LIVE VIDEO: Haaretz Conference, Israel After October 7th: Allied or Alone?

The aftermath of the 7th October and the war in the southern and northern regions have far-reaching implications for Israel, the Middle East, and the broader international order. Since 7th October, the UK has assumed a pivotal role, emerging as one of the primary global powers engaged in resolving the crisis and shaping a post-war landscape. In light of these developments and the new government in the UK, the conference will engage our community, allies, and thought leaders in reflecting on the situation in Israel, Palestine, and the wider region.

Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary InstitutionsA letter by writers, translators, publishers, and other book workers

Monday, October 28, 2024:

We, as writers, publishers, literary festival workers, and other book workers, publish this letter as we face the most profound moral, political and cultural crisis of the 21st century. The overwhelming injustice faced by the Palestinians cannot be denied. The current war has entered our homes and pierced our hearts. 

The emergency is here: Israel has made Gaza unlivable. It is not possible to know exactly how many Palestinians Israel has killed since October, because Israel has destroyed all infrastructure, including the ability to count and bury the dead. We do know that Israel has killed, at the very least, 43,362 Palestinians in Gaza since October and that this is the biggest war on children this century. 

This is a genocide, as leading expert scholars and institutions have been saying for months. Israeli officials speak plainly of their motivations to eliminate the population of Gaza, to make Palestinian statehood impossible, and to seize Palestinian land. This follows 75 years of displacement, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. 

Culture has played an integral role in normalizing these injustices. Israeli cultural institutions, often working directly with the state, have been crucial in obfuscating, disguising and artwashing the dispossession and oppression of millions of Palestinians for decades.

We have a role to play. We cannot in good conscience engage with Israeli institutions without interrogating their relationship to apartheid and displacement. This was the position taken by countless authors against South Africa; it was their contribution to the struggle against apartheid there.

Therefore: we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians. We will not cooperate with Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that:

• Are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel's occupation, apartheid or genocide, or 

• Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law. 

To work with these institutions is to harm Palestinians, and so we call on our fellow writers, translators, illustrators and book workers to join us in this pledge. We call on our publishers, editors and agents to join us in taking a stand, in recognising our own involvement, our own moral responsibility and to stop engaging with the Israeli state and with complicit Israeli institutions.

➤First 1496 signatories

➤ To add your name to this letter, please fill and submit the form here 

RENÁN VEGA CANTOREducation after Gaza

The title of this text paraphrases Education After Auschwitz, the title of a radio lecture given by the German philosopher Theodor Adorno in 1966 and later published in printed form, the first lines of which read as follows: “Demanding that Auschwitz never happen again is the first requirement of all education. It precedes all others so much that I don't think I should or can justify it. I can't understand why we didn't care so much about it until today. Justifying it would be somewhat monstrous in the face of the monstrosity of what happened. […] Discussing ideals in the field of education leads to nothing in the face of this demand: never again Auschwitz. This was the type of barbarism against which all education stands.”

Today we are faced with repetition the genocidal barbarism by Israel against the Palestinian people.   In this essay, Colombian historian Renán Vega Cantor outlines what critical educators driven by a humanist ethic could and should be doing.

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ALAIN GRESH/SARRA GRIRA Gaza – Lebanon, a Western war

Alain Gresh and Sarra Grira, Orient XXI, 30/9/2024
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

Alain Gresh (Cairo 1948) is a French journalist specialising in the Mashreq region and director of the OrientXXI website.

 Sarra Grira is a doctor in French literature and civilisation, with a thesis entitled Roman autobiographique et engagement: une antinomie? (XXe siècle), and is editor-in-chief of OrientXXI.

How far will Tel Aviv go? Not content with reducing Gaza to a field of ruins and committing genocide, Israel is extending its operations to neighbouring Lebanon, using the same methods, the same massacres and the same destruction, convinced of the unfailing support of its Western backers who have become direct accomplices in its actions.

Hassan Bleibel

The number of Lebanese killed in the bombardments has exceeded 1,640, and the Israeli ‘exploits’ have multiplied. Inaugurated by the episode of the pagers, which caused many Western commentators to swoon over the ‘technological feat’. Too bad for the victims, killed, disfigured, blinded, amputated, written off. It will be repeated ad nauseam that, after all, it was just Hezbollah, a ‘humiliation’, an organisation that, let's not forget, France does not consider to be a terrorist organisation. As if the explosions had not affected the whole of society, killing militiamen and civilians alike. Yet the use of booby-traps is a violation of the laws of war, as several specialists and humanitarian organisations have pointed out [1].

The summary assassinations of Hezbollah leaders, including that of its Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, each time accompanied by numerous ‘collateral victims’, do not even cause a scandal. Netanyahu's latest thumbing of his nose at the UN was to give the go-ahead for the bombing of the Lebanese capital at the organisation's own headquarters.

In Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories, the members of the UN Security Council are ignoring the opinions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) more and more every day. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is delaying issuing a warrant against Benyamin Netanyahu, even though its prosecutor reports pressure ‘from world leaders’ and other parties, including himself and his family[2]. Have we heard Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron or Olaf Scholz protest against these practices?

For almost a year now, a handful of voices - who would almost seem to be the village fools - have been denouncing Israeli impunity, encouraged by Western inaction. Such a war would never have been possible without the airlift of USAmerican - and to a lesser extent European - weapons, and without the diplomatic and political cover of Western countries. France, if it wanted to, could take measures that would really hit Israel, but it is still refusing to suspend the arms export licences it has granted. It could also lobby the European Union, with countries like Spain, to suspend the association agreement with Israel. It is not doing so.

The never-ending Palestinian Nakba and the accelerating destruction of Lebanon are not only Israeli crimes, but also Western crimes for which Washington, Paris and Berlin bear direct responsibility. Far from the posturing and theatrics of the UN General Assembly over the last few days, let's not be fooled by Joe Biden's anger or Emmanuel Macron's pious hopes for the ‘protection of civilians’, who has never missed an opportunity to show his unwavering support for Benyamin Netanyahu's extreme right-wing government. Let's not even forget the number of diplomats who left the UN General Assembly hall when the Israeli Prime Minister took the floor, in a gesture that had more to do with catharsis than politics. For while some Western countries bear primary responsibility for Israel's crimes, others, such as Russia and China, have taken no action to put an end to this war, whose scope is expanding daily, spilling over into Yemen today and perhaps Iran tomorrow.

This war is plunging us into a dark age in which the laws, the law, the safeguards, everything that would prevent humanity from sinking into barbarism, are being methodically torn down. An era in which one side has decided to put the other side to death, judging it to be ‘barbaric’. ‘Savage enemies‘, in Netanyahu's words, who threaten ’Judeo-Christian civilisation’. The Prime Minister is seeking to drag the West into a war of civilisation with religious overtones, in which Israel sees itself as the outpost in the Middle East. With undoubted success.

Through the arms and munitions they continue to supply to Israel, through their unwavering support for a spurious ‘right to self-defence’, through their rejection of the Palestinians' right to self-determination and to resist an occupation that the ICJ has declared illegal and ordered to be halted - a decision that the UN Security Council refuses to implement - these countries bear responsibility for Israel's hubris. As members of such prestigious institutions as the UN Security Council and the G7, the governments of these states endorse the law of the jungle imposed by Israel and the logic of collective punishment. This logic was already at work in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, with familiar results. Back in 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, occupied the south, laid siege to Beirut and oversaw the massacres in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila. It was this macabre ‘victory’ that led to the rise of Hezbollah, just as Israel's policy of occupation led to 7 October. Because the logic of war and colonialism can never lead to peace and security.

---

[1] Read Lebanon: Establish international investigation into deadly attacks using exploding portable devices, by Amnesty International, 20 Sept. 2024

[2] Listen to Karim Khan’s interview by Nick Robinson, 7 Sept. 2024

SCARLETT HADDADDespite criticism of Hezbollah, this is no time for internal discord among the Lebanese

Scarlett Haddad, L’Orient-Le Jour, 28/9/2024
Translated by Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala

 

Scarlett Haddad is a journalist and analyst for the French-language Lebanese daily L'Orient-Le Jour. She specializes in Lebanese domestic political issues in addition to Syrian, Palestinian and Iranian matters from Lebanon's perspective, including topics concerning Hezbollah and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

 At a time when it is waging a ferocious war, albeit a supportive one, against the Israelis, Hezbollah fears it could face internal unrest. At a time when the inhabitants of the South have taken to the streets again because of the violence of the Israeli bombardments in their region, political and other voices have been raised to criticise Hezbollah and ask it to close the ‘support front’. This may be pure coincidence or the expression of popular unease about this front and the prospect of its enlargement, but it may also be a step in a plan to put Hezbollah against the wall as a prelude to its weakening.

Kamal Sharaf, Yemen

After having more or less avoided criticising Hezbollah too openly, particularly after the Israeli escalation of recent days, some political figures have decided to raise their voices. This may be entirely justified by the intensification and broadening of Israeli attacks on several regions of Lebanon and by the threat of a ground invasion, but the simultaneous nature of these criticisms raises questions for Hezbollah.

At a time when it is the target of murderous attacks and is conducting an internal investigation into possible infiltration, which its opponents are exploiting to undermine its credibility among its supporters, Hezbollah is wondering whether this sudden wave of criticism is spontaneous or whether it is orchestrated by foreign parties. It is also wondering whether this is just an indirect means of putting pressure on it to accept certain conditions or whether there is a wider plan.

What really catches its attention is the timing of this campaign, which comes at a time when truce negotiations are due to be held in New York. These talks, led by the USAmericans and the French, should in principle involve a 21-day halt to the fighting, the time needed to reach an agreement on an in-depth solution to the situation on Lebanon's southern border. Hezbollah and with it official Lebanon are insisting that the agreement should also cover Gaza, but the Israelis and the USAmericans want to separate the two issues. They could therefore try to put pressure on Hezbollah to change its mind on the latter point.

However, Hezbollah is adamant that it will continue to support Hamas in Gaza through the open front in southern Lebanon. It considers that all attempts to change its mind are doomed to failure, especially since, after the latest Israeli attacks, any concession on its part would be interpreted as a defeat. It is therefore prepared to face the consequences of this position, but what would worry them is if this sudden wave of criticism were not the prelude to internal unrest. In addition to the Israeli attacks, they will have to deal with the notorious intercommunal discord that has become an obsession for Hezbollah since the coup of 7 May 2008 and the clashes that followed.

Over the last few months, those close to Hezbollah consider that one of the greatest achievements of the opening of the ‘support front’ has been the consolidation of relations between the group's supporters and the Sunni street that favours Hamas. This sort of ‘honeymoon’ that Sunnis and Shiites in Lebanon are currently experiencing, united for the Palestinian cause, means that Hezbollah can feel that its back is protected and it can therefore devote itself fully to the front and its popular environment. Moreover, the fact that from time to time Palestinian fighters and others from various Sunni groups launch missiles against the Israeli North from the South is a way of showing the extent of the understanding and coordination between them and Hezbollah. Similarly, the welcome given to displaced persons from the South in predominantly Sunni regions is further proof of the good relations that currently exist. This is a terrible blow to any attempt to spark discord between Sunnis and Shiites. Even after the so-called beeper and walkie-talkie attacks, many young Sunnis, particularly from Tarik Jdideh neighbourhood, rushed to give blood to the wounded.

As far as the Druze community is concerned, Hezbollah can also rest easy because of the positions taken by its leader Walid Joumblatt, who has repeatedly expressed his support for the Palestinian cause and Hamas in particular in this war that has been going on for over 11 months. He has also made numerous statements urging the inhabitants of the Mountain to open their doors to displaced persons from the South, and has increased the number of so-called reconciliation and rapprochement meetings with numerous parties in the Mountain and elsewhere, with the declared aim of nipping in the bud any attempt at internal discord.

That leaves the Christians, who seem to be more difficult for Hezbollah to manage in the current period. Its relations with the Free Patriotic Movement have become more complicated and it can no longer count on unfailing support from the party's base. Admittedly, the FPM has drawn up a plan to help displaced persons in the South, but the sensitivity of its base is no longer as favourable to Hezbollah. On the other hand, most of the other parties are downright hostile to Hezbollah and even if their leaders waited before openly expressing their criticism, it was already in the air.

In this respect, there is no doubt nothing new. But rumours have been circulating recently that some parties are organising and training for a possible confrontation with Hezbollah. Immediately, the spectre of the civil war, in all its stages, which took place between 1975 and 1990, reappeared. Of course, the parties concerned deny any desire to engage in a new armed confrontation and claim that their criticisms are merely the expression of a justified political position. Similarly, well-informed military sources totally deny rumours of a possible militarisation of the political conflict, assuring us that there are no preparations in that direction. Reassuring statements in these anxious times. So there should not be time for discord.

José Alberto Rodríguez Avila, Cuba

John Soos: On board the ‘Handala:’ a little ship to Gaza

 

Handala: The Little Ship that Could

FAUSTO GIUDICE War on the body, the heart, the eyes or the destruction of humanity by hacked lithium

Israel, through its armed cybertentacles, Mossad and Unit 8200, has inaugurated a new form of war of terror that no science-fiction writer had ever imagined. First stage: 3,000 beepers/pagers exploding at the same time throughout Lebanon and Syria. Second stage: hundreds of walkie-talkies exploding in their turn. The holders of these devices and the people close to them were shredded, crippled, blinded and burned. An overheated lithium battery can reach apocalyptic temperatures of a1,000°F (537°C).

Let's get one thing straight right away: no, Mossad did not hijack a stockpile of 5,000 devices intended for Hezbollah in order to insert an explosive charge (some say 3 grams, others 30 grams). He simply hacked the pagers and caused their batteries to overheat explosively. As they brought the device close to their eyes to read the message, the people targeted were often burned in the face, had their eyes gouged out and suffered other grim tragedies.

Why has the fable of explosive charges inserted into batteries been circulated so widely? It's obvious: the industry producing all kinds of devices powered by lithium batteries found itself faced with the prospect of a global catastrophe in a matter of minutes. If you can blow up a pager or a walkie-talkie by hacking into them, you can blow up any connected device: telephone, computer, car, household robot, power station, electric bicycle [I've heard reports of bicycles exploding in garages in Argentina] and...electronic cigarette [as the Ukrainians did with Russian soldiers] etc. etc. etc.

Panic at Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese producer of A924 pagers, but also at all the other manufacturers, from Foxconn (iPhones) to Elon Musk (Tesla). Gold Apollo could think of nothing better than to accuse a poor [well, less poor than me] Sicilian consultant based in Budapest, where she runs a consultancy business (notably for UNESCO), of having manufactured the A924s in question under licence. This was false: the woman, Cristiana Arcidiacono-Borsany, from Catania and a graduate of the London School of Economics, had at most acted as an intermediary between the Taiwanese and the subcontractor, who has not yet been identified.

So, no, Mossad did not hijack the shipment of A924s en route to Lebanon in the middle of the sea between Budapest and Beirut in order to trap 5,000 pagers, put them back in their packaging, put everything back in the container and transport it to Beirut (and by what means?). It simply carried out a relatively simple operation to hack into the devices. Previously, he had engaged in a deception campaign aimed at sowing paranoia in the ranks of the Lebanese fighters, by making them believe that it had taken control of all their telephones, to get them to favour pagers.

The main aim of these acts of war is to strike, mutilate, kill and terrorise, under the skin, in their most intimate part, people and their loved ones, parents, companions and neighbours. The aim is obvious: to crush the Lebanese resistance and send a serious warning to all the components of the Axis of Resistance, in Iran, Iraq and Yemen, and to all those who might be tempted to join it, from Morocco to the Philippines, via Pakistan and India. As for the Palestinians, they had already learnt from their experience and Yahya Sinwar and his companions have not used any connected devices for some time now.

But the ‘Orientals’ are not the only ones being targeted in this apocalyptic piracy operation. “Westerner”s are being targeted too, and not just ordinary people like you and me, but the Big, the Fat, the Powerful, from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos, the Drahi's, the Kretinskys and the Chinese-Taiwanese millionaires, the great family of lithium addicts. Israel's message is clear: ‘If you don't do what we tell you to do, we'll blow you up’.

 

Curtis LeMay, the Yankee air force general who burnt two-thirds of Japanese cities to the ground during the Second World War and who was disappointed by Kennedy's refusal to let him do the same in Cuba, suggested in his 1968 memoirs, that instead of negotiating with Hanoi, the US should ‘take them back to the Stone Age by bombing them’, destroying factories, ports and bridges ‘until we have destroyed all the works of man in North Vietnam’. This is what the Zionihilists are threatening us with today: ‘Us or chaos’.

So it's time, whoever we are, to think seriously about how to get rid of the lithium devices and find (back) other ways of communicating: some suggest telepathy, others the smoke signals of the Sioux. I for one would opt for good old carrier pigeons. Any other suggestions are welcome.

We Served on Israel's Sde Teiman Base. Here's What We Did to Gazans Detained There

 

Hands and feet in shackles. Eyes blindfolded. No moving. No talking. And, sometimes, violent beatings. Days upon days, weeks upon weeks pass like this at the Sde Teiman facility for Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians from Gaza. These interviewees know. They served there

Shay Fogelman, Haaretz

Aug 16, 2024

Shay Fogelman was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1971, raised in Petah Tikva. Graduate of History and Philosophy from Tel Aviv University. Worked as a researcher, cinematographer and script editor in various documentaries. He works as an investigative journalist for Ha'aretz supplement. Editor of Hebrew literature. The documentary CHASING YEHOSHUA (2019) is his latest work.

[Tlaxcala's Note : Hebrew-speakers can hear the audio version of this article  here  or here]

In the days after the surprise attack on southern Israel on October 7, a total of some 120 Hamas militants, members of the movement's Nukhba military wing and Palestinian civilians from the Gaza Strip were taken into custody in Israel. They were sent to a detention facility specially created on a military police base at the Sde Teiman camp, between the town of Ofakim and Be'er Sheva in the Negev. In the months that followed, more than 4,500 additional inhabitants of the Strip, among them terrorists from various organizations, and civilians, were incarcerated there.

Not long after the facility began to operate, testimonies were published in both Israeli and foreign media to the effect that detainees there were being starved, beaten and tortured. It was also alleged that the conditions of detention did not conform to international law. Further allegations were made concerning the treatment at the field hospital set up nearby. Staff testified that detainee-patients were fed through a straw, forced to relieve themselves in a diaper and handcuffed so tightly, for 24 hours a day, that there were a number of cases of amputation of limbs.

Two months ago, it was learned that the Israel Defense Forces was conducting a criminal investigation against soldiers allegedly involved in the death of 36 detainees in the camp. Last month, 10 reservists were arrested there on suspicion of brutal sexual abuse of an inmate. Regular or reservist soldiers assigned to Sde Teiman are subordinate to the military police, which has ultimate authority over the goings-on there.

In the wake of the many testimonies that surfaced, five human rights organizations petitioned the High Court of Justice, calling for the site to be shut down. In early June, the state announced in response that it intended to transfer most of the detainees to facilities run by the Israel Prison Service and to restore the camp to its original mission "as a facility for temporary, short-term [incarceration] for purposes of interrogation and classification only." In another response to the High Court of Justice earlier this month, the state declared that there were now only 28 detainees in the facility.

Since the war broke out, thousands of Israeli soldiers in regular and reservist forces have served at Sde Teiman. Most were posted there within the framework of a mission with which their unit was tasked. Others volunteered to serve there for a variety of reasons. In recent months, a number of soldiers and medical professionals agreed to talk with Haaretz about their time there. Eight of the testimonies follow, anonymously and in chronological order, from the earliest stint to the most recent.

N., a student from the north, reservist

"I was mobilized with the whole battalion on October 7. We were sent to secure communities in the western Negev, and after two weeks we moved to Be'er Sheva. I was involved in activity not related to the battalion when I saw on the company's WhatsApp group announcements that we had another mission – something new: guard duty at Sde Teiman. It wasn't so clear at first.

"When I got back to my company people were already whispering about the place. Someone asked if I'd heard about what was happening there. Someone else said, 'You know you have to hit people there,' as though he was taunting me and wanted to test my reaction, whether I was a leftist or something like that. There was also a soldier in the company who boasted that he'd beaten people at the facility. He told us that he had gone with a shift officer from the military police and they had beaten one of the detainees with clubs. I was curious about the place, and the stories sounded a little exaggerated to me, so I pretty much volunteered to go there.

"In Sde Teiman we guarded the detainees' lockup. We did 12-hour shifts during the day or night. The battalion's doctors and medics did 24-hour shifts at the field hospital. At the end of each shift we returned to Be'er Sheva to sleep.

"The detainees were in a large hangar with a roof and walls on three sides. Instead of a fourth wall, facing us, there was a fence with a double gate and two locks, like in dog parks. A barbed-wire fence surrounded everything. Our positions were close to the two corners of the fence, at a kind of diagonal, behind concrete blocks in a U shape. A soldier stands at each post, watching the detainees and guarding the military police personnel in charge of operating the place. We did shifts of two hours on, two hours off. If you weren't guarding you could go to the rest area, a kind of tent that had drinks and snacks.

"The inmates sat in eight rows on the ground, with about eight people in each. One hangar held 70 people and the second around 100. The military police told us that they had to sit. They were not allowed to peek out from their blindfolds. They were not allowed to move. They were not allowed to talk. And that if… what they [the military police] said was that if they broke the rules, it was permitted to punish them."

How were they punished?

"For minor things, you could force them to stand in place [for about 30 minutes]. If the person continued to make trouble, or for more serious violations, the military police officer could also take him aside… and beat him with a club."

Do you remember such an incident?

"One time someone took a peek at a female soldier – at least, that's what she claimed… She said he peeked at her from under the blindfold and was doing something under his blanket. The thing is that it was winter and they had 'scabies blankets'… like army issue [rough, coarse blankets]. And they were always scratching underneath. I was at the other post and wasn't looking in that direction. Then she called the officer and told him. The detainee was sitting in the first row and he was like… well, sort of a problematic guy. After all, they're not allowed to talk. It seemed to me that over time, some of them became on edge… unstable. Sometimes they would start to cry, or begin to lose it. He was also one of those, who didn't look very stable.

"When the military police officer arrived, the shawish [a derogatory term with many connotations in Arabic, but used to describe an inmate put in charge of other inmates here] tried to explain to him, 'Listen, it's tough. He's been here for 20 days. He doesn't change clothes and barely ever showers.' Like, the guy tried to mediate for him. But the female soldier said again that he had looked at her. The officer told the shawish to bring the guy to the double gate and to take him outside. In the meantime he [the officer] called another soldier from his company, who was then in the rest area, who was always talking about how he wanted to beat the detainees.

NAGHAM ZBEEDAT'Return of Martyrdom': 'The Engineer' Yahya Ayyash Trends as Hamas Threatens More Suicide Attacks

Nagham Zbeedat, Haaretz, 20/8/2024

 

Yahya Ayyash.Credit: Reuters

In the aftermath of an attempted suicide attack in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening, one name began gaining significant traction across Arab social media platforms, particularly on X: Yahya Ayyash. Known as "The Engineer," Ayyash was a key figure in Hamas and one of the masterminds behind the wave of suicide bombings in Israel during the 1990s until his assassination.
The Israel Police and the Shin Bet announced on Monday that an explosive device that detonated in southeast Tel Aviv on Sunday evening was an attempted terror attack. The attacker, who had the explosives on his body, was killed in the blast, while a bystander sustained moderate injuries and was taken to a hospital.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the explosion, stating they would renew out suicide attacks in Israel "as long as the massacres by the occupiers and the policy of targeted killings persist."

The scene of the explosion in Tel Aviv on Sunday. Credit: Moti Milrod

A quarter century after his death, Ayyash's name is now resurfacing in Arabic-language online discussions, with many users drawing parallels between the Tel Aviv attack and what they characterize as Ayyash's legacy, as a militant symbol of resistance against Israeli occupation.

Who is Yahya Ayyash?

Yahya Ayyash was born on March 6, 1966, in Rafat near Nablus. After excelling in high school, he went on to study engineering at Birzeit University, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1988. In early 1992, Ayyash joined the Iz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, where he specialized in creating explosives from locally available materials. He is infamous for introducing the tactic of suicide bombings into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ayyash quickly rose to prominence as one of Hamas's chief bomb-makers, earning the nickname "the Engineer." The bombings he organized resulted in the deaths of over 70 Israelis.

The wreckage of an Israeli bus in Tel Aviv after a suicide bombing, October 1994.Credit: Jerome Delay/Associated Press

On January 5, 1996, after an extensive manhunt, Ayyash was killed by the Shin Bet security service. The agency managed to infiltrate Hamas and compromised one of Ayyash's associates, who handed him a cell phone rigged with explosives. Once it was confirmed that Ayyash was using the phone, the Shin Bet detonated it, killing him instantly.

The coffin of Yahya Ayyash is carried into a mosque for funeral services, 1996.Credit: Jim Hollander/Reuters

Hamas itself has commemorated Ayyash by naming one of its longer-range rockets after him; it was first launched towards Eilat's international airport in 2021. Hamas has targeted Israel using the Ayyash 250 missile several times during the Gaza war. A rocket fired from the West Bank city of Jenin in June 2023 was claimed by a Hamas faction calling itself the Al-Ayyash Battalion. The Palestinian Authority has also commemorated Ayyash by naming a Ramallah street after him.

'Ayyash is alive'
The renewed focus on Ayyash highlights the influence of his tactics and ideology among certain sections of the Arab world, where he is often regarded as a martyr and a hero.
Adham Abu Selmiya, a Palestinian writer and activist, shared an image on X of a destroyed bus, a reference to Yahya Ayyash's suicide bus bombings, next to a road sign saying "Tel Aviv" with the slogan in English and Hebrew: 'We are coming!' Captioning the image, Abu Selmiya declared, "It is only right that we wear this 'smug' smile at Netanyahu!" He further commented, "Now, the pillars of his entity tremble at the thunderous return of the era of martyrdom operations in the occupied land."

An image featured in a X post by Adham Abu Selmiya, a Palestinian writer and activist.

Egyptian-Palestinian writer Yousef Al-Damouky wrote, "He will return from where you thought you killed him," referring to the assassination of Yahya Ayyash. Al-Damouky added, "He will laugh for a long time while you panic. Yahya will tell you with his eternal wisdom: not everyone you assassinate dies."
Images of Yahya Ayyash are spreading across the internet, accompanied by a trending caption declaring, "Ayyash is alive, don't believe he's dead." Many are also sharing a quote attributed to Ayyash: "The Jews can uproot my body from Palestine, but I want to plant something in the people that they cannot uproot."

NAGHAM ZBEEDATA Poet, a Karate Champion, a Famed Artist: The Life Stories of 40 of the 40,000 Palestinians Killed in Gaza

 

 

Nagham Zbeedat, Haaretz,15/8/2024

 As Gaza's Health Ministry announces over 40,000 dead, this project tells the stories of Palestinians killed in Gaza since Hamas launched its October 7 attack on Israel, a snapshot of 40 lives lost due to Israeli airstrikes, lack of medical care or malnutrition.

The information presented was gathered from various sources, including interviews with friends and family members of the deceased, publicly shared tributes and accounts and news reports.

Hamas-run Health Ministry death toll figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but there is a broad consensus among international organizations, governments and media outlets backing the credibility of its data.