Friends of Palestine WA

19/10/2026

Via We Are Not Numbers

Six Palestinians were killed and 25 others injured in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours [on 16 October]. Among the victims was Misk al-Dalo, a young girl killed by Israeli army fire in al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. Two fishermen were also injured when an Israeli quadcopter drone dropped a bomb on them while they were working off the coast of al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. Several other Palestinians were injured in attacks across the Strip, including in Gaza City and Khan Younis.

Israeli forces continued demolitions, artillery shelling and gunfire across Gaza, targeting homes and displacement tents in eastern Gaza City, including the al-Tuffah and al-Shuja’iyya neighbourhoods, as well as areas in central and southern Gaza. Displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi, Rafah, were also targeted by Israeli gunfire.

Since the ceasefire took effect on 11 October 2025, at least 1,517 Palestinians have been killed and 5,400 injured, while 839 bodies have been recovered from beneath the rubble, according to the ministry. The cumulative death toll from Israel’s genocide in Gaza has reached 74,475, with 175,517 Palestinians injured.

19/10/2026

Is Zionism racism?
By Mouin Rabbani

To answer this question requires a proper understanding of Zionism in both theory and practice.

Zionism is essentially a synonym for Jewish nationalism. It is the belief that Jews constitute a distinct people and nation, and on this basis require the establishment of a nation-state of their own to achieve their natural rights and collective potential.

In putting forth such views, the late-nineteenth-century founders of the Zionist movement were first and foremost adopting and reflecting the nationalist milieu and principles dominant in Europe, the environment in which they were formed and in which they operated.

Yet, from the very outset Zionism was different from other European nationalisms. Unlike for example the Greeks, Serbs, Poles, or Italians, Zionism’s intended constituents – the Jews of Europe – did not have an ancient homeland on the European continent in which they remained a majority.

The Zionist movement was unwilling as well as unable to challenge an existing European state to carve out an independent state in which Jews, like other European peoples, would enjoy uncontested demographic, territorial, and political supremacy.

Its leaders instead sought to acquire the cooperation and sponsorship of a European power to colonize and establish a state in territory outside Europe. Palestine was not the only non-European territory proposed for this venture. Various others in Africa, the Americas, Australia, as well as Cyprus were also considered, several quite seriously.

In each of these cases the Zionist movement was proceeding from another principle dominant in Europe at the time. None of these territories were uninhabited, yet their inhabitants did not possess inalienable rights, and could be freely subordinated, dispossessed, and even exterminated in the service of European power.

The Zionist movement ultimately settled on Palestine for its nation-state project. Enabled by what the pre-eminent Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi termed “the British shield”, its project met with success in 1948 with the establishment of the Israeli state.

Israel could not have been established as a Jewish state without the mass dispossession and expulsion of the Arabs of Palestine, and the wholesale usurpation of their lands and properties.

Israel could not have developed as a Zionist state without the systematic application of structural racism against its non-Jewish citizens and the enforcement of apartheid regimes against Arab populations beyond its initial boundaries that would come under its control in subsequent decades.

Crucially, the exact same pattern would have been implemented, by design, if the Zionist movement had opted for Uganda, Libya, or any other territory under its consideration instead of Palestine. It is this which distinguishes Zionism from most (but not all) other nationalisms.

In other words, the British Green Party, like the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 3379 of 1975, got it exactly right.

https://mouinrabbani.substack.com/p/is-zionism-racism

Is Zionism racism?

18/10/2026

The question “Does Israel have the right to exist?” is meant as a trap – and one directed at what the media like to call the “hard” or “far” left (very much in scare quotes). It requires that the interviewee concede at the start of the conversation the very ground they are trying to challenge.

This is what the BBC’s Nick Robinson was up to in demanding that Zack Polanski affirm “Israel’s right to exist” in an interview with the Green party leader last week. It was a classic of the genre. Note Robinson’s heavy framing of the question:

“What we’re talking about is whether a state created by the United Nations, in the aftermath of pogroms and Holocaust, the worst act of racism in the history of the planet, has a right to exist or not. This is a question you have always dodged.”

That’s very much in the “How many times a day do you beat your wife?” tradition of interviewing. In a post on X, Robinson again challenged Polanski: “Why is this a difficult question to answer?”

Both, let us note in passing, are Jewish. But only one is assumed to accrue moral standing in the exchange from their views about Israel.

We could easily turn the question around against Robinson:

“Do you think the state of Israel – as a state illegally occupying and oppressing Palestinians for decades and committing the crime of apartheid, as determined by the world's highest court, and one deemed to be committing genocide according to a consensus of legal and human rights authorities as well as genocide scholars – has a right to exist?

“Did apartheid South Africa have a right exist?”

The answer to Robinson’s question is very simple. States come and go. They don’t have a right to exist, peoples do. And importantly, according to international law, people enjoy the same, universal rights. Which is exactly why Israel as a state committing the crime of apartheid – as ruled by the International Court of Justice in 2024 – has no right to exist as it is currently constituted.

Polanski responded with the entirely reasonable assertion: “Israelis and Palestinians should have equal rights in a democracy.” Which was the solution accepted by the international community for black and white South Africans, post-apartheid.

And yet Robinson keeps interrupting Polanski, treating his sensible, moral position – one in line with his party’s new official policy that “Zionism is racism”, as determined by its members – as though it is proof of extremism, of antisemitism. As if Polanski is being slippery by refusing to accept what is, in fact, Robinson’s extreme premise.

Robinson is arguing that, even after Israel has been judged to be an apartheid state by the world’s highest court and to be committing genocide according to leading authorities on the subject, it should have an inviolable right to carry on exactly as it is.

Robinson’s implied position is that Palestinians and their supporters should simply shut up and live with the fact that Israel has been slaughtering and maiming hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s people. Nothing to see here, is Robinson’s message.

So who is the real extremist, who the real racist: Zack Polanski or Nick Robinson?

This is an extract from my latest article. Read the rest here: https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/how-the-bbc-sets-a-trap-to-make-sure

12/10/2026

Via The Times of Palestine

An Israeli soldier has revealed details of the attack on Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on October 31, 2023, which killed 250 Palestinians, in testimony reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

According to the testimony, the target of the attack was Ibrahim Biari, a commander in the Qassam Brigades. The soldier said the military knew Biari was underground beneath several large buildings but did not know his exact location or which building he was beneath.

He added that the military selected several inhabited buildings and decided to bomb them all without evacuating the residents.

The report quoted another soldier as saying that military estimates indicated the attack could kill between 250 and 300 Palestinians. The decision was therefore referred to the Israeli chief of staff for approval before the strike was carried out, destroying residential buildings and causing a large number of casualties.

12/10/2026

Via The Times of Palestine

One year after the so-called ceasefire agreement came into effect in Gaza, Israeli violations have continued, claiming more Palestinian lives and leaving thousands injured.

According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, these violations include 5,474 breaches, resulting in 1,488 Palestinians killed and 5,280 injured.

12/10/2026

10/10/2026

Via Drop Site News

🔴 Israeli attacks killed at least 21,976 Palestinian children in Gaza over the past three years, an average of one child every 71 minutes, according to a report by Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Among those killed were 5,444 children under five and 1,125 infants under one year old. Another 45,569 children have been injured, including 1,134 who have undergone amputations, while 71,846 have been orphaned.

The ministry also reported 612 children killed while seeking food or medicine, 466 deaths from malnutrition, including 157 children, and 2,027 patients who died while awaiting medical evacuation, including 264 children.

The report found that all 38 hospitals and 158 primary healthcare centers in Gaza have been targeted, with 19 hospitals and 64 healthcare centers out of service. It also documented 1,723 healthcare workers killed and 216 ambulances targeted.

Join the Global Day of Action for Gaza: three years of genocide and resistance
This Sunday 11th October, 12 noon, Forrest Place, Perth

09/10/2026

If you need any more reasons to join the Global Day of Action for Gaza: three years of genocide and resistance this Sunday, 12 noon at Forrest Place, Perth, then this should surely convince you.

08/10/2026

Demonstrations are taking place across the country this Sunday to demand an end to the arming of Israel, three years into the Gaza genocide.

Join a protest in your city. See below👇