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Gaza Protests Are Based on Jew Hatred, Not Human Rights
The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Photo: Reuters Connect
There is no issue that brings out so many global protestors, week after week, as Israel’s war to defeat the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza. But whatever is causing this unique display of passion and animosity against Israel, it is not humanitarian concern.
Hamas’ decision to start this war through a campaign of mass murder, rape, and kidnapping on October 7, and then fight it from beneath and behind Gaza’s civilians and civilian infrastructure, has led to heavy casualties and severe suffering for the Palestinian population. Their plight should move us all.
But contrary to pervasive and outrageous claims of “genocide,” the Palestinians’ plight is unfortunately an example of the horrors of urban warfare. It is strange, then, that only this war should generate such hysteria as to drown out every other conflict and atrocity.
No encampments were set up across the world to protest the wars in Syria and Sudan, where so many more innocent Arab civilians died. And no other conflict has aroused the rabid passion and hate displayed against Israel, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Unlike Israel’s war to dismantle Hamas, Russia’s war against Ukraine, now in its second year, does arguably merit the use of the terms “genocide” and crimes against humanity.
Every Russian official from Vladimir Putin on down has made the intent of this campaign clear: to wipe out Ukrainians as a national group; indeed, Russia denies Ukrainians’ existence as an ethnic group in the first place.
While the genocidal nature of Russia’s imperial war does not involve total extermination like the Nazi Holocaust, it violates nearly every other section of the Genocide Convention. This includes the forcible transfer of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. In fact, Russia is so proud of this forcible transfer that it puts the number at hundreds of thousands.
Torture, sexual violence, and rape are rampant and systematic. While the mass graves and murders uncovered at Bucha and other areas around Kyiv are well known, that process has been replicated across all the Ukrainian territory that Russia controls. The civilian death toll is unknown, but one analysis suggested as many as 75,000 people may have been killed in Mariupol alone.
There are approximately ten million Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced persons, and there is widespread intentional targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure across the country.
The outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war will also decide the future of the international order. Yet neither the humanitarian atrocities nor the existential element of Russia’s invasion seem to stir much concern in newsrooms, in the streets, or among politicians these days.
The latest civil war in Sudan, raging for just over one year, has also seen barbaric and genocidal violence and civilian displacement and suffering. In particular, the Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have targeted the ethnic African Masalit tribe, reportedly killing as many as 15,000 in West Darfur’s provincial capital of El Geneina alone. This includes reports of the systematic murder of primarily male children and infants. Sexual violence and rape are also ubiquitous and methodical.
Edem Wosornu, director of operations at the UN Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), recently asserted that “By all measures — the sheer scale of humanitarian needs, the numbers of people displaced and facing hunger — Sudan is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent memory.”
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child warned that “24 million children are at risk of a generational catastrophe.”
In Myanmar, the civil war raging since the junta overthrew the democratic government in February 2021 has seen some of the worst barbarism imaginable. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk described the junta’s terror campaign against its opponents as “inhumanity in its vilest form,” including mass killings and “burning them alive, dismembering, raping, beheading, stabbing, bludgeoning, and using them as human shields against attacks and landmines.” Mutilated corpses and heads are displayed as warnings, including the bodies of defiled women with “foreign objects lodged in their bodies.”
Principled activists would be at least as vocal about these staggering atrocities, among many others, as they are about Israel. Instead, there is only widespread indifference and deafening silence. The vast majority of the people outraged by Israel’s supposed “genocide” in Gaza, it can be safely concluded, are not driven by principles at all. They are driven by hatred of Jews and Israel, pure and simple.
Oved Lobel is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
The post Gaza Protests Are Based on Jew Hatred, Not Human Rights first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.