Annihilation With Love
Hamas makes a deal, Netanyahu throws a tantrum, and yogis preach genocide with love
Hi all—as I’m sure you already know, it was another bloody week. Before the weekly roundup, I’m sharing some backstory on Hamas to help make sense of where things stand.
As always, I appreciate you hitting the heart button (algorithm fuel), sharing the post, and pledging for a future subscription.
In 2017, Hamas released a policy document aimed at softening its international image and reframing itself as “a pragmatic and civilized movement.”
“Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”
It was a conspicuous break from the group’s original 1988 charter, which notoriously declared that “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews).” The new document reiterated that “resistance shall continue until liberation is accomplished,” but accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 borders, signaling, in effect, a willingness to entertain a two-state solution.
Whatever one made of Hamas’s rhetorical shift, the political implications of the document were clear: the group was presenting itself as a rational actor, responsive to diplomacy and pressure.
But none of this stopped Netanyahu and his allies from pushing the narrative that Hamas was an ISIS-style death cult driven by antisemitic bloodlust, a portrayal foundational to Israel’s insistence that the group must be eradicated, not negotiated with—even as Israel quietly funneled support to the same “human animals” to fracture Palestinian solidarity and undermine the West Bank-based PA. Last year, Netanyahu’s aides selectively leaked a Hamas document to derail hostage talks, framing the group as uninterested in peace by omitting its proposal for a ceasefire.
That premise buckled when the Trump team, departing from longstanding U.S. policy, engaged Hamas directly to explore a potential truce. Despite Israel’s attempt to sabotage the talks, Hamas released Israeli-American captive Edan Alexander on Monday as a gesture of “good faith.”
Alexander’s mother described the conditions her son endured: hunger, thirst, and unsanitary confinement, but said what terrified him most were “the deafening bombs, the shriek of missiles, the sound of destruction and shaking earth. Any moment could have been his last.” She thanked Trump and his envoys but not the Israeli government, instead urging Netanyahu to “listen to the voice of the people” who have asked to prioritize the hostages. (Haaretz)
But if Hamas had just proved it was willing to listen and negotiate, Netanyahu seemed intent on showing that Israel was not, throwing a tantrum that led to one of the bloodiest weeks since the start of the war. “It could be that Hamas will say, ‘Pause, we want to release another 10 hostages,’” he said. “Okay then. Bring them. We’ll take them. But under no circumstances shall we stop the war.” (NY Times, Bloomberg)
On Saturday, Israel announced that indirect talks with Hamas had resumed. Within hours, its warplanes had killed at least 135 people in Gaza. (Al Jazeera)
Gaza
The Israeli Army is Coming
Israel responded to Hamas’s gesture of good faith by launching “Operation Gideon’s Chariot,” a new offensive which includes a surge of ground troops aimed at conquering Gaza, where 93% of the population is at severe risk of starvation.
The IDF killed over 400 people this past week, mostly women and children, including over 143 on Nakba Day (Thursday), over 100 in Friday’s overnight assault on homes and refugee camps, and hundreds more over the weekend. (Al Jazeera)
“All the houses are being bombed,” said a Jabalia refugee camp resident. “They’re all making a joke out of us … We’ve been displaced more than 50 times – either kill us or let us live.” (Al Jazeera)
Another man described stepping outside after a sleepless night of airstrikes, only for the artillery shelling to begin. “It was intense and random. Dozens of dead people. Carnage. Some bodies had no heads. Women, children, and young people were lying on the ground, screaming for help … I saw an old woman lying injured on the ground, begging me to help her. But I couldn’t carry her. My body was shaking from fear and the horror of what I’d seen.”
A 25-year-old described losing 10 relatives on Friday when his cousins’ house was bombed: “A neighbor … could hear their screams for help, but no one could leave their homes to rescue them. Quadcopters were firing on anyone who moved, and there were repeated strikes … In the morning … we dug with our hands to retrieve them, but there was no one left alive.” (+972)
War on Hospitals
Israel bombed the burn unit of Nasser Hospital to assassinate journalist Hassan Eslaih, who was recovering from wounds sustained in an April strike on a media tent. Israel had marked him for death since he documented the October 7 attacks.
“It would not be difficult for the occupation to assassinate me again, especially with the increasing incitement I hear and see against me,” he had said after the April strike. “They may target me inside the hospital, in this room of mine. What can I do?” (Mondoweiss)
Hours later, Israel bombed the European Hospital in Khan Younis, killing at least 17, and leaving the last cancer facility in Gaza inoperable. The footage is horrifying.
“We saw the ground swallow people,” a survivor said. “We have seen people being burned alive. We have seen dogs tearing at martyrs’ corpses. We have seen people dying from starvation. They have inflicted every kind of death on us.” (Mondoweiss)
“Even after the bombing subsided,” another man said, “drones continued to target anyone who was alive or trying to rescue others.” (+972)
The IDF showed aerial footage of a tunnel as evidence of a “Hamas command center,” though the site shown was not under the hospital. Israel says that it killed Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar in the strike. (Haaretz, Haaretz)
Between October 7 and early May, the World Health Organization recorded 686 attacks on health facilities in Gaza, damaging at least 33 of 36 hospitals, and leaving at least 19 of them inoperable. (WHO)
After Sunday’s strike on the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, the health ministry declared that all hospitals in northern Gaza are now out of service. (BBC)
Unrelenting Death
Five more journalists were killed with their families in overnight airstrikes on their homes. (New Arab)
Israeli forces killed 12-year-old Mohammed al Bardawil, one of the NY Times’s witnesses in its investigation into Israel’s killing of 15 medics.
Gaza’s health ministry warned that 1,500 people have gone blind and thousands more are at risk. (New Arab)
The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared reports that over 14,000 Gazans remain missing. “Are they among the martyrs or prisoners?” a mother said of her sons. “I don’t know.” (Electronic Intifada)
A prisoner advocacy group identified three more Gazans who have died in Israeli prisons since October 7, including a healthy man who died just days after being detained, bringing the total to at least 69. (Quds)
Expert Consensus
Dutch newspaper NRC reports that genocide scholars “are not nearly as divided as public opinion: without exception, they qualify the Israeli actions as ‘genocidal’.” One scholar said, “There’s nothing comparable in recent history.” (NRC)
Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers: “We are demolishing more and more houses, they have nowhere to go back to … The only obvious outcome will be Gazans wishing to emigrate out of the Strip.” He said humanitarian aid would be conditioned on displaced Palestinians never returning—“The Gazans we remove will not return. They won’t be there. We will control the place. There is no other war target. Any other target is just bluff.” (Maariv)
A +972 investigation reveals the systematic destruction of Gaza for the sake of destruction:
“I went to the engineering company’s commander, we opened a map, and selected five buildings. If we didn’t, they’d just go pick buildings at random — anyway, they wanted to demolish the entire neighborhood. The general feeling was: ‘We’ve got an engineering company today, let’s go destroy something.’”
Israeli forces have also destroyed 85% of Gaza’s municipality vehicles, crippling essential services like waste collection and water delivery. On Tuesday, they assassinated Gaza’s anti-narcotics police chief. (ME Eye, ME Monitor)
BBC published a video featuring children and babies starving to death in Gaza, and another following sick and wounded children evacuating to Jordan.
Only 33 of the 2,000 children Jordan promised to evacuate have made it out, including kids with brain tumors, shrapnel wounds, gangrene-infected limbs, and multiple amputations. Jordan sent 17 children back to Gaza after they were treated, including some whose parents had pleaded with officials to allow them to stay. (BBC, New Arab)
Despite formal denials, Israeli military officials are privately warning that Gaza faces mass starvation within weeks. (NY Times)
Trump says that “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza and the U.S. “wants to help.” Secretary of State Rubio said he is “troubled” by the humanitarian situation but did not criticize Israel. (NY Times)
The U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation says it’s ready to begin distributing aid through militarized hubs in southern Gaza run by private security companies under IDF oversight. Every human rights group maintains the plan is dangerous and insufficient, and the group has conceded it won’t be able to reach the Strip’s most vulnerable residents. (BBC, Guardian)
The Trump administration is reportedly developing a plan to “permanently relocate” up to one million Palestinians from Gaza to Libya in exchange for unfreezing billions in Libyan funds. There is no indication that any of those one million Palestinians have agreed to be relocated. (NBC News)
West Bank
Bureaucratic Warfare
Two years after Israel pledged 32 million shekels to transform the archaeological site in Sebastia into a biblical Disneyland—where I reported this piece from The Drift—Israeli workers arrived on Monday to kick off the project. (Haaretz)
Israel’s Security Cabinet approved land registration in Area C, paving the way for mass Palestinian dispossession and de facto annexation. (Haaretz)
Israeli forces have now shut down six UNRWA schools in Jerusalem, leaving over 800 Palestinian students without school. (Mondoweiss)
The Worst People on Earth
IDF-backed armed settlers attacked Khallet al-Daba’, the Masafer Yatta village almost entirely demolished by Israeli bulldozers last week, beating residents with clubs and leaving at least one severely injured. (Saba).
Israeli settlers trespassing on Palestinian land near Ramallah assaulted a woman trying to stop them. (Al Jazeera)
Armed settlers ambushed a family trying to return to their olive grove, breaking the grandmother’s arm and trapping them inside their car as they smashed windows and hurled stones. (Haaretz)
Hebron-based activist Issa Amro reports that settler harassment towards him has continued to intensify since he appeared in the BBC documentary The Settlers. “Last night, Israeli settlers attacked my house with stones, they came at 4 am to throw stones and make fire in my family land, chanting about the death of my brother, and wishing I will die or killed.”
As an Instagram follower noted, “These kids need an iPad.”
“Price Tag”
A Palestinian gunman killed a pregnant Israeli woman en route to the hospital to give birth; her baby was delivered by emergency C-section in serious condition.
The IDF believes he acted alone, but Smotrich called for flattening the nearby village of Bruqin “like Gaza.” (Haaretz)
Bruqin’s mayor says 13 Israeli bulldozers have been razing homes while settlers set fire to the wreckage, torch Palestinian flags, and chant racist slurs. Israeli forces have killed at least one there and arrested dozens more. (ME Eye)
Hours after the shooting, Israeli forces killed four men and one child in Tamoun. DCI reports that soldiers used a Palestinian family, including an 11-year-old girl, as human shields.
On Saturday, Israeli forces killed a teenager in Burqa, whom they accused of throwing stones. (ME Eye)
Israel
“Destroying Gaza ‘With Love’”
Haaretz reports on a new breed of genocidaire emerging in Israel: yoga teachers, wellness influencers, and lovers of humanity who promote spiritual growth and chakra alignment while cheering for the extermination of Gazans. Rivka Lafair tells her followers that wiping out Palestinians “from infant to old woman,” like music, involves “altering one’s consciousness.” (Haaretz)
Netanyahu’s “Poison Machine”
After Edan Alexander’s release, parts of Israeli society quickly turned on him and his family. Yinon Magal, host of Channel 14’s most-watched program, accused his mother of showing a “repulsive display of ingratitude and lack of manners” for failing to thank Netanyahu. (Haaretz)
Members of the Knesset continue to boast about massacring Palestinians with impunity:
IDF-Lite
“I think we’ll have to detox from US security assistance,” Netanyahu said.
As he summons troops for an expanded Gaza offensive, a wave of Israeli reservists, once eager to fight, are refusing to show up. Entire companies have disbanded, and loyal officers say their units are barely half-full. (New Yorker)
The shortage didn’t stop the IDF from striking Yemen and Lebanon this week in addition to its intensified bombardment of Gaza. (Haaretz)
Macron is Hamas
French PM Macron called the Gaza aid blockade shameful. Netanyahu responded: “Macron has once again chosen to side with a murderous Islamist terrorist organization and echo its despicable propaganda, accusing Israel of blood libels.” (Times of Israel)
U.S.
Royal Theater
After Hamas released Edan Alexander as a good-faith gesture toward renewed ceasefire talks, Trump called to “end this brutal war” in Gaza, his first time doing so. His Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, told hostage families, “Israel is prolonging the war, even though we do not see where further progress can be made.” (Haaretz, Times of Israel)
But behind the scenes, Witkoff reportedly told mediators the U.S. had no intention of pressuring Israel to stop the war. Hamas officials said Alexander’s release came with explicit promises from Witkoff that the U.S. would compel Israel to lift the blockade, allow humanitarian aid into Gaza within 48 hours, and push for a permanent ceasefire. Instead, “they threw it in the trash,” a Hamas official told Drop Site, likening the effort to track the administration’s position to watching a volatile stock market. (Times of Israel)
Meanwhile, Trump’s “grand bargain” tour of the Middle East unraveled into a parade of arms and AI chip deals with Gulf monarchies. He left the region without a ceasefire, but with billions in trade agreements and fawning praise for the petro-fascist royals signing the checks. (Washington Post)
On the bright side, he offered, “I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good … Let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone.” (NPR)
The Homefront
Ms. Rachel told Zeteo, “It’s sad that people try to make it controversial when you speak out for children that are facing immeasurable suffering.” (Zeteo)
The New York Times asked her if she was paid by Hamas. (She was not.) (NY Times)
NYU is withholding the diploma of graduation speaker Logan Rozos for denouncing the U.S.-funded genocide.
Unsealed court records reveal that ICE used false claims to convince a federal judge to authorize a search of two Columbia students’ dorm rooms. (Intercept)
A judge ordered the release of Badar Khan Suri, a Georgetown scholar detained over his pro-Palestinian advocacy—the third time in two weeks courts have rejected Trump’s push to deport critics of Israel’s war on Gaza. (Al Jazeera)
The Trump administration is forcing universities to report international students for protest activity or vaguely defined “antisemitic speech” within 24 hours. (Zeteo)
The New York Times investigated the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther,” a coordinated effort embraced by the Trump administration to dismantle the pro-Palestine movement by targeting student activists and the institutions that support them. (NY Times)
Nessel Keeps Digging
Days after dropping felony charges against student protesters as a judge prepared a bias hearing, Michigan A.G. Dana Nessel blamed Rep. Debbie Dingell for urging the prosecutions, deflecting from extensive evidence that pressure came from pro-Israel regents tied to her campaign.
Dingell denied it, citing a letter showing Nessel offered to intervene unprompted. “She’s told a lot of people a lot of stuff,” Dingell said.
Nessel once again implied the backlash to her corruption was antisemitic. (Drop Site)
Big Tech
Stories about Google and Microsoft reveal that both tech giants provided AI tools to the Israeli military, despite internal warnings they might facilitate human rights violations in Gaza. (Intercept, Haaretz)
Won’t Someone Think of the Afrikaners
One of the white South African “refugees” let in by Trump is an explicitly antisemitic Zionist. (TNR)
I can’t think of a time when more things were up in the air with regard to the fate of the Palestinian people. Where do you all think this is headed?
Jasper
The wellness and spiritual industrial complex is a cesspool of hyper individualism and white supremacy. They're either silent on genocide, or play devil's advocate, or they do genocide denialism cloaked in victimhood. They ignore historical context because it's too low vibe energy & remain suspended in airy abstract concepts of love and light to fuel their egos. And genocide gets in the way of their personal healing journeys. It's so disturbing how spirituality gets neatly packaged and commodified to serve as a vehicle for nationalism 😳
Thanks for the news summary of this week. Interesting that some people who believe in peace and spiritual growth, at the same time think genocide against Palestinians is OK. Just another sign of the deep seated hatred against Arabs and Palestinians in particular prevalent in ‘western’ culture. To think these people most likely view themselves as spiritually advanced beings boggles the mind. Mind you, there were Europeans in twentieth century Europe who were deeply involved with eastern spiritual traditions and at the same time were raving anti-semites.