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colonialism
Israeli Defense Minister Tries to Walk Back Vow to 'Never Leave Gaza,' Build Settlements
The remarks drew critical responses, including from other Israelis and the White House.
Dec 23, 2025
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz "said the silent part out loud" on Tuesday, then promptly tried to walk back his comments that his country would not only never leave the Gaza Strip, but also reestablish settlements in the decimated exclave.
Israel evacuated Jewish settlements in Gaza two decades ago, but some officials have pushed for ethnically cleansing the strip of Palestinians and recolonizing it, particularly since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack and the devastating Israeli assault that followed.
The Times of Israel on Tuesday translated Katz's remarks—made during an event about expanding Beit El, a Jewish settlement in the illegally occupied West Bank—from Hebrew to English:
"With God's help, when the time comes, also in northern Gaza, we will establish Nahal pioneer groups in place of the settlements that were evacuated," he said. "We'll do it in the right way, at the appropriate time."
Katz was referring to the Nahal military unit that, in part, lets youths combine pioneering activities with military service. In the past, many of the outposts established by the unit went on to evolve into full-fledged settlements.
"We are deep inside Gaza, and we will never leave Gaza—there will be no such thing," Katz said. "We are here to defend and to prevent what happened from happening again."
The so-called peace plan for Gaza that US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced at the White House in late September notably states that "Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza," and "the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization."
Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff who launched a new political party a few months ago, responded to Katz on social media, writing in Hebrew, "While the government votes with one hand in favor of the Trump plan, it sells myths with the other hand about isolated settlement nuclei in the strip."
"Instead of strengthening security and bringing about an enlistment law that will bolster the IDF, the government, driven by narrow political considerations, continues to scatter irresponsible and empty declarations that only harm Israel's standing in the world," he added.
The White House was also critical of Katz's comments, with an unnamed official saying that "the more Israel provokes, the less the Arab countries want to work with them."
"The United States remains fully committed to President Trump's 20-point peace plan, which was agreed to by all parties and endorsed by the international community," the official continued. "The plan envisions a phased approach to security, governance, and reconstruction in Gaza. We expect all parties to adhere to the commitments they made under the 20-point plan."
Later Tuesday, Katz's office said that "the minister of defense's remarks regarding the integration of Nahal units in the northern Gaza Strip were made solely in a security context. The government has no intention of establishing settlements in the Gaza Strip. The minister of defense emphasized the central principle of border defense in every arena: The IDF is the first and last line of defense for Israel's citizens, and the state of Israel relies for its protection solely on it and on the security forces."
Katz became defense minister in November 2024, just weeks before the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for his fired predecessor, Yoav Gallat, and Netanyahu over Israel's assault on and blockade of Gaza. When Katz took on the new role after serving as foreign minister, Palestine defenders accused the prime minister of swapping one "genocidal lunatic" for another.
Israel faces an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. As of Tuesday, local officials put the death toll since October 2023 at 70,942, with another 171,195 Palestinians wounded, though global experts warn the true tallies are likely far higher.
At least 406 of those confirmed deaths have occurred since Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire that took effect October 10. In a Monday letter demanding action from the White House, dozens of Democratic US lawmakers noted Israel's "continued bombardment against civilians, destruction of property, and insufficient delivery of humanitarian aid."
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No, Diversity Is Not the Cause of Violence
The true problem lies elsewhere, such as in economic and power interests, the old drivers of wars and genocides.
Dec 16, 2025
On December 13, 2025, a man with a gun killed two students in a classroom at Brown University and left half a dozen seriously injured. This tragedy did not make headlines around the world because shootings are a tradition in the United States. According to various statistics, for a century (it would be necessary to add the colonization of centuries before, carried out by religious fanatics against Indians, Blacks, and Mexicans), mass murderers have tended to be supporters of the supremacist right, but it is they who blame diversity for all the ills of their societies. Fear is big business.
This massacre took a back seat when, the following day, 11 people were killed in Sydney, Australia. The victims were members of a Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah. Since the ban on semi-automatic rifles and strict regulation of firearms in 1996, massacres in Australia are a rarity.
Immediately, social media was flooded with explanations about the danger of Islam to the world, even when it was revealed that the man who stopped and disarmed one of the two attackers in the midst of the massacre was a 43-year-old Muslim, father of two children, who was shot twice. Benjamin Netanyahu will probably honor him with the Israel Prize in Human Values and Civil Heroism.
A couple of hours later, the richest Argentine in the world and resident of Uruguay, Marcos Galperin, who presents himself as the “founder and executive chairman of Mercado Libre” and Konex Prize winner, commented on the massacre with the same prejudice that the killers surely share: “Welcome to the new multicultural and diverse Australia.”
The now demonized multiculturalism is as old as the domestication of fire.
Could it be that the problem perceived by those who are against diversity is skin color? Why are non-Caucasians always the problem? When, for centuries, white people devoted themselves to assaulting, destroying, and massacring the rest of the world, they were only bringing civilization to those “shithole countries,” to use President Donald Trump's language to refer to the countries of the South. “Why do we accept people from these shithole countries, like Somalia, and not accept people from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark?” Perhaps because, to them, we are the shithole country.
The common factor is always the same: The problem is not cultural diversity, but something as superficial as skin color. When they find out that the native British and Belgians were black-skinned people, their blood sugar rises.
The now demonized multiculturalism is as old as the domestication of fire. There was no trade, let alone free trade (an ancient activity until it was destroyed by capitalism), without cultural, linguistic, religious, and technological exchange. From the 10th century until the beginning of the European slave trade, the Kingdom of Nri achieved almost 1,000 years of coexistence based on the principles of “peace, truth, and harmony.” The Nri culture, located in what is now Nigeria, shared with the Ubuntu philosophy of the southern continent its collective conception of the individual and its conception of peace and social harmony as higher goals. Its communal ownership of land and production, and its intense trade with other nations as far away as Egypt, ended with the arrival of Europeans and the novel slave trade based on skin color.
The same was true of Native American peoples. In most Indigenous cultures, foreigners who were adopted not only ended up integrating into the new society, but also tended to occupy a place of great respect in the social pyramid. The same cannot be said of the deeply racist societies of the revered Free World (“the free race,” white)―unless we are talking about sepoy soldiers.
In the Great Peace League of North America, the Iroquois adopted foreigners from all cultures and languages, including Europeans, who often did not want to return to “civilization.” Native diversity also included members of different genders (men and women “of two spirits”). These were not naive savages. For centuries, they defeated European armies armed with advanced technology, not because of their arrows but because of their superior social organization. They even expanded throughout the Ohio River basin in response to attacks by British and French armies. It was not for nothing that the natives mocked the white man's concept of freedom: “We are free,” they said. “We are not desperate to be rich, nor do we obey the orders of our leaders when they do not convince us. You submit to anything: kings, captains, priests...”
We could continue with other cultures, such as the Arab Empire, which lasted several centuries. Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted, prospered, and multiplied for centuries in one of the most outstanding civilizations in science, rational analysis, and technology.
Of course, if we look at the entire history of humanity, we will always find plenty of examples of violence, massacres, and genocide. No one can say that in these centuries of coexistence there were no conflicts, wars, and brutalities, because that is a chronic ailment of the human species. But if we compare realities, we can say that our contemporary world, which prides itself on being advanced and civilized, has stood out for its exceptional brutality. Suffice it to mention the world wars, the atomic bombs, or the imperial dictatorships imposed by the “sacrificed white man” (Rudyard Kipling, Theodore Roosevelt) on the rest of humanity. Always victimizing themselves for their own crimes. As Ukrainian Golda Meir said, “We can never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children.”
Although we cannot say that there are welcome forms of hatred, we can say that there is no single type of hatred. Slaves hated their masters for what they did, and masters hated their slaves for what they were. It is one thing to hate for what one is and another to hate for what one does.
If there is a problem with the ancient culture and morality of diversity and tolerance, it is that racists who promote civil and imperial violence are protected by the law. In fact, we reward them. Otherwise, it would be impossible to understand why the sect of global billionaires is racist, sexist, and hates the poor, whom they divide and parasitize every day.
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Israel's Colonial Aims Are the Main Barrier to Lasting Peace
What if Gaza agrees to surrender its weapons? Will Israel leave the Palestinians alone? Will the prospects of a just peace and Palestinian freedom increase exponentially?
Dec 14, 2025
US President Donald Trump's "Board of Peace" is reportedly set to be announced before the year's end. This news coincides with increasing reports that the US administration is serious about pushing forward the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire.
However, many critical questions remain unanswered. How can a governing council be superimposed on Gaza when Palestinians are unified in their rejection of any new form of Western mandate over their lives?
Furthermore, how can the proposed "International Stabilization Force" (ISF) operate in Gaza without total clarity regarding its mission? If the ISF ends up serving primarily as an Israeli line of defense, the entire project will collapse before it begins.
Neither Arab nor Muslim countries will seriously engage in subduing Palestinians on behalf of Israel. Any other participating force will inevitably be treated by Palestinians as an occupation force.
If Israel's genocide in Gaza is entirely motivated by the desire to crush the armed groups, then why the continued crushing of the West Bank?
The main obstacle, however, is the fact that Israel has never truly respected the first phase of the ceasefire, which began, in theory, on October 10. Since that date, Israeli forces have killed over 360 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more, while demolishing thousands of residential structures, according to satellite images verified by the BBC.
Worse, Israel has habitually bombed targets beyond the "Yellow Line," which was designated as the Palestinian area where humanitarian aid is allowed to flow and people are meant to return to some kind of normalcy, despite Gaza’s near-total destruction.
Israel is hoping to make the first phase of the agreement a permanent one. This intent is evident in the continued bombings; the prevention of lifesaving supplies and aid; and the constant, unsubstantiated accusations that Palestinians are the ones violating the ceasefire.
It is expected that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will make the disarmament of Gaza the main sticking point, knowing in advance that Gaza will not surrender its weapons. He has made this clear and repeatedly so, including on November 15, when he stated that “Hamas will be disarmed—either the easy way or the hard way.”
But what if Gaza agrees to surrender its weapons? Will Israel leave the Palestinians alone? Will the prospects of a just peace and Palestinian freedom increase exponentially? To address this question, let's delve very quickly into three experiences, two from history.
Palestinian and even some Israeli historians have argued that, during the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine, the Nakba, Israel had the intention of depopulating the country regardless of whether Palestinians resisted or not.
The implementation of Plan Dalet, the operation aimed at expelling the Palestinian population, was in no way related to the method or intensity of Palestinian resistance to Zionist militia violence.
In fact, the framework of that expulsion was predicated on the use of war as a pretext, as opposed to war as a response to Palestinian resistance. “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war,” wrote Zionist leader and Israel's first prime minister at the time, David Ben-Gurion.
Though some Mukhtars (village leaders) assumed that no resistance meant that they would be spared the same fate as those who resisted, they were wrong. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe writes: "Whereas the official Plan Dalet gave the villages the option to surrender, the operational orders did not exempt any village for any reason."
The same pattern was repeated throughout history. In 1982, after a US-brokered agreement to evacuate Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) forces out of Lebanon, the assumption was that their departure would keep the Israeli army from attacking Palestinian civilians.
Indeed, on August 21, 1982, PLO factions began leaving the country, leaving the camps undefended and their Lebanese allies vulnerable. However, Israeli violence in West Beirut had grown, not subsided, leading in September 1982 to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which killed up to 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians.
All the promises by Washington, the supposed "guarantees," and the diplomatic language of US envoy Philip Habib, who acted as the president's special envoy, meant absolutely nothing, as Israel helped facilitate one of history's most brutal massacres.
And, of course, there is the ongoing saga of the West Bank itself, which, unlike Gaza, lacks armed resistance infrastructure and is administered by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which operates based on an Israeli-US-Western mandate.
Yet, even before the Gaza genocide, the West Bank's suffering had grown, its land confiscated, entire communities ethnically cleansed, whole refugee camps destroyed, and hundreds of residents killed.
Between October 7, 2023, and late 2025, United Nations and human rights reports indicate that Israeli forces and settlers killed over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (more than 200 children). Thousands more were injured, and Israeli authorities destroyed or confiscated thousands of Palestinian-owned structures, displacing many. Additionally, an estimated 10,000 Palestinians from the West Bank were arrested between October 2023 and August 2024.
If Israel's genocide in Gaza is entirely motivated by the desire to crush the armed groups, then why the continued crushing of the West Bank?
Those who continue to entertain the Israeli narrative regarding Gaza must confront this historical record and acknowledge two crucial, enduring realities. First, Israel's violence is fundamentally driven by its settler-colonial ambitions, not merely by Palestinian resistance. Second, Palestinian resistance is a deeply rooted historical imperative—the native population's determined struggle for self-liberation from foreign occupation.
Only by abandoning the reductionist language that frames Israeli wars as simple responses to armed groups can we arrive at a profound understanding of events in Palestine, Israel's true motives, and the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle.
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