07-10-2025 Rudie speech

Today marks two years since the current genocide in Gaza began. By now, the official death toll has surpassed 65,000, with more than 100,000 wounded. These are the official figures, but this morning, the NRC reported that the medical journal The Lancet estimates the real number of deaths to be around 200,000 — that is, one in ten Gazans — in addition to an enormous number of injured.
The genocide is also, and perhaps primarily, aimed at destroying Palestinian culture: libraries, universities, mosques — all have been wiped out. This includes cultural heritage that had survived for centuries and through many wars, such as the Omari Mosque in Gaza City, dating back to the 7th century — Gaza’s largest and oldest mosque. By destroying archives, libraries, and universities, written sources on Palestinian culture are erased and made inaccessible. The genocide in Gaza will go down in history as one of the greatest crimes ever committed.

“Yes, but Hamas,” say those who still insist that Israel supposedly has a right to defend itself. This “yes, but” is usually accompanied by lies spread through Zionist propaganda — such as the story of Hamas beheading babies. Though undeniably terrible acts have occurred, what is often left unmentioned is that part of the deaths on October 7 were caused by Israel’s own army under the so-called Hannibal doctrine, meaning the avoidance of soldiers being taken captive. Perhaps the biggest lie of all is the idea that the history of the Middle East began on October 7.

It reminds me of all the lies about Israel and Palestine that I myself grew up with. One of the main ones — told to me at the kitchen table by my father — was that in 1948 the Palestinians were urged by their own leaders to leave their land and return once the Arab armies had defeated Israel. Such a call never existed. The Palestinians were violently expelled by Zionist militias, hundreds of villages were wiped off the map, and in some cases, entire villages were massacred. This lie, long since disproven, is still repeated today — for example, on the website of CIDI.

In the early days of Zionism, there was also the myth that Palestine was “a land without people,” so that a Jewish state could be established there. After all, it was the heyday of colonialism. When the first Zionists went to see Palestine for themselves, they found a thriving society already engaged in a process of modernization, much like European societies. That came as quite a shock, and soon debates arose about what should be done with the Palestinian inhabitants. The conclusion — in varying degrees — was: as much of Palestine as possible for the Jewish state, with as few Palestinians in it as possible.

The current genocide must be seen in that light. Until 1948, Gaza was known as a prosperous and rather cosmopolitan city — one of the major cities on the eastern Mediterranean, mentioned even in the Bible. Today, when people speak of Gaza, they usually mean the Gaza Strip, which only came into being after the Zionist occupation drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees there following the Nakba.
After 1967, Jewish settlements were established among more than a million Palestinian refugees. During the Second Intifada, it became clear that these colonies and their connections to Israel were vulnerable. The withdrawal of settlers in 2005 was presented by Israel as a step toward peace, but in reality, it was mainly intended to make it easier to control the entire Gaza Strip from the outside. After all, you don’t want to hit your own settlers when you bomb the area after every act of resistance.

The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé in 2017 tried to interpret Israel’s policy toward Gaza since the dismantling of the colonies. Why, he asked, were all settlers removed and the borders sealed? He writes that it took him a long time to find the right term, and that he ultimately concluded that what is happening in Gaza is what he calls incremental genocide.
The resistance occasionally fired rockets toward Israel, which usually caused little damage but made it clear that the Palestinians were not willing to accept the Israeli blockade. Israel’s response has escalated with each confrontation, with increasing numbers of deaths and injuries and growing terror among the Gazan population — including the bombing of mosques, schools, and hospitals. In 2017, the United Nations predicted that the Gaza Strip would be uninhabitable by 2020 if the destruction continued at the same pace.

The conclusion is that the genocide in Gaza, which began on a large scale two years ago today, has in fact been ongoing on a smaller scale for some twenty years.

It is difficult, but let’s try to end on a somewhat hopeful note. We can take hope in the fact that Israel is becoming a pariah state almost everywhere in the world, except in the U.S. and Western Europe. Last weekend, more than a million people demonstrated in European capitals — including a quarter of a million in Amsterdam alone. All over the world, people are taking action, just as we come together here every week. There is nothing left to do but to increase the pressure on our own government to finally distance itself from the genocidal Zionist colony that is Israel.

Thank you!