1 Million Jews Leave Israel Since 7 October

\The number of Israelis that left the country since 7 October, 2023 topped the one million mark according to the Yedioth Ahronoth.

The Hebrew daily stated recently Israelis are leaving to other countries because of what they term as increased threats, continuation of the war on Gaza, decline in the standard of living, and the worsening internal division inside Israel.

“Not staying here’

Yedioth Ahronoth added “these reasons prompted many Israelis to think again about staying in Israel and fear for their future.”

The newspaper pointed out that figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics show there is a 20 percent increase in the number of immigrants compared to last year. This is in addition to the phenomenon that Israelis have been establishing gatherings of Israelis abroad in the past two years.

Statistical reports are also showing there is an exacerbation of reverse migration from Israel since the outbreak of the war on Gaza, noting of the establishment of movements and associations with the slogan of “Let’s leave together” that attracted tens of thousands of Israelis to join.

The situation has become so bad, that former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett earlier called on Jews not to leave Israel, and said the  consequences of this migration is fearful, stressing Israel is going through the most difficult period since its establishment, with the confusion of war, international boycott, damage to deterrence, the remaining 120 captive Israelis, thousands of bereaved families, thousands of displaced persons, and the loss of control over the economy.

 “All of this is completely true, but one thing that worries me, and that is talk about leaving the country,” Bennett said.

40% Poll

A recent poll revealed 40 percent of Israelis say they are thinking about leaving and returning to where they came from because of the  economic situation in the country, the inequality, and disappointments due to the failure of reaching a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

In the same context, according to a study by the Begin Heritage Center, 59 percent of Jews in Israel approached or are thinking about approaching foreign embassies to inquire and submit applications for foreign citizenship, while 78 percent of Jewish families expressed support for their young sons to travel abroad.

Amid growing concern among Israelis about mass immigration, right-wing writer Kalman Libeskind said in an article in the Hebrew Maariv newspaper: We are facing a growing phenomenon in Israeli society, of a growing class in the Israeli left, that is distancing itself from Zionism and Israel, declining interest in the Jewish state and is conducting an active, vigilant discourse against the entire Zionist project while calling for a re-reading of the Nakba, Palestinian state, and the reality of the 1948 and 1967 borders, he said.

“Most of these activists are involved in Israeli civil organizations that receive donations from foreign countries with the aim of tarnishing the reputation of the Israeli army and its soldiers. Now they have come to realize that the Israeli and Zionist group to which they belong to is fundamentally wrong, and they have begun to adopt slogans such as that of the Green Line separating Jews from Palestinians that is considered a symbol of separation between what is legitimate and illegitimate, and they have begun to make distinctions between the settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron and the city of Ramat Aviv in Tel Aviv, and believe the state’s efforts to maintain a Jewish majority in it is an undemocratic behavior,” the right-wing writer confirmed.

In a study published by the Israeli Ministry of Absorption, it was found a third of Jews in Israel now support the idea of ​​immigration, especially after the Battle of the (Sword of Jerusalem) in May 2021. This was a date when Palestinian and Israeli statistics showed that the demographic balance between Israelis and Palestinians in historical Palestine was becoming closer at 6.9 million for the former, compared to 7.2 million for the latter.

According to figures from the Israeli Ministry of Absorption, 720,000 Jewish settlers have left Israel and settled abroad since the beginning of 2021, while the same year recorded a superiority in the balance of reverse migration for Jewish immigrants who had mainly come from abroad according to JO.24.

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Ceasefire Now

By Khaled Nusseibeh

Together, we witness the dying of the light
The oasis of civilized life converted
To a veritable land of waste
The earth is strewn with torn flesh
And bones dispersed on the angry land
The children beckon for humanitarian intervention
To stop, to cease an abominable carnage
Dispersing the folk from one venue to the other
As though death pursuing them with firm determination
But the resolve to overcome is indomitable
In the face of terrible and mounting destruction
Inspiring are the faces of suffering elderly
Keeping the faith amid untold desolation
An iniquitous power targeting the structures of survival
Mercilessly bombing shelters, mosques, hospitals and schools

Will the foe not experience a moment of truth?
That comprehensive destruction will not bring peace?
That the cause of justice shall eventually prevail
Not through iniquitous genocide and holocaust
But through rebuilding the havens of mercy
Of a people tied to the blessed land
Sanctified by the blood of innocent life
The world from a distance watches the ending day
As the toll of defenseless folk inexorably mounts
But the orchards will again be planted
And the olive branch will again thrive
With the travails of the noble folk
Determined to resist unethical onslaught
Designed, not to save life, but to ravage existence
Of an unwanted race on the hallowed soil

Khaled Nusseibeh is a translator, writer and a poet with several published poetry collections to his name. He holds a BA and MA Degrees from Colombia and Princeton universities in the USA. Mr Nusseibeh was born in Amman in 1961 and is a Jordanian of Palestinian origin.

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Netanyahu in the Eye of the Storm!

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

CROSSFIREARABIA – Whatever our political affiliations might be, there is no denying that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to navigate his way through the worst crisis that hit Israel since 1948.

As this crisis gathered momentum, Netanyahu became more and more inclined to think that he was “chosen” for this once in a life-time moment! In this regard, he likes to liken himself to Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt and likens the 7th Oct., – Hamas audacious full scale attack on Israeli settlements encircling the Gaza Strip – to that of America’s Pearl Harbor of 1941.

Before this devastating development, Netanyahu was busy with couple of matters. For instance, he considered Iran’s nuclear ambitions a life-threatening element to Israel. He would not waste any chance to emphasize that. In all of his speeches on international platforms, his picture holding the diagram showing Iran’s progress in making its own nuclear weapon, became familiar to the eyes of the world.

At the same time, he was engaged in disputes with critics and allies over the future of the Arab occupied territories since 1967 war, primarily the West Bank, which he and his like-minded Israeli politicians, are relentlessly trying to annex to “little Israel”!

De facto factor

Netanyahu and his clique, shared the impression that while the international public opinion in the late 1940s tolerated Israel’s de facto encroachment on territories that were originally allocated to the Palestinians according to the UN partition plan (181). Today he hopes that Israeli continuous attempts to acquire additional Palestinian territories will be, as well, tolerated and eventually neglected and forgotten!

To turn this plan into reality, he followed the example of Israeli successive governments since 1967 war when they embarked on building settlements for immigrant Jews brought in from all over the world. Today, there are more than half a million settlers in the West Bank against 3 million Palestinians, plus the 220,000 Israelis in East Jerusalem, against 372,000 Palestinians.

Dawn of 7th Oct.

Then rises the dawn of 7 Oct., 2023 to dynamite all the above mentioned plans and dreams of Netanyahu and his likeminded right-wing allies!

The surprise full scale attack by Hamas shocked the world and humiliated Netanyahu, for he was the man behind the strategy to strengthen and enrich the Hamas movement in Gaza, while undermining the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to widen the gap between the two competing representatives of the Palestinian people.

Netanyahu cannot pardon himself as he was the man who had in 2011, sanctioned the release of the now Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar, along other 1000 Palestinian prisoners, in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by the Islamic movement back in 2006.

By deepening the wedge between the two Palestinian rival groups, Netanyahu’s plan was to tell the world that there was no reliable Palestinian partner to make peace with. According to his logic, the Palestinian Authority is corrupt, weak and unpopular, and Hamas is a “terrorist” organization with whom Israel, by law, cannot talk with!

Such an argument would leave the fate of the West Bank, solely and helplessly, in the hands of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the other extreme right-wing parties, whose main reason d’etre, is the annexation of the West Bank, while at the same time continually applying different tactics to expel, as many Palestinians as possible from beyond the green line of 1948, or what the world concurs as calling “ethnic cleansing”!

The year after!

In years to come, Israeli school children, if we could dig into Netanyahu’s mind, will be taught that Theodor Herzl was the founder of Zionism in 1889, David Ben Gurion, the founder of “little Israel” in 1948 and Netanyahu was the man who tried to outmaneuver the waves of the storm!

Who can resist such a toxic temptation? A war criminal, as some Israeli liberals call him, Netanyahu seems to care less what others think or say of him!

This opinion was especially written for Crossfire Arabia by Saleem Ayoub Quna who is a Jordanian author writing on local, regional and international affairs and has two books published. He has a BA in English Literature from Jordan University, a diploma from Paris and an MA from Johns Hopkins University in Washington. He also has working knowledge of French and German.

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Israel Holds Bodies of 35 Kids Killed Since 2016

Israeli occupation forces continue to hold on to the bodies of 35 Palestinian children killed in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem and refuses to hand them over to their parents and relatives for burial reports the Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP).

These bodies have been kept by Israeli forces since 2016. Grieving Palestinian families see this act as a collective punishment according the Quds News Network.

The number of confiscated bodies was previously 40 but five were since released to their families after much pleading to be buried stated the DCIP.

“Palestinian children cannot rest even in death as Israeli authorities continue to confiscate their bodies and withhold them from their families indefinitely,” says Ayed Abu Eqtaish, DCIP accountability program director.

The Israeli army and settlers killed 64 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in 2024, including two United States citizens, according to documentation collected by DCIP.

Since 7 October 2023, 145 Palestinian children were killed in the occupied West Bank according to the DCIP, when the Israeli military began a full-scale military offensive on the Gaza Strip.

In 2023, Israeli forces and settlers killed at least 121 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces and settlers shot and killed 103 Palestinian children with live ammunition, 13 Palestinian children were killed in drone strikes, four Palestinian children were killed by missiles fired from a US-provided Apache attack helicopter, and one child was killed in an Israeli warplane airstrike.

The Israeli occupation practice of confiscating and withholding the bodies of Palestinian that are killed is a violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, which include absolute prohibitions on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, as well as stipulating that parties of an armed conflict must bury the deceased in an honorable way, DCIP said.

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Gaza: A Children’s Graveyard

In a recent statement, the UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini revealed that the number of children killed by Israel in Gaza in just over four months surpasses the total number of children killed worldwide in four years.

Eight months ago, just two months into the ongoing Israeli genocide that started soon after 7 October 2023 when Israel waged a full-scale war on the Gaza Strip, a World Health Organization official reported that an average of one Palestinian child was killed every 10 minutes in Gaza.

He described the war as “humanity’s darkest hour.”

Today the number of Palestinians killed, many of which are women and children, stand at over 40,000 through non-stop Israeli bombardment. This is while the number of Palestinians that have been killed has passed the 92,000-mark.

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