Brian Doctor

[Gabriel Epstein @GabrielEpsteinX]

Hamas has released the official obituary for child combatant Suhaib Khalifa Harb Abu Labad (ID#: 426278560, age 16), naming him as a rank-and-file fighter in the al-Zeitoun Battalion, Gaza Brigade.

[Ben @BenCohenOpinion]

Just heard @antonioguterres say that Gaza war "unlike anything I have witnessed in all my years as Secretary-General." Really? 14mn displaced in Sudan, 6mn displaced in DR Congo, 400,000 dead in Yemen, not to mention Myanmar, Syria and the Horn of Africa. All on his watch.

[Aizenberg @Aizenberg55]

13-year-old Muhammad Al-Qattani was portrayed as an innocent child killed in an IDF strike. But he was another child soldier recruited by Islamic Jihad, probably at age 12. The militarization of Gaza’s children by Hamas and PIJ is never mentioned by those “NGOs” and “experts.”

[#PalestinianMeantJewish 🇮🇱 @ItsIsraelVsEvil]

Why is the world so obsessed with a relatively minor conflict?
2026: Palestine ranks 23rd globally in reported conflict deaths (1,258). That’s under 1% of the global total of over 150,000.
2020–26: Palestine ranks accounts for 5.5% of all reported conflict fatalities.
Data: ACLED

[Barak Herscowitz @BarakHer]

ראיתי סרטון שטוען שישראל ״בונה את הנוח׳בות הבאות״ בגלל שבאשמתה ילדים בעזה גרים באוהלים בלי תשתית והם יצטרפו לטרור בלית ברירה. ובכן -

1 הנוח׳בות הקודמות, אלה ששרפו תינוקות בחיים בממ״ד ואנסו נערות בנובה, לא נבנו באוהלים. הם גויסו בעזה משגשגת, בכסף קטארי שזרם כמו מים, עם רחובות ובתים מפוארים וישראל שקולטת עשרות אלפי עובדים בתוכה.

2. הנראטיב הפלסטינאי הוא נראטיב של מסכנות ואומללות כרוניים, במציאות שבה לפלסטינאים אין לעולם אשמה, אין להם אחריות, אין להם יכולת לשלוט במעשיהם או בגורלם. הם לא יכולים לבנות מדינה שוחרת שלום ומשגשגת, חברה שעוסקת בחקלאות ומדע וספרות במקום בטרור. הם לא יכולים. תמיד יהיו אשמים וזה לעולם לא הם. מדהים שיש עדיין מיעוט סהרורי בשמאל הישראלי ששוב ושוב מתעקש לקנות את הנראטיב הזה.

3. מה שבונה את הנוחב׳ות הבאות הם: אונר״א, קטאר, טורקיה, השמאל הממדאניסטי העולמי עם חולצות האבטיח ומיעוט של כדורים סגולים ביזאריים בישראל. כל אלה משדרים שוב ושוב לפלסטינאים שאין להם שום צורך לשנות את דרכיהם, לזנוח את הטרור, להפנים את העובדה שניני ה-״פליטים״ מיפו ועכו ורמלה לא יחזרו לבתים שסבי סבותיהם הותירו מאחור כשפתחו במלחמה נגד היהודים. התנועות הללו שמזינות בכסף, רוחה גבית ומטריה דיפלומטית את האומלליזם הכרוני הפלסטינאי והסרבנות של הפלסטינאים להכיר במציאות - הן אלה שבנו את הנוח׳בות הקודמות ובונים את הנוח׳בות הבאות. ודי להאשים את ישראל בכל דבר.

[David Bernstein @ProfDBernstein]

If you don’t know much about Israeli politics, this is an excellent piece on the state of play and its origins, from astute observer Graeme Wood.
https://t.co/lYHYe2Bqfz

[Amir Tibon אמיר תיבון @amirtibon]

כמה ימים אחרי 7/10, בזמן שרוב מדינות העולם עדיין תמכו בישראל והאשימו את חמאס באופן ברור, היה שר אחד שכנראה היה חשוב לו לקבל קצת לייקים בטוויטר. שר האנרגיה, ישראל כ"ץ.

אז הוא הלך וכתב שלא יהיו בעזה מים, חשמל ודלק.

בכל העולם ציטטו את הדברים שלו, כותרות ראשיות וגינויים נגד ישראל. כמעט 2 מיליון איש ראו את הציוץ.

ואז מה קרה? ניחשתם נכון, ישראל המשיכה לאורך המלחמה להעביר לעזה מים, דלק וחשמל, והיא ממשיכה להעביר גם היום, כאשר חמאס עדיין בשלטון ומתכנן כבר את מתקפת הטרור הבאה שלו.

כלומר, ישראל גם חטפה על הראש בגלל המילים הפזיזות שלו, וגם המשיכה את המדיניות שהוא הבטיח לשנות.

כי ככה זה עם ממשלת השבעה באוקטובר. אצלם הדיבורים והלייקים בטוויטר הכי חשובים. הם אלופי העולם בהבטחות ריקות ודיבורי אבו-עלי, אבל מקום אחרון בעולם בכל השאר.

[PatsFan_Mike @PatsFan_Mike]

@CorbynSnap Yep, clearly no genocide. Tough day for you.

[Ahmed Al-Khalidi @khalidi79397]

Saudi Arabia is not an apartheid state – Public practice of any religion other than Islam is prohibited. Non-Muslim houses of worship may not be built. Apostasy and non-Muslim proselytizing are criminalized; conversion from Islam is punishable by death on the books. Naturalization requires the applicant to be Muslim.

Lebanon is not an apartheid state – Law No. 296 of 2001 bars anyone without citizenship of a “recognized state” from acquiring real property. Palestinian refugees fall under this ban and cannot legally buy or, in practice, inherit real estate after 2001. They remain excluded from dozens of licensed professions and from citizenship after generations born in the country.

Kuwait is not an apartheid state – The Nationality Law requires that a person seeking naturalization “be an original Muslim by birth, or that he has converted to Islam.” Non-Muslims are barred from naturalization. Women cannot confer nationality on their children on the same terms as men.

Qatar is not an apartheid state – Qatari women cannot confer nationality on their children born to a non-Qatari father, with no exception. Citizenship applications by long-term residents are capped and rarely granted. The kafala sponsorship system ties a migrant worker’s legal status to a citizen sponsor.

United Arab Emirates is not an apartheid state – Citizenship is transmitted primarily through the father. Naturalization is exceptional and tightly limited. The kafala system places migrant workers’ residency and job mobility under a citizen sponsor.

Pakistan is not an apartheid state – The Constitution (Article 260) and Ordinance XX declare Ahmadis non-Muslims. Penal Code sections 298-B and 298-C make it a crime for Ahmadis to call themselves Muslim, use Islamic terminology, or preach their faith, punishable by imprisonment. Blasphemy under section 295-C carries the death penalty.

Iran is not an apartheid state – Constitution Article 13 recognizes only Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians as religious minorities. Baha’is are excluded from official recognition, identity documents listing their faith, university admission on equal terms, and communal property rights.

Afghanistan is not an apartheid state – Under Taliban rule, apostasy and blasphemy are capital offenses. Non-Muslims and converts have no legal pathway to public worship or equal civic status.

Maldives is not an apartheid state – The Constitution states that only a Muslim may be a citizen. Conversion from Islam can result in loss of citizenship. Apostasy and blasphemy remain capital offenses on the books.

Mauritania is not an apartheid state – Apostasy is a capital offense. Conversion from Islam can result in loss of citizenship rights. Hereditary slavery of the Haratin (Black) population by Bidhan (Arab-Berber) groups has persisted despite formal abolition.

Yemen is not an apartheid state – Apostasy is punishable by death. Public non-Muslim worship is not protected. Personal-status rules follow Sharia distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Egypt is not an apartheid state – The Constitution names Islam as the state religion and the principles of Sharia as the main source of legislation. Unrecognized groups such as Baha’is cannot obtain identity documents reflecting their faith. Muslim women cannot legally marry non-Muslim men unless the man converts. Blasphemy is criminalized.

Jordan is not an apartheid state – A Muslim woman cannot legally marry a non-Muslim man unless he converts. Nationality is transmitted through the father; citizen women cannot confer nationality on children or foreign spouses on equal terms. Converts from Islam face bureaucratic and family-law disadvantages.

Syria is not an apartheid state – Personal-status law follows Sharia rules that restrict Muslim women’s marriage to non-Muslims. Palestinian refugees hold a distinct legal status and do not acquire full citizenship.
>>

[Max 📟 @MaxNordau]

ANOTHER BOMBSHELL: Motaz Azaiza says young men in Gaza burned their own legs with iron rods to fake sniper wounds, so they could collect the cash Hamas paid out for alleged injuries at the 2018 "Great March of Return."

"He'd hear there were stipends for people wounded at the return marches, wounded by the snipers, by the occupation."

"He'd take an iron rod and put it into his leg. He'd burn his leg with an iron rod so it looked like a gunshot wound. Because they'd pay a stipend. A thousand shekels."

About $280. He knows because he was there, working the ambulances at those marches.

Hamas announced the payments publicly in April 2018:
• $3,000 for a death
• $500 for a serious wound
• $200 for a moderate wound
All paid out of the Hamas finance ministry.

For seven years the world was told those were unarmed protesters gunned down by Israeli snipers. Hamas organized the marches, Hamas published the price list, and some of the wounds were self-inflicted.

Every casualty number from those marches was produced by people who got paid per casualty.

[Matti Friedman @MattiFriedman]

Every sentient journalist here knows these are the sources of "news" in Gaza, and have been since the Hamas takeover 19 years ago. This is obviously a major story, but Western editors can't cover it honestly because they've all played ball and are thus implicated themselves.

[Gabriel Epstein @GabrielEpsteinX]

Main points:
- Trends in both the overall death toll and the post-ceasefire period specifically remain consistent: Adult men and older teenage boys make up an increasingly disproportionate share of deaths relative to their population proportion. They make up an even higher proportion of deaths added since the October 2025 ceasefire, indicating their share of the toll will continue to rise.
- Since the ceasefire, the majority of added deaths (over 65%) continue to come from processed family reports. These deaths skew towards earlier stages of the war, indicating that the MOH casualty-recording system recovered substantially after suffering a severe reduction in capacity in Oct-Nov 2023. The scale and pace of added deaths does not support studies that project a severe undercount of the death toll in Gaza.
- The Hamas-run MOH death toll list has effectively complete information for the deaths it reports, but continued removals and re-additions to the list indicate the list is still in flux.
- The usual questions about possible inclusion of violent deaths not caused by the IDF or natural deaths, as well as the failure to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, remain a sharp limitation on analysis.
- Major unknowns remain, including the scope of deaths not yet recorded by the MOH, whether due to inaccessibility or non-reporting and the number of missing persons and their disposition. The extent that these categories overlap with deaths already reported via the family reporting mechanism, which has long included options for reporting deaths without a body, is also unclear.
- Most of the militant groups in Gaza have begun releasing significant numbers of militant obituaries since the October ceasefire, though these releases skew towards commanders and amount to a small fraction of total estimated combatant deaths assessed by the IDF. Many of those claimed by the groups would have been otherwise undetectable via OSINT techniques. Time and the militant groups’ continued willingness to publish obituaries will determine how much can be learned in this bottom-up process.
- Likely future trends include: a minor-to-moderate increase in the share of adult men in the death toll; a continuing decline in the pace of additions to the death toll, either from new deaths or the addition of older ones; and an expanded picture of militant casualties (including child combatants, dual civilian roles, etc.) thanks to official and family acknowledgements.

All of the above conclusions are subject to revision as new data is published.

[Aizenberg @Aizenberg55]

Ahmed Samir Wishah was portrayed as an innocent Al Jazeera journalist killed by the IDF in Gaza. There was already clear evidence he was a Hamas combatant. Now a family martyr notice confirms it. Don’t expect retractions from media outlets that portrayed him as a civilian.

[David Deutsch @DavidDeutschOxf]

Knowledge, bah! Who needs more knowledge? It is well known for having <gasp> Side-Effects. Whereas ignorance never hurt anyone!

[Alan Shatter @Alan__Shatter]

“Gaza’s journalism space functioned under Hamas’s control, and any reporter who deviated from the group’s narrative risked “disappearing behind the sun”. Celebrated Palestinian journalist explains how Hamas entirely controlled the “ news” narrative from Gaza that was then amplified by RTE & most Irish journalists.

[Stephanie Muss @stephaniepriano]

https://t.co/DiHKn3kelC Ce journaliste de Gaza a reçu de nombreux prix en 2024.
Il admet dans cet interview n'avoir jamais publié les photos des otages israéliens battus dans les rues de Gaza, le 07.10.2023,
pour préserver l'identité de ceux qui les battaient.

[John Bulkeley @bulkeley_john]

@piersmorgan I guess a guy showing up like this with women covered like that, on of all days 9/11, didn’t bother her at all. But it took bringing bin Laden into the picture that finally made her realize that this was a stupid idea.

[Mor Edge Insight @MorEdge_Insight]

The UN can find its voice the moment a Jewish army fires back. It loses that voice the moment Arabs bury Arabs.

That is not an accident of scheduling. It is the operating system. Volker Türk can open a session by saying nothing justifies how Israel has fought in Gaza, and the room will nod as if that sentence were the whole of international law.

Then a Yemeni named Luai Ahmed @JustLuai gets ninety seconds and asks where Yemen’s flag is, after half a million of his people died in ten years in a famine the Council treated as weather. He asks where Sudan’s flag is after more than a hundred and fifty thousand killed in less than two years. He asks where Syria’s flag is after another half million. He asks why nobody protests when Arabs kill millions of Arabs.

Those deaths did not lack cameras. They lacked a Jew to blame.

The same report that names Israel one hundred and eighty-eight times cannot find room to name Iran even once, even though Iran armed, trained, and paid Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis who spent their treasure firing at Israel instead of feeding Yemen.

Qatar sits on the Human Rights Council while it puts Hamas’s leaders in luxury hotels.

That is not a footnote. That is the institution telling you which corpses it is willing to count.

[Yoni Leviatan @songsofyoni]

"When the words Naza 500 – collateral damage estimated at 500 appear in the approval process, it means that action must be taken to reduce the collateral damage."

Lt. Col. Sarit Zehavi, one of the people who helped build the IDF’s system for limiting civilian casualties, explains it in the article linked below.

I know Sarit and she is one of Israel's finest officers who continues to dedicate her life to improving Israel's security even though she's retired, as the founder of @Israel_Alma_org, the best source of research about Israel's northern border (follow them).

Once again, Israel's civil society steps in with exactly the kind of factual response needed instead of all the hysteria coming from elsewhere.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

Motaz Azaiza, a Gazan journalist evacuated during the war and someone who has personally attacked me, is finally saying the blunt truth. Gaza‑based “journalists,” whether tied to Al Jazeera, Hamas, foreign outlets, or social media, systematically self‑censored and hid anti‑Hamas sentiments inside the Strip. Their mission was to maintain a narrative centered solely on Israel and to erase any dissent, criticism of Hamas, or diversity in Palestinian views. Azaiza describes how he struggled with supposed “journalists” who shut off their cameras whenever Gazans condemned Hamas or tried to hold it responsible for the catastrophe it brought upon them, from October 7 to the ruinous “resistance” mythology that followed.

So to anyone repeating the line that Gaza had “more journalists killed than WWII and Vietnam combined,” think carefully about who and what you are calling a journalist in territory fully controlled by a violent extremist organization responsible for severe harm and repression. This does not deny that Israel’s offensive killed or injured real journalists. But it does expose how tightly Hamas has curated and policed the narrative for three years since October 7.