Middle East Press On: Turkey’s AI Action Plan, Israel’s Relentless, Venezuela-Israel Relations, Katie Halper, Gaza, 1,000 Days of Genocide, Israeli Prisons, New Age Islam's Selection, 06 July 2026
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
06 July 2026
How will Turkey’s AI Action Plan unfold between 2026-2030?
Israel’s relentless quest for a next enemy
Could Israel aid mission open the door to renewed Venezuela-Israel relations?
Baroud on Katie Halper: ‘Gaza Will Emerge Stronger’ after 1,000 Days of Genocide
‘Companion of a Lifetime’: Maher Younis Dies after Spending 40 Years in Israeli Prisons
Right to Breathe: Unfiltered Messages from Gaza to President Catherine Connolly
The Demons Who Turned Gaza into a Medieval Woodcut of the Apocalypse
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How will Türkiye’s AI Action Plan unfold between 2026-2030?
BY CENAY BABAOĞLU
JUL 05, 2026
The contemporary interstate rivalry makes the use of artificial intelligence a primary variable in defining cyber sovereignty and national security infrastructure. Türkiye, which has spent 25 years undergoing intense digitalization, is now moving towards a new era of development through its Artificial Intelligence Vision and Action Plan for 2026-2030. Introduced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last month, the plan comprises four action axes: "Discover, Benefit, Produce and Govern."
Türkiye’s current AI capabilities rest on two decades of systematic institutional development and layered policy frameworks. The new vision leverages this process to further advance Türkiye's digitalization toward a structured, global approach, while establishing data-based administration. The current plan provides a credible foundation for Türkiye's algorithmic leap.
Leveraging strategic advantages
Türkiye’s most distinctive competitive edge lies in its proven track record in autonomous defense technologies. The success of its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ecosystem, nurtured under the National Technology Move, has created powerful spillover effects into civilian sectors. Military-grade expertise in areas such as computer vision, sensor fusion, autonomous navigation, and swarm intelligence is now flowing into fintech, health care, smart agriculture, logistics and industrial automation. This military-to-civilian technology transfer is accelerating the growth of a vibrant AI-focused startup ecosystem and mobilizing both domestic and transnational venture capital.
This technological base is powerfully complemented by Türkiye’s advanced Digital Government infrastructure, which has generated a vast treasury of structured, high-quality public data. When paired with the country’s young, adaptive and increasingly tech-savvy population, these assets create an exceptionally strong foundation for developing localized, culturally attuned, and sovereign AI systems. Expanding large-scale research centers, high-performance computing facilities and national supercomputing capacity will be essential for cultivating world-class research and development (R&D) talent within the country.
Geopolitically, Türkiye benefits enormously from its unique position as a civilizational and geographical bridge. As a longstanding NATO ally, it maintains active cooperation with Western digital defense and security networks. At the same time, Ankara pursues targeted, domain-specific technological collaborations worldwide. This strategic balancing act enables Türkiye to preserve digital autonomy while maximizing technological and economic gains.
Furthermore, Türkiye is actively contributing to new spheres of technological influence. Some of the prominent initiatives include the joint development of common large language models with the Organization of Turkic States under the “Digital Turkish World” vision. Concurrently, the development of possible partnerships in semiconductors and advanced manufacturing with Taiwan and South Korea helps the country to become an indispensable mediator and rule-maker in the new multi-polar AI world. These efforts position Türkiye as a potential leading tech hub in Eurasia.
2026-2030 AI road map
The 2026-2030 Artificial Intelligence Action Plan stands out for its determination to convert strategic ambition into concrete, quantifiable, and time-bound targets. Anchored firmly in the four pillars of “Discover, Benefit, Produce and Govern”, the plan includes the following key objectives.
Discovery by delivering comprehensive AI literacy and skills training to five million citizens within the first two years, systematically unlocking human capital potential and closing the domestic digital divide.
Benefit by allocating at least 2% of all public investment funds directly to AI integration projects and introducing specialized AI coupons for small and medium-sized enterprises to democratize access and foster widespread digital equity.
Production by mobilizing a dedicated $10 billion investment fund to dramatically expand data centers, cloud infrastructure and supercomputing networks, with the target of scaling national data center capacity to 1 gigawatt (GW).
Government by establishing dedicated AI Growth Zones for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to accelerate civilian applications of defense technologies, while positioning Istanbul as a leading hub for technological investment, innovation diplomacy, and ethical AI governance.
In this respect, the vision for 2026-2030 builds upon the solid groundwork laid by the previous 2021-2025 National Artificial Intelligence Strategy and Action Plan, taking a bold step from technology adoption towards full algorithmic sovereignty and strategic autonomy. The implementation of the action plan and new framework amounts to transforming the country's remarkable achievements in the defense industry and digital government into a long-term strategy.
Fundamentally, this vision deliberately avoids the extremes of overly restrictive state-centric monopolies on the one hand and purely corporate-driven, unregulated models on the other. Türkiye is carving out its own unique path that incorporates an effective industrial policy and adaptive, value-based regulation. Ultimately, the key point of this strategy is the protection of the country's promising human capital via various digital literacy programs and ethical AI governance.
Success, however, will depend on the maturity of regulation, the efficient collaboration between the government and the private sector, and a continued emphasis on a human-centric perspective that puts human dignity, human autonomy, and digital equality at the focus of technological progress. If these conditions are met, Türkiye could be well-positioned to emerge not merely as a regional player, but as a sustainable and influential architect of the emerging multi-polar digital order.
https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/how-will-turkiyes-ai-action-plan-unfold-between-2026-2030
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Israel’s relentless quest for a next enemy
July 5, 2026
by Jasim Al-Azzawi
For most of the past year, Israeli officials have described the aftermath of the war with Iran in confident, almost triumphant terms: a weakened adversary, its nuclear program set back, its regional proxies dismantled one by one. But even before that campaign had fully wound down, a new threat was already being sketched out in Jerusalem, in terms once reserved almost exclusively for Tehran. This one is harder to define, has no single capital, and, unlike Iran, comprises states that field some of the world’s most capable conventional militaries.
The shift in language was deliberate, and it came from the top.
He went further, accusing Ankara of working to “flip Saudi Arabia against us and establish a hostile Sunni axis with nuclear Pakistan.” Five days later, Netanyahu offered his own version of the same idea, announcing what he called a “hexagon of alliances,” built around India, Greece, and Cyprus, to counter both the Shia axis Israel says it has already broken and what he described as an emerging Sunni bloc.
Two Israeli leaders, in other words, converged within days of each other on the same conclusion: that the country’s next strategic contest would not be a rerun of the Iran campaign, fought against a state Israel and the United States had already spent years preparing to isolate, but something more diffuse — and, by most measures of hard power, considerably better armed.
Start with Turkey, the axis’s presumptive anchor and, on paper, its most formidable member. It fields NATO’s second-largest standing military, some 355,000 active personnel, backed by an annual defense budget above $27 billion. Its domestic arms industry — Aselsan, Roketsan, TUSAŞ, and the drone manufacturer Baykar — has made the country the world’s leading exporter of unmanned aircraft, accounting for an estimated 65 percent of the global UAV market. Its newest system, the jet-powered Kızılelma combat drone, has already destroyed an aerial target with a radar-guided missile in testing and is now moving into mass production for delivery to the Turkish military this year. Its navy, organized around what Ankara calls its “Blue Homeland” doctrine, already operates through large stretches of the eastern Mediterranean, not far from Israel’s offshore gas fields.
Then there is Egypt, where the comparison Israeli officials still sometimes reach for — to 1967, when Israeli jets destroyed the Egyptian air force on the ground in a matter of hours — no longer holds up against current numbers.
In late April, the Egyptian military staged a large live-fire exercise in Sinai, called Badr 2026, that state commentators openly described as a message of deterrence aimed at Israel. Netanyahu himself has taken note of the shift: in February, he told a closed session of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee that “the Egyptian army is getting stronger and we need to monitor it.”
Saudi Arabia adds a smaller but capable air force built around Typhoons and F-15s, along with a security establishment that has been quietly diversifying its ties between Washington and Beijing. But the component that most concerns Israeli planners, according to officials and analysts who have discussed it, is Pakistan — the only Muslim-majority state with a functioning nuclear arsenal and the missiles to deliver it, and an air force that has just been tested in actual combat. The Pentagon has confirmed that China delivered 36 J-10C fighters to the Pakistan Air Force, aircraft that Islamabad says used long-range PL-15 missiles to down several Indian jets, including at least one Rafale, during last year’s brief war with India.
Whether any of this adds up to a coordinated threat is, for now, an open question — and one on which even Israel’s own security establishment is divided. There is no mutual-defense treaty linking Ankara, Cairo, Riyadh, and Islamabad, and there is no evidence that the four governments are coordinating military planning. Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister and a more cautious voice than Bennett, has written only that Turkey “is no longer a partner on the periphery,” positioning itself instead as a major regional power—a description of ambition, not of imminent conflict. Andreas Krieg, a security studies scholar at King’s College London, has described Netanyahu’s hexagon as less a functioning alliance than a rebranding of preexisting relationships. Yossi Mekelberg of Chatham House and Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, have each argued publicly that both Bennett and Netanyahu have domestic incentives — an election, a governing coalition — to keep a sense of external threat alive, and that treating Ankara as a second Tehran risks helping to create the very adversary it describes.
That is the strategic risk analysts say Israel now has to weigh. Iran’s hostility was built over four decades around an explicit ideological project. Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan share no such doctrine, no joint command, and, in Cairo’s and Riyadh’s cases, long-standing peace treaties and quiet security arrangements with Israel that neither government has signaled any intention of abandoning. What unites them, so far, is alarm at an Israel that struck six countries in the region in a single year and now speaks openly of an “emerging radical Sunni axis.” Whether that alarm hardens into something closer to the alliance Bennett has warned about may depend less on decisions made in Ankara, Cairo, Riyadh, or Islamabad than on those still being made in Jerusalem.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260705-israels-relentless-quest-for-a-next-enemy/
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Could Israel aid mission open the door to renewed Venezuela-Israel relations?
July 5, 2026
by Eman Abusidu
The arrival of an Israeli aid delegation from the humanitarian organization NATAN in Venezuela, following the powerful earthquakes that struck the country on 24th June, has triggered political controversy, particularly after images circulated showing members of the team wearing military uniforms and carrying the Israeli flag.
“Immediately after landing, the delegation members began a series of working meetings with local authorities, emergency services and other partners to assess the situation, identify needs on the ground, plan joint activity and finalize preparations for the start of operations,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a joint statement.
The Venezuelan government sought to present the Israeli team’s arrival as part of a technical emergency response. Delcy Rodríguez, who replaced former President Nicolás Maduro after he was abducted by the U.S, said she had been informed of the arrival of one of the Israeli experts, accompanied by Rabbi Cohen, a representative of Venezuela’s Jewish community. She said the specialists would assess technical conditions in the affected areas and identify the rescue work needed before any reconstruction process could begin.
“We received a highly specialised and professional team from Israel, coordinated through the Jewish community in Venezuela. I thank Rabbi Bowen for helping us contact the Israeli government. The team has begun working with Venezuelan authorities to assess damaged infrastructure and determine whether there are survivors or bodies under the rubble”, Delcy said.
“Although Venezuela does not have diplomatic relations with some countries, they are here with us, and the Venezuelan people deeply appreciate this assistance”, she added.
The deployment has opened a broader debate over the line between humanitarian engagement and political messaging. Supporters argue that disaster response should be separated from diplomatic disputes and that medical assistance can create rare channels of human contact in politically closed environments. Critics, however, may view such missions as an attempt to improve Israel’s international image, especially when uniformed military personnel are visible in a country officially hostile to Israel’s policies.
Alice Miller, executive director of NATAN, said the organization’s priority is medical and humanitarian rather than political.
“When a disaster of this magnitude occurs, there is no time to lose,” Miller said. “Twenty years of experience have taught us that the first few hours are crucial, both medically and psychologically.”
“We didn’t arrive first with flags,” she said. “We arrived with medicine, listening and respect. That is often the most effective form of diplomacy.”
“In international relations, humanitarian missions promoted by states are rarely politically neutral,” Tenorio told MEMO. “Beyond assisting victims, they also function as instruments of soft power and diplomatic projection.”
He said the Venezuelan case carries particular symbolism because Caracas broke relations with Israel in 2009 in solidarity with the Palestinian people. According to Tenorio, that context makes the Israeli delegation’s arrival politically significant, regardless of the stated humanitarian objective.
“In Venezuela’s case, the symbolism is even greater because this is a country that severed relations with Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” he said. “An Israeli mission represents much more than humanitarian aid. It creates an opportunity to open political channels where formal diplomacy has remained closed for nearly two decades.”
Tenorio argued that every humanitarian operation produces political effects, including institutional contact, trust-building and reputational gains. He said this dimension is especially relevant for Israel amid growing international criticism over the war in Gaza.
“The aid may be real, but it also forms part of a strategy of informal diplomacy and rebuilding international legitimacy,” he said.
Tenorio said the central issue is not whether Israeli doctors or experts should help Venezuelan victims, but whether the mission also serves Israel’s broader image-management objectives.
He added that humanitarian credibility depends on consistency. “There is a deep contradiction between claiming solidarity in Venezuela while destroying hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure in Palestine,” Tenorio said. “Humanitarian credibility depends on consistency between rhetoric and practice.”
“True humanitarianism is universal and consistent,” he said. “It cannot be selective, nor can it coexist with policies of occupation, blockade, collective punishment or the systematic destruction of civilian populations.”
For Tenorio, “The only answer can be absolute transparency, Who is funding the mission? Who is coordinating it? What is the role of the military? What information is being produced? Who is supervising the activities?”
He warned that without clear answers, the mission is likely to be seen not only as emergency assistance, but also as part of a broader strategic effort. “Without full transparency, it is inevitable that the assistance will also be perceived as an instrument of strategic diplomacy and as part of an effort to rebuild the Israeli state’s international image,” he said.
Despite speculation that the Israeli mission could mark an opening in Venezuela-Israel relations, Tenorio said one humanitarian deployment is unlikely to reverse nearly two decades of Bolivarian foreign policy.
“I do not believe that a humanitarian mission, on its own, can alter a policy built over nearly two decades,” he said. “Support for Palestine has been a principle of Bolivarian foreign policy since Hugo Chávez and has been maintained by Nicolás Maduro.”
Still, he said the mission may fit into a wider Israeli effort to reduce its diplomatic isolation in Latin America. “It is clear that Israel is seeking to reduce its political isolation in Latin America,” Tenorio said. “Initiatives of this nature may be part of a broader strategy to rebuild ties with governments in the region.”
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260705-could-israel-aid-mission-open-the-door-to-renewed-venezuela-israel-relations/\
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Baroud on Katie Halper: ‘Gaza Will Emerge Stronger’ after 1,000 Days of Genocide
July 5, 2026
Palestine Chronicle Editor Dr. Ramzy Baroud joined journalist Katie Halper for an extensive discussion marking 1,000 days of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, offering a wide-ranging analysis of Palestinian resistance, sumud (steadfastness), regional developments, and the enduring resilience of the Palestinian people.
Baroud opens the conversation by reflecting on the significance of the grim milestone, arguing that despite the unprecedented destruction inflicted on Gaza, Israel has failed to achieve its strategic objectives.
“Gaza will emerge stronger. We will ultimately win this,” he says, explaining why Palestinian steadfastness cannot be measured solely by military or political outcomes.
Throughout the interview, Baroud discusses practical ways people around the world can support Palestinians, stressing that emotional solidarity and sustained engagement remain essential alongside humanitarian assistance. He also explores how Palestinians have relied on humor and everyday acts of resilience to confront unimaginable hardship.
A substantial portion of the discussion examines the meaning of Palestinian resistance and the concept of sumud, with Baroud arguing that defiance extends far beyond political slogans and includes the daily struggle to preserve dignity, community and hope under occupation and siege.
The conversation also addresses newly surfaced footage related to the Hannibal Directive and how such revelations should influence the way the international community understands Israel’s conduct during the war.
Later in the program, Dr. Mohammad Marandi, professor at the University of Tehran, joins the discussion to examine the relationship between Iran and Gaza and the broader regional implications of the conflict.
Former US Congressman Dennis Kucinich also participates, discussing recent calls in Israeli media targeting Iranian negotiators, US policy toward Israel, and what he describes as the moral and political consequences of Washington’s continued support for the Israeli government.
The discussion offered viewers a comprehensive examination of the Gaza genocide, Palestinian resistance, regional politics, and the international response to one of the defining crises of our time.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/baroud-on-katie-halper-gaza-will-emerge-stronger-after-1000-days-of-genocide/
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‘Companion of a Lifetime’: Maher Younis Dies after Spending 40 Years in Israeli Prisons
July 5, 2026
Maher Abdel Latif Younis, one of the longest-held Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and a symbol of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, died early Sunday after suffering a sudden illness, nearly three and a half years after finally regaining his freedom following four decades behind bars.
He was 68.
His death prompted an outpouring of tributes from Palestinian prisoner organizations, former detainees and political figures, who remembered him as one of the generation that transformed Israel’s prisons into schools of resilience, education and political consciousness.
Funeral prayers are scheduled to take place Sunday afternoon at the al-Dhahrat Mosque in the town of Ara, inside the territories occupied in 1948, where Younis was born and raised.
Four Decades of Imprisonment
Israel detained Younis on January 18, 1983, when he was 25 years old, accusing him of carrying out resistance activities and belonging to the Fatah movement.
Following what Palestinian sources described as a harsh interrogation, an I sraeli military court sentenced him to death.
That sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment before Israeli authorities revised it in 2012, setting his sentence at 40 years.
He completed the entire sentence before being released on January 19, 2023, becoming one of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners ever held by Israel.
His imprisonment came only weeks after the detention of his cousin and lifelong companion Karim Younis, who also spent four decades in Israeli prisons before his release.
A third member of the group, Sami Younis, was released during the 2011 prisoner exchange before dying several years later.
A Life Defined by Prison
During four decades in Israeli prisons, Younis witnessed profound personal loss while remaining behind bars.
He was denied the opportunity to bid farewell to his father, himself a former Palestinian prisoner who had spent eight years in Israeli detention before dying in 2008.
Like many long-term Palestinian prisoners, Younis also pursued education while imprisoned, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science despite decades of incarceration.
Former prisoners frequently recalled his role in prison educational programs, hunger strikes and collective efforts aimed at improving conditions for Palestinian detainees.
Over time, his name became synonymous with the generation of prisoners whose lives were almost entirely spent inside Israeli prisons.
‘A School of Patience’
In a joint statement, Palestinian prisoner institutions described Younis as far more than a former detainee.
His death, they said, “does not close the story of one individual, but bids farewell to one of the most prominent fighters who embodied steadfastness in captivity.”
They added that he represented “a school of patience, dignity and determination,” whose life reflected the broader experience of thousands of Palestinians imprisoned over the decades.
The organizations said Younis would remain part of Palestine’s collective memory, “not merely as a name, but as a complete story about sacrifice in pursuit of freedom.”
Farewell from a Lifelong Companion
Among the most emotional tributes came from his cousin Karim Younis, who shared nearly the same fate after the two men spent four decades imprisoned by Israel.
“Companion of a lifetime,” Karim wrote.
“Companion of imprisonment and forty years of steadfastness. You have departed in body, but your story remains a symbol that will never fade.”
The message resonated widely across Palestinian social media, where thousands shared photographs documenting the cousins’ parallel journeys—from their arrests in the early 1980s to their long-awaited reunions after release.
More Than One Prisoner
Born on January 6, 1958, in the village of Ara, Maher Younis belonged to the generation of Palestinians from inside the territories occupied in 1948 whose imprisonment came to symbolize the continuity of the Palestinian national struggle across geographic and political boundaries.
His release in 2023 ended one of the longest continuous prison terms served by any Palestinian detainee in Israeli custody.
For many Palestinians, however, the decades he lost could never be restored.
After surviving forty years behind prison walls, the freedom he finally regained lasted only three and a half years.
His death closes one of the longest chapters in the history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, but, for many, leaves behind a legacy inseparable from the broader story of imprisonment, endurance and the enduring Palestinian struggle for freedom.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/companion-of-a-lifetime-maher-younis-dies-after-spending-40-years-in-israeli-prisons/
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Right to Breathe: Unfiltered Messages from Gaza to President Catherine Connolly
July 5, 2026
By Ramzy Baroud
I recently had the chance to send a message to the President of Ireland, Her Excellency Catherine Connolly.
President Connolly is a vocal supporter of Palestine and remains one of the few European heads of state to explicitly accuse Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza.
She has a long history of this advocacy; while previously serving as a member of the Dáil Éireann—the lower house of the Irish Parliament—she famously argued that if Ireland couldn’t recognize Israel as a “terrorist state,” then the country was “in serious trouble.”
The President’s sister, Dr. Margaret Connolly, also joined the Global Sumud Flotilla—a multi-boat humanitarian convoy carrying medical supplies and food attempting to break the siege on Gaza.
In May 2026, the flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters, resulting in the detention of Dr. Connolly and hundreds of other pro-Palestinian activists.
Instead of developing my own message or constructing a commentary on what I think Gaza and the Palestinian people want, I chose to resort to my lifelong methodology of research—the framework of “people’s history” or “history from below.”
My objective was to center the voices of truly representative Palestinians and allow them to speak for themselves, unfiltered and directly to a head of state.
What follows below are the raw, unedited messages from Gazans themselves.
Message from Umm Mohammed
The first section is the result of an ongoing, intimate conversation with a Palestinian mother from northern Gaza. An Arabic teacher who now lives in a displacement tent, she has endured unimaginable loss in this war, losing three of her children, her husband, her brother, and a vast network of cousins and extended family.
She speaks entirely from the heart.
Peace be upon you, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings. We pray that God grants you safety, health, and wellness, our brother Abu Sami.
In all honesty, I truly, truly wish that you can convey our voice and that we can see a positive impact from it. We pray that your visit to the Irish President will bear fruit, that we will see its results right before our eyes, O Lord.
I pray that God grants you success in your visit, that He opens doors for you, gives you peace of mind, and unties the knot from your tongue so they may understand your speech. We pray to see the fruits of this visit with our own eyes, to feel that those abroad truly feel our pain.
You saw the Freedom Flotilla that came, and you saw what the Israelis did to them. We just want them to at least leave those who want to stand with us alone. They plot against us. But those who come wanting to support us, even just psychologically, why do they block them? We want to at least feel that people are standing with us through something simple, if not for nothing.
They haven’t lifted the siege, they haven’t opened the crossings, they haven’t started reconstruction, and on top of that, they don’t even want people to support us morally? Allah is greater… why? Why all of this?
Regarding the issue, or what our requirements are, and what we need:
First and foremost is the lifting of the siege. Frankly, as you can see, there is no electricity, no water, and no food or drink readily available. If anything enters, it’s only when they open the crossings. They barely let a few trucks in, and prices are extremely expensive—everything we have is expensive. We need reconstruction, and we need them to open the crossings.
For instance, here are my children. They are supposed to be getting an education, to have their right to study. I have a student in Tawjihi (high school exam year), but there is no studying, and there are no proper schools. Students are not being given their right to education, honestly. And even if there are educational tents, they are tents of heat, sweat, and fire. The number of students is huge inside a tiny tent. It is suffocating.
There are sick people waiting to leave, wishing to get medical treatment. There are people who want to learn—here, there are no universities left. There are people waiting for their wives and children who went abroad for medical treatment and now cannot return. Many families here have been scattered; the husband is here, while the children and wife are abroad, and vice versa.
This whole story about a truce is a lie. The Israelis are not making a truce; they are hunting us down like birds. No one lives in safety now. They say it’s a truce, but it is not. At any moment, shelling could happen. At any moment, destruction could happen. We are not living in safety at all.
So, frankly, we want a life… we want a dignified life. A dignified life with food, water, and even the ability to breathe. One feels very, very suffocated. We need so many things… so, so many things. We need psychological support, financial support, and moral support.
We have rodents that have worn us out, mosquitoes, fleas… and skin diseases are widely spread. Allergies, itching… all of this is because of what we are witnessing, all of it is the result of the siege. Honestly, this is a torment just like—just like the shelling, the bombardment, and the strikes. It is no less than the destruction and actions they are inflicting upon us.
They fight us with everything, absolutely everything. They don’t want us to enjoy our lives, even when we are sleeping in our beds. In our beds, the mosquitoes drain us, insects are all around us, fleas, and the heat is killing us. There are no fans and there is no electricity.
For all of this, Allah is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs. That is all.
There is an important point, brother Abu Sami, that I want to emphasize. The most important thing is that despite the sacrifices, despite the siege, despite the destruction, and despite the humiliation we are living through, there is a fundamental principle that we will never renounce: the Right of Return.
Our right to return to our homes, our lands, the land of our country, and the land of our ancestors. This is a right we will never give up. All these sacrifices were made for the sake of this right. We pray that God guides us, blesses us, and allows us to return to our homes and our lands, O Lord.
Ten Gazans Speak
The subsequent section comprises messages from relatives, friends, and neighbors enduring the conditions within the displacement camps. Collected by my niece, Wafa, these voices were asked a single, direct question: What is your top priority in one line? These single-sentence testimonies represent their immediate realities and structural demands.
“We want food. We want clean water. We want to sleep in a clean and safe place.”
“I want my home back, and the sense of safety we once had. I want clean food, and to sleep without fearing for my children because of rats, insects, and disease.”
“I want my family back — the family Israel took from me.”
“I want to bury my children who are still under the rubble.”
“I want the body of my husband, which has been withheld since October 7. I want to bury him and finally find some peace.”
“I want to know the fate of my missing son. Is he alive or dead? Even the Red Cross does not help us obtain information about our children.”
“I want my father released from prison. We have no one else but him.”
“We want our homes rebuilt — the homes that took a lifetime of hard work to build.”
“I want to achieve my dreams and continue my education. So many years of our lives have been stolen without schooling or learning.”
“We want to live in freedom and safety. How much longer must we continue living through wars?”
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/right-to-breathe-unfiltered-messages-from-gaza-to-president-catherine-connolly/
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The Demons Who Turned Gaza into a Medieval Woodcut of the Apocalypse
July 5, 2026
By Jeremy Salt
If we lived in the medieval age, we would know what we are seeing in Gaza and Lebanon. Demons, fiends, arising from the depths of hell to inflict pain that cannot be imagined even in the depths of hell.
But we are not living in the medieval age. We live in the modern secularized world. We know there are no demons, only human beings behaving like demons.
They have turned Gaza into a medieval woodcut of the apocalypse. Dogs feed off the remains of butchered bodies. Crying children huddle against the bodies of dead mothers. A child with severed legs looks up to the heavens for succor. Babies rot in a humidicrib. Living skeletons wander around in rags. Rats scour every corner, and swarms of insects released by these demons in human form fly upwards to take their share in this festival of death.
This is not a woodcut but Gaza today. Gaza is hell created on earth and announced in advance by the whey-faced Lucifer called the prime minister of Israel when he called for the destruction of Amalek.
The script he repeats is Moses’ command to the Jews: “Your God will help you capture the land and he will give you peace. But when that day comes you must wipe out Amalek so completely that no-one will know they ever lived.”
In biblical mythology, Amalek led resistance to the Jews as they left Egypt and set out to conquer the land of Canaan in the 15th century BCE. The ‘land of Canaan’ was the whole of present- day Palestine extending north into Lebanon. All enemies of the intruders came to be known as Amalek or Amalekites.
When the time came, Moses told his followers – so the Bible tells us – “now go and totally destroy the entire Amalekite nation, men, women, children, babies, sheep, goats, camels and donkeys.”
Amalek was to be “blotted out from under Heaven.” In the Biblical inversion of morality, the mass slaughter of the innocent represented good, and the Amalekite defense of their land evil. Moses handed down the ten commandments – ‘thou shalt not kill’ – and then called on his followers to commit mass murder.
By invoking Amalek, Netanyahu was calling for the total and utterly merciless obliteration of Gaza, the men, women, children and babies slaughtered, the hospitals, schools, universities, clinics, mosques and homes destroyed, all “blotted out from under Heaven,” with the survivors driven into the sands of Mawasi to be killed in their tents and makeshift shelters or to die from fatigue, malnutrition, disease and broken hearts.
Amalek is Hind Rajab. Amalek is the bodies of babies rotting in their humidicribs because the electricity has been cut off. Amalek is the child with his legs shot off by a missile and left to ‘bleed out’ by the soldiers standing a few feet away.
Amalek is the boy shot in the testicles or the head depending on the part of the body that has been chosen as the target by snipers on that particular day. Amalek is the family burned alive in their tent and the thousands of families totally eradicated so no one is left to bear the name.
Amalek is 20,000 massacred children and the uncounted dead lying under billions of tons of rubble. Amalek is the survivors scrabbling uselessly with their hands to reach the dead because the heavy machinery they need to remove the rubble is proscribed by their tormentors.
Amalek is the children maimed for life by missiles fired from a quadcopter accurate beyond anything possible for the human eye. “It does not hesitate and it does not make mistakes, ” once the target has been identified. The missile can be ‘activated’ while the operator sips a can of Diet Coke or snacks on a chocolate bar. There is nothing to it and he or she can see exactly who they are killing.
Apart from the identified dead, which by no means is all the dead, 20,000 children have been disabled and 40,500 children have suffered “war-related injuries,” but they also are Amalek and deserve to suffer. Thousands of children have been left with no living relatives to take care of them. They have no schools, no playing fields and no future, as planned by the genocidalists.
“You will die, your children will die, your grandchildren will die, and there won’t be a Palestinian state,” prophesied Likud loyalist Hanoch Milwidsky in February, 2024. If Palestinians imprisoned as “terrorists” are raped, they deserve to be raped: this also is part of his credo.
Amalek is the thousands of embryos destroyed in the missile destruction of a fertility clinic. If children and even babies must be killed so they can’t grow up to be terrorists, why not go a step further and kill the unborn before the embryo is planted in the womb?
Amalek is the initial target, and then the paramedics coming to save the wounded but are incinerated in their ambulance in a ‘double tap’ missile strike. There is no room for compassion. The destruction of Amalek must be total. As Moses ordered, even the children must die.
Amalek were the seven Palestinians inside the small Kia car being driven out of Gaza city
in January 2024. The two adults and three of the children were killed first when a Merkava tank opened fire. Another child died in a second burst and then her cousin, Hind Rahmi Iyad Rajab, five years old, was murdered in a third. She had been trapped in the car for three hours by that time. The paramedics coming to her rescue were then incinerated in their ambulance by a tank shell.
The tank was 13-23 meters away and like the drone operators, the soldiers inside would have had a clear view of who they were killing. The voice of a five-year-old girl pleading for help would have been picked up, but still they killed her, with the last burst of the 335 bullets they fired into the car.
Amalek is the 270 journalists/media professionals and 560 humanitarian aid workers killed in Gaza, including 391 UNRWA employees. Amalek is the university professors, the teachers, the nurses, the gardeners, shop assistants and the handyman.
Amalek is the teenager in Gaza or in the West Bank, shot while “messing with the ground,” by bending down to pick something up or just bending down. Any excuse will do to get rid of one more. A stone or knife is placed next to his body to convince the world that he deserved to be killed.
Amalek is the West Bank Palestinian wounded and lying comatose on the ground in Hebron when a soldier cocks his rifle and shoots him in the head. Amalek is the villages in Lebanon that have to be destroyed and the olive groves in the West Bank that have to be uprooted “so that no one will know they ever lived.”
Amalek is the 14-year-old boy in the West Bank village of Tubas who went outside to play with his friends and was shot. He was left to bleed to death for 45 minutes. When he threw his cap towards the soldiers who shot him, to attract their attention, they kicked it back.
They did not call an ambulance. Soldiers never do on the West Bank, because the point is not to save their victim but to let him die.
When his mother tried to run to his aid, they fired warning shots into her house: if she had not stopped, she would have been shot too. The boy did die and the body was dragged away: no body, no evidence, no burial.
Amalek is the boy shot inside his home on the West Bank. “I am the one who shot him,” the demon in human form said to his father. “God willing, he will die” – and he did.
Amalek is the malnourished mothers who give birth to babies with birth defects at a level never recorded in Gaza before. The fetus starves with the mother. Amalek is the target of a drone attack whose body is too weakened by starvation to recover from his wounds.
Amalek is the mother enduring a C-section birth without anesthetic because there is none. Amalek is the kidney patient dependent on dialysis machines that have been destroyed in attacks on hospitals or have broken down. Amalek is the cancer patient dying because of the shortage of medicine.
None of this is accidental. A hospital is not bombed and the supply of medicine/medical equipment denied to those who desperately need it without the consequences fully understood by those planning and carrying out these crimes.
Amalek is the prisoners tortured and killed by their captors, raped by their captors and terrorized by dogs, even raped by dogs. Amalek are the thousands of civilians rounded up and humiliated before being loaded into trucks and disappeared into the Israeli prison system.
Amalek is Dr Adnan al Bursh, head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa hospital, medical adviser to the national football team, abducted at Al Awda hospital in December 2023, imprisoned at Sde Teiman, where most likely he was almost raped to the point of death before being transferred to the illegal Ofer prison on the occupied West Bank and dying of his injuries there.
Amalek is Dr Hossam Abu Safiya, the pediatrician and director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, imprisoned without charge since December 2024. Amalek is Al-Aqsa; Amalek is the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron. Amalek is all two million Palestinians who are going to be locked up in a concentration camp near Rafah and not allowed to leave.
Amalek is the thousands of Lebanese killed and the more than one million terrorized out of their homes. Amalek is the Lebanese villages destroyed “so no-one will know they ever lived.”
Amalek is the forest and agricultural land sprayed with white phosphorus, as well as the villages, because the trees and crops must also die. Anyone anywhere who stands in Israel’s way will eventually become Amalek.
Much of the above comes from the latest UN report, titled “The essence of childhood has been destroyed: Israel’s deliberate targeting of Palestinian children in the occupied Palestinian territory since 7 October 2023.”
None of it is new, only updated. The facts have been reported many times over. Governments know them well yet they continue to support mass murderers using the Bible to justify genocide. Their crime of complicity is almost as great as the crimes themselves: perhaps greater, as they are choosing not to stop this and are even providing the arms so it can continue.
Netanyahu is not religious and chose Amalek only to incite genocidal hatred of the Palestinians. Israelis were indoctrinated against them since childhood anyway. Politicians and rabbis had cursed and dehumanized them as insects and snakes and Netanyahu’s invitation to commit genocide clearly worked.
If a tribunal is ever set up on the same ground rules as Nuremberg, putting Netanyahu and most of his cabinet on trial for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, they would be sentenced to death.
But what would the common soldiers incited by them say? ‘I was only obeying orders?’ It did not work at Nuremberg and it would not work for them.
There have been many Amaleks in history, an enemy treated with the hatred and contempt that ends in genocide.
Just as Netanyahu took his lead from Moses, the Nazis took theirs from Martin Luther.
Of the Jews, he wrote in the 16th century, set fire to their synagogues and schools, raze and destroy their houses, strip them of their livelihood, eject them from the country, deny them food, drinks and shelter and show them no mercy. “We are at fault for not slaying them,” he wrote, but Hitler corrected that.
Even if the judicial punishment is never meted out, may the demons in the uniforms of the Israeli military see the faces of the children they have murdered in Gaza in the faces of their own children and be haunted forever by what they have done.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-demons-who-turned-gaza-into-a-medieval-woodcut-of-the-apocalypse/
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