The assassinations we should be more concerned about

We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us…

–Benjamin Netanyahu

Charlie Kirk (2025)

Christian Nationalists, worldwide, are currently closing ranks to sanitise and protect the shameful memory of Charlie Kirk, who was shot in the neck by an assassin as he engaged in an apparent debate with students at a university campus.

Disconcertingly, it’s not just Christian fundamentalists who are losing their collective minds; unsuspecting devout Christians who have been fed a steady diet of lies and deception, no doubt by watching soundbites of Kirk pretending to defend the faith on social media, are also adding to the cacophony to make a martyr of a miscreant.

Kirk, who had, up to that point, amassed both fame and great wealth, was a bigoted, gun-toting, right-wing political activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a conservative student organization. TPUSA is a hub for rallying and goading disgruntled, conservative youngsters toward the Republican voting booths. To be frank, TPUSA is a staging ground for priming American youth to become dangerous, radicalised sycophants of the right-wing movement.

Those who believe they’re getting spiritual and moral clarity from a racist, homophobic, xenophobic, hateful advocate for guns, selling Christian values, may be shocked to learn that it’s not their soul that needs saving. Kirk’s agenda was to sow division and profit from it. I don’t think he even suspected how successful he would be in achieving that former goal in death, because it is clearly being directed to serve the callous interests of only one side in the manufactured divide in the U.S. at this time.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to ramble on about someone whose significance is debatable. Our anger is misguided, and our sympathy is misplaced. If you genuinely want to know who Charlie Kirk was, this AI reanimation below of the late master orator, Christopher Hitchens, should be enough to set you straight.

Israel (to date)

Our undivided attention should instead be on perhaps the most morally repugnant humanitarian catastrophe in modern history. I’m of course referring to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which is being perpetrated by Israel, with the steadfast backing, both militarily and diplomatically, of the United States of America, England and other Western nations.

Israel is getting away with it, while we are distracted by a murder designed to suck energy away from more important matters. We absolutely cannot wait until Benjamin Netanyahu completes the job of total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population that Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, initiated in 1947.

Last week, Netanyahu ordered the assassination of senior Hamas leaders meeting in Doha, Qatar, to discuss the latest U.S. ceasefire proposals. The airstrike on the meeting venue in a residential neighbourhood instead killed only five low-level Hamas members and a Qatari security guard. This, however, is not the first time Israel has killed or been linked to the killing of key mediators and negotiators in targeted assassinations.

Israel is petrified of reaching any sort of settlement with the Palestinians, whom they have been oppressing since 1948. It must no doubt trouble Zionist colonizers greatly to share the land they unceremoniously stole from actual Semites. Before the Doha incident, they had a long history of sabotaging peace negotiations and targeted assassinations going back to 1944.

Lord Moyne (1944)

Years before the Zionist colonizers forcefully removed the Palestinian inhabitants from their ancestral land, they were involved in military conflict with the British Mandate, which was governing Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Zionist settlers believed that the British Mandate was stymying the immigration of Zionist Jews into Palestine. Paramilitary groups such as Lehi and Irgun (precursors to the IDF), which were designated as terrorist organizations by the British Mandate, were formed to evict them (the Mandate).

Walter Guinness, or Baron Moyne, whose great-grandfather established the Guinness Brewery, became a target for the Lehi, the Zionist terrorist organization, after he was appointed British Minister of State in the Middle East. He was accused (wrongfully, as it turned out) of being an obstacle to the political goals of the Zionist settler movement. He was shot several times in Cairo on 6th November, 1944, by Eliyahu Akim of the Lehi terrorist group. Moyne died of his wounds later that evening, while Hakim and his accomplice, Eliyahu Bet-Zuri, were arrested and ultimately tried and hanged in 1945.

Count Folke Bernadotte (1948)

Bernadotte was a Swedish diplomat sent to Palestine by the United Nations to mediate in the Arab-Israeli conflict in May 1948. Earlier, in his role as the leader of the Swedish Red Cross, Bernadotte played a significant role in saving Jews from the Nazis during WW2. As the appointed UN mediator, he formulated a proposal to fairly divide the country in half and demanded that all refugees forcefully displaced by the Zionists be allowed to return. He was assassinated by the same Zionist Lehi terrorists on 17 September 1948 because his proposals were viewed as detrimental to the establishment of a Jewish state.

However, the UN General Assembly adopted his proposals in December 1948. The resulting resolution was ignored by Israel, just as it has ignored every UN resolution since.

Salah Khalaf (1991)

Salah Khalaf, also known as Abu Iyad, was the deputy chief and head of intelligence for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and also second in command of Fatah, after Yasser Arafat. Although holding degrees in philosophy and psychology, as well as a teacher’s diploma, he decided to dedicate his life to the Palestinian struggle. His activities eventually earned him a top spot on Israel’s most wanted list.

Although there is no proof that Israel was directly involved in Khalaf’s assassination in Tunis in 1991, in the lead-up to the Madrid Peace Conference, his death did weaken the Palestinian negotiating position. It eventually led to the less favourable terms offered by Israel in the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Ismail Abu Shanab (2003)

Shanab, a founding member and political leader of Hamas, was one of the more moderate individuals who decried suicide bombings and supported a long-term truce with Israel and a two-state solution. He graduated from Colorado State University in the U.S. with a Master’s in Civil Engineering.

He was arrested several times and spent two years underground in solitary confinement between 1989 and 1996. After suicide bombings by Hamas in 2001 killed 25 Israeli’s, Shanaab was arrested again, but later participated in the 2002/2003 peace talks.

Shanab and his two bodyguards were assassinated on 21 August 2003 when an Israeli helicopter fired several missiles at the car they were travelling in, in Gaza City. The assassination was in retaliation for a suicide bombing on 19 August of a bus in Jerusalem, which killed 20 Jewish citizens.

The assassination led to the termination of the ceasefire that was in place, which then paved the way to other assassinations of Hamas leaders the following year.

Ahmed al-Jabari (2012)

Jabari, also known as Abu Mohammad, was second-in-command of the Hamas military wing. While studying at the Islamic University of Gaza, he joined Fatah, a faction of the PLO. In 1982, he was arrested by Israeli authorities and spent 13 years in prison. After his release, he joined the military wing of Hamas, eventually becoming the acting operational head, and in 2012, he was elected to the political bureau.

Jabari was apparently instrumental in enforcing ceasefires and worked to prevent Hamas militants from firing rockets into Israel. He also played a role in the release of Gilad Shalit, a kidnapped Israeli soldier. Jabari personally escorted Shalit to the prisoner exchange site at the Rafah Border Crossing with Egypt.

Jabari was assassinated on 14 November 2012 in an Israeli drone attack while he was driving in Gaza City. The attack was part of an Israeli offensive known as Operation Pillar of Defence. Reports indicate that he was involved in long-term ceasefire talks with Israel and had received a truce agreement just hours before his killing.

Saleh al-Arouri (2024)

Al-Arouri was the deputy chairman of the Hamas political bureau and a founding commander of the military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades. He was imprisoned several times by Israel, commencing in 1990, and served a 15-year sentence before being released in 2007. He was thereafter exiled to Syria, before moving to Turkey and settling in Lebanon in 2015.

He was designated a terrorist by the U.S. in 2015 and had a bounty of $5 million placed on his head. During the Gaza genocide, Al-Arouri played a key role in the release of 105 Israeli civilian hostages in November 2023. Al-Arouri was also an integral link between Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

On 2 January 2024, Al-Arouri was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on a building in the Dahieh neighbourhood of Beirut. The strike resulted in the killing of six others, including high-ranking Hamas militants. Needless to say, it resulted in Hamas suspending further ceasefire and hostage release negotiations.

Other Israeli assassinations

Apart from the assassinations that are just plain revenge or meant to prevent any attempts at a truce, Israel has been alleged to have been involved in a multitude of extrajudicial killings since the 50s.

The killings seem to increase exponentially every decade: from two in the 50s to nine in the 60’s to several dozens since the 2000s. A grisly list through the decades is available on Wikipedia, although I cannot vouch for its completeness.

A legacy of pain, suffering, oppression, resistance and death

To be fair, none of the assassinated Palestinians mentioned are by any means paragons of virtue. They were involved in the killing of many Israeli civilians, whose innocence in a militaristic state, in turn, is questionable.

One has to look at their violent behaviour in the context of the dehumanising treatment and systematic oppression that was meted out to them, their families and fellow Palestinians. It is universally acknowledged that resistance to oppression is justified.

The 1970 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2625 explicitly endorses a right to resist “… alien subjugation, domination and exploitation.”

Israel’s objectives

Israel’s objectives since the Nakba in 1948 are clear and have remained steadfast. It was made manifestly clear many years before that, when the Zionist movement emerged in the late 19th century. The Zionists have no intention of sharing the land with the Palestinians. I am convinced that there has never been any intention by Israel to reach a settlement with the Palestinians, nor any intention of long-term peace.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just last week confirmed in no uncertain terms that there will be no Palestinian state at a function in an Israeli settlement in Maale Adumim:

We are going to fulfil our promise that there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us…

There has never been any intention of implementing a two-state solution, let alone a one-state solution. Israel has been fighting tooth and nail for nearly eight decades to ensure that it grabs the whole of Palestine. The list of assassinations and the genocide currently in progress in Gaza is a testament to this depraved determination.

Western countries that are currently publicly jumping on the bandwagon of supporting a Palestinian state are lying to us. They know full well that a two-state solution is impossible after Israel started accelerating the illegal settlements, which resulted in a horrendous discontiguity of land that can be settled on.

The West’s gaslighting and Israel’s murderous streak will undoubtedly continue unabated for a while yet.