Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Negazionism. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Negazionism. Afficher tous les articles

13/08/2025

GIDEON LEVY
When Anas Al-Sharif Died, So Did Journalism, and So Did Truth and Solidarity

Israel's journalists refuse to see that a country that has killed more newspeople in this war in Gaza than have been killed in any other conflict in history will one day also turn its guns on them

A demonstrator holds a picture of Anas Al-Sharif, one of four Al Jazeera journalists killed in an Israeli strike days earlier, during a protest in solidarity with journalists in the Gaza Strip and condemning the recent strike, organised by journalists outside Egypt's Press Syndicate in Cairo on Wednesday.Credit: AFP/KHALED DESOUKI

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Aug 13, 2025 11:37

"If these words of mine reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice. … God knows that I exerted every effort and strength I had to be a support and a voice for my people, from the moment I opened my eyes to life in the alleys and streets of the Jabalya refugee camp. My hope was that God would prolong my life until I could return with my family and loved ones to our original hometown, the occupied Al-Majdal Asqalan. But God's will prevailed, and His decree was fulfilled."

It was not God's will that determined the fate of journalist Anas Al-Sharif on Sunday, together with three other journalists and two civilians, in the press tent adjacent to Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital. It was not the will of God, but rather a criminal Israeli military drone that targeted al-Sharif, Al Jazeera's most prominent correspondent in the war. Not God's will but rather Israel's will to execute him on the grounds that he had led a "Hamas cell," without presenting a shred of evidence to support this.

Many in the world believed the military's version, just as they had believed that the Israel Defense Forces did not kill Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin in 2022. Even those who want to believe that Al-Sharif was a cell leader must ask: And what about the five people who were killed with him? Were they deputy heads of the cell? One cannot believe anything that is said by an army that massacres journalists so cold-bloodedly or a state that does not permit free coverage of the war, not even the stories about the head of the terror cell from Jabalya.

It is hard to believe – or perhaps nothing is hard to believe anymore – how little interest was shown here in the killing of four journalists. The Israeli press was split between those who ignored the story and those who reported that Israel had eliminated a terrorist. Equipped with zero information, nearly everyone mobilized to tell the story that the Israel Defense Forces dictated to them and to hell with the truth. And also to hell with showing solidarity to a brave colleague.

Une image contenant habits, personne, homme, chaussures

Le contenu généré par l’IA peut être incorrect.Haut du formulaire

Palestinians recite the Fatiha over the grave of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al-Sharif, who was killed alongside other journalists in an Israeli strike, at a cemetery in Gaza City on August Tuesday.Credit: AFP/BASHAR TALEB

The only evidence presented was a photograph of Al-Sharif with Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar. This is indeed grounds for execution.

A million times braver than any Israeli journalist, and less co-opted to serve the propaganda of his state and his people than Nir Dvori and Or Heller, Al-Sharif could have taught members of the Israeli media the fundamentals of journalism.

The chutzpah of the press here knows no bounds: Al Jazeera is a propaganda network, scream the reporters from the Israeli TV channels, who have given a bad name to ultranationalist propaganda and the concealment of truth during this war.

If Al Jazeera is propaganda, then what is Channel 12? And channels 11, 13, 14 and 15? Do they have any connection at all to journalism in this war?


Palestinian children and a journalist check the destroyed Al Jazeera tent at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday following an overnight strike by the Israeli military.Credit: AFP/BASHAR TALEB

When journalism died, so too did truth and solidarity. Those who have killed more journalists in this war than have been killed in any other in history – 186 according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, 263 according to B'Tselem – will one day also turn their guns on us, the Israeli journalists who do not find favor in their eyes. It's hard to understand how Israeli journalists fail to comprehend this. Or perhaps they plan to continue their submissive service to the Israeli propaganda machine, because in their eyes, this is journalism.

But this week, the IDF shelled a press tent, and the scenes you didn't see were horrifying: bodies of journalists were pulled from the burning tent, and their Israeli colleagues cheered or were silent. What a disgrace, both personal and professional. How is this less shocking than the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi? Because they didn't dismember al-Sharif's body?

Al-Sharif's friends and his will say that he knew he was a target. When the IDF began making threats on his life in October, Irene Khan, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said she was concerned for his fate. Al-Sharif, she said, was the last surviving journalist in the northern Gaza Strip. That's precisely why Israel killed him. "Do not forget Gaza," were the last words in his will.

 

01/08/2025

LYNA AL TABAL
A hundred years of hell in Palestine

Dr Lyna Al Tabal, Rai Al Youm, 1/8/2025

Translated by Tlaxcala

France has finally decided to recognise the State of Palestine.

In the month when the leaves fall and lies blossom on the banks of the Seine, France has finally granted recognition — timid, belated, seven decades behind...


And UK, the very country that sold off land that did not belong to it, has decided in turn to make a gesture... But Resolution 67/19, adopted by 138 countries at the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, had already granted Palestine the status of ‘non-member observer state’, on the same footing as the Vatican. It was on this basis that Palestine was able to join international organisations and treaties, such as the International Criminal Court and UNESCO.

Okay, you Europeans number 450 million. Your economy is worth $20 trillion. You shine on the stock markets and dominate the markets... But tell me: can your governments weigh even a kilogram of justice? A handful of dignity? Recognition seventy years late – is that your offer? You call that a gesture? You are giving Palestine nothing. Nothing. Is that all you have to offer? Really?

Will this recognition stop a tank? Will it warm the cold bed of a murdered mother? Bring a child back to life? No.

Yes, Europe loves Palestine... but from afar. Like one loves a lost cause, an oriental myth, a poem by Mahmoud Darwish framed on the wall of a Parisian living room. And you know it: Israel will swallow this recognition like it swallows the West Bank — whole.

Enough talk.

The world doesn't need another declaration. It just needs you to stop arming the killer.

This recognition is a caricature. What Palestine needs is for this complicity to end. The UN condemns Israel every day. What has that changed? Gaza is dying of hunger, suffering genocide, crimes, misery...

Three colours dominate: the grey of the ruins, the red of the blood, and the bright gold of disaster – that of the markets thriving on the rubble. There is no need for further statements. Keep your ‘courageous’ gestures. Jeffrey Sachs is not a revolutionary. He is an expert, a man who simply tells the truth: ‘Stop supplying arms to Israel, and the war will end.’

The solution begins with one word: responsibility. The responsibility of Israel, but also of all those who support it. Imposing sanctions is the minimum. Their Prime Minister is accused? Then let him be taken to The Hague in handcuffs and let the trials begin – if you still believe in that word: peace.

The only measure that makes sense in this region is the disarmament of Israel.

But what can Europe do in the face of the great powers that dictate their laws and impose their will? The Trump administration has not even bothered to hide its imperialism: ‘We will do what we want, you are worthless,’ it has proclaimed.

All this is merely the logical consequence of a choice: that of the Western world, which has preferred unipolarity to justice.

Let's not waste our time today by condemning Abu Mazen (President of the Palestinian [In]Authority)... There's no point in shooting at a hearse: history will judge him in the end.

And for goodness' sake, stop shouting ‘Where are the Arabs?’ — that question no longer makes sense. It's a stupid question.

The Arabs, my friend, have disappeared...

All that's left is you, me, and a handful of believers, dreamers, who can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

They have disappeared, like ancient species. So don't ask where they are.

All this has happened because the Western world has decided to move towards a single empire that does not resemble it and does not respect it. Europe could have prevented this war or mitigated its violence... but it chose to fall in love!

Europe is like an old lady wearing a hat made of colourful peacock feathers, who believes that America loves her... She is blinded by her love for America. Since the late 1990s, Europe has not adopted an independent foreign policy, except for a policy of hostility towards Russia... Russia is a Soviet nightmare for her, when it should have been a trading partner, but she has decided to be Washington's unhappy mistress.

Ursula von der Leyen, the official spokesperson for the American empire within the European Commission, is a ridiculous woman! You know, of course, that it is American officials who run Europe, but you continue to pretend that Brussels is the capital of Europe.

You know very well that it is Washington that calls the shots...

And yet, despite everything, you smile and wave the European flag proudly.

There is no security for Ukraine, nor for Europe, nor even for your children's dreams, in this insane American adventure that you have joined and become the leaders of.

You are complicit in a million deaths. Yes, you knowingly participated in this massacre in Ukraine.

You have sown only death. And what has changed? Nothing.

Let's return to the American position. Trump, true to form, threatens: ‘America will enter Ukraine to finish the job.’

And Putin, also true to form, bursts out laughing: “Let him talk... He always does the opposite of what he says”.

In Palestine, the situation is very clear, Mike Huckabee says there is no possible solution in Palestine!

The US has abandoned its policy in the Mashreq and handed it over to Benjamin Netanyahu... It is the Israeli lobby that dominates US policy. It's a joke!

In 1996, at the height of the peace talks, while Israelis and Palestinians were sitting in the negotiating rooms, shaking hands in Madrid, negotiating in Oslo and placing Palestinian flags alongside United Nations flags, and while Yasser Arafat was modifying the pact in the hope of a state, Netanyahu and his USAmerican Zionist advisers were preparing a plan to replace the two-state solution with a ‘solution by force’: encircle Syria, strike Iraq and suffocate the Palestinians. And strike any alliance that formed to support Palestine, including Hezbollah and Hamas. They called this solution "A Clean Break " because they had decided to break away permanently and impose their reality.

Based on this document, the US waged seven wars in five years. General Wesley Clark carried out the instructions of the Israeli political bureau. You can listen to General Wesley Clark on the Internet, he talks about this subject. He was NATO's commander-in-chief in 1999... These are Netanyahu's wars, by the way: to eliminate the remnants of the Soviet allies, dismantle the system of every state, every alliance and organisation hostile to Israel, and sow chaos in the region.

And every time a war broke out, Netanyahu would flash that same smile — the smile of a man lighting a cigarette at the first sign of depression. For thirty years, he has tirelessly repeated his vision: there will be only one state, Israel.

‘And any dissenting voice will be crushed — not by us directly, but by our American friends,’ he said. That, in general, is the policy of the United States in the Mashreq, even today.

This policy did not begin with Trump, nor with Biden, and it was not invented by Clinton, Bush or Obama. It is the tedious game of U.S.  politics: if you are not with us, you are against us, and if you are against us, wait for your regime to collapse from within. Is this not the daily reality of U.S. politics? Since World War II, the US has constantly intervened directly in the affairs of other countries, under the guise of a fallacious discourse on democracy. Between 1945 and 1989, it brought about seventy regime changes. It accused the Soviets of wanting to conquer the world, then used this pretext to conquer the world itself...

Our destiny is already mapped out, set in stone for the next hundred years... But we have this habit of surprising them, of sabotaging their most sinister plans. They thought Gaza would collapse in a month. They dug our graves, pitched their tents in the Sinai and redrew the maps of the region.

What a grotesque illusion! They believed that Gaza was just an inconvenient detail to be swept away in a few weeks. But every massacre gave birth to a new missile: from the Qassam to the Yassin, then the Badr-3; from the Ayyash 250 to the R160, to the Al-Quds and the Asif al-Ghadab.

What impotence! Have you forgotten that Gaza defies even the laws of physics? Everything that is thrown at it... ends up bouncing back.

They gambled on the colonisation of the West Bank — and they won that gamble.

They believed that a military victory would signify the end of the conflict. But Gaza reminds them every moment: this is not a battle, it is an existence.

What victory can be claimed when the stability of an army depends on a box of Prozac? A state that can only stand with antidepressants is not a state: it is a patient.

This is not advice, but a warning — cold, clear — from an enemy who does not like you... but does not even wish you dead.

It is simply telling you: go home.

The further you extend the borders of Greater Israel, the closer you run to the wall of nothingness.

For the closer you get to this imperial dream, the more it loses its meaning.

You may have won a few battles, but you are wasting what matters most: time.

And history never forgets arrogance.

The more you expand, the more vulnerable you become. The further you go, the more you exhaust yourselves. Look at Ben Gvir: a sham minister, ranting like a simpleton — ‘Send bombs, not aid to Gaza!’ "

He believes that history is written by shouting. He thinks that missiles can replace memory.

But war is not won only on the battlefield. It is won — or lost — in books, in people's minds, in the mark you leave behind.

And history, my enemies, is not dictated by megaphones. It remembers. And it will consign you — you, your bombs, your buffoons — to the red margin of eternal shame.

Tell me how? Tell me, for God's sake, how can a state claim victory when it has already lost the story?

Because one day — soon — everyone will read that Israel was a fascist state, an apartheid regime that razed cities, annihilated peoples, brought down governments to survive... and then collapsed, suffocated by its own hatred.

And that history is not being written by Tel Aviv. It is being written by Gaza.

Gaza is writing it with its rockets, with its blood, with a will that neither bombs nor tanks can break.

You will read it in a few years. And your children will read it in their school textbooks.

And on that day, they will look at you... and they will feel ashamed.