After months of threats and speculation, the Israeli military has officially begun to move into the southern Gazan city of Rafah, sending in tanks and taking control of the border crossing with Egypt. The UN secretary-general has warned an assault on Rafah would be a “humanitarian nightmare,” while Joe Biden appears unfazed as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu violates what the U.S. president previously called his “red line.”
In response to these escalations, Mehdi hosted a town hall for Zeteo paid subscribers with Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal and Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu. Segal, who has previously called Israel’s war on Gaza a “textbook case of genocide,” said: “If we finally recognized Israel for what it is, which is a white supremacist settler state, then the problem is that it’s not just confined to that. We have to recognize the whole system behind it, its support, its allies, including white supremacy and settler colonialism in the U.S.”
Zeteo contributor Diana Buttu reminded viewers that Israel’s latest escalations in Rafah are, unfortunately, no surprise, stating that the invasion is what “Netanyahu always wanted.” “He’s made it clear since the beginning that they were going to continue to push Palestinians further south,” Buttu told Mehdi. “And the point is very clear, that they want to get rid of Palestinians.” Buttu also discussed her new Zeteo column, ‘A Diary of a Palestinian Living in Israel,’ in which she describes the “genocide fever” that’s taken over Israel. ….more
