5 reasons to keep our eyes on Palestine. Cinco razones para seguir manteniendo la atención sobre Palestina ENG ESP

Update 24 Jan 2026

Chris Hedges
@ChrisLynnHedges
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, best-selling author & activist.

[A federal immigration officer shot and killed a man in Minneapolis on Saturday, 24 Jan 2026].
The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis (USA), including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades. 

It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability. 

What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aimé Césaire called imperial boomerang. Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland. 

The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself. But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. 

Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color. 

We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.

12 Nov 2025

Actualización 24 enero 2026

El genocidio y el apartheid continuan, con estrategias renovadas y persistentes. 

Hay que evitar el silencio cómplice que se expresa bien por el sorprendente “arte de hacer declaraciones y publicar manifiestos sobre Gaza (y Palestina)” sin citar apartheid y genocidio (el daño), ni a Israel (la causa), ni al sionismo, ni al colonialismo “occidental” (las causas de la causa), ni tomar decisiones (en el campo médico romper relaciones con la Asociación Médica Israelí y proponer su expulsión de toda asociación internacional, todo congreso y toda relación de investigación-docencia).

Genocide and apartheid continue, with renewed and persistent strategies.

We must avoid the complicit silence that is well expressed by the astonishing “art of making statements and publishing manifestos on Gaza (and Palestine)” without mentioning apartheid and genocide (the harm), nor Israel (the cause), nor Zionism, nor “Western” colonialism (the causes of the cause), nor taking action (in the medical field, breaking relations with the Israeli Medical Association and proposing its expulsion from all international associations, all congresses, and all research and teaching relationships).

5 reasons to keep our eyes on Palestine

A ceasefire went into effect in Gaza one month ago (16 Oct). A lot has happened in the four weeks since. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find Palestine in the news.
It remains critical to keep our eyes on Palestine. Here are five reasons why. 

1. Nearly 900 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since October 11, when the ceasefire went into effect.
The Israeli government has violated the ceasefire deal nearly 300 times since it went into effect in October, bombing Gaza over 100 times and carrying out near-daily attacks that have killed at least 242 Palestinians and injured over 600 others. 

2. As a full-blown famine rages, Israel continues to block life-saving aid from reaching Palestinians.
Only half of the needed food aid is reaching Gaza, the World Food Programme has warned — an average of less than 200 trucks daily, far below the 600 trucks stipulated by the ceasefire agreement. 
No direct deliveries of aid have entered Gaza’s devastated north in 75 days. The Rafah border crossing, Gaza’s main lifeline, remains closed. Israeli restrictions continue to block most international organizations from delivering aid in Gaza.

3. The World Bank says rebuilding Gaza will cost $70 billion, and it’s already endorsed U.S. plans for an international body to oversee reconstruction.
The ceasefire deal is designed to deny Palestinians self-determination. Now that the World Bank has endorsed Trump’s plan, we can expect reconstruction focused on opening Gaza to American business interests — and laying the groundwork for attacks on the sovereignty of any future elected Palestinian government.

4. Imperial-colonial violence inevitably finds its way back home.
What’s happening in Palestine has a direct impact on the rights of people in the rest of the world. The U.S.-backed, Israeli genocide in Gaza has made a mockery of international law, deepened the crisis of legitimacy for international institutions like the U.N., and laid the groundwork for an expansion of right-wing populism across the globe, empowering the regimes to be bolder than ever in its attacks on human rights here at home. 
This is the “imperial-colonial boomerang” in action: Political conditions inside the nations are shaped by imperial violence abroad. The weapons, technology, and tactics used to surveil, displace, and kill Palestinians in Palestine will inevitably be used by the country supplying them to silence dissent at home. 

5. The ceasefire did not end Israel’s genocide of Palestinians; it marked a new phase of the genocide.
Israel continues to kill Palestinians with impunity in Gaza and across historic Palestine. In the last weeks, Israeli troops have carried out raids across the Occupied West Bank and settler violence has surged to record levels, with more attacks carried out in October than in any month since the UN began keeping track in 2006. 
The end goal of this violence is always maximum land, minimum Palestinians: Massive Israeli raids across the West Bank that displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes — ethnic cleansing on a scale not seen since 1967.

NOTE
"Our Genocide". Report by B’Tselem
Oct 2025
Since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israel has acted in a coordinated and deliberate manner to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip, committing genocide against its residents. In light of Israel’s actions in Gaza, the public statements made by Israeli decision-makers, and the international community’s failure to take effective action, there is a serious risk that the Israeli regime will expand the genocide to other areas under its control—first and foremost, the West Bank.
B’Tselem calls on the Israeli public and the international community to use every tool available under international law to bring an immediate end to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
Video and summary in English, French and Spanish