London, July 2025

When normal people get a ceasefire agreement they think “Good, this means we can finally stop fighting and killing”. When Israelis get one they go, “This means we have to hurry up and kill as many people as possible before it takes effect.”

But it does seem the killing and abuse will at least diminish for a time; an objectively good thing no matter how you slice it.

Caitlin Johnstone, today

Spain just voted a complete arms embargo against the Zionist state. Colombia is severing all ties with Israel. New polls show two-thirds of US Jews now condemn Israel for war crimes. Greta Thunberg and the aid flotillas have captured the imaginations of millions.

And then the demonstrations all over the Western world, mostly but not only in Europe. A quarter of a million in this that, and the other city: Only force will stop the Zionist terror. It is all that is left. I count these immense displays of support for the Palestinian cause and condemnation of Israel a variety of force.

Patrick Lawrence, today

It’s been quite a week. Convict Donald Trump, his penetrating insights as lay psychologist never failing to dazzle, urges Greta Thunberg to see a doctor over her anger issues. For his part Israeli funded liar Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister with the lowest personal ratings since polling began – just look at the recent competition for that! – adds fuel to my suspicions over those Manchester synagogue murders by calling for curbs on ‘anti-Semitic hate speech’.

Then there’s the 20 point Ceasefire Plan for Gaza as drawn up by Trump and Netanyahu, hailed by Western leaders and, as icing on the cake, finding a new role for that much loved bringer of peace to the region, Sir Tony Blair.

It’s self determination, Jim – but not as we know it!

I’m short on time – setting off today to overnight on the streets of London prior to tomorrow’s demo – so this will have to do. Four days ago saw Patrick Lawrence pulling few punches over the state of the bathwater, but for all that urging us not to throw out its drowning baby.

Today he’s less upbeat, but still not completely abandoning that cruellest of the three cardinal virtues.

Keep the Champagne corked

When have the Zionists ever kept their word?

9 OCTOBER—As I read of the ceasefire Israel and the Hamas government in Gaza formally accepted in the early hours of Thursday, my mind went immediately to that memorable thought Hannah Arendt shared with Roger Errera, a French free-speech advocate, shortly before her death in 1975: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”

How, I mean to say, can one possibly take Bibi Netanyahu at his word as he commits to putting into force the 20–point peace plan the Israeli prime minister and President Trump made public with flimsy fanfare at the White House late last month? With bottomless cynicism and treachery, the Zionist regime has broken every ceasefire accord to which it has agreed for the past two decades, if not longer.

Noam Chomsky on this topic, in a video recorded earlier and posted today on “X”:

Starting in November 2005 an agreement was reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority then, not Hamas. Israel completely rejected it, and Hamas lived up to it, not a single rocket. Then came the January [2006] election [which Hamas won], and Israel intensified its attack with U.S. support. After that there were repeated attacks and ceasefire agreements.

Every ceasefire agreement is approximately like what I’ve read. Israel completely dismisses and disregards it and maintains the siege in violation of the ceasefire and increases the violence. Hamas lives up to it, and Israel officially accepts that, agrees to it, until some escalation of Israeli violence leads to Hamas reaction, and then another episode of “mowing the lawn.” That’s been going on since November 2005.

As I was considering this well-established pattern Thursday morning, I saw other videos on “X” that showed Palestinian children dancing for joy amid the rubble to which the Zionist terror machine has reduced their homes in Gaza. Hope, I reflected, is the cruelest of the three cardinal virtues. How often—in our responses to events, in our professions, in love and in other personal relations—does it turn out to betray us. I hope, for all of our sakes but especially for the sake of those children and their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and all others who have suffered with them these past two years—well, these past seventy-seven—that the accord going into effect as I write this holds.

We must allow for the possibility of success, of course. But at writing I simply cannot see it.

As Thursday morning went on, Hamas prepared to release the remaining hostages it has held since the events of 7 October 2023—22 of them alive by Israel’s count, the bodies of 26 others—and the Israelis were (reportedly) arranging for the release of 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israel’s prison gulag and 1,700 others taken captive since 7 October of two years ago. This is the first phase of the 20–point Gaza Peace Plan Trump and Netanyahu announced on 29 September. In the next phase the Israeli Occupation Forces are to withdraw from Gaza to a perimeter along its inland edge but still inside the Strip.

What is our question? Will Israel hold to this accord, or at what point will the Zionists betray it? Let me suggest my view this way: I am not dancing in the streets of the once-was factory town wherein I currently reside, and I do not see much dancing in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Genoa, Madrid, Zaragoza, Athens, or any of the other big cities where hundreds of thousands have lately been demonstrating in behalf of the Palestinian cause.

A man named Tariq Kenney–Shawa put it this way on X this morning:

Some telling Israeli analysis that makes it clear that they don’t see this as much of a ceasefire, but rather a tactical pause through which to secure the release of hostages before retaining control of most of Gaza and implementing the “Lebanon model” of continued bombings.

History, as just reviewed, suggests this is so. There is simply no believing what the Zionists say about anything under the sun at this point. Does one, after all, ever take fanatics at their word? Ever given to rank opportunism in the cause of their rank ideology, Zionist Jews—which excludes very many right-thinking Jews—have long since sunk their own ship by way of credibility.

More immediately to the point, events and politics do not line up on the side of the peace plan’s efficacy. The I.O.F. redoubled its aerial attacks on Gaza immediately after Bibi and Trump announced their “peace plan” early last week. There is video circulating on “X” as we speak showing Israeli tanks shelling the exposed population of neighborhoods in central Gaza hard by the Mediterranean beaches.

There is simply no on-the-ground indication of commitment to anything other than the no-commitment that has long defined what I refuse to call statecraft on the Israelis’ part.

What has stayed with me these past 10 days is the balance inside Netanyahu’s freak-show cabinet. Ben–Gvir, Smotrich, the crazed Orit Strook, et al.: These grotesques continue to insist that Gaza must be ethnic-cleansed at a minimum, and for them it is on up from there to the annihilation of all Palestinians. Netanyahu needs these people for his political survival and to avoid staying out of prison on multiple counts of corruption.

For the record, this is my initial analysis of the Netanyahu–Trump plan after it was made public. How I ask in it, did Bibi get his cabinet to come on board for this accord? As mentioned in that piece, the all-star best explanation I have read comes to us from John Whitbeck, the international attorney, now resident in Paris, with long experience on the Palestine question. “Presumably,” he wrote his privately distributed blog just after the plan was announced, “Netanyahu has, while still hoping that Hamas will reject this ultimatum, managed to convince these ministers of the sincerity of his insincerity in this instance.”

In this connection, Max Blumenthal pointed out not long before the plan was made public that Netanyahu was parading around Israel (and I think elsewhere, even in the U.S. if I am not mistaken) boasting openly that he has Trump completely under his control. There must be a reason for this, and I wonder now what it might be. In my view it is plausible to interpret these public displays as intended further to convince his cabinet of goons that he remained a reliable liar as 29 September drew near, as if to say, I will go along with this but do not worry.

Caitlin Johnstone, allowing for the slim possibility that the Gaza Peace Plan will actually hold, posted a thought-provoking insight on “X” this morning:

If a permanent ceasefire actually happens and actually holds without mass expulsions and further Palestinian subjugation, the only explanation I can think of is that the U.S. and Israel crunched the numbers and determined that the PR crisis from the genocide makes it unsustainable.

Johnstone prompts me to consider developments over the past 24 hours against the background of events elsewhere. The Spanish parliament just voted a complete arms embargo against the Zionist state. The other day Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s honorable president, announced that Bogotá is expelling the Israeli diplomatic legation and severing all relations with Israel. New polls in the United States indicate that two-thirds of American Jews now condemn Israel for war crimes; a lesser but still considerable percentage think “the Jewish state” is guilty of genocide. Greta Thunberg and the aid flotillas have captured the imaginations of millions.

And then the demonstrations all over the Western world, mostly but not only in Europe. A quarter of a million in this that, and the other city among those listed above: The videos are very stirring. I have argued for some time—and I am not alone in this—that only force will stop the Zionists’ campaign of terror. It is all that is left. And as of this morning I count these immense displays of support for the Palestinian cause and condemnation of Israel a variety of force.

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