They’re calling it “freedom”—again. In the dust and ash of Gaza, as bodies are still being pulled from collapsed homes, as babies are being torn apart and buried under rubble, Benjamin Netanyahu says Palestinians should be “free to leave.”
He says it calmly, almost casually. As if he’s offering water to a thirsty man—not exile to a native population being annihilated from a cage they are imprisoned in.
“They should be allowed to go wherever they want,” he says.
As if the borders haven’t been sealed for years. As if all the entry and exit points haven’t been bombed. As if the sea isn’t patrolled, the sky isn’t surveilled, the crossings aren’t graveyards.
As if the Palestinians in Gaza have passports, or an airport, or homes left to live in. This isn’t a policy shift. It’s a rhetorical smokescreen. It’s a war criminal in a suit trying to frame ethnic cleansing as humanitarian concern that should fall on other “amenable” states.
Netanyahu said he told Trump which countries “might be amenable and are amenable” to accepting Palestinians that make the “free choice” to “voluntarily migrate” from Gaza — also known as the Trump/Netanyahu ethnic cleansing plan.
Trump does not acknowledge or talk about Gaza as a homeland, mostly made up of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in Yaffa (like my father and grandparents) during the Nakba in 1948. He does not acknowledge the refugees in Gaza or the graveyard of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, mostly women and children the US and Israel have turned Gaza into.
He talks about Gaza as property—ripe for American “peacekeeping” once the land has been cleared of its people.
It sounds absurd because it is. But absurdity is not the opposite of power. It is one of its tools. Because while these men talk of “freedom,” Israel continues to bomb Gaza, targeting refugees in tents and children and their families who are displaced in the remnants of schools. Israel continues to commit war crimes with impunity, executing 15 paramedics, burying their bodies and the ambulances with bulldozers.
While they speak of “peace,” they kill the journalists who remain to tell the truth. While they praise “choice,” they crush every option except disappearance and annihilation. And while they rebrand genocide as generosity, we see the media machine at work—again.
This month, The Encampments—a searing, human documentary from Watermelon Pictures—sold out screenings across LA, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco. It grossed $110.5k in just 46 theaters. $221k in two weeks, despite being screened during mass protests demanding a ceasefire.
A film like No Other Land, winner of an Oscar, dares to dignify Palestinian resistance—and gets sidelined. Labeled “too controversial” by global streamers, the widely acclaimed film has failed to find a US distributor because it reveals truths Americans should not see.
Too real. Too raw. Too Palestinian. Too inconvenient for the sanitized story the platforms are paid to push.
A documentary like No Other Land is hailed by those who know—and shelved by those who fear what it might awaken.
Meanwhile #Nova, a high-gloss documentary about the Nova music festival—void of history, scrubbed clean of context—finds an instant home on Amazon. Wrapped in tragedy, but sold as propaganda. Media outlets praise its “balance.” Hollywood nods in approval.
There is no nuance in Hollywood’s pipeline—only narratives that flatter power. When resistance is depicted as human, it’s dangerous. When occupation is repackaged as victimhood, it’s award-worthy.
This weekend, The Encampments showed us that people are hungry for truth. But its numbers were impacted by something else—tens of thousands marching for Gaza, across the country, chanting for life over lies.
This is how consent is manufactured. This is how the colonizer becomes the victim. This is how the war criminal becomes the diplomat. They flatten the context. They center the fear of the occupier, not the humanity of the occupied. They bury the truth under language polished enough to pass for peace.
They want you to believe that Netanyahu—the architect of this horror—can be seen as a peacemaker. That the man who locked every door, starved every border, and silenced every witness is now allowing people to “leave” out of kindness.
But the truth is: they’re not offering freedom. They’re offering exile. And they want to be thanked for it. This is the logic of empire: Take the land. Erase the people. Control the narrative.
But there are cracks in the architecture.
Because, even ghosts carry memory. Even silence echoes. Even in the ashes, people are writing their names. And that, perhaps, is what terrifies them most: That no amount of spin will ever make Netanyahu look like a peacemaker.
That the world is starting to see not just the ruins—but the architects.
If this moved you, share it. Talk about it. Post about it. Refuse the euphemisms.
Support independent films like The Encampments and No Other Land that document truth when truth itself is under siege.
Stay loud. Stay present. Stay human.
Like how the British Empire and its American ally described the Opium Wars as liberatory and emancipatory. Old habits die hard in the Anglo and Eurosphere!
'...as if offering water to a thirsty person... '