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‘May 2025 Be the End of Israel’: Australian Writer Calls for Destruction of Jewish State to Mark New Year
Illustrative: Supporters of Hamas gather for a rally in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Reuters/Joel Carrett
An award-winning Australian writer has called for the destruction of Israel and the “death cult of Zionism” in what was apparently meant to be a message of hope and optimism for the new year.
“May 2025 be the end of Israel. May it be the end of the US-Israeli imperial scourge on humanity. May we see the abolishment of the death cult of Zionism and the end of US empire and finally a world where the slaughter, annihilation, and torture of Palestinians is no longer daily routine,” Randa Abdel-Fattah posted on X/Twitter on Wednesday evening.
“And to achieve that,” she continued, “is to snowball collective liberation because the tentacles of Western imperialism oppress and dehumanize us all. May every baby slaughtered in Zionism’s genocide haunt you who openly support or acquiesce through your gutless silence.”
Abdel-Fattah’s tweet came in response to a social media post by the Turkish public broadcaster TRT World saying that three newborn Palestinian babies died from extreme cold in Gaza, where Israel has been fighting Hamas since the Palestinian terrorist group invaded the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023.
Abdel-Fattah, a lawyer and Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney, is one of Australia’s most prominent pro-Palestinian activists. She has also written 12 books, for which she has won multiple awards..
The Australian Jewish Association lambasted Abdel-Fattah for her comments, responding that “evil hate speech like this has no place in Australia.”
Australian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah. Photo: Screenshot
Wednesday was not the first time that Abdel-Fattah came under fire for her anti-Israel activity.
In October, the New South Wales Police Force posted on social media saying it would not tolerate flags of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah or portraits of its leaders at anti-Israel protests. The message was displayed in blue and white, coincidentally the colors of the Israeli flag — a point noted by Abdel-Fattah.
“Brought to you in the colors of Israel’s flag,” the writer responded, appearing to insinuate without evidence that the Australian police force was acting on behalf of the Jewish state.
That same month, Abdel-Fattah penned an op-ed in which she accused Israel of “industrialized genocide, domicide, scholasticide, infanticide, femicide, medicide, and ecocide” in Gaza and described the Israeli state as “stolen land.” The writer also falsely accused Israel of seeking to expand its territory into Lebanon and Syria and posted messages from group chats that she was part of expressing excitement during Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The academic, who reportedly receives an $802,000 taxpayer-funded grant for her research, in April led a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” for “all ages” at Sydney University to “inspire” children to “stand up for justice and solidarity.”
Footage showed Abdel-Fattah clapping and encouraging children as they chanted slogans including “intifada,” “Israel is a terrorist,” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Abdel-Fattah’s activism has come amid a surge in antisemitism across Australia since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
Earlier this month, for example, arsonists heavily damaged a synagogue in Melbourne in what the country’s prime minister called an antisemitic attack.
The attack followed the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) releasing a report showing that antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels over the past year, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024.
The data included dozens of assaults and hundreds of incidents of property destruction and hate speech. Physical assaults recorded by the group jumped from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
In one notorious episode in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters gathered outside the Sydney Opera House chanting “gas the Jews,” “f—k the Jews,” and other epithets.
The explosion of hate also included vandalism and threats of gun violence, as well as incidents such as a brutal attack on a Jewish man in a park in Sydney.
Many of the antisemitic outrages documented by the ECAJ appeared to be connected to anti-Israel animus.
In June, the US consulate in Sydney was vandalized and defaced by a man carrying a sledgehammer who smashed the windows and graffitied inverted red triangles on the building. The inverted red triangle has become a common symbol at pro-Hamas rallies. The Palestinian terrorist group, which rules Gaza, has used inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “the red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence.”
That same month, the office of Australian lawmaker Josh Burns was vandalized, with the perpetrators shattering windows, lighting fires, and graffitiing “Zionism is Fascism” on the building.
Weeks later, multiple memorials near the Australian War Memorial were defaced with anti-Israel graffiti. The messages included “Free Palestine,” “Free Gaza,” “Blood on your hands,” and “From the river to the sea.”
Around the same time in July, anti-Israel activists vandalized the oldest synagogue in Sydney, displaying a large banner outside the front entrance reading “Sanction Israel,” along with flags of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in April that Canberra would consider recognizing a Palestinian state. The current government has also walked back the decision by the previous Liberal Party government to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Earlier this month, Australia voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, breaking a two-decade pattern of opposing such a measure.
The post ‘May 2025 Be the End of Israel’: Australian Writer Calls for Destruction of Jewish State to Mark New Year first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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