(FYI: Haaretz, September 17, 2026: Netanyahu Vows to Revoke Israeli Citizenship Over Alleged IDF 'Defamation' in Response to 'NAZA' Film
Netanyahu said that he would also work to increase twentyfold the amount of damages people can sue for defamation against IDF soldiers: 'We will hit them both in the pocket and in citizenship, because they have no place among us'
And
Democracy Now, September 16, 2026: “The Elimination Project”: Israel’s Systematic Dismantling of Palestinian Life in West Bank: B’Tselem" (Israeli human rights group)
A major new report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem titled “The Elimination Project” accuses Israel of “dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank.”
B’Tselem Executive Director ,Yuli Novak: Israel is dismantling the basic conditions needed for collective Palestinian existence in the West Bank. Our new report “The Elimination Project” shows how this mechanism works and how over the past three years, it has become more lethal, violent and explicit. Come with us to the West Bank to see for yourself. The Elimination Project in the West Bank operates through five domains of action that work together and reinforce each other: killing, violence, intimidation, movement restrictions, economic strangulation, social and political destruction, ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover. These are all parts of a system with one aim: to ensure Jewish supremacy and eliminate the Palestinian collective.
)
Last week in Venice, an Israeli documentary titled NAZA—a Hebrew acronym for the military term, "collateral damage"—concluded its premiere to a staggering, record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation, ultimately securing the Special Jury Prize at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. By weaving together testimonies from anonymous IDF soldiers and intelligence officers, directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor laid bare "the SYSTEMS behind Israel's calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza."
The truth proved dangerous. Within days, Culture Minister Miki Zohar accused the filmmakers of treason and threatened to strip them of their citizenship, while opposition leader Avigdor Lieberman labeled them "enemies of Israel." Yet, even as official threats mount, a fractures of dissent have appeared: fourteen Israeli international law scholars have called for an independent war crimes investigation, and over a thousand local filmmakers have signed a petition warning that the vitriol against Abraham and Szor is fast approaching physical danger.
This collision between state narrative and systemic exposure brings us back to the words of US Senator Hiram Johnson in 1918: “The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.”
For too long, these realities have been ignored or enabled by Western powers, particularly the US. As a quiet resistance to that silence, I offer the latest two entries—one haiku and one tanka—from my writing project, Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words.
CCCVIII: "smoky clouds"
where tents were
a tornado-twist
of smoky clouds
And CCCIX: "attack drone"
in smoky twilight
a mule-drawn flatboard wagon
with wounded Gazans ...
an attack drone flying past
silences everything below
To conclude today's "Special Feature" post, I would like to share with you the following penetrating remarks on "SILENCE" by Martin Luther King Jr., who noted that "remaining quiet in the face of injustice makes people complicit in the harm."
There comes a time when silence is betrayal.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
And
We will have to repent in this generation, not only for the evil words and deeds of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
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