Sunday, September 28, 2025

😡Breathtaking photo shows that Israel has completely erased an entire ancient Palestinian city - and they want us…

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😡Breathtaking photo shows that Israel has completely erased an entire ancient Palestinian city - and they want us all to see it.

If this isn't ethnic cleansing, what is?

Shaun King

Sep 28

✊🏽 Family — before we begin

This work only survives because you sustain it. What I cover isn’t on the mainstream news. There are no ads here. No billionaire owners. We’re at 2,891 members with 3 days left to get to 3,000 — 109 to go, that’s 37 people a day. If you value independent, Gaza-first reporting that cannot be quietly deleted tomorrow, please become a member (monthly, annual, or founding). Your support keeps this coverage free for everyone who needs it.

I am staring at a single photograph of Beit Hanoun, shot from above.
It isn’t a battlefield. It is an aerial view of erasure.
A city that stood for centuries — flattened to ash in months.

What the photograph shows

I’ve studied tens of thousands of Gaza images. This one guts me. In one frame:

No homes. No schools. No mosques.
No roofs. No walls. No streets.
No color — only gray ash and white dust stretching to the horizon.

There is no more Beit Hanoun.

They told us they would do this

In July, I published a piece on drone footage posted with pride by an Israeli outlet (YINONEWS, founded by former Knesset member Yinon Magal) bragging that the 8105 Battalion (Brigade 646), Paratroopers Reserves, Givati Engineering Corps, and a military rabbi “did not leave a single stone upon another” — and promised the same “throughout the entire Strip, God willing.”

They filmed it. Posted it. Celebrated it.
Today’s photograph is the receipt: Beit Hanoun — gone.

Beit Hanoun was a place

This wasn’t a blank on a map. It was a living corridor of Palestinian history and culture.

Just west of town in the year 1239, Ayyubid forces defeated the Crusaders at Umm al-Nasser and raised the mosque that bears its name. Under the Mamluks, Beit Hanoun served as a strategic postal station. During the Ottoman era it was a thriving agricultural community — wheat, barley, olives, citrus. After the Nakba in 1948, families displaced from across Palestine made new lives there. Through the British Mandate and the modern era, it remained a place of schools, markets, prayer, and stubborn resilience — despite sieges, bombings, and incursions.

A city with memory. A city with people.

This is not “security.” It is the destruction of a city and the expulsion of its people.

This is why I need you now

We keep these truths public because members make it possible. 2,891 → 3,000 by Oct 1. 109 left. If 37 of us step in today, we wake up stronger tomorrow. Join today.

Could any other country do this and call it “defense”?

Beit Hanoun was home to nearly 60,000 people — children walking to class, elders tending groves, families gathering after prayer. Flattened.

Israel did not deny it. It announced it. It named the units, stamped logos on the footage, and promised more.

And still: no emergency UN session. No sanctions. No red lines.

Why isn’t this everywhere? Because it’s Gaza. Because it’s Palestinians. Because it’s Israel. That is the ugly truth of Western news.

Call it by its name

This was not a “surgical strike.” It was not a “terrorist compound.” It was not a mistake.

It is ethnic cleansing — the deliberate destruction of a city and the erasure of its people.

The photograph doesn’t blink. It does not ask your permission. It simply shows you the crime.

Why I’m showing you this photo

Because if we don’t say it, no major Western outlet will. Because photos remember when institutions pretend to forget. Because somewhere a survivor of Beit Hanoun is scrolling on a cracked phone, wondering if anybody in the world still sees them.

I do. We do.

And we will keep saying the names of the places they try to erase.

What I’m asking of you, right now

If you believe this truth should remain public — if you believe Beit Hanoun deserves witnesses — please become a member today. We’re at 2,891 / 3,000 with 3 days left — 109 to go, ~37/day. When we cross 3,000, we’ll keep pushing to 5,000 by year’s end so this platform remains free, fearless, and impossible to silence. And if you can’t join today, forward this to three people who care about truth.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun