This past Saturday marked the 78th anniversary of Nakba Day, the day in 1948 when around 750,000 to 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and driven from their homeland by the Israelis. Since then, the Palestinians have struggled valiantly to get their land back while the Zionist state has only ratcheted up its illegal occupation, seizing more land, starting a genocide in Gaza and generally doing everything in its power to make the lives of the Palestinians as miserable as possible. While many have claimed that the October, 2023 and the subsequent Gaza genocide have been a turning point for the Palestinian movement, that has not stopped the atrocities themselves. Support or recognition for/of Palestine is far less impactful when they do not include the most powerful country in the world and when they are not backed by actions against the state that is depriving the Palestinians of their rights. The Israelis continue to deploy terrible brutality against the Palestinians with impunity. While there is supposed to be a ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli strikes killed eight Palestinians on Sunday and some 870 Palestinians have been killed since the so-called ceasefire was put in place back in October 2025.
Israel now occupies almost half the strip and, last month, Doctors Without Borders also warned that Israeli authorities are systematically depriving people in Gaza of the water they need to live. Then there is the West Bank, where Israeli settler violence and illegal land seizure has also risen. Last week, Israeli settlers forced a Palestinian family to exhume the body of their father from his freshly dug village grave near an illegal settlement re-established by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government. A new death penalty law now allows the Israelis to execute any Palestinians in the West Bank convicted by military courts of deadly attacks classified as ‘terrorism’. If the Palestinian family that was forced to dig up their own father retaliated against the settlers, would an Israeli military court have found them guilty of ‘terrorism’? Could this then result in their being executed? Understandably, a UN committee has said that this new law perpetuates racial discrimination and has called for it to be repealed.
Sadly, that is unlikely to happen. Israel will most probably ignore this latest call from the UN, as it has ignored pretty much everything else it has said. This impunity also seems to extend to anyone who tries to help the Palestinians. Gaza was not the only place the Israelis struck on Sunday; Lebanon was hit too, leading to at least five deaths. Here too, there is supposed to be a ceasefire. The latest flotilla that tried to deliver some aid to the people of Gaza was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters off Greece earlier this month. Then there is the US-Israel attack on Iran, a situation that the entire world is paying the price for and one that the US president and his party may eventually be voted out for. None of it seems to be enough to get the world’s most powerful country to reconsider its ‘special’ relationship with the Zionist state. However, getting away with anything is different from being able to do everything you want. And, the Israelis have, in fact, after everything, not gotten what they want. The Palestinians, after 78 years of untold pain, remain on their land and they are not going anywhere. This is a reality that the Zionists will eventually have to accept.
