Karma Police, Arrest This Man

Thom Yorke finds his voice, Gaza burns, and the genocidal yogi rolls out her mat.

On Friday, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke strung together a series of words, ostensibly about Israel and Palestine, bookended by complaints about a concert heckler and the toll of “social media witch-hunts” on his mental health. His 19-month silence on Gaza’s “humanitarian catastrophe,” he writes, was an “attempt to show respect for all those who are suffering,” and his artistic legacy should suffice as proof of his moral compass.

Calls for him to speak, as far as I can tell, stem from his conspicuous avoidance of the topic while bandmate Jonny Greenwood has defended Israel and kept performing there throughout the war.

As for the substance of Yorke’s jeremiad, such as it exists, he condemned “Netanyahu and his crew of extremists,” declared their “excuse of self-defence has long since worn thin,” and asked why “endless thousands of innocent human souls are still being expelled from the earth… for what?” If his question was meant to be rhetorical, it didn’t quite land against the constant, explicit rationale offered by the perpetrators: that Palestinians must be vanquished in the name of Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea.

He lamented that “this subject is now dangerously toxic” and we are “in uncharted waters,” before offering a visionary solution: “We need to turn back.”

Finally, he asks the really tough question: “For what possible reason” does the “unquestioning Free Palestine refrain that surrounds us all […] not answer the simple question of why the hostages have still not all been returned?”

Before I try to answer, I have to ask: what, exactly, does Yorke think should be questioned before we can say a people should be free from genocide and apartheid? Must five million Palestinians first demand the release of 59 hostages—including POWs who’ve possibly killed their families and neighbors—before we entertain the idea of ending their captivity? Should they clarify their stance on the two-state solution? Express regret over the breakdown of the 2005 disengagement plan? Reflect on the tragic complexities of 1948? Offer sympathy for the Israeli left’s disillusionment before reckoning with the betrayal of their own dreams? Specify whether their longing for return is literal or metaphorical? Acknowledge the psychological toll of rocket sirens before asking for Israeli and U.S.-made rockets to stop burying their children 100 feet deep? Do they need to provide a roadmap for peace before they’re allowed to clear the rubble? Must they renounce vengeance before we stop giving them reasons to want it?

What Yorke and so many others seem to be saying is this: until the oppressed can demonstrate the right kind of politics, the right kind of grief, and the right kind of restraint, their freedom must remain on hold.

Back to Yorke’s question. One of the great failures of the press over the past 19 months has been its near-total silence on the 10,000+ Palestinian prisoners held by Israel—men, women, children, the elderly, thousands detained without charge, many for nothing more than a Facebook post or a civil service job in Gaza. Some are quite literally hostages, imprisoned until a family member turns themselves in.

These prisoners are held in what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem calls a “network of torture camps,” overseen by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—a convicted terror supporter who brags about starving inmates as “deterrence.” Dozens of Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 7. Top brass reportedly call the Sde Teiman prison a “cemetery.” Countless have been starved, tortured, denied medical care, and left to rot in their own shit and piss. A growing number have had their limbs forcibly amputated, often without anesthesia, after zip ties cut off their circulation.

The erasure of this reality helped birth the era’s most hollow moral litmus test: whether every call to “free Palestine” or even “end the war” is accompanied by a demand to “free the hostages.” All this doesn’t even account for the fact that Israeli military operations have reportedly killed at least 20 hostages, and most of their families believe the government abandoned them long ago.

The irony, of course, is that this demand is itself a declaration that some lives are worth more than others—specifically, that Jewish lives, or more accurately, Jewish feelings of safety, matter more than Palestinian lives.

But it’s precisely this refusal to reckon with asymmetry that has plunged us into a discursive death spiral, where calls to free Palestine are treated as, at best, callous, and at worst, a tacit endorsement of Jewish genocide.

The truth is that those who want to free Palestine—and the five million Palestinians who want to be freed—are not prioritizing the safety of the people who benefit from their subjugation, much less their feelings. Why should they? And to be fair, it’s only natural that those beneficiaries would feel threatened by a political movement that demands a radical reordering of their comfortable world.

But Yorke isn’t actually grappling with the thorny colonial dynamics that shape how one’s identity influences their response to this moment. He’s trying to rise above them, to offer a lofty appeal for moral clarity. On that front, I’d suggest that next time he simply quote his 2007 song, aptly titled Bodysnatchers:

“I have no idea what I am talking about // I’m trapped in this body and can’t get out.”

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Here’s this week’s roundup. If you find it useful, please tap the heart (algorithm fuel), share it around, and consider pledging for a future paid subscription. I’ll be rolling out new features for paying subscribers soon.

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Gaza

Aid Charade

On Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that Israeli soldiers opened fire on starving Palestinians at an aid distribution site in Rafah, killing at least 31 and injuring more than 170. An Australian doctor who received the victims said most were dead “as a result of being shot in the head and chest.” The IDF said it was unaware of the incident. (WaPo)

The aid system launched Tuesday, with Israeli forces herding thousands of starving Palestinians into metal chutes operated by the U.S.-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, then opening fire as panic broke out, killing at least ten and injuring dozens within hours. (NYT)

In a Times op-ed, UNICEF chief Catherine Russell reminded readers that the UN already had a proven aid system in Gaza—400 distribution sites, door-to-door delivery, tracked shipments—but Israel sidelined it in favor of a chaotic, militarized network run by inexperienced private contractors serving military aims. (NYT)

The UN said armed gangs looted the aid site “under the watch of Israeli forces,” and Israeli airstrikes reportedly targeted and killed several police officers who were pursuing thieves. (NYT, Quds)

Israel now openly says it will occupy 75% of Gaza and force two million Palestinians into three fenced-in zones where the aid centers will be located. (Haaretz)

The Times profiled children in Gaza being starved by Israel. (NYT)

Ceasefire

Israel rejected a U.S.-brokered ceasefire proposal that Hamas had already accepted—one that included a 60-day truce, prisoner exchange, resumption of humanitarian aid, and a clear path to permanently ending the war—prompting US envoy Steve Witkoff to abruptly reverse course and publicly blame Hamas for the breakdown.

A revised US ceasefire pitch, crafted with Israel, stripped out every binding commitment—no enforcement, no guarantee of withdrawal, no permanent ceasefire—gutting the deal Hamas believed it had signed. (Drop Site)

On Saturday, Hamas submitted a counterproposal, reaffirming its acceptance of the original framework while demanding the US guarantee that Israel wouldn’t resume its genocidal campaign mid-truce and insisting on full withdrawal, unrestricted aid, and reconstruction. Witkoff called the proposal “totally unacceptable,” while Hamas accused him of caving to Israeli pressure and abandoning the terms he’d personally negotiated. (Drop Site)

The Toll

Reuters analyzed data on the 52,130 people confirmed dead by Gaza’s Health Ministry and found that 1,238 Palestinian families have been entirely erased, with children under 12 making up more than one-fifth of the dead. (Reuters)

Euro-Med Monitor says one in ten Palestinians in Gaza has been killed, wounded, forcibly disappeared, or detained since October 7, with over 10,000 children losing limbs, 43,600 orphaned, and nearly the entire population displaced. (ME Monitor)

A new statistical analysis estimates the real death toll in Gaza, incorporating those still under the rubble and deaths from starvation and treatable medical conditions, may be closer to 95,000. (Al Jazeera)

The UN reported that 95 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land has been rendered unusable by Israeli attacks. (ME Eye)

Hospital Assault

After a two-week siege and repeated shelling, Israeli forces ordered the evacuation of al-Awda Hospital—the final functioning hospital in North Gaza—threatening to bomb the building or kill those inside if staff refused. (BBC)

Israeli shelling destroyed Gaza’s Al-Basma IVF clinic, wiping out 4,000 embryos from cancer patients, older mothers, and others. (BBC)

Israel’s assault has wiped out chemotherapy in Gaza, leaving 11,000 cancer patients without treatment. (Quds)

The pediatric chief at Nasser Hospital said, “We receive a murdered child every 40 minutes. A killed woman every 60 minutes. And a dead person every 15 minutes.” He also said Israel is “preventing the entry of the rotavirus vaccine,” causing the pediatric ward to be “overwhelmed with cases of severe diarrhea and gastroenteritis.” (Quds)

Fresh Horrors

On Saturday, Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar, the husband of the pediatrician who lost nine children to an Israeli airstrike, died of his injuries from the attack. (Guardian)

An American surgeon who worked in Gaza told the UN Security Council, “Children didn’t die because their injuries were unsurvivable. They died because we had no blood, no antibiotics, not even the most basic supplies … My patients were six-year-olds with shrapnel in their hearts and bullets in their brains. Pregnant women whose pelvises were obliterated. Fetuses cut in two while still in the womb.” (Quds)

UNRWA reported that a 20-year staffer was executed with a blow to the skull while wearing a UN vest and driving a clearly marked vehicle.

An Israeli journalist posted a video of a targeted airstrike blowing up a man with special needs as he walked by his home in Khan Younis.

Mohammad al-Farra, targeted and killed by an Israeli airstrike.

The Survivors

A Gazan gymnast who lost his legs in an Israeli strike hopes to walk again. (Reuters)

The five-year-old girl filmed escaping flames after Israel bombed a Gaza school last week survived after watching her mother and four siblings burn to death; her father remains in critical condition. (ME Eye)

A mother described the impossibility of raising four young children with autism through the genocide. “It feels like everything I did to give them a better life has been undone.” (Nation)

Are We Done Here?

The IDF says it killed top Hamas commander Muhammad Sinwar, brother of slain leader Yahya Sinwar, during a May airstrike near a hospital in Khan Younis. (NYT)

West Bank and East Jerusalem

Everyone’s favorite genocidal yogi settler stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque under police protection to demand that Israel take it over.

(ME Eye)

Standard Procedure

Eyewitnesses say Israeli soldiers in Bruqin handcuffed and blindfolded the suspect in the shooting of a pregnant settler, then summarily executed him.

In the weeks following the shooting attack, settlers have rampaged through Bruqin, torching homes and cars, assaulting residents, and erecting a new illegal outpost dubbed “Bruchin South.” The IDF sealed off the town, demolished buildings, confiscated land, and deployed 1,000 soldiers to turn Bruqin and a neighboring village into open-air prisons. (Haaretz)

In Jit, Israeli soldiers stormed a home at 1 a.m., shot 20-year-old Jassem al-Sadda four times as he slept, then blocked ambulances and let him bleed out on the floor. (ME Eye)

In Birzeit, Israeli forces shot a 12-year-old boy in both legs during a raid. (ME Eye)

In a crackdown on currency exchange stores across the West Bank, Israeli forces killed one man in Nablus and wounded 19 others, including two children. (Haaretz)

On Tuesday, the IDF shot and killed 20-year-old Mohammed Jalayta during a raid in Jericho. (New Arab)

Between the night of May 29 and the next morning, soldiers demolished two homes in Nablus, shot three men in Jerusalem, and stormed towns across the West Bank, raiding homes, arresting residents, and destroying property, while settlers, shielded by the army, uprooted crops. (ME Monitor)

On Saturday, an Israeli military vehicle rammed a bus near Jenin carrying elderly Palestinians en route to Mecca for Hajj. (ME Monitor)

The Times reported on the April 6 killing of 14-year-old Palestinian American Amer Rabee, who was shot at least 11 times by Israeli soldiers claiming he was a “terrorist” throwing stones, though his friend said they were just picking almonds. Amer’s father said the US Embassy in Jerusalem offered no help, and a paramedic reported that soldiers blocked them from reaching the boys, saying, “Let them bleed because they threw stones at soldiers.” (NYT, B’Tselem)

Daily Pogroms

In a single week, settlers established an illegal outpost inside the Palestinian village of Maghayer al-Dir, violently attacking residents, firing weapons, stealing livestock, and beating activists until all 23 Palestinian families fled, completing the erasure of one of the last shepherding communities in the southern Jordan Valley. (+972)

On Saturday, they moved on to nearby Deir Dibwan, setting buildings ablaze, hurling stones, and injuring several residents. (Times of Israel)

Settlers torched olive groves near Sinjil and pitched a tent just 500 meters from homes in Al-Mughayir. (ME Monitor)

Settlers erected a new outpost on the ruins of a Palestinian home demolished weeks earlier by the army in Khilet al-Daba in Masafer Yatta. A day earlier, settlers assaulted a pregnant woman in the same village. (ME Monitor)

Israel’s High Court, meanwhile, declined to dismantle an illegal outpost run by a known extremist, instead inviting the displaced residents of Wadi as-Seeq to return and “see what happens.” (Times of Israel)

An American Jew recounted how living alongside Palestinians in Masafer Yatta for six months “undid a lifetime of Zionist indoctrination.” (+972 )

Diplomacy

Israel’s Security Cabinet quietly approved the establishment of 22 new settlements across the West Bank, the largest expansion in a generation. (Y Net)

Israel barred a Saudi-led delegation of six Arab foreign ministers from visiting Ramallah for a meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, alienating the allies it once courted through the Abraham Accords. (Axios)

Israel

Criminal Justice Reform

Israel approved life sentences for 12-year-olds.

Popular Opinion

A new poll finds 82% of Jewish Israelis support expelling Gaza’s residents, 56% support expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel, and 47% agree that “when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua’s command – killing all its inhabitants.” (Haaretz)

Another poll found that 64.5% of Israelis are “not concerned” about Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. (J Post)

Despite this, Thomas Friedman writes that in Israel, he saw “signals flashing” that a broad-based anti-war movement is brewing. (NYT)

Civil Society

A New York Review of Books investigation exposes how Israeli doctors have abandoned core medical ethics in service of ethnic cleansing—refusing to treat Palestinian patients, examining them shackled and blindfolded, cheering hospital bombings, and persecuting Palestinian doctors within Israel. One detained Gaza physician recalled an Israeli doctor examining him while he was blindfolded: “We are colleagues in the same profession. You are supposed to treat me humanely.” The doctor slapped him and replied, “You are a terrorist.” (NYRB)

Education Minister Yoav Kisch unveiled a sweeping plan to mandate weekly Bible study and Zionist instruction in all Israeli schools, along with compulsory trips to Jerusalem and West Bank heritage sites. (Times of Israel)

A new docuseries reveals how Yehuda Meshi-Zahav—founder of Zaka, the far-right Orthodox NGO that peddled fabricated atrocity stories to Western media—sexually abused and defrauded hundreds, including children, while police shielded him as an informant. He died by suicide the day he was set to be arrested. “Many powerful people were relieved by his death.” (Haaretz)

On The Streets

Dozens of Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans beat two Arab bus drivers in Jerusalem while chanting “Death to Arabs.” Police took 20 minutes to respond and made no arrests. (Haaretz).

An Israeli driver chased and ran over a 32-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, killing him. (Haaretz)

In The Knesset

Israel’s Shin Bet chief accused Netanyahu of repeatedly blocking investigations into Jewish terrorism. (Haaretz)

Netanyahu sparked outrage from hostage families after teasing a possible breakthrough in negotiations, only to walk it back hours later. (Times of Israel)

Activists and experts believe the Israeli government is deliberately allowing gang violence to ravage Palestinian communities inside the country. (+972)

Israeli MP Yulia Malinovsky, who raided and locked the UNRWA headquarters in East Jerusalem, brandished the keys in parliament and said, “Come in and establish sovereignty, or do I need to help you open the door too?” (X)

You Don’t Say

Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert wrote an op-ed accusing Netanyahu of waging a “private political war,” marked by war crimes, starvation, indiscriminate killing, and destruction. (Haaretz)

US

Inappropriate Behavior

Trump told Netanyahu it would be “inappropriate” to strike Iran’s nuclear sites during US negotiations. (ME Eye)

Ambassador Mike Huckabee said, “It’s incredibly inappropriate in the midst of a war that Israel is dealing with” for French PM Macron to discuss a Palestinian state. “I’ve got a suggestion for them: Carve out a piece of the French Riviera and create a Palestinian state.” (X)

DC Shooting

Leaked chats from DC shooter Elias Rodriguez showed no evidence of antisemitism, only a grim spiral of political fury, online nihilism, and obsessive hatred for Israel and the US. (Ken Klippenstein)

Collusion Against Khalil

Detained Columbia grad Mahmoud Khalil filed a FOIA request alleging the Trump administration is working with extremist groups like Betar and Canary Mission to aid its deportation campaign. (New Republic)

A federal judge ruled that the detention of Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, was likely unconstitutional, but declined to release him. (WaPo)

A profile of Noor Abdalla, Mahmoud Khalil’s wife, follows her as she raises a newborn while grieving her husband’s absence and managing his legal campaign. On video calls, she says, Khalil “stares into Deen’s eyes, or watches him sleep in the bassinet.” She’s already applying for a passport in case they have to flee. Through it all, Columbia’s administration has yet to reach out. (NY Mag)

Righteous Cause

While dodging town halls and missing 30 Senate votes, John Fetterman flew first-class to Israel with his wife on a $36,000 junket funded by a shady NYC nonprofit to meet Netanyahu and celebrate Israel’s war crimes. (Intercept)

More than half of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, according to a new Pew poll. A February YouGov survey found the Biden Administration’s Gaza policy was the top reason many former Democratic voters abandoned Kamala Harris. (+972)

MIT barred its class president, Megha Vemuri, from graduation after she wore a keffiyeh and used her commencement speech to denounce the school’s ties to the IDF. (ME Eye)

AIPAC darling Ritchie Torres, who represents the poorest district in the US, is calling for an investigation into the Park Slope Food Co-op, which isn’t in his district, because a proposed BDS policy made some people uncomfortable. (NY Post)

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As always, I welcome your thoughts and appreciate your continued support. Feel free to weigh in on any of this in the comments—but I’m especially curious if you think it’s fair to expect artists to take a righteous stand in moments like this.