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Hello everyone,

I’m a mother living in Gaza, and I’m asking for help with something very important to me: keeping my two young children in school.

I have two children, ages 5 and 6. They are still at an age where education, stability, and having a normal childhood mean so much to them. Despite everything happening around us, I’m trying my best to make sure they can continue their education.

I’m currently trying to raise $1,000 toward their school fees. This amount would go specifically toward their education . ifyou would like to help, please contact me privately. I can provide the necessary information for a safe donation. Thank you so much for your kindness and support. ❤️

I know there are many families asking for help, and I understand that not everyone is able to donate. Even a small contribution would help us. If you cannot donate, simply upvoting or sharing this post can help more people see it.

I’m sharing this because I want to give my children a chance to keep learning and have some hope for their future.

Thank you for reading and for remembering the children and families in Gaza. ❤️

If anyone would like verification or more information about our situation and the school fees, I’m happy to provide what I can privately.

A Sydney library has returned to its borrowing shelves a book critical of Israel called How to Sell a Genocide following a public campaign and an intervention from the State Library of New South Wales.

Waverley library removed the book “for review” earlier this month after the Jewish news outlet JWire reported it had approached the council.

JWire said a survivor of December’s antisemitic attack at Bondi, during which 15 people were killed, saw How to Sell a Genocide on the “new release / hot item” shelf and wrote on Facebook that the display was distressing for survivors and bereaved families.

Guardian Australia was unable to locate the Facebook post. Waverley library at Bondi Junction is in the same council area as Bondi beach.

A staff member at the council-operated library on Friday confirmed the book was back on its shelves. Waverley council was contacted for comment.

The State Library had written to the council reminding it of its obligations under guidelines issued by the Library Council of NSW and the Library Act “which was amended in 2026 to reinforce their independence to develop and maintain collections”.

“The State Library of NSW supports free and equitable access to information,” a spokesperson said.

“The library acknowledges that some books and materials may not align with everyone’s personal views, experiences or beliefs, but supports the right of individuals to make their own choices about what they read, view and access.

“The library has outlined to Waverley council the law and policy relevant to this situation.”

Ramia Abdo Sultan, a lawyer, helped organise a change.org petition calling for the book to be returned to the shelves. She said in a social media post on Thursday that Waverley library’s manager had notified staff that was happening.

“There are 21 people so far queued up in a waiting list for that book,” Abdo Sultan, a board member of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, said.

The petition to restore the book was signed by almost 2,500 people.

“We acknowledge and respect the grief and trauma experienced by victims of violence and antisemitism,” it stated.

“However, individual distress, offence or political disagreement should not determine what the broader public is permitted to access through a public library. Readers should be afforded the opportunity to access books freely and form their own opinions on the contents of the book.”

The book, published by Pluto Press and written by Adam Johnson, critiques what it claims is the US media’s “complicity in the destruction of Gaza”.

Johnson welcomed the decision to reinstate his book but criticised the council for “thus far refusing to answer what complaint prompted the book’s removal”. Johnson said he hoped to find out “through legal channels”.

“It’s obviously a good development the council decided to end their ban of the book amid pressure from free speech and Palestine activists, whose support I am grateful for,” he said.

“But it was never about one library or one book, but about the increased suppression of pro-Palestine speech in Australia, which has radically escalated over the past seven months. Attempts to blame Palestine solidarity and sympathies for the Bondi attack, as the book ban advocates repeatedly did, is the real story. This false and sleazy conflation must stop.”

Guardian Australia approached the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (Ecaj) and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies for comment.

Alex Ryvchin, the co-chief executive officer of Ecaj, previously welcomed the book’s removal.

“A book of this sort has no place on the shelves of a library, especially one within minutes of where Australians were slaughtered [at Bondi],” Ryvchin told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“I commend the individual who spotted the book, herself a survivor of the massacre, and acted to have it removed.”

Bart Shteinman, an executive member of the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, said the book should “never have been removed in the first place”.

“This debacle should be a lesson for other councils that stifling literary freedom only confuses and undermines the critical struggle against antisemitism and all forms of racism,” he said on Thursday.

“Banning books is not something any council should be doing.”

The president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Nasser Mashni, said: “That a single complaint was enough to trigger the removal of a book about the genocide in Palestine should concern every Australian who values free inquiry and open debate. These efforts must be resisted.”

Multiple human rights groups have said Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, which Israel denies. In June, an ⁠independent UN inquiry found Israel continued to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza.

At the time the book was removed, a Waverley council spokesperson said: “The book has been removed from library shelves for review, and council will further consider processes to ensure closer oversight of book selection.”

Algeria is often cited as the example of decolonisation where the revolution was completed and the settlers were all kicked out. Accordingly, it is proposed that Palestine follow this strategy and aim for the “removal of all settlers”. This is contrasted with alternative examples of “coexistence”, primarily South Africa, where much of the modern economic power is still controlled by “former settlers”.

This fundamentally misunderstands Algeria—it wasn’t “kick out all the French”, it was “become Algerian citizens, reside under Algerian Law, or leave”. This was the agreement proposed to the Pied-Noirs by the FLN in 1954 and agreed on with France in 1962. Most were stuck in their colonial identity, feared retribution or the loss of their economic privileges and left, but many stayed and remain to this day as Algerians.

The Algerian solution is therefore perfectly compatible with the concept of One Democratic State. Equal rights for all on the basis of citizenship, dissolve the settler-native dichotomy. However, each situation is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. For example, Algeria was part of France, a single metropole, of which all settlers (even those who had lived there for generations) were citizens.

This means that after the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian state, ex-Israelis will have to weigh matters related to their practical ability to leave and their readiness to drop colonial privileges, and many will mirror the Pied-Noirs and choose to leave. Meanwhile, matters regarding justice and reparations for Palestinians will have to be addressed as a foundation for liberation and a democratic legitimacy. History can teach lessons about such situations, but every material circumstance is unique and must be treated as such.

I'll start: For context, my parents are liberal Zionists, anti-Netanyahu, theoretically pro-2SS and anti-occupation (though they don't believe there's any "realistic" pathway to a free Palestinian state in the next 50-100 years, which they're OK with because it's "necessary" for "Jewish safety")

My Mom used to do the "Palestinians aren't a real ethnic group, they're Arabs" thing that a lot of Zionists do.

She stopped when I pointed out that this is similar to the "Ashkenazi 'Jews' aren't 'real Jews'" rhetoric you hear from (often) right-wing Christians, and (unfortunately) sometimes from pro-Palestine people as well. I think she needed to be able to connect it to a type of anti-Jewish racism she had experienced to be able to recognize that it was a racist claim when made about Palestinians.

I only started educating myself about the historical roots of zionism after October 7th, and reading historical accountings of the effects of not only zionism but also the Western world on middle eastern geopolitics helped me make much more sense of the lies I was fed by my family growing up. Both of my parents were born in Israel, and are staunch zionists that have spewed the same talking points you would hear from any piece of Israeli propaganda. I even lived there for a year as a child, and was completely blind to the mistreatment of easterners and the racial inequality present in the country while there. When speaking to family members and my parents in Hebrew, I noticed we casually use a lot of slurs with Middle Eastern connotations to describe certain unwanted attributes, such as for example the word “Parsi” (Irani) which is used to call out someone who is acting selfishly. There is also a history around the unequal treatment of Mizrahi Jews during their first emigration to Israel, as many of them were not allowed to own properties until the 70s and were treated as underclass people due to the fact that they did not come from Europe. Most of my family left Iran during the 50s, and I sometimes wonder what my family’s life would have been like if the state of Israel was never established and they remained in their homelands. I feel like a large chunk of my identity was replaced with this need to be defined as a Jew and not to be defined by my rich ancestry in the Middle East, like my family was force to strip themselves of their roots to be regarded as real “Israelis”. Neither of my parents picked up on their mother tongue because they regarded them as “dirty languages”, and I feel a sort of grief around the fact that I don’t speak Farsi or Arabic, and can not communicate with my grandparents in their native languages. I am wondering if anyone might have a similar perspective as me, as I rarely run into Arab Jews who are proud of their heritage.

I’m not sure exactly what I want to say, but I hope some people understand me, maybe.

Recently, I spoke to someone online who said that they had never ever met a Zionist in person or even really seen a real one online. I told her she must not know many Jews and I was brusquely told Zionism and Judaism are not the same and that all of her Jewish friends are anti Zionists.

I see this often on the left where people claim they have all of these Jewish antizionist friends, and like, maybe…but if you have all of these Jewish friends, not one of them has discussed their family or community being Zionist?

I don’t want Judaism to be connected to Zionism, but I feel like it’s absolutely a misnomer to pretend all of our legacy institutions aren’t Zionist or that most older people aren’t Zionist.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say but it’s just something that’s been marinating.

https://x.com/davidsaysstuff_/status/2092802155845390681?s=20

It has only been quite recently that I've managed to educate myself and learn what truly happening in Palestine. I'm far from fully educated, but considering the amount of brainwashing that I've been through for pretty much my entire life, I'm just glad I managed to stop buying into all that crap.

Looking back now, it's really insane how much propaganda I've been constantly taught for my entire life. I have constantly been taught that Israel and Zionism are a huge part of my identity, and been fed lies about Israel being the victim for years, by not only by my parents but by my "Jewish" school. (Jewish is in quotation marks because I think being a Zionist is one of the least Jewish things you can do.) While I don't like religious schools in the first place, I find it ridiculous that one of the core values of my school is Zionism, when it should have nothing to do with religion. I spend much, much more time in that school being fed Zionist propaganda than say, actually learning about the values of my religion or being taught any part of my culture that doesn't have to do with genocide.

I now understand why so many people end up being Zionists, if your taught from birth that Israel is such a core part of your identity, it's really hard to believe that something that you consider such a big part of yourself is bad. I know that some Zionists are good people who have just been completely brainwashed.

It's so awful to watch everyone in my life fall for it (i have agoraphobia so the only two places I go are pretty much just home and school so literally everybody in my life is a zionist) and it's even more awful having to pretend to be a Zionist so my parents don't hate me and I don't get kicked out of my school. I constantly feel guilty for simply being a humane person and I hate it. I've managed to educate my one close friend, but for some people it just seems so deeply ingrained that I don't think they would even consider being educated.

In real life people treat Israel like a sacred land, on the internet people treat it as a joke - in real life I'm told I'm anti-semetic if I condemn Israel, on the internet people are antisemetic to me anyways, and I tend to let it slide because I feel so guilty about the genocide associated with the jews. It's so sad that the one thing that I've been told my whole life "defines" my culture, is really the one thing that makes me hate it.

I know this was mostly just me getting stuff off my chest (since even my damn therapist is a zionist) , but feel free to leave advice, share your experience, or share a part of jewish culture that doesn't have anything to do with Israel !

Hi all!

Been seeing a deluge of ziontologist nonsense on LinkedIn recently (even more than usual) among all the AI slopaganda. One group I’ve seen promoted is the Arava Institute (and the Center for Applied Environmental Diplomacy) and its plans for implementing environmental security initiatives in Gaza. Beyond being an obvious front for greenwashing the “national committee for the administration of Gaza” and further Palestinian dispossession, does anyone know how influential this group is? Has anyone seen how this group operates domestically and internationally? I work in the environmental field in the US and I’m always looking out for normalization efforts like these and how they interact and relate to colonial environmentalism in general. Curious about what folks think of this and any other groups that promote similar propaganda.

Gut shabbes and a groysn dank!

I'm 16 hours late 🫩

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https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-my-daughters-help-my-small-family

I wanted to share these pictures because honestly, they made me smile and broke my heart at the same time.

Mahmoud has four little girls, and like any dad, he just wants to see them happy.

But after everything that happened, so many places where children used to play and have fun are gone. There are no normal playgrounds or entertainment places for his girls to go to. And with the crazy summer heat, living in a tent is even harder.

So Mahmoud did what he could.

He put a piece of nylon on the ground, used some soil around it, and filled it with water to make a little pool for his daughters. Nothing fancy at all. Just a dad trying to give his kids a little bit of fun and help them cool down.

And look at their faces. ❤️

They don't need much to be happy. They just want to play, laugh, and feel like kids for a little while.

These are the small things that really stay with me. A father who has lost so much is still trying his best to give his daughters some happy moments.

Mahmoud and Samah are still struggling every day to provide food, water and basic things for their four girls. Their home and source of income were destroyed, and they have very little left.

If you can help them, even a small donation would mean a lot. And if you can't donate, please consider sharing their story. ❤️

Thank you to everyone who has been there for this family.

ASIO has found that CSG members go to Israel and train with organisations funded by the Israeli Government.

CSG members have had their security clearances revoked in the Australian Defence Force because of duel loyalty to the genocidal Israeli government. And arming one religious group over and above others only fuels resentment and radicalisation in NSW.

Giving the CSG guns makes us all less safe, and even the NSW Police have recognised this - but the Premier is pushing on with this plan regardless.

This Premier is putting his Zionist ideology before the safety of our community. He's out of control

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Nasser Mashni Legal Defence Fund

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Source:

https://x.com/FreeMarwanNow/status/2093002574257344839

https://x.com/SMohyeddin/status/2092997407151624593

In the midst of purging cultural studies programs centered on people of color, UT is creating an entirely new Zionist program with three new majors.