The inevitable decline and fall of Zionism

For decades, the world was made to feel guilty for seeing clearly. That era is finished.

by Jasim Al-Azzawi

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during an AIPAC conference in Washington, US on 6 March 2018 [Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

There is a moment in the moral life of nations when the lies that sustained them can no longer hold. Israel is living through that moment. The images that came out of Gaza were not evidence of war’s brutality. They are the autopsy of the painstakingly constructed myth of Israel as a refuge for the persecuted, a democracy in the desert, and a moral beacon in a sea of barbarism. That myth, so elaborately maintained, so viciously defended, has now been burned alive in the same rubble it created.

The journalist and writer Chris Hedges, one of the few voices in American media who dared speak plainly while others trembled, warned years ago that “we have given Israel carte blanche to ethnically cleanse, occupy and oppress.” The world did not listen, drowned out by the accusation of antisemitism, that blunt instrument wielded not to protect Jewish people but to silence hard truths. For a generation, the charge worked. It froze tongues, ended careers, and shuttered debates. Today, it lands like a spent cartridge on a stone floor. The world has seen too much.

“Gaza is not just a place. It is a judgment,” Gideon Levy, Haaretz.

Gideon Levy, writing from inside Israel with the lonely courage of a man who has refused every comfortable silence, has spent decades documenting what his own country refused to see. He wrote that Israel has “lost its way” and that “the occupation is not just a political issue; it is a moral catastrophe.”

Now the catastrophe is visible to everyone. There are no more filters or pretenses. A child’s limb in the rubble. A hospital reduced to a grave. A family erased in a single strike. The world watches and remembers. Savvy public relations cannot repair this shattered image.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued warrants for the Israeli PM Netanyahu and former defense minister Galant for crimes against humanity. Israel’s military has been placed on the United Nations List of Shame. These are not the inventions of propagandists; they are the verdicts of Western institutions. The question no longer concerns Israel alone. It concerns the Western powers who provided the bombs, the diplomatic cover, and the ritual vetoes. The West made itself an accomplice and must now reckon with what it enabled. In his Wages of Rebellion, Chris Hedges writes, “The question is not whether Israel will survive this war. The question is whether its soul — if it had one left — can”.

The young generation in Europe and North America has watched all of this on their phones, in real time, with their own eyes. They did not live through the Holocaust. They feel no inherited guilt — and they are right not to. Generational guilt, weaponized as political paralysis, is not memory; it is manipulation.

When Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt warned that “the banality of evil” lies not in monsters but in functionaries who follow orders and look away, she could not have imagined that her words would one day apply to the very state created in the shadow of that evil. But history is merciless in its ironies.

Millions have marched. London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Jakarta, Johannesburg. The numbers are not a transient mood; they are a damning verdict. Sympathy for Palestine is no longer a fringe position whispered at the margins of polite society. It has become the common moral stand of a new generation that refuses to inherit its parents’ silences.

“The arc of the moral universe is long,” said Martin Luther King Jr., “but it bends toward justice.” It is bending now — painfully, irreversibly, in the direction of Gaza.

What has been destroyed in these months is not merely infrastructure. It is the last scaffolding of a contrived myth. The story Israel propagated about itself has collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. Zionism’s stranglehold on Western powers and people is in its death throes. The fear of being labeled an anti-Semite draws derision and laughter. Israel today is the most hated country on the planet, a pariah state, isolated and despised as a genocidal country. The Holocaust of Gaza achieved all that. 

Even the formidable citadels are crumbling. The United States Congress — that long-reliable fortress of unconditional Israel support, where AIPAC’s influence once made dissent a career-ending heresy — is no longer impregnable. The torrent has breached its walls. No sanctuary remains.

A state that perpetrates what the ICJ has formally designated as a plausible genocide loses any claim to a moral legacy. The contradiction is obscene. It is seared now into the retinas of a watching world, frame by frame, child by child, rubble by rubble. No press office can unsee it. No diplomat, however silver-tongued, can launder it with a carefully crafted speech at the United Nations. The wound is too deep for stitching. Zionism has done what no enemy could — it has devoured its own myth, in its own fire, with its own hands. And history, that patient, merciless accountant, has finally opened its ledger.

Indefinite ceasefire is a strategic defeat for the US in the face of Iran

by Sayid Marcos Tenorio

Daily life continues as anti-US and anti-Israel protests are held in the evenings in Tehran, Iran on April 22, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]

The decision by Donald Trump to unilaterally announce an indefinite extension of the ceasefire with Iran, without any request from Tehran, reveals more than an attempt at mediation. It exposes the failure of Washington’s military approach and the difficulty the United States faces in sustaining escalation against an adversary that does not yield to the logic of intimidation.

By tying the ceasefire to uncertain negotiations, the White House signals that it has lost the ability to unilaterally impose the terms of the conflict. The most immediate reading is that of a tactical retreat.

After testing different war scenarios, the United States encountered the concrete limits of an offensive that failed to produce strategic gains. Iran’s response capability, combined with the resilience of its infrastructure and the regional coordination of the resistance axis, raised the costs of confrontation to an unsustainable level.

In this context, the indefinite extension of the ceasefire emerges as an attempt to manage a withdrawal without admitting defeat, a classic move of political containment in the face of a clear military setback.

However, there is a second layer of interpretation that cannot be ignored. The history of US interventions shows that ceasefires often function as instruments of repositioning.

This so-called “extension” may serve as cover for indirect actions, clandestine operations, or selective strikes carried out by the United States itself or by its allies. Iran, aware of this pattern, has already made it clear that it does not underestimate such a scenario and maintains its strategic readiness. In other words, the ceasefire, far from signaling peace, may simply represent an operational pause.

Within this framework, the role of the Zionist entity of Israel remains central. One of the most sensitive hypotheses is that Washington may seek to reduce its direct exposure, leaving Tel Aviv to assume the leading role in continuing the war, under pretexts such as alleged violations in Lebanon.

This reflects a well-known US strategy of outsourcing conflicts, maintaining pressure without fully bearing the costs. However, Tehran has already warned that it will not accept such artificial dissociation, stressing that any aggression will be treated as a shared responsibility.

The element that fundamentally reshapes this equation is Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of the world’s oil passes, now a key strategic lever for Tehran.

The continuation of maritime blockades by its adversaries automatically implies the continuation of the conflict. Iran has already stated that it will not reopen the strait under such conditions and may, if necessary, impose a total closure.

This constitutes a pressure mechanism with immediate impact on the global energy system, capable of shifting the center of gravity of the conflict beyond the military sphere.

The US attempt to maintain a “shadow of war”, a permanent state of tension designed to paralyse Iran’s economy and politics, also encounters concrete limits.

Unlike previous moments, the current scenario includes a decisive variable: Iran’s capacity to directly influence global energy flows. This means that prolonging instability indefinitely does not only penalise Tehran but threatens the broader international economic balance, including Western allies themselves.

What is unfolding, therefore, is a reconfiguration of the very pattern of power.

The indefinite extension of the ceasefire does not resolve the conflict; it merely shifts it to other dimensions, diplomatic, economic, and symbolic. At the same time, it demonstrates that the logic of unilateral imposition, historically employed by Washington, is now facing more structured and effective resistance.

In this context, Iran does not appear as a passive actor, but as an active subject redefining the rules of the game.

By rejecting the extension as a concession and maintaining its deterrent capacity, Tehran imposes a new balance of forces in which the cost of war can no longer be fully transferred to the other side.

Trump’s gesture, far from demonstrating control, lays bare a historical inflection point, revealing the decline of the United States’ ability to impose its will through force.

The indefinite ceasefire is, in practice, an acknowledgment of a limit. And in this new scenario, the central question is no longer whether the war will continue, but who, in fact, still has the capacity to sustain it.

Pakistan’s pageant, Washington’s whim, Iran’s refusal

by Junaid S. Ahmad

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi (2nd L) is welcomed by Pakistani Foreign Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar (2nd R) in Islamabad, Pakistan on April 24, 2026. [Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Anadolu Agency]

There is something almost admirable — artistically, if not morally — about a “breakthrough” engineered to last precisely as long as a news cycle and not a second more. It appears, it trends, it reassures, and then, like a stage prop after curtain call, it quietly disappears. In Islamabad, diplomacy has not failed; it has been rebranded as entertainment. A Field Marshal performs statesmanship with theatrical zeal, a prime minister delivers his lines with the solemnity of a man who knows improvisation is not in his job description, and in Washington, Donald Trump directs the whole production like a conductor who has misplaced both the score and the orchestra. Iran, inconveniently, declines to applaud.

Let us retire the comforting myth that this was confusion. It was fabrication — efficient, coordinated, and executed with the confidence of people who know no one will be held accountable. Pakistani media, guided by “senior officials” whose names remain as elusive as their accuracy, circulated tales of imminent Iran–US talks. Tehran, with the unfortunate habit of saying what it means, responded plainly: no talks, no process, no performance. One side offered verifiable statements; the other offered interpretive fiction. Naturally, the fiction proved more popular.

Truth, after all, lacks marketing instincts.

At the center of this spectacle sits Pakistan’s governing arrangement — a Field Marshal who governs without electoral consent and a prime minister who governs without the inconvenience of authority. Asim Munir does not mediate so much as curate his own indispensability. Shehbaz Sharif does not lead so much as accompany, like a diplomatic backing vocalist. Together, they have transformed Pakistan into a venue — available for hire, fully furnished with press briefings and optimism, though somewhat short on outcomes.

This is not diplomacy. It is geopolitical cosplay with a security detail.

Then there is Trump — the man who has done for strategic coherence what reality television did for subtlety. His foreign policy operates on a simple rhythm: threaten catastrophe, announce talks, cancel talks, declare success, repeat. It is less a strategy than a mood board.

One imagines even his own advisors keeping notes with the faint hope of
identifying a pattern. They will be disappointed.

Enter Witkoff and Kushner — Zionist shills whose diplomatic qualifications begin and end with their proximity to power, and whose presence lends the process a certain… clarity. Not seriousness, but clarity. They are less negotiators than Tel Aviv’s accessories — reminders that in modern geopolitics, influence is sometimes measured not by expertise but by seating arrangements. That Tehran views them with scepticism is perhaps the only unsurprising development in this entire affair.

Iran, in this cast of improvisers, plays the only adult in the room.

Its position has been consistent, disciplined, and almost unfashionably grounded. No negotiations under coercion. No participation in headline-driven theatre. No confusion between appearing engaged and actually negotiating. Its foreign minister travels, speaks with precision, and — most scandalously — refuses to validate processes that exist only in press briefings. In a world where exaggeration is currency, such restraint feels almost subversive.

Which is precisely why it disrupts the show.

Because Munir, Sharif, and Trump do not need a deal; they need the suggestion of one. Pakistan’s establishment needs relevance it cannot generate domestically.

Trump needs the impression of control over events that appear largely indifferent to him. Kushner and Witkoff need a stage large enough to justify their continued presence.

Substance, in this context, is less an asset than a complication.

So narrative does the work.

Leaks appear. “Sources” murmur. Headlines promise imminent talks, imminent progress, imminent breakthroughs — each more imminent than the last. And then, inevitably, silence. No meetings. No agreements. No outcomes. Only the soft echo of a script performed so often it no longer requires conviction.

This is not diplomacy failing. It is diplomacy replaced — with something more efficient, more theatrical, and considerably less binding.

Pakistan’s media machinery, admirably responsive to official cues, delivers momentum on schedule and silence on demand. Accountability exits discreetly, stage left. Washington, meanwhile, enjoys the ambiguity — projecting progress without the burden of commitment, like a chef presenting an empty plate with great confidence.

Iran, once again, refuses the cuisine.

It insists on clarity where others serve fog. It demands terms where others offer slogans. It speaks on record where others rely on “sources” that sound suspiciously like ventriloquism. The asymmetry is almost unfair: one side performs, the other negotiates.

And so the spectacle continues — energetic, repetitive, and increasingly transparent.

Call it what it is: a production sustained by applause it has not quite earned. In Islamabad, the lights remain bright. The Field Marshal performs. The prime minister supports. Trump oscillates between menace and triumph with admirable stamina. Kushner and Witkoff linger, patiently awaiting a negotiation that continues to avoid them.

The curtain rises. The headlines flare. The denials follow.

And somewhere beyond the stage — beyond the choreography and the carefully managed illusion — one fact remains, stubborn and unglamorous: there were no talks, no breakthrough, no diplomacy worth the name.

Only spectacle. And the quiet realization that the audience, at long last, has read the
script.

In the end, the United States must acknowledge that Iran is inherently bound to the Strait of Hormuz

by Dr Jannus TH Siahaan

A view of the vessels passing through Strait of Hormuz following the two-week temporary ceasefire reached between the United States and Iran on the condition that the strait be reopened, seen in Oman on April 08, 2026. [Shady Alassar – Anadolu Agency]

The geography of the Strait of Hormuz is a cruel mistress to the logic of conventional military might, a reality that the world is rediscovering with agonizing clarity in the spring of 2026. For decades, the narrative of Western naval hegemony suggested that the sheer weight of American carrier strike groups could keep the world’s most vital energy jugular open by fiat. Yet, as the sun sets over the rugged, jagged cliffs of the Musandam Peninsula and the Iranian littoral, a different truth emerges: Iran has transformed the twenty-one miles of water at the strait’s narrowest point into a geostrategy fortress that the United States cannot simply bomb into submission.

The recent, fragile reopening of the waterway for commercial vessels is not a victory for Washington’s “Operation Epic Fury,” nor is it a surrender by Tehran. Instead, it is a calculated tactical adjustment within a larger game of geoeconomic hostage-taking, where the Iranian leadership has successfully leveraged geography, asymmetric warfare, and the energy desperation of Asia to force a superpower to the negotiating table in Islamabad.

The strategic advantage Iran holds over the Strait of Hormuz is rooted in a unique synergy between topography and doctrine. Unlike the open waters of the Pacific or the Atlantic, the Persian Gulf is a confined maritime theater.

The primary shipping lanes, governed by a Traffic Separation Scheme, hug the Omani and Iranian coasts, forcing massive tankers into a predictable and vulnerable path. Iran’s northern shoreline is a natural rampart of mountains and hidden coves, providing the perfect sanctuary for what the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) calls its “Mosaic Defense.” 

This decentralized command structure means that even if a decapitation strike were to paralyze Tehran, local units along the coast possess the autonomy and the hardware, thousands of sea mines, drone swarms, and mobile anti-ship ballistic missiles like the Khalij Fars, to continue the fight. This is why the 6,000 targets struck by US and Israeli forces since February 28 have failed to yield a “mission accomplished” moment. Every time a Tomahawk missile finds a fixed battery, two more mobile launchers vanish into the limestone caves of Larak or Qeshm Island.

For the United States, the military option to “force” the strait open is increasingly viewed by analysts as a form of strategic suicide. The term “Mutually Assured Devastation” has replaced the Cold War’s nuclear parity as the governing principle of the Gulf. If the US Navy were to attempt a full-scale clearance operation, Iran’s retaliatory playbook does not stop at the water’s edge. The IRGC has made it clear that any attempt to seize the strait would result in the systematic destruction of the region’s life-support systems. This includes the massive desalination plants in the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, alongside critical energy hubs like the Abqaiq oil processing facility. 

In a region where water is more precious than oil, the prospect of millions of people in desert cities losing access to drinking water within forty-eight hours creates a political cost that no Western government can sustain.

Consequently, the Trump administration has been forced into a paradoxical posture: maintaining a high-profile naval blockade of Iranian ports to save face, while simultaneously engaging in a marathon diplomatic scramble to avoid a kinetic escalation that would vaporize the global economy.

The current breakthrough, the announcement that the strait is “completely open” for commercial ships, must be viewed through this lens of stalemate. The reopening is not unconditional, it is tied directly to the ten-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. By linking the security of the world’s energy supply to the survival of its primary proxy in the Levant, Tehran has effectively expanded its “Strategic Depth” from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s declaration that ships must follow “coordinated routes” under IRGC supervision is a masterpiece of grey-zone sovereignty. 

It effectively institutionalizes a toll system and a security vetting process that challenges the very concept of “innocent passage” under international law. Reports of vessels paying upwards of two million dollars in “safe passage fees”, often settled in Chinese Yuan or cryptocurrency, suggest that Iran is successfully running a protection racket on a global scale, using the proceeds to fund the very reconstruction necessitated by American bombing.

The role of China and India in this drama cannot be overstated. As the primary consumers of the twenty million barrels of oil that transit the strait daily, Beijing and New Delhi have moved from being passive observers to active, albeit quiet, underwriters of the peace process. China, in particular, has utilized its “all-weather” partnership with Pakistan to facilitate the Islamabad Talks. Beijing is not a neutral mediator, it is a stakeholder that imports nearly 90% of Iranian oil and sees any permanent closure of the strait as a direct threat to its domestic stability. 

By allowing Chinese-linked tankers to pass through the blockade while Western-linked vessels were turned back, Iran used “smart control” to drive a wedge between Washington and its Asian partners. This pressure eventually bore fruit when the US, despite its public rhetoric of “unconditional surrender,” began discussing the unfreezing of six billion dollars in Iranian assets held in Qatar.

The Islamabad Talks, held at the Serena Hotel and the Jinnah Convention Centre, represent the highest level of direct engagement between Washington and Tehran since 1979. The 21-hour marathon session between Vice President JD Vance and Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was a collision of two uncompromising worldviews. The US demand for the total handover of Iran’s enriched uranium, the so-called “nuclear dust”, has been met with an Iranian counter-demand for the total lifting of primary and secondary sanctions and the withdrawal of US combat forces from the region. 

While the White House vehemently denies that any deal has been struck regarding the six billion dollars in Qatar, the very fact that the money is a central pillar of the discussion indicates a significant retreat from the “maximum pressure” of early 2026. The funds, originally frozen in 2018 and trapped in a cycle of release and re-freezing, have become the litmus test for whether a broader “grand bargain” is possible.

Looking ahead, the question remains whether this opening of the strait is a permanent return to normalcy or a temporary lull in a century-defining conflict. The obstacles to a lasting peace are formidable. The US Navy continues to enforce a blockade on Iranian ports, a move that Ghalibaf warned would eventually lead to the strait being closed once again. 

Furthermore, the 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon is a fragile foundation upon which to build global energy security. If Israel resumes its campaign against Hezbollah or if the US refuses to provide a verifiable path toward sanctions relief, the IRGC will likely return to its strategy of “controlled escalation.”

The risk of a naval incident, either through a miscalculation during a visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) operation or a rogue mine hit, remains high.

The reality of the 2026 crisis is that the Strait of Hormuz has been permanently altered. It is no longer an international waterway governed by the idealistic principles of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, it is a contested corridor where passage is a privilege granted by the coastal power, not a right exercised by the global community. Iran’s strategic advantage is not just in its missiles or its mines, but in its willingness to absorb pain and its recognition that in a multipolar world, the dependence of Asia is a more effective shield than any missile defense system. 

As the second round of talks in Islamabad approaches, the world is watching to see if the Trump administration will accept a “managed Iran” as the price of stable oil prices, or if the pursuit of the “really bad thing”, a nuclear-armed Iran, will lead to the very devastation that the diplomacy was meant to prevent. For now, the ships are moving, but the shadow of the IRGC looms large over every tanker, a reminder that in the Strait of Hormuz, the keys to the world’s economy are held firmly in Tehran.

Hormuz is the war’s invoice—and Washington can’t pay it

What Washington Missed?

by Tamer Ajrami

A ship waits to pass through the Strait of Hormuz following the two-week temporary ceasefire between the US and Iran, which is conditional on the opening of the strait, in Oman on April 8, 2026. Shipping traffic remained at low levels, reported. [Shady Alassar – Anadolu Agency]

Closing the Strait of Hormuz is not a side detail. It is the main pressure point. Every day the strait stays shut adds a new layer of cost to the global economy; and the shock travels back to the United States fast. This is not only about the price of oil. It is about a supply-chain squeeze: shipping insurance, freight costs, industrial inputs, petrochemicals, raw materials. Then inflation that lands on American consumers like a delayed war tax.

Washington’s mistake was deeper than one bad assumption. It believed military force alone can break political will, that markets will “adjust” on their own, and that a crisis can be managed through statements and threats the way you manage an election campaign.

But the economy does not negotiate with speeches. It reads facts: the passage is closed, risks are up, and costs are piling up.

Hormuz as a Weapon: “Economic Nuclear” without the fallout

The clearest lesson from this round is that Hormuz has become a new kind of deterrent: an economic weapon that can rival traditional military tools without radioactive fallout and without clear global red lines. Closing it does not kill directly, but it can choke slowly: energy prices, shipping, factories, then public anger and electoral punishment.

Iran’s advantage is structural. It does not need a classic battlefield victory to force a political outcome. It only needs to keep economic pressure alive until Washington goes looking for a deal. That is exactly what we are seeing.

Why Trump now looks like he is begging for a deal?

When the effects start reaching the U.S. economy (i.e. imported inflation from Asia, stress on supply chains, fear of shortages or price spikes in key industrial materials) the White House shifts from the language of “deterrence” to the language of “exit”. That is why channels suddenly reopen, mediators multiply, and Trump pushes for a fast deal.

The problem is that Trump wants a deal as a “moment”: a quick announcement, a press conference, a victory headline. Then details can be postponed. Iran, especially now, is not playing the headline game. It is playing the time game: each day raises the price of American retreat and strengthens Tehran’s leverage.

William Burns offers a rescue map—will Trump listen?

Inside the U.S. establishment, there is a realistic argument for how to get out. William Burns—former CIA director and a veteran of the Iran file—signals one basic rule: stop digging the hole deeper.

His core point is simple: serious negotiations require professionals, patience, and a return to the logic of the Obama-era nuclear framework, not fantasies of Iranian “capitulation”.

Diplomacy with Iran is not diktat. It is trade-offs: limits or a freeze on enrichment under strict verification, in exchange for meaningful sanctions relief. This is not generosity toward Tehran. It is the only formula that can produce a durable agreement.

On Hormuz, Burns’ implied approach is also clear: treat it as more than a bilateral US–Iran issue. Bring in the Gulf states that share the waterway. The goal is not to hand Iran a “toll booth” on world trade. The goal is a regional arrangement that reduces the chance of a repeat closure: maritime security, transit understandings, and potentially an internationally supervised mechanism—framed as a public good (clearing mines, stabilizing shipping) rather than as a reward.

Why is Iran hardening its position?

Because Tehran sees the full picture: a struggling US administration, nervous markets, and uneasy allies. And inside Iran, the hardline logic gains ground: this is not a moment for a cheap compromise. It is a moment to raise demands. Their argument is blunt: if the strait reopens without a serious political and economic price, Washington will try the same approach again later. So, they want a lesson that makes the next adventure too costly.

But hardening has limits.

Real negotiations do not give any side “everything”. Every player has ceilings and vulnerabilities. Iran has a powerful card; but turning pressure into lasting gains requires discipline, not triumphalism.

Washington’s Real Danger is Domestic

If the closure drags on, the crisis will not stay “over there”. It will become a US domestic issue: inflation, pressure on industry, supply disruptions, and political rivals weaponizing the failure. That is why Trump demands an immediate deal and why he is searching for any channel that can deliver an off-ramp before the bill grows larger.

Worse, time reduces American freedom of action. Any later agreement will look like a concession made under pressure. Delay does not strengthen Washington. It weakens its credibility, emboldens rivals, and alarms allies.

What does this mean for the region?

It means the rules are changing. Deterrence is no longer only about missiles and aircraft. It is also about chokepoints and supply chains. A region once managed through American military presence is being reshaped by the ability to disrupt global trade. That will alter Gulf calculations, Europe’s energy debate, and Asia’s view of reliance on a single vulnerable corridor.

Therefore, Trump wants a quick exit because time is working against him. Iran is tightening because time is working for it. But strategy is not a nerve game alone. It is the management of costs, gains, and limits.

Hormuz today is not just a passage. It is an economic leverage point that can decide political outcomes. Those in Washington who still treat it as a footnote will pay the price—first in markets, then at the ballot box.

From Palestine to Iran: This is Not a Religious War — It is a War on Religion

 By Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo

Palestinians return to the mosque to pray on the ruins of the Farouk Mosque. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

The greatest mistake one can make in trying to understand the violence consuming Palestine and the region is to call it a religious war. It is not.

A religious war suggests opposing camps driven by competing theologies, each claiming God as its exclusive mandate. That is not what is taking place. Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians, whether Muslim or Christian, Sunni or Shia, are not mobilized in some grand sectarian crusade. They are resisting siege, occupation, bombardment, humiliation, and erasure.

What we are witnessing instead is something darker: a war on religion itself.

This war manifests in many forms. It appears in the destruction of mosques in Gaza, in the tightening grip over Al-Aqsa Mosque, in the harassment of Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, in attacks on churches and shrines, in the mockery of sacred language, and in the growing contempt shown toward spiritual symbols and religious authority across the region. It is not theology that unites these acts, but power. It is domination stripped of restraint.

In Gaza, the Israeli part of this war is by now undeniable.

The destruction has not only been military. It has been civilizational. It has targeted the social, historical, and spiritual architecture of Palestinian life.

Gaza’s government media office said 835 mosques had been completely destroyed and 180 more partially damaged. Churches had also been struck, and 40 of Gaza’s 60 cemeteries had been destroyed.

This is not merely a matter of damaged buildings. A mosque is not reducible to stone, concrete, or minaret. A church is not only an old wall or a fragile roof. These are repositories of memory. They hold grief, continuity, ritual, and belonging. To destroy them on this scale is to assault not only a people’s present, but also their ancestry and their future.

In Gaza, where people now pray amid rubble and in bombed-out structures, religion itself has been forced into survival mode. Even worship has been made to kneel before annihilation.

Yet the Israeli war on Palestinian religion did not begin in Gaza, and it will not end there.

For decades, Jerusalem has served as a laboratory for this assault.

At Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinians have repeatedly been beaten, restricted, expelled, and humiliated under the language of “security.” Israeli forces have stormed the compound during Ramadan, firing stun grenades, assaulting worshippers, and turning one of Islam’s holiest sites into a space of fear rather than devotion.

In recent years, access has been tightly controlled through age restrictions, military permits, and checkpoints that prevent thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank from reaching Jerusalem at all. Even for those who do arrive, entry is often arbitrary, delayed, or denied altogether.

The result is not simply restricted movement, but a deeper assault on dignity: prayer reduced to permission, worship subjected to force, and a sacred space transformed into a site of constant surveillance and coercion.

Palestinian Christians know this reality no less intimately. For years, they have faced mounting pressure not only as Palestinians under occupation, but as custodians of a Christian presence in East Jerusalem that Israel has steadily made more precarious.

The Rossing Center documented 111 cases of harassment and violence against Christians in Israel and East Jerusalem in 2024, including 46 physical attacks and 35 attacks on church property.

Among the ugliest manifestations are the repeated incidents of extremists spitting at clergy, pilgrims, and Christian women in the Old City. Reuters reported in 2023 that Israeli police arrested suspects after growing complaints of precisely such acts.

Spitting is often dismissed by outsiders as a small indignity. It is not. It is a ritual of dehumanization. It is a public declaration that the other is impure, unwanted, and beneath dignity. When such acts become common enough to require police statements and special investigations, we are no longer speaking of isolated prejudice. We are speaking of a political culture in which contempt for Palestinian Christian presence has become normalized.

Recent events have only made this more explicit. On Palm Sunday this year, Israeli police barred Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, disrupting a centuries-old Christian observance before the decision was reversed after public outcry.

The symbolism was staggering. If even the highest Catholic authority in Jerusalem can be denied access to one of Christianity’s holiest sites, then no Christian in Palestine is meant to feel secure in the permanence of his or her faith, ritual, or place.

Then came one of the most grotesque scenes of all: the cutting off of the head of a Jesus statue in South Lebanon.

Reuters verified the authenticity of the image showing an Israeli soldier striking a statue of Jesus in Debel, a Christian village in southern Lebanon. Church leaders called it a “serious affront” to the Christian faith.

That language is accurate, but restrained. Such an act is not random vandalism. It is desecration in its most literal form. A statue of Christ is not worshipped as an object, but it is revered as a sacred representation. To mutilate it in a Christian town under military occupation is to send a chilling message: not even your most cherished symbols are beyond our reach.

That offense is not only religious. It is civilizational.

For Arab Christians, especially in Palestine and Lebanon, faith is not an imported or marginal identity. It is indigenous, ancient, and woven into the very history of the land. To attack their churches, insult their clergy, restrict their ceremonies, or destroy their sacred symbols is not merely to offend belief. It is to assault the very idea that they belong to the East at all.

The American role in this war on religion is different in history, but not in effect.

Donald Trump’s language and symbolism have repeatedly revealed a political culture that instrumentalizes religion while dishonoring everything religion is supposed to protect: humility, dignity, compassion, restraint, and reverence for life.

On April 5, in an Easter Sunday post threatening Iran, Trump ended his message with the phrase “Praise be to Allah.” It was not a gesture of respect. It was mockery—Islamic language turned into a taunt while military threats were being issued. And this was not an isolated vulgarity.

Trump also circulated an AI-generated image of himself dressed as a Jesus-like figure, provoking outrage among many Catholics, and then publicly attacked Pope Leo, calling him “terrible” and “weak” after the pontiff criticized war.

None of this is trivial. It reflects a political performance in which religious language is emptied of moral meaning and turned into ego, theater, and coercion.

Trump may present himself as a Christian leader, but the Christianity projected in these gestures is not one of mercy or justice. It is imperial, theatrical, violent, and profoundly anti-Christian in spirit.

That culture is echoed in the figures around him.

One could argue, of course, that all of this belongs to a much older Islamophobic discourse that has plagued the West for decades. That is true, but insufficient.

Because the contempt no longer falls only on Muslims. The degradation of Christian clergy in Jerusalem, the restrictions on Christian holy days, the hostility toward Pope Leo, and the desecration of Christ’s image in Lebanon suggest something broader and more dangerous.

This is not simply anti-Muslim politics in a familiar form. It is an assault on the sacred whenever the sacred stands in the way of militarism, supremacy, or domination.

This is why calling it a religious war is so misleading.

The peoples under attack are not fighting because they seek to impose religion. They are fighting, enduring, and surviving because they are being invaded, besieged, erased, and denied the most basic conditions of dignity—including the dignity of worship.

The more accurate description is a war on religion. Once a war reaches this stage, it loses even the last remnants of logic.

It becomes absolute—extremist, unrestrained, untethered from any moral limit. A war of this nature can only sustain itself through desecration and the systematic erasure of the other.

That is what makes it so profoundly dangerous—not only for Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians, but because it destroys the very moral boundaries that religion, at its best, is meant to preserve: the sanctity of life, the dignity of human beings, and the limits that should restrain violence.

– Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of eight books. His latest book, ‘Before the Flood,’ was published by Seven Stories Press. 

– Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and academic journals.