Israel Is Using an Old Playbook to Justify Gaza Genocide
On Jan. 21, 2024, Gaza’s Ministry of Health announced that Israel has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians since it began its latest assault on the Gaza Strip. The grim death toll comes as the International Court of Justice is drafting a preliminary verdict in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide.
As International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches on Jan. 27, a new op-ed for YES! by writer and filmmaker Shane Burley points out that Israeli officials are ironically employing the same language and logic as past perpetrators of genocide: claiming its victims have genocidal intentions to justify killing them first.
Burley is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It and editor of ¡No Pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches From a World in Crisis. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Ben Lorber, is titled Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. He spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about his op-ed for YES!, titled “Don’t Let Zionists Weaponize Jewish Suffering.”
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Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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