At the end of July, Hamas agreed to a Board of Peace (BoP) roadmap to implement Phase 2 of the three-stage ceasefire agreement. At its core is Hamas’s willingness to decommission its weapons. This would have been unthinkable only a few years ago and offers a realistic pathway for ending the Islamist group’s governance and security control over the devastated Strip.
This process will only begin once Israel has fully complied with its Phase 1 obligations, which it has yet to do. More fundamentally, it will require Israel to accept a process to end its military presence in Gaza and ultimately engage in negotiations towards Palestinian self-determination. Netanyahu and his hardline government have rejected the roadmap out of hand and are now the main threat to the ceasefire deal.
Having been largely sidelined, Europe now has a role to play in ensuring the deal succeeds.
The unfinished phase 1
Announced in September 2025, Trump’s 20-point plan aims to end the war in Gaza in three phases. The first phase conditioned the full cessation of hostilities and emergency relief on the release of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian groups. The second phase aims to remove Hamas from power and begin reconstruction—the roadmap Hamas agreed to in July outlines how this stage will work. The final phase would end with Israel’s full withdrawal from Gaza, the return of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the launch of a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
At the same time, Israel has continued to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the 70% of Gaza that remains under its control. Israel may now be seeking to create a new de facto border with Gaza and effectively annex a large chunk of the territory, potentially preparing for the return of Israeli settlements there in the future.
The roadmap
Once Phase 1 is complete, Palestinian factions will begin handing over their heavy weapons to the Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a transitional body created as part of the 20-point plan to replace Hamas governance and security control in the Strip. This will include the full alphabet soup of Palestinian armed groups—many of which are more hardline than Hamas—as well as Israeli-backed militias.
Heavy weapons will effectively be placed under lock and key, monitored by the International Stabilisation Force (ISF), which will deploy as a buffer between Israeli forces and NCAG-controlled areas. BoP officials have said Palestinian weapons could ultimately be dismantled and melted down. This would replicate how Northern Ireland’s decommissioning process dealt with weapons held by paramilitary groups. Tunnels and weapons production facilities would also be put out of action.
Small arms like AK-47s will instead be regulated by NCAG through a system of permits. NCAG will also establish a new police force made up of newly trained recruits and members of the Hamas-run civil police vetted and approved by the BoP.
Critically, the roadmap links the decommissioning process “to an Israeli withdrawal, in phases, from the areas under its control in Gaza”. According to previous understandings, Israel would withdraw to a new “Red Line” by the end of Phase 2, and from there to a “Black Line” along Gaza’s perimeter, where it would retain a narrow buffer zone until “Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.”
While the contours of Phase 2 are now clear, the final operational details still need to be hammered out between the sides during follow-up talks. Questions also remain over the lack of funding for the NCAG and the status of the ISF, which to date has only around 200 pledged troops from Morocco, though smaller numbers may also come from countries including Kosovo and Uganda. Meanwhile, the new Palestinian police force has yet to begin training in Egypt.
Europe is right to avoid directly funding the BoP. But it has considerable expertise in disarmament and security-sector reform, including through the EU’s EUPOL COPPS mission, which was established to assist the PA police in the West Bank. Europeans should offer critical personnel and technical expertise to support both the decommissioning process and the training of the new Palestinian police force.
The spoiler
The biggest obstacle remains Israel’s opposition to any transitional political process that would eventually force it out of the Strip and into talks on Palestinian self-determination
The biggest obstacle remains Israel’s opposition to any transitional political process that would eventually force it out of the Strip and into talks on Palestinian self-determination. The Israeli government has instead vowed to remain in Gaza and continue its military attacks. It has also opposed NCAG taking over until Hamas fully disarms, and demanded the right to veto troop contributions to the ISF from “hostile” countries such as Turkey and Qatar.
BoP officials now appear to be altering parts of the laboriously negotiated deal (and its own press release) to accommodate Israel’s hardline stance. They now state that Israeli withdrawal beyond the Yellow Line would begin only once the decommissioning process is complete. This appears to contradict the original text and Nikolay Mladenov, the BoP’s high representative, who initially said the two would move forward “in lockstep”. The accompanying Explanatory Note also reinforces this interpretation, outlining “a step-by-step process linking withdrawal phases to verified decommissioning steps.”
Such manoeuvring risks undermining Hamas support for the agreement. Moreover, by conditioning all further Israeli withdrawals on Gaza’s full demilitarisation, the BoP is in effect giving Israel a veto over the process itself, allowing it to deepen its control over the eastern half of Gaza. Given the near impossibility of removing every single Palestinian weapon, as many are held by families, clans, criminal networks and jihadi groups, Israel could argue indefinitely that the conditions for its withdrawal have not been met.
But even BoP efforts to placate Israel have failed to satisfy prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He continues to demand that the deal be re-negotiated, insisting that no Israeli redeployment will take place, even to the original Yellow Line, until Hamas has fully disarmed.
The path forward
Having secured Hamas’s unprecedented agreement to decommission its weapons, the BoP now needs to show the political will to implement its own deal. US officials have already warned Israel that US president Donald Trump would be “very, very disappointed” if Netanyahu derailed it. Although the prime minister’s far-right coalition limits his room for manoeuvre, Netanyahu has invested heavily in portraying his close relationship with Trump as a political asset—which means he cannot easily afford a public rupture with him.
Mladenov has won wide international praise for brokering the deal. Rather than modifying the terms he himself negotiated and risk the diplomatic gains already achieved, he should use his current political capital and Trump’s momentary re-engagement to insist that Israel implements rather than rewrites the agreement. If necessary, he should be prepared to call out Israeli obstruction, just as he previously cast Hamas as the main obstacle. Europe can further strengthen his hand by also highlighting Israel’s non-compliance with its obligations, as the Arab and Turkish mediators have done. The EU should also resume discussions on suspending the Association Agreement with Israel unless it complies.
Sustained diplomatic engagement before Israel’s October elections should aim to shift the terms of the domestic debate. The Israeli opposition has also been critical of the deal, accusing Netanyahu of weakness by allowing Hamas to survive, and is unlikely to chart a radical new course on Gaza if it wins. Nevertheless, opposition figures have also acknowledged that Israel’s battlefield gains need to be converted into lasting diplomatic achievements. Europe should use the political framework established by the Gaza roadmap to reinforce this logic and demonstrate how military gains can be converted into a sustainable political settlement.
Ultimately, success will depend on whether both sides conclude that diplomacy offers greater rewards than renewed war. Hamas is unlikely to complete decommissioning unless it believes that concessions today will lead to genuine political gains tomorrow towards Palestinian liberation. Equally, Israel will only embrace a durable ceasefire if it sees political transformation within Hamas that locks it into credible peace negotiations as a means of strengthening its long-term security. This makes Phase 3 every bit as important as Phase 2.
Without a credible pathway towards Palestinian self-determination, decommissioning risks becoming an end in itself rather than the foundation of a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. Equally, a future Israeli government will need to view full implementation of the Gaza agreement not as a concession to Hamas, but as the indispensable stepping stone towards normalisation with Saudi Arabia and deeper integration with the Arab and Islamic world. Europe should therefore work with its Arab partners to ensure that the Gaza deal is tied to a regional package. That would allow a future Israeli government to present withdrawal from Gaza and acceptance of a political process leading to a two-state solution not as unilateral compromises, but as part of a US-brokered grand bargain that underpins Israeli integration and security in the region.
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on July 21, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
In December 2023, former State Department official, Josh Paul told CNN anchor, Christiane Amanpour that during his tenure in the foreign service, he learned of the rape of a 13-year old boy by Israeli officers while in captivity. In response to U.S. inquiries, the Israeli Government designated the Defense for Children International, the Palestinian organization that documented the abuse, a terrorist organization.
Since then, multiple Palestinian testimonies have emerged, enough to fill the pages of reports by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR), the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. Among the most harrowing incidents was a leaked video of five Israeli officers gang raping a Palestinian detainee in Sde Teiman prison. An Israeli court not only acquitted the officers, but Israeli society celebrated them as heroes and protested their trial in infamous “right-to-rape” rallies. Still, when American journalist Nicholas Kristof published his opinion essay bemoaning impunity for the systematic sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli captivity in The New York Times, he insisted that there was “no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes.” (The Israeli government threatened to sue the paper of record for blood libel nonetheless.)
While Kristof, the UN, and human rights organizations are right to scrutinize the lack of concern and accountability for the sexual abuse of Palestinians, they have rarely asked how sexualized violence has functioned within Israel’s wider system of conquest, occupation and domination.
On June 30, 2026, the Palestinian Feminist Collective released a report that helps rectify that elision with meticulous research and painstaking documentation. A Predatory State: Israeli Systemic Sexualized and Gendered Violence against Palestinians lays out a decades-long pattern of Israeli sexual aggression against Palestinian children, women, and men. Harrowing as the 200-page report is, it is necessary reading for anyone concerned with human rights and gender justice. The report’s historic sweep, from the early days of the Zionist militia attacks on terrorized Palestinians, to the present day sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli prisons, should lay to rest any attempt to rationalize the current horrors as a response to the alleged rapes by Hamas militants of Israeli citizens or worse, an issue of a few rogue soldiers. Instead, the PFC report makes clear that such violence advances the genocide of the Palestinian people.
The report revisits a 1949 case, revealed in Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s own diary, in which he describes how a platoon of Israeli soldiers kidnapped a young Bedouin girl, “in her mid-teens.” When their commanding officer gave them the choice between using her as kitchen staff or a sex slave, the Israeli officers opted for the latter. They cut her hair and washed it with kerosene, then gang raped her so violently that on the next morning the officer in charge, Second Lieutenant Moshe, “saw fit to remove her from the world.”
Gendered violence is an inherent tool of settler colonialism and is not unique to Israel. Here in the United States, another settler colonial state, the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement has highlighted the impunity surrounding the sexual assault of indigenous women on reservations where overlapping US and native criminal jurisdictions have made indigenous women particularly vulnerable to sexual assault. That it remains a significantly under-resourced and unaddressed crisis is not an accident.
Similarly, Zionist ideology, as a nation-making enterprise, necessitates the dispossession of Palestinian land and, ultimately, Palestinian elimination through juridical negation — denying their right to self determination, forced removal, containment, and/or destruction. Sexual violence is central to that effort as it both advances ethnic cleansing ambitions and shatters the social cohesion of those Palestinians who remain.
Israeli historian Benny Morris, who bemoans the fact that the 1948 Nakba did not go far enough in ethnically cleansing Palestine, noted many reported instances of rape dating to the founding of the Zionist state. He observed that “because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg.” The sexual violence, like other forms of violence enacted throughout and since the Nakba, aimed to terrorize Palestinians and compel them to leave their towns and villages in search of safety. Official records show that the highest-ranking Israeli officials were fully aware of these abuses. The PFC report traces this history from before the establishment of Israel, into the present and intensified genocide in Gaza, to illustrate how Israel has always relied on sexual violence to advance its colonial plans. In it, we learn about the rape of civilians during the 1948 Nakba, the sexual torture of innocent prisoners in administrative detention during and in the aftermath of the 1967 War, and the rape of grassroots organizers during the Intifada, all the way to 2023–that is, before the October 7, 2023. The report also provides an analysis of the unfounded mass rape accusations against Hamas militants to demonstrate how such narratives work to further racialize Palestinian society as uncivilized and unworthy of life.
From being used as a method to expel Palestinians from their land in 1948 to the use of gendered sexualized violence to torture Palestinian detainees and prisoners in the wake of the 1967 War, and beyond, the report shows that while sexualized violence has changed frequency and form, it has remained a feature of settler-colonial displacement and oppression.
The United States cannot treat this as someone else’s crime. US officials have been told about these abuses. US weapons and diplomatic support continue to shield the system in which they occur. Accountability must go beyond a handful of soldiers to reach and tear down the legal, military and political structures that command and then protect these crimes.
When activists in Ireland heard that Peter Thiel’s secret club, Dialog, was planning to meet in the Irish countryside, they launched a campaign to stop it. They succeeded.
Peter Thiel is a Silicon Valley tech financier and the founder of the companies PayPal and Palantir who donated lavishly to Trump’s 2016 presidential run. In 2022, he financially backed 16 far-right congressional candidates. Thiel’s company Palantir has come under fire for supporting both the genocide in Gaza and the immigration crackdown in the United States.
Leaks about Dialogdropped in June, revealing information about Thiel’s 20-year-old elitist invitation-only organization and its planned Irish conference in August. Meeting topics included World War III, battlefield technologies, building a cult, and improving your sex life.
The meeting was to be held in the five-star Powerscourt Hotel in County Wicklow, Ireland. Several grassroots Irish groups — including Your Tech, Their Deaths and North Wicklow Against Genocide — created #DropDialog, a campaign to get the conference cancelled. They planned several protests at the Powerscourt Estate. They didn’t have to. News broke on July 3 that the event had been cancelled.
“Media reports say the genociders’ event, the Dialog conference, will not be hosted at Powerscourt Hotel,” they wrote, in a statement on the #DropDialog website. This is a victory for all people of conscience who mobilised against it and shows that direct action works! We issue a warning to any other hotel or venue on the island of Ireland who may consider hosting these individuals. Genociders, warmongers and technofascists are not welcome in Ireland. Power to the people!”
Jude Farrell is a founder of the group Your Tech, Their Deaths. She is a former Irish Big Tech worker, a human rights activist, and a mom. She’s been involved in the pro-Palestinian movement in Ireland.
“Everything the Irish people do to support Palestine is really to help end imperialism, colonialism, oppression for everybody,” she says.
Michael Fox spoke with Jude on July 8, as part of the Battle for Free Speechpodcast.
When they spoke, Jude had just left a protest in Dublin against the tech company Snyk Limited.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Michael Fox: Tell me about this protest that you just left. Where were you just now?
Jude Farrell: Okay, so AIB [Allied Irish Banks] which is one of the largest banks in Ireland, are about to sign a contract with a tech firm called Snyk. Now, Snyk is set up by three Israeli soldiers. Not just your standard Israeli soldier, but they’re actually former soldiers from unit 8200, which is the most nefarious evil unit in the Israeli occupying army. So this information was shared with us by an employee [of AIB] about seven weeks ago, and we have been protesting since then. And we are making headway. Right now, AIB have paused the contract, but they are refusing to put in writing or make a public statement saying that they will not sign this contract with Snyk. We just need to push in a similar way that we kicked outDialog from the Powerscourt Hotel in Wicklow last week.
I don’t know if you know this, Mike, but the word “boycott” was actually coined in Ireland. Boycott was an individual, an Irish person, and that person actually got boycotted. So the Irish people know how to come together, use our voices, use our boycott power, close their AIB accounts, move elsewhere to non-complicit banks, and it will happen.
Members of Your Tech, Their Deaths protest in front of the Irish back AIB. Courtesy of Your Tech, Their Deaths.
Michael Fox: Wow, that’s incredible. And what a great piece of history to tie it all together. What Big Tech company did you work for?
Jude Farrell: I worked for Google. I worked for Google at a time when… I don’t think they were as evil as they are now. And I worked for Google at a time when they did not use their technology for warfare or for governments. I really enjoyed my time at Google. And I am personally heartbroken at the path that they have taken, and I fully support the boycott of Google in order to support the Palestinian people.
Michael Fox: Can you tell me a little bit about your organization, Your Tech, Their Deaths?
Jude Farrell: I set up this group only about a year ago from a sense of frustration that there wasn’t enough information out there about Big Tech’s role in the genocide in Palestine, and in particular the Big Tech EU bases in Ireland. I set it up to educate people, but also to start a people-led boycott group to move people away from using the likes of Gmail, move them towards Proton. We focus on US big tech. We focus on Israeli tech. We focus on Zionist technology. And we are making an impact.
We had heavy involvement in Drop Dialog last week. We are working really hard to get AIB Bank to drop their use of Israeli technology. It’s a grassroots led initiative, but it’s very much brick-by-brick. A small, committed group of people can impact change. And that is in Irish blood. That is in our DNA. We saw the Dunnes Stores workers, 21-year-old Mary Manning, refusing to sell a South African grapefruit. And to be honest, we’re taking the same approach with Israeli tech in Irish organizations, in Irish semi-state bodies.
We do not want any complicit tech in Ireland, and Your Tech, Their Deaths will not stop until that’s ended.
Michael Fox: Are all of the Big Tech firms in Ireland? Is Ireland the main spot where they’re located in Europe at this point?
Jude Farrell: Yes. And they’re only here to take advantage of our friendly tax rates. It’s absolutely galling, the amount that are here, and it is galling that the Irish government continues to welcome them.
We have Chat GPT here, Open AI. We have Anthropic. The Irish government welcomed Anthropic last year with open arms. Enterprise Ireland helped facilitate them with grants and publicity. And it’s sickening to think that an organization like Anthropic can come in here, be given tax breaks, being given great publicity, and yet go on to commit the murder of over 160 schoolgirls in Minab, in Iran, but the Irish government says, “Welcome, Anthropic.”
Michael Fox: Talk to me about Dialog and this conference. How did you all hear about it? How did you shut it down? And congratulations.
Jude Farrell: Thank you. It was a huge collaborative effort. And it wasn’t just Your Tech, Their Death. There was great involvement from North Wicklow Against Genocide because this event was actually going to take place in County Wicklow in Ireland. So that group took a huge lead on it. And then there were just general Irish people that popped up, you know, ad hoc, and got involved where they could.
Michael Fox: Why were you so concerned about Dialog? What is it about Peter Thiel and this organization that should be terrifying for everybody?
Jude Farrell: I think it’s not just Peter Thiel, it’s not just Palantir, but it is the audacity and arrogance of individuals like Thiel that they think that they would be welcome in any country and come in and discuss topics such as how to build a cult and how to get through World War III, when we know that they are entirely focused on their own power and privilege. They are not using technology or data for the good of humankind. They’re only using it to fill their own coffers, and they use it specifically to oppress and control people.
So Palantir, for example, they are now getting pushback from the UK government. So people are very slowly starting to understand the consequence of giving large nefarious organizations like Palantir access and control of individuals’ data. That data is being used to suppress, to surveil, to oppress people. It’s being used for profiteering and warmongering.
We know that they are entirely focused on their own power and privilege. They are not using technology or data for the good of humankind.
Michael Fox: What is it about Big Tech that people need to understand? And, in particular, [about] the fact that they’re moving into so many different places. They’re pushing into Ireland, they’re pushing into Europe. These are US companies, or companies, like you just said, from Israel or other places. What is it about Big Tech, and what they’re doing, that people need to stand up against and that’s so concerning?
Jude Farrell: I don’t know if America realizes how ancient the history in Ireland is with Big Tech. Google opened their first data center in Ireland before they even opened their first office here. Then they opened their EU office here. They opened it here to take advantage of our very friendly tax rates. And the thing that I really want people to understand, and I didn’t understand this myself, going back to my time working in Google in particular, is that nothing is free, Mike.
If you are being offered a tech product for free, like Gmail, like Google Maps, you have to understand that it is not free. They are taking your data. They are selling your data to third parties. They are using that data, commodifying that data, and that data is then going to come back and basically be utilized against you. So, with Big Tech in Ireland, I want people to understand that their privacy, and their security, and their ownership of their data is absolutely pivotal to their safety in the future and the safety of the next generation, as well. And I don’t think we understand that in Ireland.
And that is largely thanks to the role of the Irish government — multiple Irish governments now — acting almost as [confiders] for agents for, unfortunately, Mike, US imperialist interests. So having Google in Ireland, or Amazon, or X, formerly Twitter, all of these large American companies, the Irish public are constantly told how lucky we are to have these companies here. We’re told how much money they’re bringing into our economy, when the reality is they are actually extracting from the Irish people, from the Irish land, all of our resources — whether it is extracting our intellect, whether it is extracting our renewable energies, they benefit more from us than we do from them. But this would be a huge lens shift for the Irish people to understand.
But I do think that they’re starting to get it, unfortunately, because of the genocide in Palestine. So we know, for example, that Microsoft have actually held illegally surveilled Palestinian people’s data in data centers on Irish land. And that data then has been used to blackmail Palestinians, surveil, track, murder them. And then you take that even a year forward, and data like that, phone call data, that’’s now actually being used to turn into the latest LLM AI models and build voice recognition, voice profiles, to further suppress Palestinians.
But we know it will not stop in the Palestinian laboratory; this is also then being used back in the United States. It’s being used by ICE to oppress migrants and American citizens and children in the United States. So really I just want people to understand that with Big Tech nothing is free. Your privacy and your data is everything. And no, Big Tech in Ireland are not benefiting us.
Michael Fox: My podcast is very much about free speech, and looking at the different definitions of free speech and how the United States, and particularly these Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley, are trying to push this idea of absolutist free speech, even though it’s not actually absolute, but “absolutist,” for people to be able to do whatever they want to, or say whatever they want online — hate speech, whatever else.
First off, what is your definition of free speech? And are you concerned that these Big Tech companies are trying to push their vision for the world elsewhere, as well as fueling disinformation, fueling hate speech, etc.?
Jude Farrell: Your future — America’s future — is intrinsically tied with Ireland’s future. So if you fuck shit up, you fuck it up for everybody.
And it’s the same with the United Kingdom. It’s the same with America. It’s the same with Germany. You cannot view Big Tech or freedom of speech in isolation. It would be the biggest and the most naive error for any of us to take that approach. What happens in imperialist countries like the United States trickles down to us here in Ireland.
I’m extremely worried about free speech. But you asked me what my personal definition of free speech was. And I suppose, for me, free speech should be being able to say anything so long as it does not harm an individual. So yeah, you can have your opinions. You can even have what could be considered divisive opinions. But as long as you’re not inciting hate yourself, or inciting others to hate, then I support free speech. Of course I do. I’m Irish. We are an oppressed people still. We have six of our counties still occupied by a foreign entity. We lost our language. It was illegal to speak, to learn Irish. And that impact we see generations later, and we’re only starting to understand the impact. It’s like we’ve got a hangover from our own oppression — the silencing of our religion, the silencing of our language, of our culture.
So yeah, free speech is incredibly important in Ireland.
We’re told how much money they’re bringing into our economy, when the reality is they are actually extracting from the Irish people, from the Irish land, all of our resources — whether it is extracting our intellect, whether it is extracting our renewable energies, they benefit more from us than we do from them.
Michael Fox: Were you following Elon Musk’s role in the Belfast riots that happened recently? And can you talk to this a little bit? Because I think this is really important in terms of understanding how the social media platforms and these kind of far-right billionaire — trillionaire — activists are fueling this kind of hatred.
Jude Farrell: I didn’t follow it in depth. And even though I’m Irish, I do not presume myself to be an expert on what it is like to grow up and live in the occupied six. So I want to be really respectful of giving my opinion here. But in the social media platforms and media conglomerates in general, promoting dangerous ideologies in order to push their own ideologies and their own aims to control and suppress, it’s extremely worrying. With the Belfast riots, but also with the influence of the far right in Ireland in particular, I would say two things.
I would say that the far right is actually smaller than they even think they are. I think they’re like one of those yappy little dogs. They don’t have much power or control in Ireland yet, thankfully.
I’ll also say that I think they are purposely targeting a population on the island of Ireland, in general, that are really suffering thanks to decades worth of poor decisions from different Irish governments. There is a very big issue in Ireland with a cost of living crisis, with public transport, infrastructure, with healthcare, with education. If you look on paper at Ireland, we should be rich as fuck. And yet we are not. For all this money the imperialist asses are throwing in here, Ireland is really, really struggling.
But these social media channels, these media conglomerates, figures like Elon Musk, etc., it is very easy to put the blame on immigrants. And immigrants are not the problem. The problem is actually with allowing imperialist people to take our resources here.
And it’s very easy for social media to target immigrants, but you can’t be Irish and be racist.
We are a nation that is built on immigration. We had to leave Ireland due to our own genocide, thanks to the British, through our own man-made famine, thanks to the British, and we went to the places like America and Australia and built those countries. You cannot be Irish and be racist.
Fear is a very powerful thing, a powerful tool to use on social media, and Irish people are struggling. Our utility bills, our energy bills, are the highest in the EU. They’re the highest in Europe. But this is thanks to the Irish government allowing US companies to come in and build data centers here when our grid is not even capable of powering these data centers, giving US tech firms reduced energy contracts, whilst hiking energy bills for the average Irish person.
So that’s who we should be looking at. We should be looking outwards, not inwards.
Michael Fox: If you were going to speak to people within the United States who don’t necessarily understand the power these Big Tech firms have abroad, what would you tell them? Are you concerned about the impact that these firms and the spread of their agenda may be having in Ireland and in other countries all around the world?
Jude Farrell: I think I actually have some hope for Ireland around this. And I think I have hope because of generations that are younger than me. If I think back to how younger generations in America responded to TikTok being bought out by Larry Ellison, and the number of TikTok users dropping pretty sharply… I think we’re seeing similar in Ireland. So it’s not enough yet, but there is an awareness, particularly amongst younger people in Ireland, that the information that you get online from TikTok, from Google, from YouTube, from Meta, isn’t necessarily factual and isn’t necessarily well intended.
Activist Jude Farrell during a protest in Ireland. Courtesy of Jude Farrell. Photographer Merita de Melo. Instagram @meritademelo
So I do have hope that people are seeing that change. I just think we need to push more within Ireland in taking the shine off these big American companies. When they came to us in the early 2000s, it was hugely exciting because Ireland has always been like the poor cousins compared to the United States or the United Kingdom. And I think we felt lucky that Google or Amazon or Twitter picked us, and I think that those companies took advantage of our low self-esteem, the fact that we haven’t gotten over our own genocide and occupation.
But there is definitely a change since… I’m sorry to bring it back again to Palestine, but there is a change since Oct. 7. Because we’re not seeing it on our own media.
So if you think in America that what you see on, like on TV as opposed to independent journalism, it’s no different here. RTE, our national broadcaster, is heavily complicit in suppressing what has been occurring in Palestine, the language that they use to talk about the genocide. I don’t know how many years it took them to even use the “G” word, but that is no different here. But there is a movement towards independent journalism in Ireland that is reassuring. So things are bad, but I think there’s hope.
Michael Fox: Ireland is a place where you have long seen progressive organizing and people standing up. Are you concerned for the far-right wave around the world and the narratives being pushed by the right and these tech firms, and what they could mean for Ireland? Or do you think that the Irish will continue to stand up and hold out?
Jude Farrell: The far right in Ireland isn’t as big as the far right actually think that they are. And that is partly because there is a history within the Irish people, because of our own occupation in standing up for the underdog, in standing up for what is right and being very vocal when we see oppression of any kind.
Irish people, in general, are not racist. Racism, yes, can occur everywhere, and unfortunately it does occur in Ireland, but, overall, Irish people are incredibly welcoming of all nations because we’’re a nation of immigrants ourselves.
And, I think, if you look back to the fuel protests in Ireland that happened a couple of months ago… when those first occurred, there was a big push on social media from some far-right figures in Ireland. And they were trying to shift all the blame onto immigrants and certain races and refugees. The reality is the far right were silenced pretty quickly. I actually attended some of the fuel protests as a legal observer for the ICCL [Irish Council for Civil Liberties], which is a UN-recognized role where we attend protests to observe how the police in Ireland interact with protesters.
So I got to actually watch the few fuel protests from a neutral point of view, rather than being an activist. And what I actually saw was some key “far-right figures,” and I’m using inverted commas here, you know, rock up to O’Connell Street, our central street in Dublin.
And they had a couple of fangirls and fanboys around them. But, in general, they weren’t welcome. They weren’t given a huge amount of air time, because the fuel protests were about the Irish people.
And you cannot be racist and Irish.
The fuel protests were about highlighting the terrible decisions that multiple Irish governments have made that continuously impact the standard of living of Irish people. And Irish people being any people of any color or any creed that live on the island of Ireland.
So while the far right, yes, was trying to push their own agenda around the fuel protests, the reality was it was ordinary men and women. It was farmers. It was hauliers. It was mums, dads, kids. It was the ordinary Irish people that came out and shut the country down. And I was so goddamn proud to be Irish during those fuel protests. And it terrified the government. And I’m really glad, because the government need to listen to the Irish people. And the problem is government policies. The problem is not immigrants.
Michael Fox: Why is Big Tech so concerning for you, Jude?
Jude Farrell: I’m not anti-technology. I am anti how Big Tech is currently being used to profit from war or to oppress people. If technology — in particular AI — could be used for good, if it could be used for science, if it could used be used for medical research, then I would be completely behind it.
The challenge is the very tiny group of people that are funding and lobbying and powering AI currently, they’re just doing it to keep themselves in billionaire status, to move themselves to trillionaire status. And they’re just going to continue to grow the gap between us and them and just further oppress people, no matter what color your skin is, where you live, what your religion is.
If that type of Big Tech is not stopped, it is coming for us all.
Michael Fox: Do you think that that technology should be democratized? Do you believe that there should be a way for it to be shared equally and not be just for profit, or the insane amount of profits that we’re seeing now?
Jude Farrell: Yeah, absolutely. And I do think that governments, in particular, can make a move away from using Big Tech at a government level to open source [software]. If we have to have data centers, why can’t they be data centers for the people? AI has the potential to move humankind forward massively in a positive manner, but it does have to be for the people, by the people.
If you look at France, for example, their government has been actively working for, I think, the last 12 to 18 months on moving away from Microsoft and moving towards open source. And that’s the type of thing that Ireland needs to do.
The Irish government is so firmly embedded with US imperialist tech that I don’t think they’d even know where to start, which is why the people in Ireland are driving change. It’s not the government. The government will consistently vote against, block, any type of movement towards a democratic, non-oppressive way of being. Whereas the Irish people like me and other members of Your Tech, Their Deaths, we’re focused on highlighting the fact that and Irish government, state and and semi-state bodies are using technologies like Checkpoint, which I know is huge in the US as well, but that wasn’t even well known in Ireland until last year. But we are using Israeli ex-IOF technology in our banking system, in our postal system, in our electricity grid, in our hospitals.
And there is no conversation about this at government level. All that push is coming from the people. And it must continue from the people, because we have to move away from complicit tech, whether it is US big tech, whether it is Zionist tech, whether it is Israeli tech. And we need to build more of our own tech — Irish tech. We need to build European tech. We need to move to open source and not have this monopoly with US big tech.
Members of the organization Your Tech, Their Deaths protest in defense of Palestine. Courtesy of Your Tech, Their Deaths.
Michael Fox: Talk to me about Palestine, what these tech companies are doing there.
Jude Farrell: What we are seeing with Big Tech companies in Ireland, like Google, like Meta, like X, like TikTok, is the purposeful suppression of brown-skinned voices — in particular Palestinian voices, or individuals that are supporting the Palestinian people. We have seen data and multiple reports saying that Meta, in particular, are removing pro-Palestine content from Facebook, from WhatsApp, from other platforms, specifically at the behest of the Israeli government.
We actually have Hasbara ads paid for by the Israeli government and being funneled through Google Ireland, the EU headquarters here. To give two examples on that: We saw ads going through and the Google Ireland office where the Israeli government were paying YouTubers and placing Google ads and denying the famine that was occurring in Palestine. When we could see men, women, children, and babies dying of starvation in front of us, there were paid Google ads saying that these claims were false. More recently, we have seen the same type of ads coming out of Google — Google Ireland in Dublin — around the recent UN report showing that the Israeli occupying army were specifically targeting children, were specifically sniping children and babies. And immediately after that, we saw more Hasbara adverts coming out.
So when you typed in “UN report on children being targeted by Israel” the first ad that came up was a paid ad thanks to Google and the Israeli government saying that the UN is biased towards Israel.
Those ads are being funneled through Ireland, even if they’re booked in a different location. I personally don’t believe they are being booked elsewhere, but even if they are booked elsewhere, they go through the books here so that Google can take advantage of our low corporate tax rate.
Michael Fox: Is there anything else to add that you think is important?
Jude Farrell: So fucking much, Mike.
I want to touch on something that I don’t think Irish people, and definitely American people, aren’t going to understand about who is operating in these large tech companies in the US and in Ireland at the trust and safety level.
These people tend to be Zionists. They tend to be ex-IOF soldiers. And they are using their positions of power in companies like Google, like Meta, like TikTok, like X to actually influence and shape what is being put out by those platforms. And they do this by flagging anything that is pro-Palestine, that is pro-Islam, and flagging these videos or comments as being antisemitic.
This is an absolute abuse of power. And what terrifies me is that we’ve seen this happening in other countries as well, like the UK, like Australia. We’ve seen the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of antisemitism come into Australia. The Australian people trying to push back against that definition for the longest time, and, unfortunately, it came through. And the reality is that Zionism is not a religion. Zionism is a supremacist, occupying, colonizing ideology that is as dangerous and as evil as Nazism.
And it breaks my heart to see our Jewish community in Ireland, or in other countries, be in any way associated with Zionism, because Judaism is not Zionism. Yet this small, elitist, powerful, privileged group of people, particularly via Big Tech trust and safety, are using their influence to lobby tech companies, to lobby governments, to change the definition of what antisemitism is, and to actually change it to anti-Zionism.
Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and I think that is hugely concerning, and Americans and Irish people need to understand that.
We’ve seen the genocide in Palestine head into its third year now, and everybody watching it start said if we do not stop it in Palestine it is just going to continue, and it is going to spread, because evil crosses oceans.
I don’t think people know this, but Ireland is Israel’s second biggest trading partner. It goes USA, Ireland, China. And this trade is mainly in technology. This trade is nearly entirely thanks to Intel. So you’re talking about just over, I think, 3 billion euros in exports in electronic circuits and chips. So it’s really heartbreaking to hear people say Ireland is doing such a great job of supporting Palestine. Yes, the Irish people support Palestine. But no, the Irish government does not support Palestine. The Irish government spent eight years obfuscating and silencing and in the end effectively shutting down the Occupy Territories Bill. They voted on it yesterday [July 7] to put it forward immediately with them excluding services.
So we are basically going to ban, I think, around 200,000 worth of Jaffa oranges. I’m oversimplifying things a little bit there, but that’s essentially what we’re doing. It’s insulting. Whereas we could enact sweeping sanctions against the terror state that is Israel. And that is actually what we are meant to do under the Geneva Convention. Every state is meant to do their utmost to prevent genocide.
Well, we are two and a half years into a genocide and we are still Israel’’s second largest trading partner, so, no, do not commend Ireland. Don’t even commend the Irish people. Yes, we are doing something, but we need to do more. What we are doing is not good enough. We are not angry enough. We are not disruptive enough. We are not willing to be as uncomfortable as we need to be, in order to actually effect change. The Irish people need to do more and the Irish government need to pull their fucking finger out.
Israel’s recent attacks on Lebanon and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank are part of a long history of military aggression and occupation. But the Zionist project of creating a “Greater Israel” in the region has reached new heights, with senior government officials openly advocating territorial expansion into sovereign nations like Lebanon.
In the southern suburbs of Beirut, the Palestinian refugee camps of Shatila and Bourj al-Barajneh have been a home to generations of Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Nakba. Residents of these camps have endured decades of violence, while holding onto the dream of one day returning to their stolen homeland.
TRNN was granted exclusive access to the Shatila and Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camps. In this on-the-ground report, we take you inside the camps in the midst of the latest conflict, and we speak to residents about their lives, resistance, and dreams of returning home.
Credits:
Filmed, directed and edited by Ross Domoney
Produced by TRNN, Antonis Vradis, and Shadowgraph Media
“Israel aims to establish a greater Jewish state from the Euphrates to the Nile. All Arabs are threatened, not only Palestinians. Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan—all are threatened”
Time is running out to save the life of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was abducted by Israel’s military and has been held for over 18 months in Israeli detention without charge. Dr. Abu Safiya’s lawyers report that he has suffered extreme torture and medical neglect and that his life is in mortal danger, but Israel has repeatedly ignored international calls to free him. We speak about the current condition of Dr. Abu Safiya and international efforts to free him with Dr. Nidal Jboor and Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle, cofounders of Doctors Against Genocide.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Time is running out to save the life of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital who was abducted by Israel’s military and has been held for over 18 months in Israeli detention without charge and was last seen showing visible signs of extreme torture and medical neglect. His family has issued this plea to people of conscience around the world. Take a listen.
Speaker 2:
My father was unable to breathe. My father was unable to speak. His face was disfigured from the marks of torture and pain, especially after the last court session held in Jerusalem at the Supreme Court. We still call out plead and appeal and beg to all the free people of the world and to everyone with an atom of humanity in their heart to save my father’s life before it’s too late.
Maximillian Alvarez:
The rogue state of Israel has repeatedly ignored the demands and desperate pleas from around the world to free Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. And with us today to tell you what you need to know and what you can do. I’m grateful to be joined today by Dr. Nidal Jboor and Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle, co-founders of the group Doctors Against Genocide. Thank you both so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Can you please start by telling our audience what we know and what we don’t know about the current state of Dr. Abu Safiya and the other doctors and medical workers who are also being held captive by Israel right now?
Dr. Nidal Jboor:
Yeah, I thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for helping us speak about this important topic. And yes, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is one of the greatest human beings that we knew. We consider him a friend. He used to come on our webinars every week to report on the situation in his hospital and on the children that he was treating and trying to protect and save their lives in the hospital. So we consider him one of our own. We know this guy, we can vouch for him. He’s not just a number, he’s not an abstract. He is part of us, part of the medical community and a close friend for us. And he appealed to us and to the whole world to come and save him, save the children, save the other doctors, save the patients in the hospital many times before he got abducted. And we tried our best to share his voice, his appeal.
One of his appeals was even to President Trump just after he got elected before he assumed presidency. But unfortunately we all failed him. We failed the children, we failed the other doctors and they were raided, they were invaded. He was abducted along with many other doctors and nurses and healthcare workers. Many of them got shot. One of them got murdered during that raid. Many of the patients got killed. The others were forced to flee. They also abducted many patients. And since then for more than 560 days now, he’s been enduring the most horrific conditions you can imagine. He lost more than half of his weight. He’s being tortured, he’s been held in solitary confinements for long periods of time. And we have been speaking to everyone trying to help him. But what made this call even more urgent is almost a week ago and after long delays, his lawyer managed to see him and he could not recognize him at all.
He didn’t know that this is the person that we know. He witnessed, and that’s the lawyer testimony, severe signs of torture all over him. And his head, neck, behind his ears, all over his body with fresh bruises, active bleeding. He was not able to sit in the chair to finish the interview. His consciousness was on and off. He reported to the lawyer that they have been beaten him with batons, with hammers, with metal objects, and they are intent on killing him. He’s been there for solitary confinements for more than a few weeks since the Supreme Court of Israel refused to take his case. And the last thing he shared with the lawyer is that I don’t think you’ll see me next time. I don’t think I’ll survive this. They’re killing me. And we sit here as doctors, healthcare workers, human beings all over the world.
Watch a human being being tortured in front of all of our eyes. We failed him once. We don’t want to fail him again. This is not acceptable for any doctor, for any healthcare worker, for any human being. There are all types of absolute prohibition of torture under all international laws, international humanitarian laws, Geneva conventions. And even here in the United States as a medical community, we have all our major organizations, the American Medical Organization, the American Psychiatric Organization, the American Psychological Organization. All of them have resolutions and codes of ethics that absolutely prohibit torture under any circumstances for anyone anywhere, regardless of their chart, regardless of their crime, regardless who they are. And these resolutions have been enacted and passed in the last decade. So in light of this, we will not sit down and watch him being killed. We don’t think any human being deserves to be tortured regardless of who they are, especially someone that we know personally.
We know he’s innocent. We know he did not commit any crime other than refusing to abandon the children he was taking care of. And we are calling upon our major medical organization who are unfortunately until now completely silent on this. They’re betraying their own ethics, their own ethics and codes of conduct that they are imposing on us. And we are demanding that at least to live up and asking them to live up to their own codes of ethics, not anyone else, and to speak up and to issue a statement and to reach out to the Israeli Medical Association. And they do have power, they do have leverage, and we know that if they move, we can save at least the life of Dr. Hassem along with his other colleagues. Yes,
Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle:
This is pretty much where we stand. As doctors again, genocide, our mission is to mobilize the medical community and to speak up against war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. We have many members, have thousands of members all over the world. And we have heard the call from Rasda, the physician syndicate in Raza called for a standout for acts of solidarity with them and with their colleagues who have been detained by Israel in torture camps and torture prisons. So the medical syndicate in Raza is calling on the colleagues, the medical community, the medical community in the rest of Palestine, in the West Bank, in Jordan, all over the world. We are calling on our members to take a stand. We have dedicated an hour of our day today to make all the people with conscious to take action. The action could be calling the elected officials.
We have placed thousands of phone calls to the Senate, to the Congress, to the Parliament in Canada, to different politicians all over the world. We have been calling our medical associations. We have been taking stances with protests and standouts and visuals and all our actions are coming through with social media and our members’ communications. And our goal from that is to mobilize, to raise awareness, not to be silent. We understand that silence in situations of torture and abuse is complicity. It is against our medical oath. It is against what we stand for as humans and as doctors, as healthcare workers. So we invite all our colleagues to not choose comfort and not choose security over doing the right thing. Doing the right thing means that we stand for each other, especially when one of us or many of us are being tortured just for taking care of patients within the context of a genocide.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, thank you both so much for that. I really appreciate it. And I wanted to ask if we could also tell viewers and listeners right now where things stand with the current efforts from within Israel and from around the world to free Dr. Abu Safiya, because obviously time is of the essence here.
Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle:
We are optimistic. We have been seeing a positive response from our elected officials here in the US where we live and all over the world. We have seen a tremendous amount of mobilization. Everyone knows the story now. Every phone call to elected officials, they have heard it before one of us calls. We are hopeful that this coordinated pressure will bear fruits and we will see our colleagues released and we will see their health restored to them, their dignity restored to them. All they want is to be able to take care of their patients and to see their family members and to have human dignity. What we have experienced is the removal of human rights and human dignity from people who deserve the best.
Dr. Nidal Jboor:
And his lawyer sent another urgent appeal to the court to allow independent medical evaluation of Dr. Hussam because we think he might be suffering from an intracranial bleed after all these beatings. That’s why he was not able to sit. That’s why his consciousness was variable during the interview. Unfortunately, they did not respond yet. We’re waiting on that. And actually his appeal includes that one of the judges, one of the Supreme Court judges go there and verify for themselves the situation of Dr. Hussam. We are also working closely with a group called Physician for Human Rights Israel. They’re already appearing on behalf of Dr. Hussam and another 16 doctors who continue to be held unlawfully in Israel and all of them are being tortured. There is a total of more than eight healthcare workers who continue to be enduring these conditions there and a total of more than 9,500 Palestinian hostages.
All of them are being detained illegally with no charges, with no protections. Even the International Center for International Red Cross appealed the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Israel ordered the state to allow the Red Cross to visit and verify the situation and the treatment of the prisoners and the state is refusing their own Supreme Court order. Can you imagine this? Even the International Red Cross is not able to go in there and check on them, at least make sure they’re being treated in human conditions and not enduring torture. And we cannot emphasize enough the absolute prohibition on torture under all international laws, Geneva conventions and here in the United States. There was something called the Hoffman Report. The Hoffman Report is a report that was made on behalf of the American Psychological Association, I think in 2005 or 10, because some psychologists at that time were complicit with the Bush administration in torturing those that they took from Iraq and from Afghanistan.
They were treating them badly at detention centers Guantanamo Bay. And that was a very lengthy report, detailed report, almost 500 pages that showed some complicity of some psychologists and medical employees in the torture of those detainees. And the recommendation with the report and the resolution that the American Psychological Association took after that is there is absolute prohibition of torture for anyone anywhere under any circumstances, even if they’re terrorists, even if they’re guilty. If you have someone charged with a crime, even if they are criminal, you’re not allowed to torture them. There is absolute prohibition torture. And this is a code of ethics that we as a medical community cherish and we insist to live up to and we cannot stay silent while one of our own or any human being undergoes these conditions. So we are really appealing to everyone. So far we have few elected officials, few Congress people and senators did speak up on behalf of Dr. Hassem, but there are too many.
We are hoping we are appealing that many more of our politicians appeal on his behalf to save him. And we do know that they do have the leverage on Israel. This is the country that the US supports with billions of dollars in weapons and impunity. So our Congress stricted officials, they do have a say. They can save one life if they use their leverage with the state department, with our embassy in Israel, with the Israeli ambassador here. Our medical and mental healthcare organizations, they do have leverage if they speak up. Again, this is regardless of your politics, regardless of where you stand, this is a humanitarian call to save human life that is being taken away in front of our eyes and we should not have any controversy about it. Regardless of our positions, this should not be controversial. This is a humanitarian call, a universal call, and it’s a very, very urgent call.
We don’t think he will survive until the end of the week. So the call should be immediate and urgent. We urgently appeal. Every human being, wherever you are, do everything in your power. Reach out, call, use every leverage you have to try to step in and do something to save the life of our colleague, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and his other colleagues too.
Dr. Karameh Kuemmerle:
I appeal to all my colleagues, especially pediatricians. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is a pediatrician just like all of us. His fault was that he stayed in the pediatric hospital in the north of Gaza to take care of the children who are sick in Razda and he could not bring himself to leave them without medical care. For that he was punished by being taken hostage. I appeal to every doctor, every nurse, every pediatrician, especially to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Take a stand. Do not stay silent while one of us is being tortured. And to all our colleagues, follow us on Doctors Again Genocide. We have a lot of information that you can use to become more active in advocacy against what is happening to our colleagues, advocacy against torture and advocacy to be a more responsible medical community. And thank you so much for hosting us.
Time is running out to save the life of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza's Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was abducted by Israel’s military and has been held captive for over 18 months without charge.
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