Middle East Press On: Israel, Gaza, Palestinians, Antisemitism, Trump, Big Tech, Israeli Genocide, and International Community: New Age Islam's Selection, 17 December 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
17 December 2025
· Israel's next steps in Gaza: Give Palestinians the choice to leave without chaos
· The protesters that proved antisemitism is alive and real
· Trump’s Gaza plan blocks the creation of a Palestinian state
· Make terrorism backfire: Rescinding recognition of ‘Palestine’
· The international community, Israel’s security narrative and the two-state paradigm
· Benjamin Netanyahu’s Lethal Legacy: Revisionism, Neoconservatism, Big Money and Corruption
· Big Tech and the Architecture of Israeli Genocide: From Execution to Media Whitewashing
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Israel's next steps in Gaza: Give Palestinians the choice to leave without chaos
By JPOST EDITORIAL
DECEMBER 17, 2025
Israel facilitated the departure of more than 200 Gaza residents holding dual citizenship or valid visas on Monday, according to COGAT, which manages Israel’s civilian coordination with the Palestinian territories.
COGAT said the group exited Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing, traveled through Israel to the Allenby Bridge crossing into Jordan, and continued onward to third countries. It said the departures followed requests submitted by foreign governments and the UN and added that all travelers were approved by Israel’s security establishment before they were allowed to move to ensure that wanted terrorists were not using humanitarian travel as cover. The process, COGAT explained, depends on a third country submitting a request and agreeing to receive those leaving Gaza.
The organization also addressed the winter aid dispute. It rejected claims that recent delivery problems were caused by deliberate Israeli restrictions, pointing instead to severe weather and heavy rains. It cited large quantities of tents, tarpaulins, winter items, and sanitation supplies it says were approved for entry while urging international organizations to coordinate quickly so goods can enter and be distributed.
That is the news. Now comes the policy question: Should Israel expand and formalize this approach?
The answer is yes. This is not expulsion. These are people who already have a legal destination abroad, a second passport, a valid visa, or a verified medical referral. Another country has already agreed, in law, to receive them. In a functioning international system, civilians with lawful travel options should not remain trapped in a combat zone because politics are difficult. Facilitating their exit is what a responsible state does in wartime.
The framework is compatible with Israeli security. It is conditional, vetted, and traceable. Requests come from foreign governments and the UN. Names are screened. Movement happens through controlled crossings. Israel keeps the decision point. Critics who demand humanitarian outcomes while dismissing security realities rarely offer workable alternatives. Here is a workable alternative, and it should be routine, not episodic.
It is strategically smart because it undercuts Hamas’s leverage. Its power does not rest only on rockets and tunnels but also on the exploitation of suffering. When civilians are trapped, desperate, and visible, that misery becomes a narrative weapon aimed at Israel and a recruiting story for extremists. A lawful exit channel reduces that leverage. It does not solve the war, but it removes one tool Hamas uses to manufacture pressure and despair.
It also forces responsibility onto the international community. If foreign governments want more people to leave safely, they must do the unglamorous work: issue visas, arrange onward travel, accept evacuees, and fund logistics.
Israel can facilitate transit. It cannot invent destinations. A process contingent on third-country acceptance is not a loophole; it is the basic architecture of international travel, and it requires other states to act like stakeholders, not commentators.
The same clarity is needed on aid. The argument is too often reduced to trucks per day. What matters is what enters, what clears inspection, and what is distributed to people in need, especially during winter. Storms disrupt logistics.
Distribution can break down. The solution is not to abandon security. The solution is to make the pipeline predictable, transparent, and measurable.
So, what should Israel do next?
Institutionalize the departure channel. Publish clear criteria for eligibility and documentation, and run departures on predictable schedules. Predictability is humane, and it reduces rumor-driven panic.
Treat winter relief as a life-saving category. Create fast-track lanes for shelter, sanitation, and medical necessities, paired with end-use monitoring for sensitive goods. Report on what is approved, what has entered, and what has been distributed, so the public can see where the system is failing and where it is functioning.
Israel should say this plainly: It is at war with Hamas, not with civilians. A state that insists on that distinction must behave like it believes it. Facilitating lawful departures for those with documentation, while maintaining security vetting, is a demonstration of Israeli strength.
In a conflict where lies travel fast, Israel should lean into what it can control: being secure, effective, and humane at the same time. This initiative is a practical way to prove it, and Israel should expand it now.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-880498
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The protesters that proved antisemitism is alive and real
By LISA KATZ
DECEMBER 17, 2025
Last week in New Orleans, some 200 mayors and municipal leaders, representing 30 million constituents, gathered for the North American Mayors Summit Against. Inside the hotel, we spoke about policy, policing, education, social media, and community cohesion. We shared best practices and hard truths. We talked about rising antisemitism with charts, data, and headlines.
But the most powerful lesson didn’t happen in a conference room. It happened in the streets.
As part of the summit, we held a traditional New Orleans second line parade. It was a joyful, jazz-fueled march meant to celebrate community, resilience, and to stand united against hate. Jewish and non-Jewish mayors of diverse backgrounds walked side by side, laughing and dancing behind the band in a hopeful display of unity and dignity for all.
Then the pro-Palestinian protesters arrived, positioning themselves along the parade route and gathering at summit events. They met our second line of love with a wall of hate – shouting hostile slogans, waving signs accusing Jews of monstrous crimes, and using rhetoric that crossed the line from political protest into open intimidation.
For many of the mayors, this was the first time they personally felt even a fraction of the fear, tension, and vulnerability that so many Jews now live with every day. Antisemitism was no longer a statistic on a PowerPoint slide. It was a crowd on the sidewalk, screaming into their ears.
And as strange as it sounds, that’s why I find myself saying something unexpected: We should thank the protesters
Dehumanizing and demonizing language used to describe Jews
Not because their message was justified or acceptable. It wasn’t. Much of what was shouted and displayed that day crossed into dehumanizing, demonizing language about Jews – the very essence of antisemitism. There is a world of difference between criticizing Israeli policy and chanting slogans that glorify violence or single out Jews, and those who support them, as a collective enemy.
We should thank them because, without realizing it, they ripped away any lingering illusion that antisemitism is abstract, rare, or exaggerated. They made sure that every mayor and municipal leader who came to New Orleans understood, viscerally, that this is not a theoretical problem. Mayors found themselves face-to-face with a crowd whose rage and hostility were aimed squarely at Jews and those who stand with them.
One mayor from the South turned to me and said he could not believe that people were protesting a conference whose sole purpose was to combat antisemitism and hate. Another mayor spoke through tears about how the hostility outside reminded him of the ugliest moments in his own community’s history. Many told me this was the moment it truly clicked: “This is what Jews are facing in our cities, and we can’t pretend it isn’t happening.”
There was another difference between what the mayors experienced and what many Jews endure: we had protection.
Because this summit was high-profile and sensitive, there was a strong police presence at the second line parade, around the hotel, and throughout the program. Officers were visible. Barriers were in place. We knew that if anything crossed a line, there were trained professionals ready to respond.
But what happens on an ordinary Shabbat, when a group of protesters decides to show up at a synagogue as families arrive for services? What happens when Jewish students are surrounded and shouted down on campus and no one steps in? What happens to the Jewish community center that gets repeated threats while local authorities shrug it off as “just words”?
Our mayors left New Orleans understanding that the answer cannot be “nothing.”
Cities have a responsibility to protect freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, including for those whose views many of us deeply oppose. But cities also have a responsibility to ensure that protests do not become campaigns of harassment, assault, and intimidation.
When a demonstration targets Jews simply because they are Jews, when rhetoric incentivizes violence, or when a protest turns into a group that surrounds and screams at people because they are visibly Jewish, that is not democracy functioning well. That is a warning.
So yes, paradoxically, I am grateful to the protesters who tried to hijack our second line parade and intimidate elected leaders of all faiths at the hotel. In spite of themselves, they drew the sharpest possible contrast between what we were doing inside and what they were doing outside.
The protesters did not derail our summit. They defined its urgency.
If you are a mayor, council member, city manager, or law enforcement leader, I hope you take the lesson to heart that antisemitism is not a distant issue. It is at your parades and your campuses, outside your synagogues and community centers, on your streets and social media feeds. Jews in your city are watching to see whether you notice, whether you understand, and whether you will stand up when it counts.
In New Orleans, for a few days, mayors got a glimpse of that reality. The protesters showed us that our work is not theoretical. They reminded us that behind every incident report is a real person, walking through their own second line of joy, suddenly confronted with a wall of hate.
The mayors who were with us saw it. Now the question is what they, and all of us, will do next.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-880483
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Trump’s Gaza plan blocks the creation of a Palestinian state
By YARON SCHWARTZ
DECEMBER 17, 2025
Recently at the Doha Forum, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said that the Trump plan “Is not only about Gaza, but also the West Bank. It’s about the rights of the Palestinians for their state.”
Whether this was said as wishful thinking or as an exercise in disinformation, the facts are exactly the opposite.
US President Donald Trump’s plan excludes Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and focuses on freeing the remaining hostages, dismantling Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza. The first goal has been achieved, and the other two will be completed by the International Stability Force (ISF) or by the IDF.
The simple fact is that the 20-point Trump plan for ending the war in Gaza buries the Palestinian state fairytale, and the adoption of the plan by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2803 reaffirms it.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political rivals at home – whether genuine supporters of Palestinian statehood or those who find it politically expedient to oppose anything Netanyahu does – along with Israel’s international detractors, welcomed the Trump administration’s approach to achieving the ceasefire in Gaza.
The Plan makes no mention of the West Bank or East Jerusalem
They, like Qatar’s prime minister, argue that Netanyahu has effectively agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state. At the same time, pro-Palestinian critics of the plan argue that its fundamental flaw regarding Palestinian statehood is its narrow scope: it makes no mention of the West Bank, the eastern parts of Jerusalem, or the settlements, and thus is a surefire road to failure.
This UNSC resolution is different from previous resolutions because it does not pretend that a Palestinian state exists or necessarily should exist. It does not demand a dangerous Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, and does not predispose negotiations on specific final borders based on the “1967 borders.” In fact, it does not even stipulate where, geographically, such a future state would exist.
Pundits who have actually studied the maps have suggested that Sinai is the solution, or perhaps the western expanses of Saudi Arabia are the best location for a future Palestinian state, if anything, at least temporarily, until true Palestinian reform is achieved. As a matter of principle, the Middle East stakeholders who are urging to establishment of a Palestinian state should also offer some real estate alongside their advice.
The Trump plan’s language on Palestinian statehood is restricted and vague, stating that conditions “may” create a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood when the Palestinian Authority's future reforms are completed. It fails to mention when and for how long the PA will have to make such reforms.
Both the UNSC resolution and the Trump plan specify that once the PA undergoes a stringent course of reform and societal deradicalization – as laid out by Trump in his first term – then “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” In other words, the time to discuss statehood is when such a state would cease to be a threat to Israel. And it will be the US and Israel who judge if these conditions have been met.
The UNSC resolution also authorizes Israel’s presence in a Gaza buffer zone and conditions PA administration of Gaza on whether it “can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza.” Or, in other words, Israel will hold a security buffer until the red cows come home.
Michael Waltz, US ambassador to the UN, described the resolution as the “most pro-Israel UN resolution ever adopted” as well as the first real step in generations toward lasting peace.
He is correct.
The simple truth is that the Trump plan and the Security Council resolution that ratifies it prevent a Palestinian state anywhere from the river to the sea.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-880476
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Make terrorism backfire: Rescinding recognition of ‘Palestine’
By GIL TROY
DECEMBER 17, 2025
As the world is shocked by the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre, and as experts pontificate about fighting abstractions like “hate,” too many ignore the most effective move Australia – and other countries – can make.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should say: “Palestinian terrorists and their supporters keep trying to advance the Palestinian cause by slaughtering innocents, Jews and non-Jews alike. Today, rather than impotently claiming ‘terrorism doesn’t work,’ we will prove it with one action. Terrorism doesn’t work – it backfires: Australia hereby rescinds its recognition of a Palestinian state.”
Instead, after two antisemitic anti-Zionists murdered 15 innocents and wounded dozens, Albanese guaranteed that the problem won’t end; he claimed that Australia’s recognizing of a fictitious Palestinian state didn’t encourage the Jew-slaughter.
Such head-in-the-sand thinking is like denying the link between Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Holocaust. Mein Kampf wasn’t just a bestseller, and Australia’s pro-Palestinian stance isn’t just a policy. Since the 1970s, the world has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism by advancing the Palestinian cause. Since Hamas’s unspeakable barbarism on October 7, it’s become super-trendy to enable terror and greenlight Jew-hatred.
When terrorism is rewarded
Ghazi Hamad, a Qatari-based Hamas leader whom Western useful idiots deemed “pragmatic,” called Australia and other countries recognizing a Palestinian state one of the “fruits of October 7.”
Hamas celebrated the recognition as an “important step” and a “deserved outcome of our people’s struggle.”
Terrorists aren’t stupid. Western leaders claim “terrorism never works,” yet their appeasement and cowardice spur more violence. That’s why since 2000, over 106,000 terrorist attacks worldwide have murdered 249,941 people. Since October 7, 8,670 terrorist attacks – including stone-throwing – occurred in Judea and Samaria.
There’s a fine line between exploiting a tragedy for political reasons and disincentivizing terrorism. But Bondi Beach wasn’t some natural disaster.
It was an unnatural aberration, perpetrated by monsters and fed by a monstrous anti-Zionist ideology blurring support for a Palestinian state, traditional Jew-hatred, and a desire to eliminate the Jewish state. Just because this anti-Zionist antisemitism gets traction in reaction to Israeli actions or leaders, it’s still motivated by a fury that Israel is – not what Israel does.
The logic is clear. Terrorism is politically motivated violence. Punishing the political cause discourages the terrorists. That’s why the way to stop antisemitic terrorism is to rescind recognition of the Palestinian state and encourage Palestinian civil society.
Bondi Beach should challenge the Jewish world too. Jews in countries emboldening terrorists by recognizing this bound-to-be-undemocratic Palestinian state must ask: have we truly shouted our displeasure, pressured our leaders, and shown the kind of spine we want Albanese and others to grow?
For decades, Jews’ accommodation politics worked in Australia, Great Britain, and Canada. But as their governments turn on Israel, communities there must master a new politics of confrontation – understanding that fighting against antisemitism and for Israel is a fight for true liberal democracy and the West’s soul.
Second, everyone must ask: are we raising our children to have the courage, grit, and strength demonstrated by Ahmed al-Ahmed, the fruit vendor turned hero who tackled a terrorist?
Israeli parents can answer “yes.” Can others? If not, why? Many should stop raising their kids to fit in and start teaching them to stand up, strong and tall, for others, including their own. They need a new conception – and new parenting guides – understanding that a strong sense of particular identity, including loyalty to your people, actually is the best way to create rooted, grounded, civic heroes who are gutsy and self-sacrificing.
Finally, beware of the conversational winds shifting in New York, as Jews risk catching Stockholm Syndrome, accepting Zohran Mamdani, who is still campaigning to be America’s leading anti-Zionist antisemite. Yes, Bondi Beach proves again how antisemitic anti-Zionists are, how the Palestinian national movement has intertwined the two, and how the burden of proof is on anti-Zionists – not Jews – to prove they aren’t Jew-haters.
No, I don’t agree that Mamdani “understood the fissures of our community better than we ourselves did” – why give him such credit? That’s not what happened. Does anyone believe anti-Zionist Jews went woke because American Jews don’t criticize Israel enough?
Bibi-bashing has long been a favorite sport among American Jews. Moreover, although Google AI notes that “prominent American Jews have been criticizing Zionism and Israel since before the state was founded in 1948,” for 30 years, at least, American Jews have been “hugging and wrestling” with Israel – a phrase coined in 2004, eight years after the radical Israel-bashing group, Jewish Voice for Peace, was founded.
Perhaps, rather than rabbis blaming Israel for the Jews’ alienation from Judaism and the Jewish state, we should re-examine how rabbis – and parents – teach about Israel, Zionism, and Judaism. Do they view Israel through the B-B-B – Bibi-bashing partisan lens – rather than the B to B … Bible to Birthright identity-building lens?
Have they taught Jews to recognize their true enemies, even if they’re perfumed with human rights talk or masked by Mamdani-style high-flying rhetoric? Can they distinguish between those who criticize what Israel does and those who reject that Israel is?
It’s no coincidence that a disproportionate number of the young Jews leading Hillel proudly today – and much of the Jewish community – are day school graduates. They lead not because they’re programmed to be mindless, pro-Israel right-wingers but because they’re educated to be thoughtful, nuanced, caring Jews, who recognize how central Israel is to their Jewish identity and our Jewish future.
It’s too easy to blame Israel for letting Jews down; sadly, too many Jews have let Israel down.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-880469
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The international community, Israel’s security narrative and the two-state paradigm
December 16, 2025
by Ramona Wadi
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might project being vindicated after the recent mass shooting at Bondi Beach, which claimed the lives of 15 Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah on Sunday. When Australia announced it would recognise a Palestinian state, Netanyahu wrote to Prime Minister Albanese stating that recognition furthers antisemitism and rewards Hamas terror. After the recent shooting, of course, Netanyahu found the perfect opportunity to rehash the conflated rhetoric. In a statement, Netanyahu called the Australian government weak. “You let the disease spread and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today.”
Albanese’s reply was simple – there is no link between Australia’s recognition of Palestine and the mass shooting at Bondi Beach. “Overwhelmingly, most of the world recognises a two-state solution as being the way forward in the Middle East,” he stated.
Of course, the two-state paradigm will not be the way forward in the Middle East – it is a way forward for Israel’s colonial expansion. But linking the Bondi Beach mass shooting to a symbolic recognition of a Palestinian is way beyond the confines of imagination for anyone in favour of conflating the definition of antisemitism.
Recognising a Palestinian state based on the two-state compromise automatically recognises Israel and its colonisation of Palestine. Netanyahu is missing the key point. Recognising a Palestinian state means endorsing the 1947 Partition Plan, which unjustly bequeathed more land to Zionist colonisers than to the indigenous Palestinian people. Symbolism is weaker than colonisation – in this case recognition of a Palestinian state is weaker than recognising Israel and allowing it to commit a colonial genocide in Gaza.
Netanyahu taking issue with Australia’s recent symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state – something other states politically aligned with Israel have already done – only shows increasing exploitation and manipulation of antisemitism. It is Netanyahu that requires antisemitism be constantly tied to Israel’s security narrative. Netanyahu keeps warning that attacks on Jewish people anywhere in the world would require Israel’s intervention which, by the way, is a threat against any country’s sovereignty. Not all Jews ascribe to Zionism, and neither do all Jews ascribe to a colonial enterprise in their name, or to genocide. The facts speak for themselves.
However, Netanyahu’s tirade against the Australian government can be read as a threat to all states endorsing the two-state compromise. There is no separating recognition of a Palestinian state from the two-state politics; indeed those that do not recognise a Palestinian state cannot really be advocates for the two-state implementation. Netanyahu’s warning to Albanese could have been sent to any government in whose territory attacks against Jewish people had taken place. With that single warning, Netanyahu is widening the parameters of who stands for Israel, and who stands against. Based on conflation, of course, but who in the international community is paying heed?
The international community equates the two-state with Israel’s survival, and it is right because the unjustness of the paradigm prevents decolonisation and Palestinian liberation from happening. But is the international community willing to change the emerging Zionist narrative that Netanyahu is promoting – that recognition of a Palestinian state, thus implying also that the two-state paradigm – encourages attacks on Jewish people? If the international community upholds Israel’s security narrative at all costs, it is going to face a hard time protecting Israeli colonialism and its own corrupted middle ground.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20251216-the-international-community-israels-security-narrative-and-the-two-state-paradigm/
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Benjamin Netanyahu’s Lethal Legacy: Revisionism, Neoconservatism, Big Money and Corruption
December 16, 2025
By Dan Steinbock
Netanyahu recently doubled down on his request to President Isaac Herzog for a pardon amid his ongoing criminal trial, saying, “There is no case there.”
Indeed, Netanyahu is as involved in the game of Israeli politics as he was in early 2023, when the huge Israeli demonstrations started against his far-right cabinet’s proposed “judicial reforms.” These seek to transform a secular “democracy” into a Jewish supremacist autocracy, and against the genocidal atrocities in Gaza, including the escalating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
The mass protests mobilized many but could not fully halt the reforms. Little by little, Israeli “democracy,” which serves primarily its Jewish population, is crumbling.
To avoid prosecution for corruption, Netanyahu needs to hang onto power and keep the war activities going. How is this status quo even possible? The simple answer is revisionist Zionism, U.S.-style neoconservatism, hard right politics, Big Money, dark donors, and, of course, corruption.
Revisionist Zionism
Born in Israel in 1949 but growing up in Philadelphia, Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history. He sees himself as an activist of Zion, like his grandfather Nathan Mileikowsky. While Netanyahu’s grandfather and father had a role in revisionist Zionism, he put himself at its center.
Mileikowsky, the Russian-born rabbi and early Zionist champion, was known for his advocacy against socialist Zionism and anti-Zionists. After migration to Israel, he raised funds abroad for the Yishuv, or the pre-state Israel, and cooperated with rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the founding father of Religious Zionism. In turn, the rabbi’s son, rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, is the revered spiritual father of Israel’s violent settlers and the Messianic far-right.
One of Mileikowsky’s sons was Benzion Mileikowsky (who later adopted his father’s pen name as his last name), a medieval historian and onetime deputy assistant to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the pioneer of revisionist Zionism.
Benzion (“the son of Zion” in Hebrew) befriended extremist revisionists such as Abba Ahimeir, who wanted to create a fascist state in Palestine, promoted “Il Duce” (Italian fascist) salutes, and was one of the likely assassins of the Zionist labor leader Haim Arlosoroff.
But instead of a revisionist Zionist revolution, Benzion eventually opted for an academic career in the US, returning to Israel only in the 1970s.
Netanyahu’s Web of Revisionist Zionism
Building on his master’s treatise, Origins of the Inquisition in 15th Century Spain, Benzion saw Jewish history as a series of holocausts. He shunned the long period of Spanish history of convivencia (Spanish, “living together”), from the Muslim Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the early 8th century until the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. In the Moorish Iberian kingdoms, the Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in relative peace.
This period of religious diversity and tolerance – captured wonderfully by Maria Rosa Menocal in her book The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (2002) – differed drastically from the subsequent Spanish and Portuguese history, when Catholicism became the sole religion in the Iberian Peninsula, following expulsions and forced conversions.
Benzion Netanyahu fully shared Jabotinsky’s insistence on the creation of an “Iron Wall” between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Oslo Accords, Netanyahu’s aging father complained, were “the beginning of the end of the Jewish state.” So, after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, he supported its reinvasion, “even if it brings us years of war.” And to the end of his long life, he stuck to the European orientalist bias: “The tendency to conflict is the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence… His existence is one of perpetual war.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, his son, is the product of both American and Jewish worlds. But unlike the father, he had little interest in academic dreams. He saw himself as a revolutionary. He wanted to overthrow the Labor Zionists to realize a Greater Israel.
Israel didn’t need bleeding-heart socialists. Eretz Israel needed tough Jews. The country needed him.
Hard Right
“Bibi” Netanyahu is his own man, but he was heavily influenced by his father. Like his older brother Yonatan, who lost his life in the 1976 Entebbe raid to release Jewish hostages, Bibi served with distinction in Sayeret Matkal, an elite reconnaissance unit of the Israeli military.
After studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and working as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), his political career took off in the late 1980s, when he served as Israel’s permanent UN representative, at which time I met him in mid-Manhattan.
These were the formative years of the US neoconservative movement, many of whose ideas he shared. Israel’s ambassador to the US, Moshe Arens, a scientist, veteran Likud politician and ex-Irgun operative, paved Netanyahu’s path to the corridors of power in Washington.
Seemingly unassuming, shrewd, fast and smart, and well-trained in US-style communications, Netanyahu was a natural to succeed Likud’s old guard; Menahem Begin, the former leader of the terrorist Irgun group, and Yitzhak Shamir, the ex-head of the terrorist Stern group.
With a giant ego and penchant for self-aggrandizement, he knew his moment had come, even if he would first have to overcome Likud dinosaurs like Shamir, and the Likud princelings: “The dinosaurs are dying out and the princes are too blue-blooded to fight for the crown. I’ll get there.”
Netanyahu’s leadership in Likud started in the aftermath of Rabin’s 1995 assassination, thanks in part to the incendiary political climate his campaign permitted to fester. Vocal critics of the Oslo Accords, Netanyahu and his party had participated in demonstrations where effigies of Rabin were displayed in Nazi uniforms and burned.
When Rabin was buried, his wife Leah was glad to meet PLO leader Yasser Arafat, but she kept a cold distance toward Netanyahu. She accused the young and ambitious opposition leader and his Likud party of cultivating the climate of incitement.
Setting aside the extreme political climate, there was also another reason for Netanyahu’s election win. He hired Arthur Finkelstein to run his campaign. The legendary Republican political operative had sold presidents Nixon and Reagan to the US. He was known for his repetitive, hard-edged campaigns, which idolized his candidates by tarnishing their adversaries.
As in the US, the scaremongering worked well in Israel.
Big Money and US-Israeli Neoconservatism
In Israel, Irving Moskowitz was among the major US billionaires funding Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, Messianic religious schools and universities, Jewish far-right groups, and paramilitary activities.
Moskowitz was not only Netanyahu’s donor and one of the many on his “millionaire list.” He was also an associate of the right-wing Ariel Center for Policy Research, a hardline advocacy group espousing the Likud line on Israeli security. In the United States, he was among the funders of major neoconservative think tanks promoting the War on Terror and hardline Israel-centric Middle East policies, including the Hudson Institute, the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).
Along with other pivotal financiers, Moskowitz contributed to the rise of neoconservatism in America, and the movement’s many Jewish leaders who shared the ideas of revisionist Zionism, including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, and so on.
Led by Kristol and Kagan, neoconservatives founded their think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with a view to sustaining America’s unipolar moment for decades to come. Whatever was in the interest of Israel, according to Netanyahu’s Likud, was in the national interest of America.
Other donors followed, including the casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson. For some, two decades until his death in 2021, when Forbes estimated his net worth at $35 billion, Adelson was a major sponsor of Netanyahu and kingmaker among the Republicans who helped fund Trump’s drive to the White House.
Israeli Neocon Manifesto
Thanks to their commonalities, the neoconservatives in the US and the Israeli hard-right Likud party cooperated in a policy document, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, described as “a kind of U.S.-Israeli neoconservative manifesto.”
Published in 1996, the report called for a muscular US Middle East policy to defend Israeli interests, including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq (which ensued in 2003), a proxy war in Syria (which followed in 2011), and rejection of any Israeli-Palestinian solution that would include a Palestinian state (one of the Trump administration’s motives for pursuing the 2020 Abraham Accords), among other objectives.
Membership in the neoconservative club had its benefits: it made Netanyahu rich. Despite his lofty legal fees, estimates of Netanyahu’s personal wealth amounted to some $50 million, already a decade ago. But precise, verifiable sources are lacking, due to his political office, dark donors, and extraordinarily opaque financial disclosures.
Over the past decade, it is precisely this contested past that has been haunting him.
Bribery, Fraud, and Breach of Trust
From the start, Netanyahu’s career has been overshadowed by dark money controversies. The corruption charges began in 1997, when police recommended his indictment on corruption charges for influence-peddling. Investigations into the murky dealings began in 2016, following a dozen debacles, three attorney generals, and two state comptrollers.
After a three-year investigation, he was indicted. In 2020, a trial started with 333 prosecution witnesses. The long list excludes many debacles by his wife Sara, infamous for her vocal temper and penchant for luxury, and his son Yair, who excels in far-right podcast populism.
In his position as PM in 2009–2016, Netanyahu made decisions that had significant implications for national security, yet without an orderly decision-making process. These decisions allegedly enriched him. One involved the purchase of submarines and vessels from German shipbuilder Thyssenkrupp in a deal valued at $2 billion.
The problems went further. Since the start of his career, Netanyahu’s select aides had to be approved by his wife Sara, according to their loyalty rather than expertise. The highly controversial practice was later extended to some appointments involving even military and intelligence authorities.
In Netanyahu’s world, meritocracy is nice, but loyalty is everything.
The legal process began anew in December 2024 and remains ongoing. Netanyahu faces charges in three separate cases, including bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. He has consistently denied all wrongdoing, calling the prosecution a “witch-hunt”.
What Next?
On November 30, 2025, Netanyahu submitted an official request to President Isaac Herzog for a pardon, asking that the trial be halted for the sake of “national unity”. This is an extraordinary request as pardons are typically granted only after a conviction and admission of guilt.
President Herzog could offer a conditional pardon, potentially requiring a form of admission and an agreement to retire from politics, but Netanyahu has refused to commit to leaving politics. If any form of pardon is granted, it is highly likely that petitions will be filed to the High Court against the decision. Given the remaining stages of the trial and potential appeals, proceedings are expected to continue for several more years if the pardon is not granted.
As of late 2025, Netanyahu’s personal approval ratings are low, hovering around 40-45% favorability/trust, while a majority of Israelis express dissatisfaction with his government’s performance. Most Israelis do not trust their government.
Does it follow that the PM’s political career is over? Not necessarily.
Netanyahu’s political scenarios
Despite his numerous controversies, some polls place Netanyahu ahead of rivals like Yair Lapid, the head of the centrist opposition, and former war cabinet member Benny Gantz, a center-right conservative ex-military chief. But setting aside real and perceived rivals, there are several scenarios for Netanyahu’s political future:
PM deja vu. Netanyahu remains Prime Minister in a new coalition by leveraging perceived military or diplomatic successes, such as new normalization agreements with Arab states.
Opposition hits a home run. Netanyahu is ousted as the opposition forms a cohesive majority government without relying on him or his hard-right Likud.
Political paralysis by repeated elections. If no single bloc by Netanyahu or the opposition can form a governing majority, Israel could face a period of political paralysis. That could mean repeat elections with Netanyahu as an interim PM.
Voluntary retirement. Given his age (76) in the 2026 election, recurring health issues and the immense pressure from ongoing corruption trials, intense public protests, and the political fallout of the October 7 attacks, Netanyahu’s health could eventually fail him.
So, what accounts for Netanyahu’s staying power?
A long view of the current context encompasses Israel’s shift to the right since the late 1970s; Messianic doctrines seeking to legitimize occupation; the hardening of political divides after Rabin’s assassination and the subsequent crumbling of the peace process; Likud’s longstanding cooptation of Jews of Middle Eastern ancestry and religious Jews
Perhaps most importantly, it includes Netanyahu’s longstanding cooperation with leading US neoconservatives and his ultra-rich political sponsors in the US. The latter ranges from the late Las Vegas casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson to the Falic family, owners of a chain of 180 Duty Free Americas stores, Irving Moskowitz and many others in his “millionaire list.”
Those who believe that Netanyahu is about to disappear from Israel’s political map engage in wishful fantasies. He is determined to change Israel. And he is almost there.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/benjamin-netanyahus-lethal-legacy-revisionism-neoconservatism-big-money-and-corruption/
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Big Tech and the Architecture of Israeli Genocide: From Execution to Media Whitewashing
December 16, 2025
By Jamal Kanj
History is filled with examples of corporations fueling war machines and global colonization. IBM supplied technology used in Nazi death camps; shipping and trading companies played central roles in the transatlantic trafficking of Africans; and multinational firms helped bankroll South Africa’s apartheid regime.
The companies that once profited from South Africa’s pass laws today empower Israel’s biometric checkpoints. Silicon Valley giants are repeating that history by providing the digital tools and propaganda that enable and whitewash Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The collaboration between Israel and Silicon Valley goes far beyond hardware and algorithms, encompassing narrative control. According to Drop Site News, Google signed a six-month, $45 million contract with the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to promote government disinformation and downplay the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Signed in late June, the agreement made Google a “key entity” in Netanyahu’s PR strategy.
The PR campaign was launched in response to international outrage after Israel violated the early 2025 ceasefire on March 2 and blocked food, medicine, and fuel from entering Gaza. The Google contract was part of Israel’s digital disinformation effort, toward claiming “there is no hunger” in Gaza. In other words, while Palestinian babies were starving to death, Google was fattening its checkbook, serving as Netanyahu’s pernicious digital PR machine to obscure the crime.
In 2021, Microsoft signed a $133 million contract that made the Israeli military its second-largest defense customer after the United States, describing the Israeli army as a “top priority” client. The deal includes more than 600 separate Azure subscriptions linked to military units such as Mamram, its central tech hub, and Unit 8200, its elite cyber-intelligence wing.
According to the Associated Press, Microsoft’s support team fielded 130 direct requests from the military in the first ten months of the Gaza genocide. Its data centers outside Tel Aviv store more than 13.6 petabytes of data, or 350 times the size of the Library of Congress. At least nine Microsoft employees, including some ex-unit 8200 Israeli officers, coordinated Microsoft AI genocide with the Israeli army.
Microsoft centers supplied raw data for Israel’s AI kill lists. Since 2021, these facilities were used to deploy “Gospel” and “Lavender,” algorithms that ranked Palestinians by the likelihood of being militants. Lavender, for example, assigns scores from 0 to 100 based on criteria such as family history, friends, or intercepted phone calls and messages.
Known as “AI hallucination,” these systems often generate information that appears convincing but is, in fact, fabricated. “Hallucinating” AI models can extrapolate from incomplete or misleading inputs, such as intercepted phone data, mistranslated language, ambiguous signals, or distorted realities, and combine them with unscientific assumptions about family history to produce what appear to be credible “kill” targets.
Weaponizing AI
AI doesn’t make war cleaner. It is a resourceful utility to murder efficiently. Tech company workers have protested against this murderous process. In response, Microsoft fired the staff who organized a vigil for Palestinian refugees. One, Hossam Nasr, leading the No Azure for Apartheid campaign, said, “cloud and AI are the bombs and bullets of the 21st century.” The digital targeting has taken war to a new barbaric level, fusing US corporate power and a malevolent Israeli occupation.
Google is also deeply enmeshed in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion joint venture with Amazon to supply Israel’s government and military with cloud computing, artificial intelligence services, and data centers. This is not an abstract “infrastructure.” Cloud storage and AI have become the backbone of modern warfare, powering surveillance systems, analyzing targeting data, and sustaining Israel’s military operations, from the river to the sea.
As with Microsoft, when workers raised alarms and protested against the Nimbus contract, Google summoned the police and fired 28 of its staff, instead of engaging the employees. A company engineer described Google’s contract as a project to build a “sovereign cloud,” exclusively for the Israeli government, for use with no regard to international law.
Instead of investigating ways to ensure that AI products are not used to murder and starve children, AI companies have formalized the ethical violations. OpenAI, for instance, changed its policies to allow military use of its models. Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, a Zionist by all means, urged Silicon Valley to build the “drone swarms and robots that will dominate the coming battlefield.”
Over a year ago, Col. Racheli Dembinsky, head of the army’s computing unit, stood before a giant screen displaying the logos of Israeli genocide partners: Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Palantir, and Amazon Web Services. She hailed the “very significant operational effectiveness” of this partnership in the Gaza genocide.
Big Tech, Mainstream Media Complicit
The challenge is whether the world will hold accountable not only the state dropping the bombs, but also the companies engineering the algorithms to deliver murder, and the PR machines that conceal it. Israel is not the only party guilty of genocide; the corporations reaping blood profit from synthesizing and enabling its war crimes are also guilty.
Big Tech does more than make war “efficient.” It creates the digital fog that enables mainstream media to wash massacres into sanitized narratives. Algorithms are weaponized not just on the battlefield, but across social media. In a clear example of this insidious subversion of the truth, META hired an ex-Israeli embassy staff member as “Israel & the Jewish Diaspora policy chief,” Jordana Cutler, who spoke proudly before the Jewish National Fund of her role to silence pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli activities across META’s platforms.
META, owner of the major social media outlets Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads, is utilized as one of Netanyahu’s new weapons, suppressing images of Israeli atrocities while amplifying Zionist disinformation. In doing so, Big Tech firms play a dual role in the architecture of the Israeli genocide against Palestinians: facilitating its execution on the ground, while whitewashing it in the media.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/big-tech-and-the-architecture-of-israeli-genocide-from-execution-to-media-whitewashing/
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