Four weeks after the last mass international protest at the onslaught on Gaza demonstrators across the world again assembled with demands ranging simply from a halt to the military offensive to an ending of complicity in the Israeli occupation by governments or companies in their countries. Marches in London and Capetown were the largest. Given the August emptying of cities by residents in many countries the size and spread of the peaceful protests was remarkable.

Nathan Thrall reviews the options that faced Hamas after former allies in Egypt, Iran and Syria demanded unacceptable terms for their continued support. One of these is trying to make the unity government work, something which Israel will also have to consider.

Jerry Haber doesn’t ‘like’ Hamas. Nor do most people outside Gaza – who properly elected them. That doesn’t mean Hamas doesn’t have the right to resist the occupation, a right which those who promote liberal values should defend not abandon in tough times.

The smashing of Gaza’s already fragile infrastructure is causing a potential health catastrophe. Exhausted, homeless, traumatised people are trying to keep the filth of uncollected garbage and ruined buildings away with little fresh water – most has been polluted – or functioning sanitation. Agencies are raising the alarm.

Meeting point for the Jewish Bloc on Saturday OUTSIDE CAFFE NERO 273 REGENT STREET, W1R 7PB. (JUNCTION WITH GREAT CASTLE STREET) As you walk up from Oxford Circus tube towards Portland Place Caffe Nero is on the left. Please assemble there between 11.30 and 12 noon after which we will join the march as a […]

The massive edifice of the Israeli military, blind enthusiasm for smashing Gaza and propaganda about evil Hamas rests on a very febrile base thinks Uri Avnery. The reality is that Hamas are not jihadists for sharia law and the IDF in Gaza was a cumbersome machine stuck in a rut. The super-patriotism, with its fascist current, might yet devour Netanyahu.

This week the long-running argument about the morality, efficacy and limits of boycotting Israeli products as a means of pressing for change from the outside hit the headlines. London’s Tricycle theatre did not want to accept the Israeli state-funding for the Jewish Film Festival which it hosts. Although the theatre offered to make up the funding itself, the JFF rejected the offer on grounds of principle.

The primary purpose of this report from Human Rights Watch is to detail incidents of the IDF firing on Palestinian civilians – a war crime- as they fled the Khuza’a massacre. It also provides a glimpse of the harrying of Palestinians as they run from place to place seeking safety as one building after another is shelled.

The IDF’s Hannibal directive – in this and earlier posts – was little-known until the death of Hadar Goldin was announced. First reported captured, to maximum Israeli alarm, then dead, to their relief, it has since emerged he was killed by his own side rather than let him be captured. A death is simple and done with; a capture is complex and drawn-out – and irrecoverably shameful. One more life claimed by Israeli pride.

The use of women as a metaphor for the land which might be raped (man’s national property) is not new but still shocking in 2014 yet it’s rife in Israeli social media. Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer, tells Ma’an news about the new sexualised violence in Israeli discourse – first expressed by a Zionist from Brooklyn.

Ben Kfir’s daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. He chose to join the Parents Circle Families Forum for bereaved Palestinians and Israelis. He does not believe all Palestinians are terrorists, rather that ‘the infrastructure is poverty, ignorance, hopelessness, despair and the basic absence of security. These are not things the IDF can handle’. He talks to Al Monitor about why he does not despair.

A young woman from Gaza does everything expected of her to be a good citizen — she votes, she is highly educated, she stands up for her nation. She finds her vote makes her a terrorist, her education cannot find her a job or water and power for her home and, though having committed no crime, is forced to live in wretchedness because ‘an occupying nation came from nowhere to claim exclusive ownership of my land on which an endless chain of my ancestors lived’.

Although written before the IDF pulled out of Gaza (with nothing but corpses and rubble to show for it) this sharp critique by Richard Silverstein of the IDF’s shameless destruction and its likely consequences is timeless. Israel is destroying the very thing it went to war for – its own security.

As far as the editor of Britain’s Jewish Chronicle is concerned, groups like JfJfP represent such a tiny fraction of people they cannot demand the right to have their voices heard. So it is against the odds that so many should be being heard not just in the mass demonstrations in many cities but also on the broadcast media. We include a few of them here.

‘The justification is always the same: the security of the occupier must be upheld against the resistance of the occupied and blockaded population. And at every stage Israel has had the military, financial and diplomatic support of the West, the US above all.’ A clear call from Seamas Milne to end our leaders’ support for an illegal, unjust and bloody occupation.

There have been repeated calls for ‘the international community’ to intervene to stop Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. Here are reports of the discussions held by the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council and a special session of the UN Human Rights Council. The overwhelming number of countries at the UN condemned Israel’s warfare . Germany, the US and UK clung to the mantra of Israel’s right to defend itself.

The path to deadly wars in the interest of some nation or other is strewn with accidents and ‘what ifs?’ The first world war with its millions of dead could have been avoided. In which case, muses Robert Cohen, so would the the rise of Nazism, the holocaust, the creation of Israel as a militaristic nation state. The least British Jewish leaders can now do is NOT abandon their principles in the name of defending Zionism.

Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies, writes that Israel has failed in its war aims of destroying the rockets and tunnels used by paramilitary groups in Gaza. Constructed over years in part for trade with Egypt the tunnel network is far more extensive than the IDF imagined and the fighters far better disciplined and trained, hence the comparatively high IDF death rate. The IDF withdrew not because it had ‘won’ but because better counsel prevailed.

Michael Sfard shows how the IDF has redefined the laws of war, challenging any differentiation between military targets (which are legitimate) and civilian targets (which aren’t) and undermining the principle of proportionality, which forbids attacking even a legitimate target if the anticipated harm to civilians is excessive in comparison to the military benefit from the target’s destruction has gone. The IDF interprets the laws of war in a way that is “shockingly different” from the general consensus worldwide.

Serious proposals from Jimmy Carter, former US President, and Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN Commissioner for Human Rights. As they say, ending this war in Gaza begins with recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor; the international community’s initial goal should be the full restoration of the free movement of people and goods to and from Gaza through Israel, Egypt, and the sea – and more…