it's IGF, not IDF.

words matter so make sure to use them deliberately.

the IGF loves to dress up in the clothes of Palestinians they have displaced. Totally normal things.

Good day, spectators,

And first things first, the more hardened spectacle readers may remember we officially rebranded the IDF one year ago when the magazine was still a baby with just a couple of hundred readers. But now, 5000 subscribers later, I think it’s important to remind everyone…

We don’t say 'Israeli Defence Forces (IDF)' anymore.

After 21 months of mass graves, bombed hospitals, and UN reports documenting 50,000+ dead in Gaza (including 16,000 children), it's time to call them what they are: the Israeli Genocide Forces (IGF).

(Source: UN’s monthly report on the Gaza Genocide. July 2025.)

Why this matters goes far beyond semantics. The language we use and normalise shapes reality, and when you say 'defence,' you already conjure images of huddled soldiers repelling invaders. You do not imagine F-35s flattening refugee camps with 2,000-lb bombs. Not snipers executing aid seekers at GHF distribution points. Not settlers, now state-licensed as militias, burning Palestinian villages with impunity.

‘Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)’ is similarly flaccid and considering what we are observing goes far beyond any conventional occupation, it also needs to be retired in favour of IGF.

The IGF's 2025 resume speaks for itself. Lebanon invaded (again). Syria bombed (again). West Bank pogroms industrialised via Ben Gvir's brownshirts which I talked about in my last article. Gaza's water, food, and medicine weaponised despite ICJ orders. This isn't defence at all but a systematic destruction dressed up in military jargon.

Meanwhile, the UN confirms what anyone with functioning eyes can already see: Israel's use of 'starvation as a method of warfare' and 'indiscriminate attacks' meets the legal threshold for genocide. Yet people still say 'IDF' which I consider a euphemism as grotesque as calling Hitler a 'Germany enthusiast.'

The cognitive dissonance is staggering. How do you reconcile 'defence' with deliberately starving two million people? How do you square 'forces' with state-sanctioned terror? You don't. You change the language to match the reality.

So that’s what we shall do, spectators: scrub ‘IDF’ from your vocabulary. Replace it with IGF and I mean everywhere; in tweets, essays, dinner-table rants. Watch Zionists squirm when their propaganda can't mask the truth behind sanitized terminology.

Words matter and these ones just happen to indict a regime. And it's about time we stopped pretending otherwise.

And that was it from me today, just a short update which I consider to be quite important. I am working on a longer analysis piece to be released tomorrow so you can look forward to that.

(And as always, please make sure to give this post a ❤️ and restack below to amplify the message and let me know what you think in the comments too.)

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Read more from the spectacle:

Syria’s uneasy rebellion: jihadists and geopolitics.

making an enemy of the Irish people is one of Israel's biggest mistakes.

the UK government is more outraged by an Irish band speaking up about genocide than the genocide itself.

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an offer for the spectacle’s one-year birthday.

Right now is the spectacle's first birthday. I'm amazed that we've reached 5,000 subscribers. The community we're building here gives me hope that people still desperately want unfiltered reality over sanitised spin.

the spectacle is a human magazine for humans, written by one singular human without AI assistance or algorithmic interference. It exists to communicate very serious and very real truths to other humans who still believe truth matters.

To mark this one-year milestone, I'm offering something special: from now until the end of July, anyone who takes out a yearly subscription will be upgraded to a lifetime subscription for free.

It's a token of my gratitude for putting faith in me and this magazine to continue for another hundred years and more as we move away from mainstream media and towards decentralised news:

Alternatively or if you are already subscribed, simply buy me a sandwich below because I need all the help I can get. This magazine is free but costs a lot of time, effort and emotion.