I am 81, a retired professor of U.S. history. I have never in my life seen anything on a par with Israel's well documented genocide in Gaza. All my ancestors are Jewish; thus I am not antisemitic. The Zionists' treatment of the Palestinians has been a horror since well before their state was created in 1948. As a result of the Nazi Holocaust, the Israelis have had an unbounded sense of entitlement. It has never been the Palestinians who are the source of their troubles. Quite the contrary. They have continuously massacred Palestinians since they, European Jews, began going to Israel in sizable numbers in the early twentieth century. They are a settler colonial country, as is the US. Settler colonialism invariably displaces native peoples. Since the Zionist state is small, about the size of New Jersey, they have always used wars for purpose of expansion. For that purpose they call on their fellow settler colonial state, the US to be a continuous source of money and weapons. Over the decades they have stolen much land and hundreds of thousands of dwellings, farms, and orchards from the Palestinians, a people who has been there for thousands of years. When the Palestinians resist, as they did on October 7, 2023, it gives the Zionist state an excuse to conduct periodic wars, which they refer to as "mowing the lawn." Their attitude towards the Palestinians is sociopathic, that is without conscience. Most of them view Palestinians as a lower and thus expendable form of life. Over the years the Zionists' government has gone further and further to the right. Likud, together with parties even further to the right, that have been in power for some thirty years, will never agree to a two state solution. That is a myth that Jewish and gentile liberals like to believe. The Zionists have now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they purpose to take all the land and either kill or permanently exile all the Palestinians. And the vast majority of genocide scholars worldwide agree that the Zionist state is now perpetrating a genocide, their own version of the Nazi holocaust.
Thank you Professor Berk for your very wise and thoughtful analysis of how destructive the Zionist movement and Israeli government have been towards the Palestinians. I am a 75 year old Jewish man who was raised as a Reform Jew in Long Island , NY. My parents and grandparents taught me that the Jewish faith honored justice, compassion, and equal treatment of all people on this earth. Israel is violating every tenet of that faith. Its policies are an abomination, as are those of its main ally, the United States. Growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, the histories we were taught of the nations of Israel and the United States were fictions. I don’t know how we put a stop to this.
We have a lot in common. I grew up in Reform Judaism in the Boston area. Our synagogue, Temple Israel, had a rabbi who had been the chaplain at Iwo Jima in the Pacific theater of World War Two. In the fifties and much of the sixties, the rabbis and teachers talked about Israel, but they were never obsessed with it. They considered Judaism a religious civilization which encompassed a great deal more than modern Israel. I had a colleague who taught Jewish history at the university where I taught. We used to have great discussions. One thing we agreed upon is that the obsession with Israel has had a negative effect on Judaism as a whole. The Jews who have managed to avoid that are the Orthodox, including the Hasidim.
I agree with Professor Berk. I would like to expand on one point. He descibed Hamas' attack on 10/7/2023 as an act of resistance. It is. However, it involved a targeted attack on Israeli civilians which is a war crime. It is a tactic of terror, the most desperate of responses to a military occupation. I understand it, but I could never condone it. I believe the most effective form of resistance is embodied in the spirit of Sumud; the quality of resilience and determination of the people of Gaza to go about their lives in the midst of a genocidal war being conducted against them. The spirit of Sumud is what imbued the first intifada when demonstrators confronted IDF tanks and Palestinian youth threw stones at IDF soldiers. Hamas has rejected this futile approach. More likely, they are simply sick of dying. But it is the killing of Israeli civilians that has enabled this genocide. It in no way justifies it. The many wars the IDF has perpetrated in Gaza have been enabled by Hamas' incompetence, in their blind response to IDF aggression, in their launching of unguided missiles that fall in civilian areas of Israel. I agree with genocide scholar Omer Bartov that there is no real two-state solution. The only way that would be possible would be for everyone living wherever they are right now, to respect the rule of law under either a Palestinian or an Israeli authority. It would take at least two generations of peace for either Palestinians or Israelis to even consider that. Short of that, we have this, a genocide in Gaza and a bloody march to create a Greater Israel that has been expunged of Palestinians.
Every single being on this earth knows there is a genocide in Gaza .
It was through bombing and killing civilians,through cutting off of medicine and medical aid but this did not work people in Gaza continue to resist , so now it is famine the ultimate weapon that kills every body.
And the Arab and Moslem countries continue watching quietly or your turn will come
Two Israeli soldiers have been arrested at a music festival in Belgium over war crimes allegations, a campaign group has said.
The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) said in a statement that the two soldiers were attending the Tomorrowland festival in Boom, near Antwerp when they were arrested "with a clear show of force" by Belgian federal police.
After the soldiers were taken into custody, they were formally interrogated and released.
HRF said the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office has confirmed that a criminal investigation is now underway.
The complaint was filed last week by HRF and the Global Legal Action Network (GLan).
And there’s more: Dock workers at the Port of Piraeus have refused to unload a ship with military cargo destined to be transferred to a ship bound for Israel.
“We will not unload a single centimetre of this murderous cargo. The dockworkers of Piraeus will not be complicit”.
We refuse to be tools of the US, Nato, the EU, Israel, or China, who use our country’s infrastructure to reshape the world redrawing borders with the blood of nations of the Palestinian people,”
We need to get the current administration, along with the entire Biden administration, charged under 18 U.S. Code § 1091, the statute that incorporates the Genocide Convention into US criminal law. Members of these administrations shouldn't go a single day without having this statute in their faces, up front and center, at every protest, at every meeting, press conference, briefing, and trips home and abroad. Let them consider what is looming. They should have visions of prison all the days of their lives, and echos of those cell doors slamming shut.
Do the Israelis not believe in Karma? I suppose not. They have one of the most sophisticated armies in the world thanks to our tax money and also obviously the most brutal of all.
The photos of mothers holding the skeletal remains of their little ones should make even the coldest hearts melt. But some of the coldest of hearts are not capable of empathy. And our media-shame, shame, shame on you!!!!!
Call on Pope Leo XIV to do whatever it takes to save Gaza and stop the bombing, and end the starvation. Let him go to Gaza and stand with the suffering people who are being massacred by Israel and the Western posers. He can go to Gaza right now, and insist aid be allowed in.
Is there anything more important in today's world than this?
A Thousand Madleens to Gaza is an independent, civilian-led flotilla of volunteers, activists, and humanitarians. Our peaceful mission: to challenge the blockade, deliver aid, and show unwavering solidarity with Gaza. Show your support today: https://chuffed.org/campaign/138012-a-thousand-madleens-to-gaza
They deserve our support, even if we know it should be a thousand-ship flotilla with the escort of the navies of the world.
There needs to be a multinational force to ensure that aide gets into Gaza and is distributed Fairly. Go to Palestine _protect or protect - Palestine or ousmannoor to see how to write to Hague Group and advocate for such a force
This is something I genuinely don’t understand — why do you believe there could be an actual international force deployed under the “Hague Group”?
The countries involved are: Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Oman, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
None of them has the military capacity to carry out a sustained intervention:
- No shared border with Gaza
- No blue-water navy capable of running supply lines
- No air superiority or secure access routes
- No regional logistics infrastructure to support troops
Even if they somehow deployed personnel, how would they get them there? How would they supply them? Through Egypt? Past Israeli air control? Over the sea with what navy?
This isn’t a question of intentions or moral clarity — it’s about logistical and military reality. These nations may be aligned politically, but they don’t have the means to enforce or protect aid operations inside Gaza without external support — which they’re not going to get.
So I’m genuinely asking: what do you envision happening here, concretely? What mechanism or capacity are you relying on — beyond just hoping it will happen?
Send a letter condemning McNally Capital for investing in genocide!
One of the investment firms profiting off the Gaza “Humanitarian” Foundation’s (GHF) barbaric starvation campaign to kill Palestinians is McNally Capital, headquartered in Chicago.
What did the Allies do when Germany was killing and starving their own people? We bombed them. That was the only thing that brought them to their senses.
I am 81, a retired professor of U.S. history. I have never in my life seen anything on a par with Israel's well documented genocide in Gaza. All my ancestors are Jewish; thus I am not antisemitic. The Zionists' treatment of the Palestinians has been a horror since well before their state was created in 1948. As a result of the Nazi Holocaust, the Israelis have had an unbounded sense of entitlement. It has never been the Palestinians who are the source of their troubles. Quite the contrary. They have continuously massacred Palestinians since they, European Jews, began going to Israel in sizable numbers in the early twentieth century. They are a settler colonial country, as is the US. Settler colonialism invariably displaces native peoples. Since the Zionist state is small, about the size of New Jersey, they have always used wars for purpose of expansion. For that purpose they call on their fellow settler colonial state, the US to be a continuous source of money and weapons. Over the decades they have stolen much land and hundreds of thousands of dwellings, farms, and orchards from the Palestinians, a people who has been there for thousands of years. When the Palestinians resist, as they did on October 7, 2023, it gives the Zionist state an excuse to conduct periodic wars, which they refer to as "mowing the lawn." Their attitude towards the Palestinians is sociopathic, that is without conscience. Most of them view Palestinians as a lower and thus expendable form of life. Over the years the Zionists' government has gone further and further to the right. Likud, together with parties even further to the right, that have been in power for some thirty years, will never agree to a two state solution. That is a myth that Jewish and gentile liberals like to believe. The Zionists have now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they purpose to take all the land and either kill or permanently exile all the Palestinians. And the vast majority of genocide scholars worldwide agree that the Zionist state is now perpetrating a genocide, their own version of the Nazi holocaust.
Thank you Professor Berk for your very wise and thoughtful analysis of how destructive the Zionist movement and Israeli government have been towards the Palestinians. I am a 75 year old Jewish man who was raised as a Reform Jew in Long Island , NY. My parents and grandparents taught me that the Jewish faith honored justice, compassion, and equal treatment of all people on this earth. Israel is violating every tenet of that faith. Its policies are an abomination, as are those of its main ally, the United States. Growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, the histories we were taught of the nations of Israel and the United States were fictions. I don’t know how we put a stop to this.
We have a lot in common. I grew up in Reform Judaism in the Boston area. Our synagogue, Temple Israel, had a rabbi who had been the chaplain at Iwo Jima in the Pacific theater of World War Two. In the fifties and much of the sixties, the rabbis and teachers talked about Israel, but they were never obsessed with it. They considered Judaism a religious civilization which encompassed a great deal more than modern Israel. I had a colleague who taught Jewish history at the university where I taught. We used to have great discussions. One thing we agreed upon is that the obsession with Israel has had a negative effect on Judaism as a whole. The Jews who have managed to avoid that are the Orthodox, including the Hasidim.
Thank you for a clear, honest and precise summary of what is happening in Gaza .
I do hope the Israelis will wake up to the horror of what they are doing and stop their blood thirsty leaders and army
Violence begets violence. The violence must stop.
Amen.
I agree with Professor Berk. I would like to expand on one point. He descibed Hamas' attack on 10/7/2023 as an act of resistance. It is. However, it involved a targeted attack on Israeli civilians which is a war crime. It is a tactic of terror, the most desperate of responses to a military occupation. I understand it, but I could never condone it. I believe the most effective form of resistance is embodied in the spirit of Sumud; the quality of resilience and determination of the people of Gaza to go about their lives in the midst of a genocidal war being conducted against them. The spirit of Sumud is what imbued the first intifada when demonstrators confronted IDF tanks and Palestinian youth threw stones at IDF soldiers. Hamas has rejected this futile approach. More likely, they are simply sick of dying. But it is the killing of Israeli civilians that has enabled this genocide. It in no way justifies it. The many wars the IDF has perpetrated in Gaza have been enabled by Hamas' incompetence, in their blind response to IDF aggression, in their launching of unguided missiles that fall in civilian areas of Israel. I agree with genocide scholar Omer Bartov that there is no real two-state solution. The only way that would be possible would be for everyone living wherever they are right now, to respect the rule of law under either a Palestinian or an Israeli authority. It would take at least two generations of peace for either Palestinians or Israelis to even consider that. Short of that, we have this, a genocide in Gaza and a bloody march to create a Greater Israel that has been expunged of Palestinians.
Go to hell Israel. I just don’t know how else to say it.
Every single being on this earth knows there is a genocide in Gaza .
It was through bombing and killing civilians,through cutting off of medicine and medical aid but this did not work people in Gaza continue to resist , so now it is famine the ultimate weapon that kills every body.
And the Arab and Moslem countries continue watching quietly or your turn will come
What do you call the “most moral military in the world” when it conducts a genocide?
What can be said about a “Humanitarian Fund” that kills more people than it saves?
What is the value of an “international court” where the “chief justice” is aiding and abetting the war criminal?
How can you discuss anything serious in a language in which words no longer have meaning?!?
بالروح بالدم نفديك يا فلسطين
Fuck Israel, bombing children after starving them, they are the Devil incarnate
Right on Ellen. Fuck Israel.
Two Israeli soldiers have been arrested at a music festival in Belgium over war crimes allegations, a campaign group has said.
The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) said in a statement that the two soldiers were attending the Tomorrowland festival in Boom, near Antwerp when they were arrested "with a clear show of force" by Belgian federal police.
After the soldiers were taken into custody, they were formally interrogated and released.
HRF said the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office has confirmed that a criminal investigation is now underway.
The complaint was filed last week by HRF and the Global Legal Action Network (GLan).
https://donate.stripe.com/cN228hbY5g7jaM84gg
And there’s more: Dock workers at the Port of Piraeus have refused to unload a ship with military cargo destined to be transferred to a ship bound for Israel.
“We will not unload a single centimetre of this murderous cargo. The dockworkers of Piraeus will not be complicit”.
We refuse to be tools of the US, Nato, the EU, Israel, or China, who use our country’s infrastructure to reshape the world redrawing borders with the blood of nations of the Palestinian people,”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/greek-dock-workers-will-refuse-unload-ship-carrying-military-grade-steel-israel?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The Israeli government and the IDF harbor genocidal maniacs within their ranks. Hope the ICC gets you sooner rather than later!
Thank you Abdel Qader Sabbah and Sharif Abdel Kouddous for your exceptional journalism. We see your work, we cry, and are grateful.
18 U.S. Code § 1091
We need to get the current administration, along with the entire Biden administration, charged under 18 U.S. Code § 1091, the statute that incorporates the Genocide Convention into US criminal law. Members of these administrations shouldn't go a single day without having this statute in their faces, up front and center, at every protest, at every meeting, press conference, briefing, and trips home and abroad. Let them consider what is looming. They should have visions of prison all the days of their lives, and echos of those cell doors slamming shut.
Let us find the way.
Do the Israelis not believe in Karma? I suppose not. They have one of the most sophisticated armies in the world thanks to our tax money and also obviously the most brutal of all.
The photos of mothers holding the skeletal remains of their little ones should make even the coldest hearts melt. But some of the coldest of hearts are not capable of empathy. And our media-shame, shame, shame on you!!!!!
Call on Pope Leo XIV to do whatever it takes to save Gaza and stop the bombing, and end the starvation. Let him go to Gaza and stand with the suffering people who are being massacred by Israel and the Western posers. He can go to Gaza right now, and insist aid be allowed in.
Is there anything more important in today's world than this?
https://chng.it/gkvBfY44rq
Please sign the petition and share widely.
A new flotilla has set sail for Gaza
A Thousand Madleens to Gaza is an independent, civilian-led flotilla of volunteers, activists, and humanitarians. Our peaceful mission: to challenge the blockade, deliver aid, and show unwavering solidarity with Gaza. Show your support today: https://chuffed.org/campaign/138012-a-thousand-madleens-to-gaza
They deserve our support, even if we know it should be a thousand-ship flotilla with the escort of the navies of the world.
Death to Israel
There needs to be a multinational force to ensure that aide gets into Gaza and is distributed Fairly. Go to Palestine _protect or protect - Palestine or ousmannoor to see how to write to Hague Group and advocate for such a force
This is something I genuinely don’t understand — why do you believe there could be an actual international force deployed under the “Hague Group”?
The countries involved are: Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Oman, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
None of them has the military capacity to carry out a sustained intervention:
- No shared border with Gaza
- No blue-water navy capable of running supply lines
- No air superiority or secure access routes
- No regional logistics infrastructure to support troops
Even if they somehow deployed personnel, how would they get them there? How would they supply them? Through Egypt? Past Israeli air control? Over the sea with what navy?
This isn’t a question of intentions or moral clarity — it’s about logistical and military reality. These nations may be aligned politically, but they don’t have the means to enforce or protect aid operations inside Gaza without external support — which they’re not going to get.
So I’m genuinely asking: what do you envision happening here, concretely? What mechanism or capacity are you relying on — beyond just hoping it will happen?
Send a letter condemning McNally Capital for investing in genocide!
One of the investment firms profiting off the Gaza “Humanitarian” Foundation’s (GHF) barbaric starvation campaign to kill Palestinians is McNally Capital, headquartered in Chicago.
Shame on you!
https://www.codepink.org/mcnally?utm_campaign=07_23_2025_pal_alert_mcnally_3&utm_medium=email&utm_source=codepink
What did the Allies do when Germany was killing and starving their own people? We bombed them. That was the only thing that brought them to their senses.