Welcome to +972’s Sunday Recap! Here’s your wrap-up of the latest articles from our contributors, including our colleagues at Local Call.
Last May in Gaza City, a senior officer in the Israeli army’s Nahal Brigade tied an explosive cord around the neck of an 80-year-old Palestinian man and forced him to serve as a human shield, ordering him to scout out abandoned houses under threat of having his head blown off. As Illy Pe’ery revealed, in partnership with the Israeli investigative outlet The Hottest Place in Hell, the soldiers ordered the man to flee with his wife after his release, but upon being spotted by another battalion they were both shot dead on the spot.
Dr. Mahmoud Abu Shahada, the chief of orthopedics at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, was one of 70 medical staff arrested along with dozens of patients on Feb. 17, 2024, during Israel’s invasion of Gaza’s second largest medical facility. Ruwaida Kamal Amer spoke to Dr. Abu Shahada about his year in Israeli jails, where, held without charge, he was subjected to months of physical and psychological abuse.
The Israeli army continues to tighten its grip on refugee camps in the northern West Bank, displacing more than 40,000 Palestinians from their homes in recent weeks. Hanno Hauenstein reported from Jenin and Tulkarem, where refugees say Israel is waging a deliberate campaign to make the camps unlivable.
Last weekend in Miami, an American Jew mistakenly identified a father and son — both Mizrahi Jews from — as Palestinian, and immediately shot them; from the hospital, the son published a post saying that he and his father “survived an attempted murder motivated by antisemitism,” signing off with the popular Israeli slogan, “Death to Arabs.” For Orly Noy, the incident served to show that Mizrahim can continue to deny their identity, but they cannot shed their skin: the shooter’s bullets remind them, after all, you’re Arab too.
And Jonathan Adler spoke with Zaha Hassan, a Palestinian human rights lawyer and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., and co-editor of the new book, “Suppressing Dissent: Shrinking Civic Space, Transnational Repression and Palestine-Israel.” Published just two days after the November election, the volume lays out how Israel exported its crackdown on Palestinian activism and helped trample free speech in the U.S., paving the way for the post-October 7 backlash against pro-Palestinian activists and students — which President Donald Trump has promised to escalate.
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