “self-defense”—sounded the worst false note: the Iraq Defense: “nobody knew,” nobody could have known. (See “Iraq Liars And Deniers: We Knew Then What We Know Now,” May 22, 2015.)

The reason “nobody knew, or could have known” about a televised genocide, proclaimed the lemon-faced Piers with trademark verbose vacuity, is that there have been no “credible, international journalists” in Gaza!

Did you hear that? Palestinian journalists don’t count! In an instant, the MIA Morgan Media set about canceling the work done by the greatest journalists to have lived and died on the job. As you can see, society’s gate-keepers are also wretched human beings. To further their scheme and vanity, these power-brokers imply that absent their AWOL, MIA Media, we cannot and could not have known what was underway in Gaza.

The Missing-In-Action Media was never in Gaza, never stood up for Gaza, and never broke down barriers to reach and report about Palestinians sequestered in genocide. Now, the same Media asserts that we cannot know—could not have known—what was underway in the tiny Gaza Strip without them. Only Morgan and his ilk could have given us the goods on Gaza. …

…THE REST. New Essay is “Gaza Genocide: The Coverup Begins. Johnny-Come-Lately Journos & Politicos Start Covering Keister.” It is featured on The Unz Review and LewRockwell.com,  anti-state, anti-war, pro-market.

And now on IlanaMercer.com

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Dare I say that there is a duty to support anti-genocide activists and intellectuals? There is! To the extent they say important things (and are not powerful celebs); those who do this work are often fired from positions held, shadow-banned and throttled on social media. Tech algorithms also ensure that we are hard to find on Google searches. As one wag (Bassem Youssef) put it, we have free speech, but no reach.

Above all, the duty stems from the fact that this is an American and western genocide.

Like it or not, Gaza is America’s genocide.

PLEASE DO YOUR PART.

October 4: A beautiful—beatific—-soul, Greta Thunberg, who has the courage few men and women possess. Detained and abused in detention by agents of The Demon State.

A good update is at Drop Site Daily.

 

9/11: New Essay.’Where Are The Men? Military Action Against Israel. NOW!’ + Aug/Sept News Updates

America, Argument, Ethics, Foreign Policy, GAZA, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Just War, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law, Politics, War

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“Where Are The Men? Military Action Against Israel. NOW!” is a new essay now on The Unz Review, home to dissidents from day one.

You can also find the essay now on IlanaMercer.com

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2025/08/men-military-action-israel-now/

The core ideas of the piece you are about to read were fleshed-out previously (with more details about geopolitical context), in the lengthy, January 2025 essay, “BRICS And Pan-Arabism Revived To Tackle Israel, Militarily.“

Excerpt:

…  Libertarians worth their salt will apply to the collective the same moral code applied to the individual. If a lone serial killer and home invader must not be left to continue on his merry spree of murder and theft; neither may a band of killers armed with WMD do the same. If a lone serial killer ought to be hunted down by good men and women, cuffed, incarcerated and tried; so too must a gang engaged in high-tech, AI-assisted mass murder. That is the simple meaning and application of the libertarian axiom of non-aggression in a world in which defense is not privately produced.

Curiously—and considering the centrality of a values-based pretense in U.S. foreign policy, of good-vs-evil—if ever a clear, moral case for American military intervention presented itself; it is on the side of the civilians of Gaza as against the Israelis, who are armed with Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

This must lead to an inescapable conclusion:

Since the United States of America is not a “global force for good,” it remains for the locals to do the job. A large-scale regional military intervention must be mounted post haste, for there is an affirmative, not a passive, obligation to stop Israel. The world, with some heroic exceptions, has so far breached that legal and moral obligation.  …

…

…As that most American of crime writers, Raimond Chandler, counselled, “It never pays to let the enemy make all the rules.” And Israel is the enemy, the enemy of humanity.

Similar counsel comes from a recently released, elderly, pro-Palestinian resistance fighter, who spent four decades in a French prison. Described in the French press as a “Lebanese leftist militant imprisoned in France since 1984,” Georges Ibrahim Abdallah remains a masculine force at full tilt.

Abdallah arrived in Lebanon on July the 25th. A large gaggle of press and supporters eddied around him. He told them, “If one million Egyptians try to break the siege on Gaza, the genocide would end.”

Abdallah deferred to lionheart Greta Thunberg as an example of courage: The Swedish young woman had sailed forth in international waters intending to reach the riparian territory of the people of Gaza. For wishing to administer kindness—to slake the thirst and assuage the hunger of some Palestinians—and to galvanize on behalf of Gaza; Israeli terrorists kidnapped Freedom Flotilla activists and forced them into their own benighted country.

Piracy on the high seas. What should have been a safe, peaceful voyage was terminated by pirates, perpetrators of genocide. Does Israel now rule the high seas as well?

I might have misunderstood Mr. Abdallah, but by praising a wee girl for her bravery he seemed to be asking, where are the men?

… READ THE COMPLETE ESSAY. “Where Are The Men? Military Action Against Israel. NOW!” is now on The Unz Review and on IlanaMercer.com

https://www.ilanamercer.com/2025/08/men-military-action-israel-now/

Screen-capture image via Ha’aretz.

September 11:

There is a reason I wrote that, “The Israel-Occupied Levant Must Be Liberated, S.O.S.,” on 10/19/2024.

Awash with evil, when Israel is not imposed famine-starvation in Gaza, assassinating negotiators (Qatar) as well as entire governments, heads of civilian portfolios, across the Middle East (Yemen)—Jewish Israel is willy-nilly murdering over 100 Palestinians each day and wounding many hundreds more, consigning the injured to slow death by sepsis and starvation, without hope for recovery. The Gaza Strip Israel has demolished. Just in case, The Demon State has set about demolishing “around 300 residential units a day in Gaza City, aided by the Israeli army’s explosive-laden robots.” Soldiers the IDF are not. Here’s a news story from an archaic, old-fashioned keeper records: By November 15, 2023, Gaza City, “the largest Palestinian city,” was near complete destruction.

September 9: 

Today, 09.09.2025, the SS IDF bombed its partners to negotiations, in an attempt to assassinate Palestinian representatives, namely Hamas leadership, in Doha. This was done with US knowledge—and, presumably, acquiescence.

You ask why?

The answer:

“At bottom, these Israeli atavists want subjects they can sanction and slaughter into submission, not educated, erudite neighbors; equals with whom to make magic in the region.”—ILANA Mercer, “IRAN: Everything You Need To Know But Were Too Afraid Of The Israel Lobby To Ask,” July 1, 2025

Via Democracy Now!:

“Dr. Mimi Syed is an emergency medicine physician who’s been on two medical missions in Gaza working in hospitals that were under Israeli siege and was just denied reentry into Gaza, mere hours before she was scheduled to travel there for a third medical mission.”

The following phone message was left for her by a starving Ghazzawi medical student, a friend, heartbroken because she would not be seeing her friend, Dr. Syed:

PALESTINIAN MEDICAL STUDENT:

It’s been over a week since the famine began, and honestly, I haven’t felt full even once. I’m constantly hungry all the day, every day. I sleep every day with hunger. I can’t take anymore, Mimi. You know, I just — I feel weak. I feel too weak to move. And I have to still continue my hospital training every single day without eating. …
Hello, my dear Mimi. Ever since I found out that you couldn’t enter Gaza because of the occupation’s refusal, I’ve been very sad. I had hoped that I will see you soon, and I started to feel better from my previous state of depression and sadness, but now I no longer have any hope. Everything feels over. We don’t even want you to come and help us. They are devils, in every sense of the word.
Mimi, I don’t want anything from life except death, because I truly believe I will find peace in it. I just want everyone to pray for me. I was really hoping to see you soon, but in Gaza, things never go the way we want. I wish there another chance to see you, my dear, hug you, but I know I won’t make it. I know. I love you so much, and I’m really sorry.
And another thing, Israel have already started occupying Gaza. I’m so — I’m so sad, and I’m so tired. We’re getting displaced again. Oh my god. I no longer have any hope. I just want to die. I just want to die right now. Oh my god. You know that love you so much, my dear, and it’s such an honor to know you. Love you. Don’t forget to pray for us. Thank you so much for everything.

August 27:  A crime? Intentional? Israel? You don’t say!

The double-tap murder:

https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1959881104569069708

The aftermath—which has happened countless times for the best part of two years.

https://x.com/gazanotice/status/1959918069104435401

With every new, daily, brazen butchery by Israel, the moron media contemplate, as the Guardian imbecile does, that “Israel’s attack on hospital in Gaza may constitute a war crime.” Double-tap strikes—first target Gazans, then target the beautiful souls who invariably come to the aid of your initial victims—such as the latest by the genocidal entity, are what dissident media have documented for the best part of two years. And the Moron Media still persist in calling genocide a war (Glenn Greenwald, in particular, should know better than to use this misnomer). One more thing:  The legacy media’s language: quit the “were killed” usage. “Were murdered” is the correct appellation.

One of the beautiful people murdered yesterday: Maryam.

Via Euromed Monitor, some Church-of-Satan generated headlines since August 18, on left. On Right, Ha’aretz’s “Starvation Is Everywhere: Virtual Tours of Gaza Clinics Expose the Scale of the Horror.”

August 23 UPDATES:

No clue why Seymour Hersh, august journalist, thinks the Israeli obscene and grotesque future “plan” for Gaza, drawn up by members of the Israeli genocidal entity, is a “fantasy.” Is the Genocide a fantasy? Is the acquiescence in genocide of the Biden-Trump administrations a fantasy? Is the West’s complicity a fantasy? Is utter inaction—nay, assistance—a fantasy? Is the world’s creation of “a place of massive impunity” for Israel a fantasy?

Floated by Israel’s religious right was a “formal plan for the future of Gaza titled ‘The Riviera in Gaza—From Vision to Reality'”. It “is a blueprint for a future in Gaza without the Palestinians who now are living and dying there…”

**

15:22 into a “visit” with perfidious Piers Morgan, the equally reprehensible Megyn Kelly disgorges this: “I am reluctant to put too much stock in the images coming out of Gaza, because they are manipulated and they are masters of propaganda. They are fine having their own children starve, just so long as they can put them on camera and show them off to the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCoiWisIbuo That’s Hamas, and frankly, that’s a lot of Palestinians. So, I’m very skeptical at [sic] taking those images at face value, and saying that it’s Israel’s fault.”

Some, not me, would add “c-nt and a cretin” to “complicit.” Not me.

A couple of weeks later, this actress begins to slightly rehabilitate her image. Poor Megyn is so independent and is being pushed by AIPAC. She and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene chat about their general admiration for Israel, but need to put America First. They conclude: “If we had the money; we’d give it to Israel. But we don’t.”