Weekly Briefing: This is what ethnic cleansing in Gaza looks like
Dave ReedJuly 26, 2025
A charity organization distributes hot meals to Palestinians facing difficulties in accessing food due to Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza, July 20, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/apaimages)
The horror in Gaza is reaching new depths. Starvation has become so widespread that children are dying daily from malnutrition. Women were lured to U.S.-run aid centers, attacked, and some were killed. The Israeli army gunned down scores of civilians at another aid convoy, and tried to lie about it. What we’re witnessing is not a breakdown in order—it’s the plan. This is a genocide, designed and carried out with intention by the Israeli government in coordination with the U.S. government.
Tareq Hajjaj reported devastating eyewitness accounts of the latest atrocities: children’s bodies withering from hunger, women beaten with batons by U.S.-backed aid staff, and mass killings of civilians at so-called humanitarian aid distribution sites. The Israeli and U.S. governments are trying to break the will of Palestinians in Gaza and force them to leave. In other words: ethnic cleansing. Mitchell Plitnick connects the dots in his piece on the Trump administration’s quiet approval of Israeli plans to forcibly expel Palestinians from Gaza. That plan is being implemented right now, through systematic starvation and terrorist violence.
In the West Bank, Israel is moving to formalize its practice of illegally annexing Palestinian land. The Knesset passed a motion to support it, while the state deepens its grip on land, water, and legal structures. We documented how one Israeli company controls the water flowing beneath Palestinian homes, and cuts it off at will. Jeff Wright’s reporting also shows how the apartheid legal system is being reshaped to strip Palestinians of rights and speed up the theft of their land. These policies aren’t separate from Gaza; they are part of the same effort to erase Palestinian life and sovereignty.
Here in the U.S., that project is propped up by politicians, media outlets, and institutions trying to criminalize dissent. The New York Times promotes genocide while pretending to report the news. A child advocate in California was punished for speaking about Palestinian trauma. And the leadership of the NEA, America’s largest union, rejected its own members’ democratic vote to cut ties with the ADL, revealing how disconnected the top ranks remain from the movement growing below them. Still, that movement is growing. Resistance continues in classrooms, unions, and city halls across the country.
Mondoweiss is one of the only outlets documenting these stories with the depth, clarity, and political urgency they demand. But we need your help.This is the final month of our fiscal year, and we’re trying to recruit 15 new monthly donors. If you believe in the importance of this work and want more people to see what’s really happening in Palestine, please become a monthly donor today. Together, we are building the narrative and political infrastructure that this movement needs.
In solidarity,
Dave Reed, Publisher
Must Read: Palestinian women were told to go to U.S.-run aid sites in Gaza. They were killed and beaten instead, eyewitnesses say.
Tareq Hajjaj: The Israeli-backed and U.S.-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said that its distribution on Thursday would only be for Palestinian women. Eyewitnesses say that GHF staff pepper-sprayed them and beat them with batons, while two women were killed.
Palestinian women come back from GHF distribution center in southern Gaza, where eyewitnesses say GHF staff pepper-sprayed the aid-seekers and beat them with batons, July 24, 2025. (Photo: Abdallah Alattar/APA Images)
Genocide in Gaza
Tareq Hajjaj: The WFP reported on how the Israeli army opened fire on a crowd of starving civilians rushing an aid convoy in northern Gaza, which killed 90 people. The Israeli army lied and said no one was shot. Eyewitnesses describe a massacre.
Mitchell Plitnick: The head of the Mossad spy agency was recently in Washington to coordinate with the White House on plans to expel Palestinians from Gaza. The plan, along with the forced starvation and mass killing of Gazans, echoes the worst of the Nazi Holocaust.
Tareq Hajjaj: Children in Gaza have begun to die of severe malnutrition in increasing numbers as Israel continues to starve the people of Gaza. Infants are the most severely affected, as hunger devours their bodies until they reach “a point of no return.”
Catch-up
Mitchell Plitnick: A common cliche used by American politicians to describe the U.S.-Israel relationship is that “there is no daylight between the two.” But this is clearly not true when it comes to Syria.
Writers Against the War on Gaza: The New York Times has helped to enable and sustain Israel’s ongoing genocide. A new dossier reveals the close ties of 20 top editors, executives, and journalists at the Times who have covered Gaza and their connection to Israel and Zionism.
Qassam Muaddi: The Knesset’s motion supporting the annexation of the West Bank signals Israel’s intention of formalizing what it has already been doing at an accelerated pace since October 7 — establishing total Israeli control over Palestinian land.
Asfia Qaadir: The Jewish Community Relations Council attacked a talk I gave to the U.S.’s largest children’s mental health system as “antisemitic” because I discussed Palestinian trauma. My employer bowed to the pressure, but as a child advocate, I must speak out.
Jeff Wright: Netanyahu’s government is building on a long-standing legal matrix to accelerate Israel’s de facto annexation in the West Bank.
Qassam Muaddi: Palestinians in the West Bank are facing an unprecedented crisis in accessing enough water. But drying water resources isn’t the problem — it’s the fact that Israel extracts and controls all of the water from under their feet.
Sam Carliner: On July 18, the NEA Board of Directors voted to ignore a vote by 7,000 NEA members to end ties with the ADL. Still, union members are celebrating the original vote as a major shift among the rank and file toward Palestine and pledge to move forward.
Daniel Friedman: The first Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress, which drew 1,000 anti-Zionist Jews and their allies to Vienna, marked a significant moment in the rising tide against the settler-colonial state of Israel.
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