🌹

Just Me. 🇵🇸✌️

[Handala @HandalaPali]

Dear diary,

I still fall asleep and wake up to the sound of missiles tearing through the sky, the walls of my room trembling like they might give up before I do. Every night, I whisper the Shahada, asking God to accept me into heaven if this is my last breath. We have no shelters here, only faith and each other. Still, I am not writing this to complain. I am writing this so it is not forgotten.

In these past months, more of our land has been stolen by Israel under the guise of its war with Iran. Land that belonged to my father, to my grandfather, is now carved up by bulldozers building roads we are not allowed to drive on, roads for others, built over our memories. I watch from a distance, helpless, and filled with rage, knowing that if I step closer, I risk being shot or abducted into an Israeli torture camp. Even visiting what is ours has become forbidden. It feels like we are becoming strangers in our own lands.

Even the simplest movement is a burden. At Israeli checkpoints, we stand and wait for hours in the cold, our time no longer our own. A short trip usually turns into an entire day lost. We are searched, questioned, and made to feel small for just trying to pass through our own Palestinian land. It is humiliating having to ask for permission to live your daily life, to work, to see family, and to exist. And still, we wait, because we have no other choice.

The nights bring no rest. Raids come without warning. Israeli occupation soldiers storm through, throwing sound bombs and tear gas as if our fear is their routine, and terrorizing us is a game for them. The children wake up crying; the elders sit in silence. And then there are the Jewish settler attacks, faces filled with hate, and actions without consequence. We are left to endure all on our own, helpless, defenseless, and with no hope.

Even those meant to "represent" or "support" us have failed us. For nearly three years, our salaries have come incomplete, if at all. We are owed so much by the PA, over a year of full salaries, yet we are told to be patient and to understand. They say the money is being withheld by Israel, like everything else in our lives.

Sometimes it feels like all of this is not random. Like it is a slow, deliberate plan to make life here so heavy, so unbearable, that we leave on our own. But this is our home. Every stone, every tree, every story is ours. We are still here.

And we are not leaving Palestine.

April 6th, 2025

[Heba @helayoty]

@healpalestine_ asks for volunteers in Egypt to help tutor injured Palestinian children. If you are interested, sign up and apply here👇
#volunteersforpalestine

[GenXGirl @GenXGirl1994]

Israel Gallup Poll: 1967-2026 🧵

- 1967: 1st Poll Israel Attacked USS Liberty
- 1982: Sabra & Shatila Massacre Poll Dip
- 1983: Launched Hasbara Campaign
- 2023: Start Genocide
- 2024: $17M Hasbara Campaign
- 2025: $150M 8th Front War on US
- 2026: $726M 8th Front War on US

[GenXGirl @GenXGirl1994]

TRUMP SOTU:

“There were wars & chaos throughout the world, and after one year, I can say with dignity & pride, we have seen a transformation like no one has ever seen before”.

Indeed. WATCH

[🌹 @TheDNArab]

Happy holidays— check out @HandalaFreedom’s update and subscribe to support the important work he does. It’s critical that he is able to continue documenting the Palestinian history and narrative 🌹🇵🇸 https://t.co/cmMr35QLWQ

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

@seanmdav Israel was stolen from the Palestinians. After expelling more than 750,000 from their land, Israel enacted the Absentee Property Law so they could transfer Palestinian land and property to Jewish settlers. Palestinians have never been allowed to return.

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

@elonmusk It’s been confirmed 𝕏 is targeting and profiling Palestinians. It’s written into the 𝕏 code. So, then, how could this analysis be unbiased?

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

Ceasefire?

Let the doctors in!

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

Every argument against calling Zionism a settler-colonial movement is destroyed here.

A must read.

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

Dear Diary,

Yesterday hit me hard, like so many days do here in our ghetto of Palestine. I headed to the old barbershop, that little haven where we Palestinians gather to have fun, crack jokes, and pretend for a moment that the weight of the world isn't crushing us. We were watching the TV, cheering on a football match, trying to steal a sliver of normalcy. Then, out of nowhere, the chaos erupted, with Israeli occupation soldiers storming our street, lobbing tear gas canisters, and gunfire cracking through the air. We slammed the doors shut, killed the lights, and stayed quiet in the dark, hearts pounding, waiting for the boot to kick in the door.

Every one of us imagining the worst: beatings, arrests, or bullets just for existing as Palestinians. My legs were shaking, same as my buddies', and we tried to laugh it off, teasing each other about our shakes, spinning dark jokes about what might come next to drown out the terror outside.

An hour dragged by, like eternity, before the soldiers finally pulled back. I slipped home to my old parents, who were scared, blowing up my phone with worried texts.

I wrapped them in hugs, kissed their cheeks, and collapsed into bed, my mind racing through the nightmare we'd just survived. How much longer can we Palestinians hold on under this endless siege of oppression? Sleep finally claimed me as dawn broke.

The next day, I jolted awake from a sweat-soaked nightmare, Israeli troops chasing me like prey, guns blazing, ready to end it all.

I woke up to sirens wailing in the distance, my chest tight, breaths coming in ragged gasps. I stumbled out of my room to see what fresh hell was unfolding, and bam, a tear gas grenade detonated right at our doorstep. My cat freaked, clawing at the window to get in; I scooped her up quick. Dad rushed back from his clinic nearby, and together with Mom, both in their seventies, frail and gasping, we barricaded every door and window against the choking chemicals in their gas. Their eyes streamed with tears, faces twisted in pain from the gas, and it lit a fire in my veins, pure rage boiling over at the sight of my old parents suffering like this.

These last few days? Not a soul in our town has lifted a finger in “violence,” no stones thrown, no resistance at all.

Yet here come the Israeli forces, invading under cover of night, terrorizing us to flex their control, and baiting us for any excuse to escalate. It happens at least three or four times a week here. They also put iron gates on our town's entrances, locking us in or out on their whims, like we're animals in a cage.

This is just a raw, tiny slice of the daily hell we unarmed and defenseless Palestinians endure under Israel's brutal occupation and apartheid regime.

When will the world wake up?

October 4 & 5, 2025

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

https://t.co/jAH8mj99wc

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

https://t.co/tjOEA5gyky

[1 Palestine @1palestine_org]

Abundantly relevant as we see Israel constantly posturing and pretending to provide aid to those they are genociding

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

No one knows about us here.

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

So here are my thoughts as a Palestinian living in Palestine under Israel’s apartheid regime about countries wanting to recognize a Palestinian state.

I believe that rather than recognizing Palestine, nations ought to revoke their recognition of Israel.

By extending formal recognition to a supposed Palestinian state, member states of the United Nations merely reinforce the fundamental illegality of Israel as a regime rooted in systemic discrimination.

The founding of Israel itself constitutes an unlawful endeavor, violating the same United Nations resolutions that initially suggested its creation. Nevertheless, a striking paradox persists in dominant Western narratives concerning Israel and the Palestinians: the refusal by Israelis and Western actors to affirm the Palestinians' right to self-determination is often treated as a valid stance in politics, whereas challenging Israel's "right to exist" as a state premised on Jewish supremacy is swiftly branded as "genocidal" or "antisemitic."

Back in 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organization conceded Israel's entitlement to exist as a Jewish supremacist state when its exiled legislative body proclaimed the "independence" of a Palestinian state encompassing the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. This concession became overt with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Following the PLO's announcement in 1988, this magical Palestinian state started accumulating endorsements from various UN members, much like the recent wave of recognitions.

Yet, that envisioned state has never come to be, while a broad global agreement has solidified around viewing Israel as an apartheid regime entrenched in racism since its inception in 1948—a conclusion echoed by organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, to name a few.

In light of the persistent claims from advocates of Israel, the core issue in debates over statehood for Israeli Jews and Palestinians boils down to this: which position truly perpetuates racism, and which one champions the fight against it?

From 1948 onward, Israel has steadfastly denied the Palestinian people's claim to sovereignty over their homeland and has employed every tactic imaginable to thwart its realization.

To date, I have encountered no instance where Western leaders or media outlets have labeled this outright rejection of Palestinian self-determination as genocidal or inherently bigoted.

Meanwhile, Israel was established upon stolen Palestinian land in 1948, encompassing not only the areas allocated by the nonbinding UN General Assembly's Partition Plan of November 1947 but also roughly half of the land designated for a Palestinian state, which Israel occupied between May and December of that year.

Still, Palestinians who reject Israel's "right to exist" as a Jewish supremacist state enforced through a web of discriminatory laws—and who instead call for a decolonized, democratic state spanning from the river to the sea—are promptly denounced as "genocidal" toward Jews.

In reality, the sole victims of genocidal violence in Palestine have been the Palestinian natives themselves.

The United States and its allies in Europe have long maintained that Israel's status as a Jewish supremacist state is non-negotiable in any dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, confining talks to the slim prospect of a diminished Palestinian enclave on fragmented bantustans.

Thus, the true proponents of racism are those who affirm Israel's entitlement to exist as a Jewish supremacist entity, thereby endorsing the perpetuation of its 1948 forcible expulsions of Palestinians and the upkeep of its array of racist laws and frameworks.

By contrast, the genuine anti-racists are those who push for the abolition of Israel's discriminatory apparatuses and statutes, endorsing a single, decolonized state from the river to the sea, where all inhabitants enjoy equal legal standing without privileges based on race, ethnicity, or faith.

When UN member states endorse a fictitious Palestinian state, they are essentially shoring up Israel's unlawful status as a bastion of institutional racism. The path forward demands not the recognition of such a Palestinian state but the retraction of recognition from Israel itself. Only through this step can a truly decolonized, equitable, and democratic resolution emerge.

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

https://t.co/BoA48BronM

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

In the heart of Palestine, a brutal campaign of extermination and expulsion rages on, driven by a singular, chilling goal: to secure a Jewish demographic majority at any cost. The ongoing genocide in Gaza, claiming thousands of Palestinian lives, is not something novel but the latest chapter in a century-long Zionist project secured through widespread slaughter and forced displacement since 1948 to erase the indigenous Palestinian presence and entrench a Jewish settler-colonial state.

From the outset, Zionists recognized that their settler-colonial ambitions hinged on creating a Jewish majority, achievable only by annihilating or expelling the native Palestinian population.

Theodor Herzl, the architect of the Zionist movement, laid the groundwork for these strategies in the 1890s, with the Zionist Organization actively advancing them from the 1920s. Large-scale expulsion, however, became feasible only following the Zionist military conquest of Palestine.

On the brink of the 1948 war, Palestine's Jewish population stood at 608,000 (constituting 30 percent), predominantly recent arrivals over the prior two decades, including many "illegal immigrants," alongside 1,364,000 Palestinian natives.

In the 1948 conquest, Zionist forces killed between 15,000 and 20,000 Palestinians and forcibly displaced around 800,000, representing 80 percent of the indigenous Palestinian population in the land of Palestine, which Israel later proclaimed as a Jewish state.

These acts of mass killings and forcible expulsion were pivotal in establishing Jewish demographic supremacy in Israel from 1948 to 1967.

The gravest demographic miscalculation by the Jewish settler-colony was its 1967 illegal occupation of the remaining Palestinian lands, alongside the Golan Heights and the sparsely inhabited Egyptian Sinai.

Although Israel's insatiable territorial ambitions tripled its landmass, this expansion critically eroded the Jewish demographic hegemony that Zionists had painstakingly cultivated since 1948.

Prior to the 1967 forcible displacement, the West Bank’s Palestinian population was estimated to range between 845,000 and 900,000, while the Gaza Strip housed between 385,000 and 400,000 Palestinians.

During the Israeli conquest, over 350,000 Palestinians, many of whom were 1948 refugees from what became Israel, were forced to cross the River Jordan from the West to the East Bank.

In Gaza, by December 1968, Israeli occupation forces had expelled 75,000 Palestinians and barred an additional 50,000, who had been working, studying, or traveling in Egypt or elsewhere, from returning to their homeland.

From the Golan Heights, Israeli forces expelled between 102,000 and 115,000 Syrians, leaving no more than 15,000 behind.

In the Sinai, where the population largely consisted of Bedouin and farmers, 38,000 became refugees. As the occupation persisted, Israel continued to deport hundreds of Palestinians from their own homeland.

The decline in the Jewish colonial population persisted until 1990, fueling growing fears among Israelis, who feared the erosion of their colonial dominance.

The disintegration of the USSR and subsequent economic turmoil in post-Soviet states triggered widespread emigration, particularly among Jews, who found relocation smoother due to Israel’s Law of Return, which provided an immediate destination devoid of the complexities associated with immigrating to Western nations.

This made Israel an enticing location for Soviet Jews and a lifeline for the Israeli state, countering the feared Palestinian demographic “bomb,” as Israelis termed the “crisis.”

Yet, the one million Soviet Jews who migrated to Israel between 1990 and 2000—dramatically reshaping its demography by boosting both the Jewish and Ashkenazi populations—were not all Jewish. The Jewish identity of over half was contested by Israel’s rabbis.

Despite this significant influx, the Palestinian population’s growth outpaced these efforts.

By 2000, Israel’s population had swelled to 6.4 million, encompassing five million Jews and nearly 1.2 million Palestinians, while the West Bank’s population a stood at 2.012 million and Gaza’s at 1.138 million—resulting in Jewish colonists and their descendants constituting no more than 52 percent of the overall population.

Observing that the few European settler colonies to survive the global dismantling of settler-colonialism since the 1960s—such as South Africa until 1994—were those that secured a dominant white demographic majority, like the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the Israeli government was panicking.

By the end of that year, the reestablishment of Jewish demographic dominance had transformed into a real obsession.

That December, the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre in Israel launched the first of a planned series of annual conferences dedicated to bolstering the state’s strength and security, with a particular emphasis on preserving its Jewish supremacist identity.

In 2002, former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, a pivotal figure in Israeli government since the 1950s, voiced alarm over the Palestinian demographic “danger,” noting that the Green Line dividing Israel from the West Bank was starting to:

“disappear…which may lead to the linking of the futures of West Bank Palestinians with Israeli Arabs.”

He labeled this a “demographic bomb” and expressed hope that the arrival of another 100,000 Jews in Israel would delay this demographic “danger” for a decade. He emphasized that “demography will defeat geography.”

By 2010, Israel’s population had climbed to 7.6 million, comprising 5.75 million Jews and 1.55 million Palestinians, while the West Bank’s population reached 2.48 million and Gaza’s 1.54 million. This shift rendered the Jewish population a minority of no more than 49 percent for the first time since the mass forcible expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967.

This reality was unacceptable to Israel's apartheid regime, prompting the Israeli parliament to enact the “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” in July 2018, which declared that:

“the land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the state of Israel was established,” and “the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

Despite its overtly racist nature, this law was upheld as constitutional by Israel’s Supreme Court, serving as a desperate acknowledgment that Israel was losing the demographic “war.” It underscored the state’s determination to uphold exclusive, colonial privileges for Jews over the native Palestinian population.

In 2020, Israel’s population reached 9.2 million, comprising 6.8 million Jews and 1.9 million Palestinians, while the West Bank housed 3.05 million Palestinians and Gaza 2.047 million Palestinians—further diminishing the proportion of Jewish colonists and their descendants to 47 percent of the total population.

However, Palestinians are not the sole group perceived as a demographic “bomb” undermining Jewish demographic supremacy.

As recently as January 2023, Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), issued a frantic warning about the looming “de-Judaisation” of the Jewish state.

This time, the threat stemmed from so-called pseudo-Jews, admitted under Israel’s discriminatory “Law of Return.” Amended in 1970, this law permits anyone globally with a single Jewish grandparent—including their non-Jewish spouse, children, grandchildren, and their spouses—to settle as colonists in Israel and gain citizenship.

The ZOA’s statement expressed alarm, noting that the 1970 amendment had enabled half a million “non-Jews” from the former Soviet Union (FSU) to reside in the Jewish state.

Amid this backdrop, Israel, its Supreme Court, and its Jewish settlers intensified their relentless campaign to terrorize Palestinians in East Jerusalem in May 2021, forcibly displacing 13 families—totaling 58 people—from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

An additional 1,000 Palestinians faced the imminent threat of expulsion by settlers and Israeli courts.

This action was widely regarded internationally as further evidence that Israel is an apartheid state.

In January 2021, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem had already published a report condemning the Israeli regime as one rooted in “Jewish supremacy” and labeling Israel an apartheid state.

In April, just one month before the Supreme Court’s ruling, Human Rights Watch released a report denouncing Israel as an apartheid state across both the 1948 borders and the Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.

Amnesty International echoed this stance in February 2022, also declaring Israel an apartheid state.

Given the minority status of Israel’s Jewish colonists , the ongoing genocide in Gaza persists, accompanied by plans to expel the remaining Palestinian survivors outside of historic Palestine.

Israel’s frantic efforts to reclaim Jewish demographic dominance drive the annihilation and planned forcible displacement of Gaza’s two million Palestinians. In March 2025, the Israeli cabinet greenlit the establishment of:

“a body to manage voluntary migration [of Palestinians] from Gaza.”

The US government, complicit under both Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations, has worked with Israel to secure destinations for the expelled Palestinian survivors of the genocide, reportedly negotiating yet another deal—this time with Libya’s warlords—to absorb them.

With the departure of between 100,000 and half a million Israeli Jews from the country since October 2023, continuing a prior emigration trend, it appears improbable that Israel could restore Jewish demographic supremacy, even if its campaigns of extermination and expulsion in Gaza succeed.

Its only remaining option would be the annihilation of all Palestinians—not solely those in Gaza.

Read more 👇

[Handala @HandalaFreedom]

One image from the past year captured this genocide in its entirety: a lone doctor, who had risked everything to keep his hospital functioning amid Israeli sieges, bombarded by shells and drones, and with staff hunted by snipers, courageously walking toward the forces intent on annihilating him and his people.

The image was the final documented glimpse of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, captured moments before his so-called “arrest”—his abduction—by Israeli forces and his subsequent disappearance into Israel’s network of torture camps.

For days, the Israeli military denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, only admitting to holding him incommunicado after a petition was filed with Israeli courts by a local medical rights group.

According to mounting reports, Abu Safiya was detained in Sde Teiman, Israel’s most infamous torture camp, where soldiers were recorded on video raping a Palestinian prisoner with a baton, causing catastrophic internal injuries.

Dr. Abu Safiya has been detained for nearly seven months and subjected to torture in Israeli prisons, specifically at Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank, where he was transferred to from Sde Teiman. Reports from his lawyer, Gheed Kassem, who visited him on March 19, 2025, describe severe mistreatment and torture, including a serious eye injury, four broken ribs, an irregular heartbeat, and denial of glasses for his poor eyesight. He has been subjected to prolonged interrogations, with one session lasting 13 consecutive days.

On March 25, 2025, the Be’er Sheva District Court upheld a detention order under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, extending Dr. Abu Safiya’s detention for six months without formal charges.

The most recent documented lawyer visit occurred on July 9, 2025, at Ofer Prison, conducted by his attorney, Gheed Kassem. During this 30-minute meeting, Kassem reported severe deterioration in Abu Safiya's physical and mental health, including weight loss exceeding 40 kg (from approximately 100 kg to 60 kg), attributed to malnutrition and starvation. He has endured at least six physical assaults, with the latest on June 24, 2025, involving a 30-minute beating that targeted his rib cage and caused bruising to his face, head, back, and neck.

Israel has labeled Abu Safiya, Gaza’s most prominent pediatrician, a Hamas “terrorist.” It has also abducted 240 others from Kamal Adwan Hospital, branding them “terror suspects”—likely including patients and medical staff—who are enduring similarly horrific conditions.

According to Israel’s twisted reasoning, anyone who is employed by Gaza’s Hamas-led government—such as Dr. Abu Safiya, who served in a key institution like a hospital—is branded a “terrorist.”

Consequently, any hospital, by virtue of being under the Hamas government’s jurisdiction, is labeled a “Hamas terrorist stronghold,” as Israel has designated Kamal Adwan. This rationale justifies the destruction of all medical facilities, the “arrest” and torture of all doctors, and the forced “evacuation” of all patients.

The image of Abu Safiya’s laid bare the stark contrast between who is David and who is Goliath, who is the oppressed and who is the oppressor, and who is the humanitarian and who is the terrorist.

Above all, it exposed the complicity of Western political and media elites, who, over the past months, have peddled a grand lie about Gaza. Far from working to halt the genocide, they have sought to hide it—to justify it. This is why the most iconic photo of the past year was not seen in the mainstream media, absent from front pages, as Dr. Hussam was kidnapped by Israel and his hospital burned.

Israeli occupation forces stormed one hospital after another, demolishing wards, surgical suites, and critical care units.

Each forced “evacuation” left a wake of suffering. Premature infants were abandoned to perish from hunger or cold in their incubators. Critically ill patients were dragged from their beds. Ambulances attempting to rescue them were destroyed. And repeatedly, Gaza’s medical personnel were detained, stripped, and vanished from the face of the earth.

Israel’s newly bolstered disinformation campaign, despite increased funding, will be as futile as its previous efforts.

No amount of propaganda can erase the truth of a genocide. In the coming months, more Israeli atrocities, both recent and historical, will surface. An increasing number of legal and human rights bodies, along with scholars, will affirm that Israel has perpetrated a genocide in Gaza.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) will issue additional arrest warrants for war crimes, building on those already targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

But the reckoning goes deeper. Prominent human rights organizations and academics will be compelled to reassess their historical perspectives on Israel and its foundational ideology of Zionism. They will have to recognize that this genocide did not emerge out of the blue.

Its roots trace back to Zionism’s inception as a settler-colonial project over a century ago. The trajectory continued with Israel’s establishment in 1948 on stolen Palestinian lands, achieved through massacres and forced displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population. It accelerated after 1967, as Israel perfected its apartheid regime, enforcing unequal rights for Jews and Palestinians while confining Palestinians to ever-smaller Bantustans.

Left unchallenged, Israel’s path was always destined to culminate in genocide. This outcome is a direct consequence of the ideology of Jewish supremacy and exceptionalism deeply ingrained in Israel’s Zionist framework.

The roots of genocide are embedded in Zionism’s foundational mythology, yet it has been the responsibility of Western politicians, news outlets, academic institutions, policy think tanks, and even human rights groups to obscure this reality.

For decades, they have upheld a now thoroughly debunked Western narrative: that Israel serves solely as a refuge for Jews escaping antisemitism, that it stands as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” that its unlawful occupation is mostly harmless, its illegal colonial settlements are vital for security, and its military is “the most moral in the world.”

These myths are crumbling faster than Israel’s propaganda can mend them.

Western leaders are well aware that Israel has abducted Dr. Hussam—one of Gaza’s most dedicated physicians—and imprisoned him in a torture camp, where he is subjected to starvation, sporadic beatings, humiliation, and terror, as are other Palestinian captives.

Israel’s mission is to break his body and spirit, just as it has systematically destroyed Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure.

Israel’s aim is not to eliminate “the terrorists.” It is to transform Gaza into a desolate, nightmarish wasteland where no one good, no one compassionate, no one striving to preserve their humanity can endure. A place devoid of doctors, where aid workers are a distant memory, and kindness is a weakness; a place ruled by tanks and criminal gangs.

The role of Western political and media elites is to normalize this horror, to desensitize us, and to erode our capacity for empathy and resistance until we are emotionally numb. We must defy them—for Dr. Hussam's sake, for the people of Gaza, and for our own humanity.

Read more 👇

[SourcedPress @SourcedPress]

Water and Occupation: https://t.co/NO1vGML32P