The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs - August/September 2025 - Vol. XLIV No. 5
Staggering Cost of U.S. Support for Israel Staggering Cost of U.S. Support for Israel
Silence While My People Scream
Silence While My People Scream
Aid Distribution: Designed to Fail
Aid Distribution: Designed to Fail
Lessons from the 12-Day Israel-Iran War
Lessons from the 12-Day Israel-Iran War
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On Middle East Affairs
U.S. ROLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE
Egypt Blocks the Global March to Gaza
The Price of Citizenship: Silence While My People
Palestinian Liberation From Israeli Colonization Will Liberate the United States, Too—Ida Audeh
Life and Shattered Dreams in Gaza—Writers Share Their Stories—Six Views Refaat Ibrahim, Hassan Abo Qamar, Deema Fayyad, Donya Abu Sitta, Reem Sleem, Jumana Taiseer Mughari
Israel-Iran War—Three Views —MJ Rosenberg, Dale Sprusansky, Elfadil Ibrahim
U.S. Support for Israel Comes at a Staggering, Multifaceted Price Brian McGlinchey
Academic Freedom Ends Where Palestine Begins: Lessons from NYU, GWU and MIT—Faisal Kutty
68 Stepping Up to Address a Humanitarian Crisis —Ibrahim Ghandour and Staff
70 Support for Palestinians Deeply Entrenched in Malaysia—John Gee
“Bubble Zone” Bylaw Could Impact Protests
Pakistan, India and the War of Narratives
Genocide, Ghost Wars and Gold: How the Genocide Convention Loophole Helps Fracture Sudan —Mustafa Fetouri
Other Voices
Israel Tried to Break Iran—but It May Have Actually Helped Unite it, Mohammad Eslami, www.aljazeera.com
Iraqi Shi’i Demand Expulsion of U.S. Troops After Israel Attacks Iran, Juan Cole, www.juancole.com
“Not for You”: Israeli Shelters Exclude Palestinians as Bombs Rain Down, Aseel Mafarjeh, www.aljazeera.com
A Short Guide on How to Starve a Population to Death, Jonathan Cook, www.jonathan-cook.net
The “Chaos” of Aid Distribution In Gaza Is not a System Failure. The System Is Designed to Fail, Abdaljawad Omarj, mondoweiss.net OV-56
Zen and the Art of New York Times Headline Writing, Caitlin Johnstone, www.caitlinjohnstone.com.au OV-58
DEPARTMENTS
Khan Suri Recounts
Compiled by Janet McMahon
Where Is Netanyahu’s Blame For Hamas?, Jason Jones, theamericanconservative.com OV-58
Sanctioning Ben-Gvir and Smotrich Is but a Tiny, Sad Step in Ending the Gaza Massacre,” Gideon Levy, www.haaretz.com OV-60
“It’s so Painful”: Man City’s Guardiola Speaks Up on Israel’s War on Gaza, Hafsa Adil, www.aljazeera.com OV-60
The Surprising Campaign of Zohran Mamdani, Spencer Neale, theamericanconservative.com OV-61
Egypt’s Energy Gamble Has Left It Beholden to Israel, Elfadil Ibrahim, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-63
Yemen: U.S. Strikes on Port an Apparent War Crime, Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org OV-65
Publishers’ Page
It’s Our Responsibility...
To stop the genocide. We can do it by halting our country’s aid to Israel. See p. 32 for a comprehensive tally of the staggering price of U.S. support for Israel. Then take a close look at the politicians and media who are complicit in this tragedy and tell them—over and over—you have had enough. Generations will look back at this time and either say we chose humanity and social justice or barbarism.
War Criminal Offers a Peace Prize
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu nominated President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize during his July 7 visit to the White House. The president gushed, “Thank you very much, this I didn’t know, wow, thank you very much, coming from you in particular this is very meaningful.” We agree this is particularly meaningful coming from Netanyahu as he commits war crimes from Tehran to Gaza. Emboldened by the return to the White House of Trump, Netanyahu is calling for the forced removal of Gazans from their land. Palestinians have three choices: starve to death, get shot or leave. He is also calling for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Meanwhile, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has been hounded and smeared by the Israel lobby for boldly opposing Israel’s genocide and vowing to enforce Netanyahu’s ICC arrest warrant should the prime minister enter the city (see pp. 38-41).
So Much is Happening...
Palestinian flags and banners, calling for an immediate end to Israeli attacks as well as U.S. military, financial and diplomatic support.
about Israel because they feel they are not completely informed. The Washington Report can help keep you informed.
How Can You Help Palestinians?
During panel discussions, conferences, protests and individual conversations people around the world are asking, “What can we do to stop the carnage in Gaza?” This issue provides tangible ways we can work together. One answer is to sign the petition on p. 12, as an individual or organization, and then forward it to your lists and contacts. We are translating it into many languages and sending it to the U.N. General Assembly. Individuals and organizations are trying to galvanize the United Nations and bypass Security Council vetoes to save lives! Several Global South states have also come together to form the Hague Group to coordinate legal and diplomatic action to challenge the wall of impunity surrounding the Israeli regime.
All at once that it is tempting to shut down, curl up in a ball and watch Netflix. Instead, we implore you to sit down with this copy of the Washington Report, with extra pages added again, including the “Other Voices” insert. Some people say they are scared to have conversations
Changing Minds—One at a Time
So many of us avoid conversations with relatives and friends who reflexively defend Israel. But it’s essential to have these transformational conversations with everyone who opposes racism. An
online workshop (see p. 44), held by Voices From the Holy Land (VFHL) and headlined by Alex McDonald urges us to develop friendships with people who hold divergent views and practice these conversations “because it is like a muscle: the more you do it, the more you will develop and improve your skills.” Authors Miko Peled and Thomas Suárez offered their tips on handling typical assertions, like “Hamas started the war on October 7.” Suárez’s response: “If someone had you in a chokehold and you tried to break free, would you be the one that started it?”
A Terrible Thing to Miss!
Due to an unfortunate printing glitch, some of our subscribers did not receive the June/July 2025 issue. Please send an email to: missingcopy@ wrmea.org and we will send you a replacement copy. Once again even though we added extra pages to this issue we still ran out of space.
Middle East Books Renovation
Is nearly complete! After a year of working from a tiny nextdoor popup, we are finally moving back into our enlarged and revitalized space. Our customers can’t wait to linger over bookshelves full of new releases and timeless classics. Plus a new shipment of Palestinian ceramics just arrived. Stay tuned for news of a grand reopening bash, as well as book talks, book clubs, poetry readings, film screenings and fundraisers to come. Today, more than ever we need to come together to empower each other and....
Make a Difference Today!
Hundreds of demonstrators, including Washington Report contributor Steve France (above), gathered in front of the White House to protest the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government’s genocidal actions in Gaza, on July 7, 2025. Demonstrators carried
Executive Editor: DELINDA C. HANLEY
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ISRAEL’S ATTACK ON IRAN DELAYS U.N. MEETING ON PALESTINE
French President Emmanuel Macron delighted Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu by postponing sine die the U.N. conference in support of the “two-state solution” scheduled for late June, citing as his excuse the inability of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who always needs Israeli permission to leave Palestine, to attend due to the Iran-Israel war.
Anyone who has listened to one of President Abbas’ speeches at the U.N. would know that his absence from the conference would have done no harm whatsoever to the Palestinian cause—and, obviously, he could have provided a speech by video.
It is also deeply depressing that President Macron has opined that Israel’s unprovoked war of aggression against Iran constitutes a legitimate act of self-defense and that his only criticism of Israel’s Gaza genocide is that it “is a betrayal of the history and identity of Israel and dangerous for the security of Israel today and tomorrow,” not that Palestinians are full-fledged human beings entitled to life, not annihilation, and that genocide is the ultimate evil.
John Whitbeck, Paris, France
WAS TRUMP TAKEN FOR A RIDE BY NETANYAHU?
Based on his actions, President Donald Trump either lied during the campaign or he was easily manipulated by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and a major donor, Israeli-born billionaire Miriam Adelson, who gave him $100 million during the election.
Trump has presented no evidence that Iran even wanted a nuclear weapon while also contradicting our own intelligence agencies, as well as International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi. Meanwhile, Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons and, unlike Iran, has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
When will Trump ever address this inconvenient situation?
Ray Gordon, Venice, FL
EHUD OLMERT: ISRAEL IS COMMITTING WAR CRIMES
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently offered a rare and damning indictment of his own government’s conduct in Gaza. In an interview expanding on his Haaretz op-ed, Olmert called Israel’s war in Gaza “indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal”—a campaign of devastation that has long lost any legitimate justification.
Initially supportive of a military response to the October 7 attacks, Olmert now asserts that the war should have ended months ago. He emphasizes that senior Israeli defense and intelligence officials agree: the war does not serve to rescue hostages or ensure security. Instead, it appears to be driven by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s political survival, fueled by extremist ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Olmert confirms what many human rights advocates have long alleged: Israel intentionally starved Gaza’s population, blocking food, medicine and basic necessities as official policy. The goal, according to Smotrich, is to drive Palestinians into “total despair” and push them toward mass relocation—a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. He warns of a similar strategy in the West Bank, where extremist settlers, such as the Hilltop Youth, operate like militias, attacking Palestinians with impunity while the Israeli government expands illegal settlements at a record pace.
This candid confession from a former Israeli prime minister must not be ignored. It is time for the international community, especially the United States, to stop arming and shielding Israel from accountability and demand an immediate end to these massive war crimes.
Jagjit Singh, Los Altos, CA
THE LEAST YOU CAN DO: CALL CONGRESS ABOUT GAZA
If Greta Thunberg, at her young age, can join an aid ship sailing to Gaza to help stop the genocide, why can’t we in the United
States at least call our members of Congress to tell them to stop funding and supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people?
What is stopping us?
Carol Rae Bradford, Somerville, MA
RAFAH WARS: FROM ANTIQUITY TO PRESENT
I’ve been doing some work on Ancient Egypt, a big area of interest for me, and came across something I had forgotten, which is that there was a battle between the Egyptians and the Assyrians in 720 BCE at a place the Assyrians called Raphia. This was Rafah. The Assyrians won and then looted and destroyed Rafah. There was a huge battle close to the town in 217 BCE, between the Hellenistic rulers of Egypt and most of the Asian parts of Alexander the Great’s conquests. The place has gone through a lot over the centuries, but I suspect nothing was as devastating as what the Israelis have done.
John Gee, Singapore
In March 2024, then-President Joe Biden warned Israel against invading Rafah, calling it a “red line.” More than a year later, Rafah essentially no longer exists, having been flattened by Israel. Of course, Washington imposed no serious penalty for this violation. Now, Israel’s war minister, Israel Katz, has proposed establishing a “humanitarian city” on the ruins of Rafah and forcing all remaining Gazans—an estimated two million people—into the small area along the border with Egypt. The end goal, one suspects, is to force every last Palestinian to flee Gaza from Rafah.
CANADA MUST END ITS COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE
Nakba Day just passed and was not acknowledged by Canada’s government or its ruling Liberal Party. Previous administrations were equally indifferent. Meanwhile, the Israeli state’s former Nakba denial has recently been replaced by open promises of a second expulsion.
As Israel continues to destroy the Palestinian people, why is Prime Minister Mark Carney offering nothing but tepid platitudes?
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Is he afraid of baseless but damaging accusations of anti-Semitism? Is it pressure from Canadians profiting from Israeli trade? Perhaps he fears American retaliation? I would appreciate a comprehensive answer.
As I write this, it is still legal to criticize Canada’s conduct regarding the activities of the Israeli state. Recent U.S. developments justify my concerns about state repression of free speech, particularly on this topic.
Pro-Palestinian advocacy is not Hamas support, although it is hard to imagine that any people under such horrific oppression would not respond violently at some point. I am sure Canadians would not meekly accept a 17-year blockade by a foreign power.
Unless Canada opposes Israel’s violent campaign to re-organize the Middle East, the world will eventually consider Canada complicit through indifference and our reputation will be forever tarnished.
Now is the time to openly oppose Israel’s blatant war crimes and human rights
abuses in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Morgan Duchesney, Ottawa, ON
A CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR PALESTINE
I recall the article in the March/April 2023 issue titled, “Can A Conservative Movement for Palestine Emerge?” In the age of Trump, we desperately need a book on the subject, as many conservatives refuse to disavow his policies. Trump is starting to make President George W. Bush look like my hero Ron Paul!
Yehuda Littmann, Brooklyn, NY
In June, the Washington Post published an interesting article, “Young Republicans are fueling the GOP’s generational divide on Israel.” One young Republican is quoted as saying, “October 7 kind of broke that very emotional attachment to Israel.” It also cites a recent Pew Research Center poll which found that half of Republicans under the age of 50 have a negative view of Israel. This change in views is attributed to young people relying on social media rather than mainstream news networks to learn about the world. It appears that the staunch support for Israel among Republican lawmakers is not indicative of their base. This is more evidence that the pro-Israel lobby will not be able to hold back popular opposition to their policies much longer. ■
Can Israel Survive Without the West? The Answer Reveals Our Collective Power
By Ramzy Baroud
The rubble at the site of an overnight Israeli airstrike in the Kafaat neighborhood of Beirut's southern suburbs, on June 6, 2025, in what Lebanese leaders call a major ceasefire violation. Israel has been carrying out near‐daily bombardment and drone attacks in Lebanon since it reached a truce with Hezbol‐lah in November 2024.
THE ISRAELI GENOCIDE in Gaza, along with the escalating regional wars it has ignited, has brought two chilling truths into our focus: first, Israel is deliberately and aggressively undermining the security and stability of the entire Middle East and, second, Israel is utterly incapable of surviving on its own.
These two assertions, though seemingly distinct, are inextricably linked. For if those who relentlessly sustain Israel—militarily, politically and economically—were to finally withdraw their support, the Middle East would not be the powder keg it has been for decades, a situation that has catastrophically worsened since October 7, 2023.
Though no oversimplification is intended, the brutal reality is that all it would take is for Israel to withdraw from Gaza, allowing the devastated, genocide-stricken Strip the faintest chance to heal. Over 56,000 Palestinians, including more than 17,000 children and 28,000 women, have been brutally slaughtered since the commencement of this war, a horrifying tally expected to surge dramat-
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book, co‐edited with Ilan Pappé, Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out, is available from Middle East Books and More. Dr. Baroud is a non‐resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is <www.ramzybaroud.net>.
ically when comprehensive investigations into the missing are finally conducted.
Only then could the process of returning to some semblance of normalcy begin, where the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people must be fiercely championed within an international system built, at least theoretically, upon unwavering respect for basic human rights and international law.
The abhorrent “might makes right” maxim would have to be utterly expunged from any future political equation. Middle Eastern countries, both Arab and Muslim, must finally rise to the occasion, stepping up decisively to aid their brethren and to ensure that Israel is powerless to divide their ranks.
For Israel, this demand is simply impossible, a non-starter and, understandably so, from its colonial perspective. Why?
“Invasion is a structure, not an event,” the influential scholar Patrick Wolfe has famously asserted. This profound statement unequivocally means that Israel’s wars, commencing with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the 1948 Nakba, and all subsequent wars and military occupations, were not random historical coincidences, but rather integral components of an enduring structure of power designed to eliminate the indigenous population.
This renders as simply false the notion that Israel’s behavior after October 7 was solely driven by revenge and devoid of strategy. We are perhaps excused for failing to initially grasp this distinction, given the grisly, unspeakable nature of the Israeli actions in Gaza and the palpable sense of perverse pleasure Israel seems to derive from the daily murder of innocent people.
Yet, the language emanating from Israel was chillingly clear about its true motives. As Binyamin Netanyahu declared on October 7, 2023, “we will turn Gaza into a deserted island.”
That has always been an intrinsic, unchanging part of Israel’s colonial structure, and it will remain so unless it is decisively reined in. But who possesses the will and power to rein in Israel?
Israel operates through a network of enablers, benefactors who
have long viewed Israel’s existence as an indispensable colonial fortress serving the interests of Western colonialism.
“The connection between the Israeli people and the American people is bone deep....We’re united in our shared values,” Joe Biden declared with striking conviction in July 2022.
Without even bothering to question those “shared values” that somehow permit Israel to perpetrate a genocide while the U.S. actively sustains it, Biden was undeniably honest in his stark depiction that the relationship between both countries transcends mere politics. Other Western leaders blindly parrot the same perception.
The unfolding genocide, however, has spurred some Western—and a multitude of non-Western—governments to courageously speak out against the Israeli war, Netanyahu, and his extremist ideology in ways unprecedented since Israel’s very establishment. For some of these countries, notably Spain, Norway, Ireland and Slovenia, among others, the proverbial “bond” is
demonstrably “breakable’ and their support is most certainly not “unequivocal.”
There are various theories as to why some Western governments dare to challenge Israel, while others stubbornly refuse. That important discussion aside, shattering the bond between Israel and the West is absolutely critical, not only for a just peace to finally prevail, but for the very survival of the Palestinian people.
The nearly 21 agonizing months of unrelenting Israeli genocide have taught us a brutal lesson: Israel is, after all, a vassal state, utterly unable to fight its own wars, to defend itself or even to sustain its own economy without the direct, massive support of the U.S. and others.
Prior to the war, there were occasional outbursts from Israeli officials proclaiming that Israel is an independent country, not “another star on the U.S. flag.” These voices have since been largely silenced, replaced by a constant stream of begging and pleading for the U.S. to come to Israel's rescue.
While Palestinians continue to stand with legendary courage to resist the Israeli mili-
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tary occupation and apartheid, those who genuinely care about international law, justice and peace must take decisive action by directly confronting governments that persist in helping Israel sustain the genocide in Gaza and the destabilization of the Middle East.
Governments like Spain and others are doing what many had not expected only years ago: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is powerfully advocating for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, an extensive trade deal in place since 2000, due to “the catastrophic situation of genocide.”
If more such governments were to adopt a similar, uncompromising stance, Israel would be choked off, at least from acquiring the very murder weapons it uses to carry out its barbaric genocide.
It is our collective responsibility to march in lockstep behind such courageous voices and demand uncompromising accountability, not only from Israel, but from those who are actively sustaining its Israeli settler colonial structure. ■
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Unbinding Decisions to Hogtie Rule of Law at Home and Abroad
By Ian Williams
THERE WAS A TIME when treaties ratified by the Senate had the force of law in the United States, but Washington lobbies attenuated that principle over the years as they discovered it was easier and cheaper to buy members of Congress than to suborn international bodies.
I don’t want to put too much of a rose-colored tinge on history, but past attitudes were different: despite evidence to the contrary citizens still expected some degree of honor from their representatives. As the Declaration of Independence preambled, its drafters were impelled by “decent respect for the opinions of mankind,” whereas current legislators exhibit a perverse disregard for what the rest of the world thinks.
Without being sentimental, citizens linked governments’ international behavior with their domestic delivery. I remember being on a radio show back in the early ’90s and callers were horrified and incredulous that Washington was reneging on its payments to the U.N., the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is the author of U.N.told: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).
other international bodies. One caller in particular said that if the federal government did not honor its commitments to the U.N., it opened up the road to (pause for shock) not fulfilling its duties to the Social Security Fund. We might see that consummation shortly, but when we do we should remember the interconnectedness of principles.
Part of the ideological substructure that brought this about is the liberal Zionist exceptionalism constructed to cover for Israel. This took away many of the progressive internationalist activists who could otherwise be counted on to support ethics and international law, in fact campaigned for it. In a fit of unthinking partiality, many of them supported, or at least did not oppose too strongly, measures that they would not countenance in any other context than Israel. Many of them supported boycotts and isolation for Apartheid South Africa but opposed them for Israel— and inexorably moved toward opposing all boycotts.
When Nelson Mandela came to New York after his release, it was with some schadenfreude that we saw how the city’s glitterati feted and fawned over him and were genuinely puzzled when he did not join them in waving blue and white flags. With a breathtaking display of virtue signaling, they cheered him on,
Palestinians carrying flags and banners gather at the Nelson Mandela Square in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Jan. 10, 2024, to demon‐strate in support of the genocide case filed by the Republic of South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The Israeli government failed to comply with the legally binding ICJ order to provide urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid.
even as he expressed views on the Middle East that would have led to public shunning if expressed by an American. The lobbies and their media allies had already made it thoughtcrime to support Palestinian rights and U.N. resolutions on the region.
The Israeli lobbies had already broken the mold by stopping U.S. funds for U.N. Palestinian programs, and it was not long before the Know-Nothings in the GOP jumped on the moving war chariot. They followed through with moves to defund the U.N. altogether, secure in the knowledge that much of the liberal wing of U.S. politics had already betrayed the cause. After all, if the United States can default on its obligations because Congress did not like funding Palestinian-favoring programs and resolutions, then why not starve it over the law of the sea, small arms or human rights?
The pressure was international as well as domestic. This column has often discussed how the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the United States were diluting international law, for example with their insidious campaign to make U.N. General Assembly resolutions “non-binding,” despite their own citation of them to partition Palestine and fight the Korean War. When the Palestine Mission decided to bypass the U.S. veto in the Security Council by using the “Uniting for Peace” procedure that Washington had designed to empower the General Assembly to conduct the Korean War in the face of Soviet vetoes, we began to hear more and more about how Assembly resolutions were “nonbinding.” The Israeli exception shot U.S. diplomacy in the foot, if not in the crotch. When the U.S. wanted to intervene in Iraq or the Balkans, it could not use the General Assembly to overcome Russian or Chinese vetoes.
Long ago, when I was a student hitchhiking through Germany, faced with a “don’t walk” sign on a pedestrian crossing and with no vehicles on the horizon in any direction, I briskly walked across. “Es ist verboten” came the shocked murmurs
from law-abiding Germans around me. A different approach was visible when I first visited the U.S. and found that even a “Keep off the grass” sign had to be buttressed with designated city and state codes that would be violated if you had the temerity to step on the green sward, enumerating the penalties that would follow. Now the subtext of the “non-binding” exception shtick became that nations did not follow international law because they were good global citizens but only because there was a machinery to enforce it.
It was déjà vu back to 18th-century England, which had over 300 offenses that carried the death penalty, on the assumption that people needed a ferocious incentive to follow the law.
The legalisms don’t matter, of course. The Nazis in the Nuremberg dock were not only obeying orders—like Israeli genocides they were following the law.
But in June, the U.S. Supreme Court brought the principle home. It effectively ruled that there was no power to implement domestic court orders. It did not rule that those orders were erroneous or that they violated legal principles—simply that they could be safely ignored, at least by Donald Trump.
This insouciance toward (or rather contempt for) courts is also firmly rooted in the Middle East. We covered here the unprecedented moral and social pressure put on South African judge Richard Goldstone to reverse his report on a previous Israeli war against Gaza in 2008-2009.
Similarly, in 2019, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was denied a visa to the U.S. for investigating U.S. Army actions in Afghanistan. The U.S. threatened economic sanctions against her and the court. A glutton for punishment, Bensouda began looking into suspected crimes in Palestine, which brought in “direct threats” to her person and family.
Chief ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has been badgered with threats of sanctions and arrests and is under U.S. sanctions; and he finally had to step back, faced with
allegations of sexual harassment. I cannot testify to the accuracy of those accusations, but since a recent U.S. presidential candidate breezed past far worse proven civil charges and was elected, one does not have to be paranoid to see the hands of Israel’s friends behind the attacks on Khan.
Most recently, a British King’s Counsel, Andrew Cayley, who was involved the Gaza investigations has reluctantly resigned from the ICC and returned to Britain, in the face of physical, financial and legal threats. The UK government had warned the renowned barrister of likely U.S. actions and admonished him to take security precautions at his home.
It is not reassuring that Israel, which claims to be the state of the people of the book of the law, will do almost anything to avoid trial and accusation. Anything, that is, except desisting from the crimes.
Aggression against Gaza, bombing Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and now Iran suggest that Israel does not deem international law to apply to itself, a view that even a cursory run through the speeches of Israel’s U.N. ambassador reinforces. While popular opinion across the world can see Israel’s guilt as self-evident, the elites— Friedrich Merz, Keir Starmer, Donald Trump and the others—their support for Israel is enough to breed a new legend of the Protocols of the Elders of Likud.
But lawlessness rules worldwide and, as we have been saying, the roots of that anarchy lie in the deference to Israel from so-called progressives without whom none of this would have been possible. The bright side (though admittedly not for the murdered Palestinians) is that Israeli actions are so outrageous that the state has thoroughly overdrawn the Holocaust account and has lost the support of most American Jews and indeed of most of the Western citizens who do not get AIPAC paychecks. But it is no coincidence, as they say, that the same people overturning the remains of FDR’s New Deal are also demolishing the postwar international order he helped install, and which despite its admitted failings has so far kept us from World War III. ■
U.N. General Assembly: Deploy an Emergency Armed Multinational Protection Force to Gaza!
THE ISSUE
WE, THE UNDERSIGNED, call upon the United Nations General Assembly to invoke its authority under the Uniting for Peace mechanism—previously employed in the 1956 Suez Crisis to establish the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF)—to authorize a multinational armed protection force for the Gaza Strip.
We demand the immediate deployment of a UN multinational armed protection force with the following mandate:
Protect civilians from further violence and displacement.
Ensure full, safe and sustained humanitarian access to food, water, shelter, energy, and medical care.
Assist in the initial stages of reconstruction, enabling families to return to their homes and rebuild with dignity.
Preserve and secure evidence of potential war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and human rights violations to enable future accountability and justice mechanisms.
The Uniting for Peace precedent was established to break Security Council deadlocks and to uphold the UN’s founding promise: to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, as well as to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and worth of the human person, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for international law can be maintained. That promise is being tested by Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The world cannot afford selective protection or enforcement of international law based on geopolitical interests. Just as UNEF was created to halt aggression and uphold peace, so too must we now act to fulfill our moral and legal obligations to the people of Gaza.
We call on the General Assembly to convene an emergency special session and to approve the deployment of this U.N. protection force without delay.
Sign this petition and stand for peace, justice and the sanctity of all human life.
Cosponsors: DAWN, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, People Against Genocide Everywhere
For Media Enquiries contact: Raed Jarrar rjarrar@dawnmena.org or Omid Memarian omemarian@dawnmena.org
Six Views
Daily Life and Shattered Dreams in Gaza— Writers Share Their Stories
Hell Behind Bars: A Detainee Describes His Ordeal
By Refaat Ibrahim
IN AN ERA where slogans about human rights grow louder, the truth is buried behind prison walls. Palestinian journalist Ameen Baraka, 37, emerges from the rubble of his destroyed home and
Refaat Ibrahim is a Palestinian writer living in Gaza, where he stud‐ied English language and literature at the Islamic University. He has been passionate about writing since childhood and is interested in political, social, economic and cultural matters concerning his home‐land. He is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
torment in Israeli prisons to reveal the details of the hell he endured for more than 13 months while detained by Israel, hidden from the eyes of the world.
Baraka worked for several local channels and Al Jazeera; he was arrested in February 2024 from an UNRWA school west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. He was released as part of a prisoner exchange deal in February 2025. I visited him and sat beside him near the ruins of his destroyed home, where he shared the harrowing details of his ordeal in Israeli prisons.
When I met Baraka, his face was gaunt, his eyes sunken and shadowed with exhaustion, and his frame noticeably thinner than in the photos I’d seen of him before his arrest. “I lost so much weight,” he confirmed, his voice heavy with fatigue. “We were starved, humiliated and broken, day after day.” His hands trembled slightly as he spoke, a lingering sign of the physical and psychological toll of his captivity.
(Above left) Moments before Ameen Baraka was reunited with his family after his 13‐month detention. (Above right) Ameen Baraka seated in his family home before his arrest. (Bottom right) Ofer Prison, one of the detention centers in which Ameen Baraka was held.
PHOTOS
A DESCENT INTO HELL
“Welcome to hell,” an Israeli intelligence officer sneered at Baraka upon his arrest. What followed was a relentless campaign of torture. “I spent 13 months in Israeli prisons, enduring physical beatings, psychological torment and brutal retaliation,” Baraka recounted. “They subjected me to stress positions, hung me by my wrists and beat me severely. For days on end, I was deprived of sleep, my body and mind pushed to the brink of collapse.”
The physical abuse was merciless. Baraka described how officers tightened their grip around his neck, extinguished cigarette butts on his body and targeted sensitive areas, his testicles, kidneys, stomach, chest and face. “One interrogator shoved my head into a trash bin,” he said, his voice breaking. “They threatened to kill my family, just as they did with the family of Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza correspondent.”
The psychological torment was equally devastating. One officer mocked him: “We bombed your house with a missile. When you return to Gaza, you’ll have nowhere to live.” Baraka only learned after his release that his home had indeed been completely destroyed and that two of his brothers had been martyred.
The prisons were overflowing with Palestinians, thousands of them, according to Baraka. “I was held with students, journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, engineers, doctors, nurses, academics, lawmakers and workers,” he said. He listened to the testimonies of fellow detainees, many of whom were released in the same exchange deal. They described a range of tortures: electric shocks, severe beatings to sensitive body parts, and even amputations. “Mahmoud Abu Ta’ima had one of his fingers cut off by an intelligence officer,” Baraka recalled. “Thabit Abu Khatar, from Khan Younis, lost his foot.”
Baraka himself endured unimaginable cruelty. “My left leg was tied to a metal corner, my right hand to another, leaving me suspended at an angle while the officer beat me for hours,” he said. The sounds of torture were inescapable. “I heard the screams of other prisoners being tortured in nearby rooms—cries of pain that haunted me day and night, reminding me of the fate awaiting me.”
STARVATION AND HUMILIATION
Food was a tool of punishment. “We were given a small piece of bread and a 250-ml bottle of water to share among ten people, for the entire day,” Baraka explained. The guards deliberately starved them, sometimes stepping on the meager rations or pouring filth over the food. Meanwhile, the smell of grilled meat wafted through the air as prison guards held near-daily barbecue parties near the detention areas, feasting on lavish meals and drinks while the prisoners starved.
Hygiene was another casualty. “We were denied basic necessities,” Baraka said. “We couldn’t clean ourselves or the bathrooms for days.” The lack of sanitation led to the spread of scabies, a skin disease that became another form of torture. “They turned it into a weapon,” he said. “No treatment, no soap, no clean clothes, no sunlight, no regular showers.” The stench in the cells was overwhelming, a constant reminder of their degradation.
Baraka fell ill multiple times during his detention. “I had fevers, stomach pains and infections from the beatings and poor conditions,” he said. Medical care was nonexistent. “At best, sick prisoners got a single paracetamol tablet, no matter the severity of their condition.” The deliberate medical neglect left many in agony, their health deteriorating without relief.
The torture extended to sleep. “They forced us to sleep in a place they called ‘the disco,’” Baraka said. “We had to lie on gravel for 24 hours, on our backs, with a massive speaker next to our heads blaring strange, loud rhythms. It caused stress, anxiety and mental breakdowns.” Sleep deprivation was systematic, guards doused them with cold water, stripped them naked during interrogations and refused to let them rest. “If anyone resisted or challenged the guards, their blood would spill, and their limbs might be severed at the prison’s threshold,” he added.
The days began with violence. “We woke to the sound of batons striking zinc sheets or stun grenades fired at us, signaling a crackdown or transfer to punishment cells,” Baraka said. Even basic needs were weaponized. “We were allowed to use the bathroom once a day, for one minute only. If you exceeded that, they’d beat you and force you to stand with your hands raised for hours, accompanied by insults, punches, kicks and blows from rifle butts and batons.”
SEXUAL ASSAULT AND RELIGIOUS REPRESSION
Among the most horrific abuses was sexual violence. “Soldiers deliberately inserted electric rods and batons into the anal openings of some prisoners,” Baraka recounted, his voice trembling with anger and pain. Guards also unleashed police dogs on detainees, attacking them as they were beaten mercilessly.
Religious expression was stifled. “They banned us from praying or performing our religious rituals,” Baraka said. “No Qur’ans were allowed.” The guards’ actions were a calculated effort to strip them of dignity and hope.
The process of transfer, whether to Israeli courts, between prisons or to interrogation centers, was a journey of torment. “They made us kneel on the ground, hands and feet bound behind us, eyes blindfolded,” Baraka said. “They beat and insulted us throughout.” Legal rights were nonexistent. “We couldn’t defend ourselves or hire lawyers. Visits from family were banned, and we were completely cut off from the outside world: no radio, no TV, no news. During the war on Gaza, I had no idea what was happening to my loved ones.”
Even release brought no relief. “The interrogator threatened to bomb me and my family if I resumed my work as a journalist,” Baraka said. “While I was tied to the interrogation chair, he leaned in and said, ‘You must leave Gaza with your family the moment the Rafah crossing opens, and you’re forbidden from ever returning.’”
A FAILURE OF HUMANITY
The brutality against Palestinian prisoners constitutes grave violations of international law, yet Israel continues with impunity. Despite being a signatory to the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, which protects prisoners and prohibits torture or humiliation, Israel systematically flouts these obligations. Human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented
Israel’s use of torture against Palestinian detainees, most recently in 2021 and 2023 respectively.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, tasked with monitoring prisoner conditions under the Geneva Convention, failed to act, according to Baraka. “For 13 months, the Red Cross never visited us, never checked our conditions, never provided medical or psychological care, not even food,” he told me. “When we were released, we were shocked to see Red Cross staff for the first time, instructing us to follow Israeli orders not to celebrate or raise victory signs.”
The suffering of Palestinian prisoners defies imagination, and the world’s silence enables it. As I listened to Baraka, his resilience shone through the pain. He looked at me, his eyes fierce with determination, and said, “They tried to break me, my body, my spirit, my voice. But I will not be silenced. I will speak for myself, for my brothers and sisters still in those cells, for Gaza. The world must hear us, see us and act. This is not just my story, it’s the story of thousands, and we demand justice.” ■
Making Fire, and Other Daily Rituals of Survival
By Hassan Abo Qamar
SITTING ON THE GROUND, I closely observe the details around me. The sky is pink; the time is nearing sunset. Clouds fill the horizon, and among them fly the buzzing drones of the occupation, their hum never leaves my ears. The smell of burning wood mixed with plastic—one of the main materials used to start the fire, catches quickly and helps the firewood ignite—leaves me with a persistent headache. Although I am 3 meters (10 inches) away from the clay oven, all my senses feel the heat as I inhale the scent of fire. I’m close enough that if a strong wind blows, I can reach the flames to rekindle them before they go out.
I sit there, lost in thought about nothing at all, focused on my senses and the scene in front of me. My focus is interrupted by my mother’s voice: “Did it boil?” she asks, referring to the tea kettle. I lift the lid and reply, “No not yet.” We all wait for it to boil so we can end another long day of facing the fire.
I look closely at the face of my mother. She is my partner in fire, a phrase she coined to describe our bond. Her tired features as she waits for the tea to boil say it all. She, too, shares in the struggle before the flames, and her face clearly shows that she, like me, longs for this day to end. We both wait for that moment when we can finally lie down and rest after a day full of burning and smoke. I hope for just enough rest to enable me to survive tomorrow.
We wake up late, despite our old habit of rising early. These days of hunger and hardship offer no incentive to wake up early. Why
Hassan Abo Qamar is a Palestinian writer, programmer and entre‐preneur from Gaza, who focuses on documenting the humanitarian situation in Gaza. In addition to writing, Hassan has a deep passion for business and technology and hopes to study industrial engineer‐ing. He is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
would we? To sit before the fire? To grow hungrier? The equation is simple: Waking up earlier means more working hours, means greater need for food that doesn’t exist.
As soon as I open my eyes, I head out to buy firewood, marking the start of yet another day in this war with fire and in this ongoing genocide by the occupation. I begin chopping the wood, usually not finishing until the afternoon prayer. In one’s imagination, chopping wood might seem like a scene from an adventure film, but reality is always different…and more disappointing.
Chopping and lighting the fire is exhausting and draining. I can barely get through half of it before my body starts to give out. Then comes the tiring task of trying to ignite the flames, a bit later in the day; we delay lunch until just before sunset so we don’t need another meal at night due to the lack of food.
At the same time, my partner in fire—my mother—is inside, preparing whatever ingredients we have. Our daily routine begins with two cups of coffee placed on a still-weak fire, hoping it might ease the headache caused by the smoke. Then, we must search through our neighborhood corners for any vehicle carrying firewood. Sometimes they come early, so there’s no wood left for those who arrive late, like us. Other times, they come late, and we have to wait for it.
Once the flames grow stronger and the embers spread, we start cooking. The last thing placed over the dying coals is always the tea kettle.
While sitting in front of the fire, we can’t help remembering our past days and wondering whether they will ever return. Sometimes we ask each other strange questions: “Would you rather the gas came back or the food?” Then we laugh—we’ve forgotten that we’re supposed to have both. Even more absurd is that we’ve forgotten to talk about the war ending. We haven’t grown used to death or pain, but we’ve grown used to being abandoned. It shows in the kind of conversations we have now. And it’s even clearer when we
Making tea over a wood fire in a clay oven is a challenge.
PHOTOS
remember how we used to complain about our old lives and laugh, a hysterical kind of laughter that carries more pain than any tears.
In every lunch battle, I face the same weapons from the same enemy—fire. Choking from the smoke, eyes stinging to the point of tears, blackened, cracked hands from wood and coal: it’s a repeated scene, all for a hot drink before studying, or to heat a bit of coffee before reading the news, or for a plate of canned food whose taste I still cannot get used to.
The hardest part is the psychological toll. I always ask myself after lunch: Was it worth it? Do canned beans justify all this effort? Should heating coffee take 45 minutes? Is hunger more painful, or is it this emptiness the fire leaves behind? I am empty of dreams; I gave them up long ago. Maybe because they burn faster than plastic… or maybe they help ignite the fire even better than it! I am empty of life; the screams of those who died by this fire never leave me. It’s the same cause of death, but they die in minutes, while I’m dying slowly. I am empty of energy; the fire has drained my ability to work or study.
Then, suddenly, the smell of tea interrupts it all. It is more alive than I am. It boils with a strong, beautiful scent, even if mixed with the cursed smell of fire, while I boil with a pale face and sunken eyes, filled with hatred, exhaustion and emptiness. I smile—for the first time, it was a cup of tea, not the sound of a deadly missile, that shook my thoughts.
Because I hadn’t been thinking about “nothing,” after all. I was thinking about real, terrible questions: Why did the world allow them to do this? Why can’t we buy gas even when we have money? Why has this world gotten used to seeing fire in my city, burning humans? Then, it occurs to me that maybe I was, in fact, thinking about nothing. Because this world holds nothing of humanity. ■
Our Precious Meal During War
By Deema Fayyad
FOR OVER A YEAR, the Gaza Strip has been closed off. This feels like living in a prison: the jailer has complete power to oppress and isolate us. In March, food aid kits and other goods were
blocked from entering the besieged Gaza Strip, resulting in catastrophic famine throughout Gaza. Now, we feel oppressed, isolated and starved.
The shortage of cooking gas and foodstuffs has led to steep price increases in the market. By June, one bag of flour cost a staggering $1,900. Gazans have become completely dependent on canned food, which though still expensive remains the cheapest option for survival.
In the run-up to the famine, my family took precautions by storing two bags of flour and some canned food. This was one of the lessons learned from previous famines, and we have not yet run
Every day the author buys firewood, chops it, lights a fire and waits.
My niece, Basma, and my nephew, Asim, happily eating falafel.
PHOTO BY DEEMA FAYYAD
out of flour. However, each of us can afford only a small daily portion of bread, to make sure the flour lasts as long as possible. Like most, our diet is based on legumes like lentils and canned food like beans and peas. On good days we have tuna.
One day I woke up to the enthusiastic noise accompanying my brother Fadi’s return from the market. We were used to Fadi’s trips resulting in meager things like two onions, a few cloves of garlic or a few spices, if that—often, he would return empty-handed, lamenting the skyrocketing prices. However, this time, Fadi was able to buy many fresh vegetables: potatoes, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and green chili peppers. Most of these vegetables had not been served on our table for more than 70 days.
While our faces showed both astonishment and silent questions, Fadi explained, “We can’t have chicken or meat for Friday’s lunch like we used to—but can’t we at least have something fresh?” My older sister Fidaa immediately suggested we make a special meal of falafel with French fries and a fresh salad. It didn’t take long for everyone to agree and get excited—especially the children, who filled the place with joyful chaos.
Fidaa began making the falafel mix. I took it upon myself to cut
Deema Fayyad was born and raised in Khan Younis, Gaza. She was forcibly displaced to Deir Al‐Balah during the ongoing war. Earlier this year, she entered her fourth year as an English translation major at the Islamic University. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Pales‐tinian writers.
the potatoes. I held each potato carefully, as if I were holding a jewel, and peeled it gently, trying my best not to waste any. As I cut it, I sensed something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I recall my brother Fadi’s funny comment when I accidentally dropped a tiny piece of potato on the floor. He exclaimed, “Girl, you better watch out—you just dropped $1 on the floor!” His comment led us all to uncontrollable laughter; it was as funny as it was painfully real.
Later, my brother-in-law Anas finished cutting the wood into small pieces in preparation for cooking and ignited the fire. Fidaa began frying falafel over the open flame while Anas kept feeding the fire with one piece of wood after another under the pot. I can’t fully convey the real suffocation of this particular cooking stage, as the smoke spread everywhere and pierced our eyes—especially Fidaa’s, exposed as she was over the hot flames. As our eyes shed tears over the fire, for a moment they became tears of grief over everything we lost. But then, just as we’ve been doing for the past year and a half, we wiped our tears and carried on—because this life has left us no other choice.
In another corner, my mother was preparing some appetizers: tahini, which is a must with falafel, and Turkish salad, which we finally had the tomatoes to make.
My mother was happiest about preparing the salad. She smiled as she cut the cucumbers and tomatoes and then sighed before saying, “Oh, thank God for the blessing of fresh vegetables. Let’s compensate a little for the lack of vitamins in our bodies.” My mother is the healthiest person in our family. She cares deeply about nutritious food. Never-
Frying the falafel over the fire.
PHOTO BY DEEMA FAYYAD
The final setup of our falafel meal.
PHOTO BY DEEMA FAYYAD
theless, the war deprived her of this interest, leaving behind mostly unhealthy choices like white bread and canned food. I’m sure that salad was the dearest dish to my mother’s heart that day.
The final step was heating the bread. To heat it over an open flame would burn it, so instead I put hand sanitizer that contains alcohol on the cooker and ignited it to heat the bread. The process may take ages due to the low flame, but the result is tender, hot bread.
Our most luxurious meal in a long time was finally ready to be served. We had hot, crispy falafel and potatoes; colorful plates of fresh salad decorating our table; tahini; and even homemade pickles. Everything was perfect—beautiful enough to whet anyone’s appetite. Everyone was extremely excited about this special meal, which had cost so much money, time, effort and many smoky tears.
I served the meal while excitedly asking the children, “Who wants falafel?” Thunderous shouts of “Me!” pierced the air in response. We all ate with great pleasure, but the children’s joy was especially moving. I remember Basma—my eldest niece—her eyes glistening as she ate a falafel sandwich. “Oh God, this tastes so good! I never thought I loved falafel and potatoes this much. I feel like I’m over the moon!”
Basma’s comment truly mirrored our thoughts at that moment. It was the best falafel meal we had ever had. In fact, everything we’ve been eating during these difficult days tastes ten times better. Since childhood, we’ve eaten falafel sandwiches with potatoes and vegetables for breakfast or dinner so often that we grew tired of them. We never imagined the day would come when we’d eat them with so much eagerness and longing. And we definitely never expected to one day consider our once-humble daily meal a rare luxury. ■
The Vegetable Basket That Once Fed Gaza
By Donya Abu Sitta
IN SOUTHERN GAZA, just outside Rafah, lies Mirage—once known as the vegetable basket of Gaza. This fertile area yielded vibrant red tomatoes, the earthy scent of freshly dug potatoes, the glossy purple of plump eggplants, and the sharp, clean smell of onions to homes across the besieged Gaza Strip.
Mirage now lies barren. Israel destroyed everything: the land, the homes, even the vegetables. Heavy bombing and fires turned the lush, green farmland into a charred desert. Then the tanks rolled in, trampling the land to ensure that it would no longer be suitable for agriculture.
Since March 2, 2025, almost no food or aid has entered Gaza, and people cannot find anything to eat. Since the Rafah crossing was closed, people had depended mainly on the vegetables produced in these lands. Now even that has been taken from them.
Vegetables from the market in January 2025, the last time they were readily available and affordable.
THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THE LAND THAT FED GAZA
Abu Suleiman, a lifelong farmer in Mirage, had built his 10-dunum (2-and-a-half acre) farm from scratch. Every morning, he would start his day before sunrise, filling his small cup of hot tea and placing it near the solar panels that powered his water pump. Then he would check the pump, locally known as al-ghaṭis, which irrigates his crops.
Abu Suleiman is not just a farmer. He is the guardian of his land, its engineer, and a friend to its rich soil. He has toiled in it for years and invested everything he has to make it a sustainable source of livelihood. His land used to supply the markets of Gaza from north to south, especially after the targeting of agricultural areas east of Khan Younis.
During harvest time, vendors came from all over the Gaza Strip to buy the produce. Abu Suleiman and his workers began filling baskets with vegetables, filling the sales trucks that then headed off to markets in different areas.
Donya Abu Sitta is a content writer and translator, studying English language at Al‐Aqsa University. She has volunteered as a translator and writer for the Hult Prize, Youth Innovation Hub, Science Tone, Eat Sulas and Electronic Intifada. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Pales‐tinian writers.
In April, the tomatoes were splitting their red clusters among the deep emerald green leaves, their smooth skins taut and gleaming in the early light; the potatoes were waiting to be harvested underground, their presence betrayed by the slight cracks in the dry soil; and the eggplants and onions were ready for picking in a few days, their surfaces cool and firm to the touch.
These days were supposed to be the most prosperous of the year for Abu Suleiman and his farmer neighbors, but they have turned
PHOTO CREDIT
DONYA ABU SITTA
Israel has turned 70 percent of Gaza into no‐go zones.
into sad days filled with fear and death. In a single moment, Israel seized the most beautiful thing Abu Suleiman had—his farmland.
HARVESTING AS A DEATH SENTENCE
“It was just two days before we planned to pick everything,” he told me. “The tomatoes were hanging like lanterns, their sweet, vegetal scent filling the air. There was no time to harvest. The tanks came quickly. Overnight, our thriving agricultural hub became a militarized zone,” he said sadly, his voice heavy with despair.
The occupation forces moved swiftly, their heavy machinery rumbling ominously as it crawled over the land firing shells at fleeing locals. Then, as if a swarm of locusts had invaded the harvest, the Israelis left behind only barren stalks.
Abu Suleiman and the 50 members of his extended family fled on foot, taking nothing with them; his eldest son, his wife and his 2-year-old daughter rode a motorcycle with a desperately whining engine.
One day, his middle son slipped back into the farmland without telling anyone. He couldn’t bear the thought of their thirsty trees wilting alone.
He quietly turned on the solar system and watered what was left of the crops, the precious water gurgling through the irrigation channels. While there, he ran into two neighbors—fellow farmers riding their donkey through the fields, the rhythmic clip-clop of its hooves the only sound besides the distant shelling. They had also returned briefly to check their land, their faces etched with worry.
He asked them for a ride, but they declined, afraid they would be an easy target: the Israeli army would kill anyone they found harvesting crops, and carrying things would instantly make them a higher value target. So the son walked home.
Abu Suleiman had meanwhile just learned that two of his neighbors had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Upon seeing his son return, and not realizing where his son had been, Abu Suleiman shared the bad news. In disbelief, the son gasped that he had just been with them moments ago.
Realizing how close his son had come to death, Abu Suleiman sternly warned him not to go back again: “I don’t want to lose you.”
FARMING IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH
Mirage wasn’t just a local field. It fed neighborhoods from Gaza City in the north to Khan Younis in the south. Losing it is not only an economic blow to farmers, but a blow to Gaza’s food security as a whole. Without it, prices for vegetables have soared. Families now stretch one tomato across a single salad they all must share. Markets are emptying, their once vibrant scent now a faint memory.
“Al-ghaṭis stopped humming,” Abu Suleiman said, his voice flat and devoid of its usual warmth. “Not because there’s no sun—but because there’s no reason to water what’s no longer alive.”
The Israeli assault on Mirage came not only with bulldozers grinding through the earth and drones buzzing menacingly overhead, but with the brutal understanding that destroying Gaza’s ability to feed itself sentences it to a slow death.
Abu Suleiman’s eyes welled up as he remembered the tomatoes he grew that fed Gaza. You could feel their weight in your hand, smell their ripe odor, and taste their acidic sweetness. The tanks pulverized them into dust. Will we ever be free to make this land fertile again, or will the dust remain as a permanent reminder of what was lost? ■
In Gaza, Journalism Comes With a Death Sentence
By Reem Sleem
GAZA’S JOURNALISTS diligently go to work even as they await their likely deaths. Unarmed witnesses to the truth, they have continued to do their jobs documenting reality only to be killed in droves by Israeli airstrikes. For them, journalism has long become more than a risk: it is a literal act of suicide. Working as a journalist means working toward a shroud; it means fighting to keep one’s spirit alive when death is everywhere.
Targeting journalists is part of a deliberate Israeli plan to prevent the world from seeing what is happening in the killing fields of Gaza.
By early June 2025, Israel had killed as many as 230 journalists and media workers since October 2023, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza. Al Jazeera notes that this is more than the total number of journalists killed in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the war in Yugoslavia and the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Most of them were annihilated with their families during heavy airstrikes targeting their homes, displacement camps or hospital beds, or while reporting in front of cameras. Others were shot execution-style.
Reem Sleem, an English literature student at Al‐Azhar University, was displaced to Egypt early in the war. She is training with We Are Not Numbers, a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
Many of them were not reporters but rather news editors, technicians, camera operators and sound engineers—unsung heroes of journalism. In Gaza those who work for media organizations behind the scenes also risk their lives.
A few examples of the many journalists killed, some prominent and others less so, include Khaled Abu Seif and Nour Qandil and their young daughter in Deir al-Balah. The Israeli Occupation Forces assassinated photographer Aziz al-Hajjar, his wife and children in northern Gaza and took the life of journalist Abdul Rahman al-Abadla in the south. Ahmed al-Zanati, his wife and their two children were all killed by an Israeli airstrike on his tent in al-Mawasi, a “safe” area.
An Israeli drone targeted journalist Hassan Islayh in the dilapidated Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis. Islayh was being treated for injuries he sustained from an Israeli bombing of a media tent on April 7, 2025. In this attack, his colleague, Helmi al-Faqawi, burned to death. Two days later, two other journalists—Hassan Samour and Ahmed al-Helou—were also killed in Israeli attacks.
On April 17, Fatima Hassouna, a prominent photojournalist whose life during the genocide was the subject of a documentary to be screened at Cannes, was targeted. She was killed the day before the screening in her home with 10 members of her family.
On April 23, 2025 Saeed Amin Abu Hassanein, a sound engineer at Al-Aqsa Radio, was martyred with his wife, Asmaa Jihad Abu Hassanein, and their 15-year-old daughter, Sarah, on Al-Bi’a Street
Palestinian journalist Saeed Amin Abu Hassanein, who spent 20 years in the fields of audio engineering and radio mixing, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Deir al‐Balah, central Gaza Strip on April 23, The bombing also claimed the lives of his wife, Asmaa Jihad Abu Hassanein, and their young daughter, Sarah Saeed Abu Hassanein.
in central Deir al-Balah when an Israeli warplane launched a missile directly at them while they were walking.
Saeed was a colleague and close friend of my uncle Ahmed, a video editor at Al-Aqsa TV. Ever since that moment, Ahmed’s life turned upside down; this tragedy plunged him and his family into despair.
Initially, my uncle believed that only senior journalists or those in visible field roles were at risk. But when he learned that his colleague, an unarmed sound engineer, was deliberately targeted and killed, the news filled him with fear.
My uncle realized that no one in the media is safe. Anyone attempting to expose these crimes and break the deliberate media blackout would be targeted.
Press vests, helmets, cameras and accreditation cards no longer protected anyone. In fact, wearing identifying markers as journalists or staff working for them placed them in danger.
Fearing for his family's safety, Uncle Ahmed had to make the heartbreaking decision to distance himself from them and go into hiding. He had to leave his young children in a school turned displacement center in Khan Younis while remaining exposed himself. He has been physically and psychologically exhausted, with little opportunity for even minimal rest.
He was not alone; many like him were forced to sleep on the streets, in cars or in gutted newsrooms, avoiding phone contact with their families in a desperate attempt to protect them through physical separation.
Is there anything worse than knowing that proximity to your loved ones threatened their lives?
Is there a more dreadful feeling than knowing that your presence beside your children in these miserable conditions creates a burden on them instead of a source of comfort and safety? And all this just because you edit videos or enhance the sound quality that conveys the news from Gaza?
Exactly what kind of press freedom are Gaza journalists allowed to celebrate? Their press “freedom” requires them to abandon their families to do their jobs or to be buried with them in a family grave.
Despite all this, my uncle remains determined to continue his work, knowing that it is the only way for the world to know what is happening in Gaza and to see the extent of the destruction and genocide committed by Israel.
“Even if we are threatened and assassinated, even if we lose our loved ones, our voice will not be silenced, and we will not stop conveying the truth and the facts,” he told the Washington Report
Press freedom in Gaza is not merely a human rights issue; it is a
Journalist Omar Al‐Diraoui before the occupation bombed his house in Al‐Zawaida, central Gaza Strip.
life and death saga. What is happening should not be treated as numbers in annual reports but as a systematic crime against the truth and as the silencing and even erasure of the victims of ongoing systematic crimes.
If the entire world can claim to be unable to protect Palestinian journalists, the least it can do is not be complicit through silence. Silence is complicity in crime. ■
Gaza’s First Blind Lawyer
By Jumana Taiseer Mughari
IN THE SOUTHERN Gaza Strip, where bombed-out streets and broken lives have become the backdrop to daily survival, one young man is rewriting what it means to persevere. Mohammad Yousef Al-Najjar, 25, is Gaza’s first blind licensed lawyer.
Al-Najjar has never let his disability define or limit him. “I chose law to challenge stereotypes,” he says. “Many people believe that blind individuals should only pursue fields related to education or religion. But I believe that blind people can study other fields, such as law, information technology and even medicine.” Al-Najjar graduated in 2023 with a degree in law with honors from the Islamic University of Gaza. The university had adapted to his needs: providing materials in braille, recorded lectures and screen reader software during exams.
After his graduation, Al-Najjar trained at the office of attorney Maram Abu Shatat. For several months, he helped her prepare legal memoranda, organized case files, and even supported military court cases—some of the most complex legal matters in Gaza.
“She trusted me,” he says. “She believed I was capable, and that belief shaped my confidence.” However, his legal apprenticeship ended abruptly on October 7, 2023. All law offices were closed and courts stopped functioning.
Al-Najjar was only weeks into a masters degree program in public law at Islamic University of Gaza when the war erupted and access to academic resources vanished. “The university library no longer exists,” he says. Despite these losses, Al-Najjar has not paused his education—he’s currently taking online classes.
On May 30, 2024, the Israeli Occupation Forces launched a heavy bombardment campaign on Rafah, forcing the family to flee their home in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood. Four months later, their house was destroyed completely. “My laptop, documents, my personal library of legal books and references—everything was lost when our house was bombed,” Al-Najjar says. He is now displaced in Deir al-Balah, yet he continues both his academic and professional journey. Despite the destruction around
Jumana Taiseer Mughari is a journalist and writer with a bachelor’s degree in English from Al‐Aqsa University in Gaza. She is driven by a passion for uncovering human stories and amplifying voices of re‐silience amid adversity. She is also a skilled translator and offers de‐velopmental English courses to those eager to enhance their lan‐guage skills. Currently, she works as a coordinator at Dar Al‐Sabeel Foundation for Orphans, where she supports community‐based ini‐tiatives. She is training with We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a project to amplify the voices of young Palestinian writers.
him, Al-Najjar provides legal consultations to Sharia courts that oversee family, marriage, divorce and inheritance cases and assists in drafting contracts, while steadfastly pursuing his master’s degree in public law.
A FIRST STEP INTO THE GLOBAL LEGAL ARENA
Encouraged by his former professor, Dr. Tamer Al-Qadi, Al-Najjar submitted a research paper titled “The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Curbing Cybercrime” to a student conference organized by the Faculty of Law at the University of Mosul in Iraq. It was his first international academic participation—prepared entirely while displaced, without electricity or reliable internet.
“It was incredibly hard,” he says. “I had no computer, no screen reader and the only laptop I could borrow wasn’t accessible for blind users.” He dictated what he wanted to write to his sister-in-law, who helped by typing and formatting his words. “The hardest part was finding sources. Most books exist only in print, and even when I knew someone had a needed resource, I couldn’t reach them because of the military checkpoints.” He had to “rely on limited references...and dig deep into every source” he could find, he told the Washington Report
Still, his research was accepted and presented, and remarkably, won first place.
“I was happy to win,” Al-Najjar says. “But at the same time, I was heartbroken for not being there in person.” The award, which included a certificate and a financial prize, didn’t drastically change
Mohammad Yousef Al‐Najjar graduated in 2023 with a degree in law with honors from the Islamic University of Gaza.
his life, but it became a turning point. “It motivated me to look for opportunities to pursue a Ph.D. outside of Palestine.” The experience gave him a sense of validation and helped him connect—at least virtually—with international legal circles. It was a step forward, even from within the confines of Gaza.
Today, he is determined to become a diplomat or an international legal advocate. “I want to represent Palestine and the rights of our people. I want to bring justice, not only in courtrooms but on global platforms.”
In a place where even hope is targeted, Al-Najjar’s persistence has become a symbol. He is not looking for pity, nor does he describe himself as exceptional. “Many students are continuing their studies under extreme conditions,” he says. “I’m not the only one. From under the rubble, dreams are born.” Al-Najjar adds, “Palestinians can achieve anything—whether inside the Strip or abroad, with sight or without it.”
LAW, LOSS AND THE FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE
What Al-Najjar lost in material form—books, devices, a home—he has replaced with something harder to destroy: belief in his mission. He continues writing his master’s thesis despite power cuts, limited mobility and digital isolation. He still dreams of standing before international courts, not only to represent himself, but also represent a people whose right to justice has long been delayed.
Al-Najjar is the first blind lawyer in Gaza—but he doesn’t want to be the last. His life has been a continuous call to break barriers, defy expectations and reimagine what’s possible even in the most impossible conditions. His voice, authoritative yet simultaneously softened by experience, is now part of a larger legal conversation—one that refuses to be silenced by rubble or bombs.
“I want to live for a cause,” he says. “Even if everything else collapses, this cause will keep me standing.” ■
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Egypt Blocks the Global March to Gaza
By Ahmad El-Masry
THE GLOBAL MARCH TO GAZA is a broad-based international initiative launched in 2012 that aims to challenge the ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza, call attention to the genocide and starvation campaign there and demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian people. The movement also asserts the right of Palestinians to freedom of movement and challenges the broader Israeli occupation. Drawing inspiration from other forms of nonviolent resistance, the organizers envisioned a mass mobilization of international activists and local supporters marching toward Gaza’s borders from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel itself. However, the march has faced numerous political and logistical obstacles, particularly from
Ahmad El ‐ Masry is an activist based in DC with CODEPINK. If there’s a protest for humanity, you can find him there.
regional governments, and its ability to physically reach Gaza has often been impeded by geopolitical barriers. In particular, Egypt has adopted a complex and often ambivalent position toward the movement, shaped by its own political interests, regional alliances and internal security concerns.
My experience of the march as an Egyptian-American participant may have been a bit different than the majority of other participants. I wasn’t just complicit in the genocide and mass starvation in Gaza because of my U.S. nationality, but also because of my Egyptian roots. The United States greenlit, armed and gave diplomatic cover to the genocide; Egypt may not be as complicit as the U.S., but its role can’t be ignored either. When the Rafah crossing was still somewhat open, Egyptian border officials were demanding that bomb-battered Gazans pay up to $10,000 a
Activists from more than 30 countries waiting at a checkpoint after having their passports confiscated by Egyptian police.
PHOTO BY AHMAD EL-MASRY
person to enter Egypt. Yet when Israelis were fleeing Iranian missiles and couldn’t use the airport, they used the Taba border crossing to get into Sinai; they did not have to bribe anyone to enter Egypt, as was demanded of terrorized Gazans.
Before the march even began, the Egyptian government was already cracking down. Foreign nationals who arrived at Cairo airport wearing any pro-Palestine messaging were flagged; their bags were checked and they were often interrogated (and in some cases, deported). Those who made it out of the airport were visited in their hotels by Egyptian police; some were detained for hours while the officials decided what course of action to take with them. Some activists were put on a bus and sent to the airport where they were deported; others were allowed to stay in Egypt after having their phones and belongings searched. All this happened before the official march programming even began.
thugs threw water bottles at them and beat them; women were yanked by their hair and clothing.
The day the march was supposed to take place (June 15), things took a turn for the worse. The road to Ismailiyya where all the delegations were supposed to gather was marked by checkpoints and a heavy police presence. The police accused march participants of being bad faith actors who were funded by Israel and the Muslim Brotherhood to destabilize the security of Egypt; they seized passports and then gave international activists the choice of getting on a bus and returning to Cairo (and getting their passports back) or staying there in limbo. Activists chanted in solidarity with the Palestinian cause and waved Palestinian flags for hours at these checkpoints until nightfall.
That’s when the brutality began. For decades, Egyptian police have preferred to outsource the beating of unarmed people to hired thugs. As peaceful activists sat down with locked arms, the
I saw some of the most peaceful and gentle souls I’ve ever met brutalized that day. The government claimed that these participants did not have official approval for the march. March organizers had tried for at least two months to obtain the proper permits but were always given the run around. In the end no one made it to Arish, where we were supposed to start the physical march on foot to the Rafah crossing.
A big chunk of the Egyptian population was antagonistic toward the march; it believed the government propaganda that we were there to undermine Egypt’s security and to sow chaos. My own uncle, who had expressed pride in my disruption of a Senate hearing with Secretary of State Marco Rubio (where I was literally picked up and thrown out of the hearing and then arrested), was now asking me why I left the United States to “burden Egypt with this unrest.”
Everyone I met who came to participate in the march came for one reason: HUMANITY. No one sought to criticize the Egyptian government for its role in the genocide, no one came to protest the human rights violations by the Sisi government and none of this was about internal politics in Egypt. We simply wanted to reach Rafah to apply global pressure for the aid trucks lined up at the border unable to reach the population that was in desperate need of that aid.
I expected Egypt to be more sympathetic to the cause; that was my mistake. In Egypt I was afraid to even wear a keffiyeh or any proPalestine attire in public; I never felt that fear in the halls of Congress, but in Egypt such could be the reason I got detained or deported, which would mean I would no longer be able to see most of my family members, who live there. I used to love coming to Egypt; I was born in the United States, but Egypt was the one place I felt that I actually belonged.
I no longer feel that way. It’s true that most of the population is largely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but not if support requires any change to their lifestyles. McDonald’s and other brands that are supposed to be boycotted are thriving in Egypt. I understand protesting in a police state like Egypt is especially risky for Egyptians, but boycott is the easiest way to make sure you’re not complicit in the genocide happening right next door, and even that is not being adopted. I tried to have conversations about this with local Egyptians, and for the most part they would say something along the lines of, “what can we do besides pray?” Sort of the way U.S. politicians respond when asked what can be done about all the school shootings in the country. And in both cases, whether genocide in Gaza or mass shootings in the United States, people surely can do a lot more than offer thoughts and prayers. ■
Just one of the many Palestinian flags that were carried in hopes of making it to Rafah and finally letting the aid trucks into Gaza.
PHOTO BY AHMAD EL-MASRY
The Price of Citizenship: Silence While My People Scream
By Diana Safieh
Thousands of protesters encircle part of Westminster to form a symbolic red line at Houses of Parliament in London, UK, on June 4, 2025. Protesters formed a red line around a large segment of Parliament, calling for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to sanction Israel after the U.N. warned 14,000 children in Gaza face starvation.
MANY OF US are grappling with the dissonance of witnessing unimaginable horrors unfold in Gaza on the news, only to return moments later to the routines of our everyday lives, commuting to work, meeting friends, existing in relative safety. But perhaps no one feels this contradiction more acutely than the nearly 50 percent of Palestinians who live outside of historic Palestine. As a member of the diaspora myself, I feel it most sharply in those jarring moments, when I hear another devastating update, then step out to clear my head with a walk through the quiet, leafy streets of the Royal Borough of Richmond. The contrast is painfully noticeable.
I have written about being a member of the diaspora and the survivor’s guilt that accompanies it (Washington Report March/April 2025, pp. 62-63). But what happens when the country you’ve called home since childhood decides to back and arm your oppressor? I love Britain, the culture, the opportunities and lifestyle living here
Diana Safieh is a writer and podcaster with expertise in Palestine, true crime and social justice. Her website is <www.dianasafieh.com>. She currently works with the Britain Palestine Project.
has afforded me. But this same country is historically and actively complicit in the erasure of my ancestral homeland, my people, my culture, my voice and my identity. How are Palestinians in the UK, the U.S., Canada and Europe supposed to reconcile this? Are we meant to uproot our lives and move to Slovenia or one of the few countries that even acknowledge our right to exist as a state?
THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Is this just a personal reckoning, or is there a foundation in international law for this profound discord between home and homeland? In January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that it is plausible Israel is committing genocide in Gaza under the Genocide Convention. The ICJ issued provisional measures requiring Israel to prevent all acts that could kill, cause serious mental or physical harm, create life-destroying conditions or obstruct births among Palestinians. Israel was also ordered to ensure the delivery of urgent humanitarian aid. These ICJ measures are legally binding, but they depend on the will of the international community to enforce them. And thus far, that will is sorely lacking.
Twenty years earlier, the UK formally acknowledged the ICJ’s ruling on the illegality of the separation wall. But did it act on it? No. Trade with Israeli settlements continued. The arms trade remained uninterrupted. Not a single meaningful step was taken to challenge or obstruct the illegal occupation of Palestine.
And what about the International Criminal Court (ICC)? In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant,
PHOTO
and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif (who had already been killed by Israel in an air attack). The UK’s initial response was bizarre, claiming the ICC lacked jurisdiction because Britain does not recognize Palestine as a state. Worse still, the UK refused to commit to executing the arrest warrants if Netanyahu or Gallant were to set foot on British soil. So much for a rules-based international order. The UK has since imposed sanctions on far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, barring them from entering the country. But it’s too little, too late, and honestly, will they even be that bothered?
In fact, the UK has consistently abstained from or voted against U.N. resolutions aimed at holding Israel accountable. Britain’s selective application of international law doesn’t just undermine its credibility, it exposes a deep moral failure at the heart of its foreign policy.
MILITARY SHIPMENTS CONTINUE
To be clear, components for F-35 fighter jets, drones, munitions, military intelligence and training obtained from the UK are all being used in the relentless assault on Gaza, contributing directly to the soaring death toll. And yet, halting this trade is seen as too politically risky, not just because of Israel, which seems unbothered by British condemnations so long as the weapons keep flowing, but because of the UK’s ever-fragile “special relationship” with the United States. But that relationship only seems to last as long as the next president’s mood. And with Donald Trump at the helm again, it’s clear that no amount of moral compromise will satisfy a man who always demands more. So why continue to sacrifice Britain’s professed principles for a transactional alliance with no loyalty in return?
The UK has claimed it would temporarily suspend some arms exports to Israel—but with so many loopholes, the policy is essentially toothless. In September 2024, around 30 export licenses were suspended due to possible breaches of international humanitarian law. But the Guardian reported on May 6, 2025, that at least 14 mil-
itary shipments have gone through since then, including 8,500 bombs, grenades and missiles, and 146 armored vehicles.
Under international law, it is illegal to export weapons or components where there is a clear risk they may be used to commit violations of international humanitarian law. With multiple investigations underway into alleged war crimes by Israeli forces, the UK’s ongoing arms trade with Israel puts it at serious risk of breaching its own legal obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty. Several human rights organizations are now pursuing legal action against the UK government, arguing that it is complicit in potential war crimes by continuing to supply arms in the face of overwhelming evidence of their use in unlawful attacks.
But when Britain says it’s “reviewing” its arms exports, we know exactly what that means: business as usual.
MEDIA COVERAGE SHIELDS ISRAEL
Even so-called neutral media coverage feels like a kick in the teeth, because passive language can be violent too. Israeli hostages must be freed, perhaps in exchange for our prisoners. Israelis are bru-
tally slaughtered by Palestinians, while we are simply killed, as if by accident, or some unfortunate inevitability. The word Palestinian is so often followed by Hamas-linked or extremist, rarely, if ever, by child, doctor, teacher, mother, let alone British citizen This isn’t just semantics. These choices shape perception. They strip us of our humanity in the public eye, one headline at a time. Then there’s the psychic violence, being told that mourning the deaths of friends, family, colleagues is political. That our grief is a form of protest. That to acknowledge our loss is to take a side.
LIFE ON THE MARGINS
I hold a British passport. I went to school here, studied at university here, I pay taxes and I vote. And when my people are bombed, it is my adopted government that supplies the bombs. So what does it feel like to live in the UK, watching half-hearted condemnations, if and when they come at all, alongside graphic atrocities on the evening news? It takes an emotional toll to be both a citizen of this country and a member of a community under siege.
The UK government’s policies don’t just ignore our suffering, they actively erase
Activists from Choose Love read aloud and list the names of 15,613 children who have been killed in the Gaza war since Oct. 7, 2023, on May 29, 2025, outside the Houses of Parliament in London, UK.
PHOTO BY
ALISHIA ABODUNDE/GETTY IMAGES
our humanity. The sense of alienation, invisibility and betrayal runs deep. I couldn’t feel more like a second-class citizen, technically protected, yet morally and legally abandoned.
That protection has always been conditional, if it existed at all. When I found myself in difficult situations with Israeli authorities, I often wasn’t even granted the basic right to contact my consulate. Another violation. Another silence. Another message received.
And if I dare to express anger about any of this? I’m dismissed as too emotional, too militant, too radical. But how can we
not be angry? Speaking out about injustice isn’t incitement. It’s truth-telling. It’s fact.
As a British citizen of Palestinian origin, I choose to use my citizenship to hold a mirror up to my government. If that makes people uncomfortable, well, maybe it should. I’m not asking for anything Britain hasn’t already pledged to uphold.
So what’s the way forward? For me, it always comes back to international law. These conventions were created in the wake of world wars to prevent atrocities like the ones we’re seeing today. They were meant to safeguard humanity, not to gather dust. But we can reclaim them.
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That’s why I work with the Britain Palestine Project, a charity calling on the UK government to demand an immediate ceasefire, recognize the state of Palestine, uphold international law, suspend arms transfers and end complicity in war crimes. We advocate for peace built on justice and equal rights. And honestly, I don’t want to live in a country, or a world, where any of that is considered controversial.
My father’s refugee journey ended with a rare and precious prize: British citizenship. I gained access to safety, education, the Nathe National Health Service, the right to vote—gifts denied to so many still trapped in camps, on borders or beneath rubble. I’ve had opportunities they can only dream of, and I am genuinely, deeply grateful.
I grew up in one of the most diverse, vibrant cities in the world. But gratitude and grief are not mutually exclusive. I can love this country and still hold it to account. And I must, because this isn’t just a Palestinian pain. Women, LGBTQIA+ people, Black and brown communities, we all know what it means to be told we matter less, that we are a threat.
It was always an uneasy marriage. I never adopted a British accent. I have my funny little ways. But I did my best to belong, until silence became betrayal. Until my government’s complicity in genocide made it impossible to play the polite guest. I refuse to feel grateful while my people are screaming.
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My passport says I belong. But policy says otherwise. Every day I try to feel at home. Every day, the bombs remind me I can’t. I live in London, but my heart is buried in Gaza’s rubble. None of us are safe until all of us are free. If your freedom depends on their oppression, it was never freedom to begin with. I may not be worthless to this government, but I am definitely worth less. I live in the margins. Not erased. Just written smaller. They let me stay. But they do not let me stand up. ■
The author’s grandparents, Odette and Emile Safieh, and their pre‐1948 British Palestine passports. (Granddad is smoking!)
COURTESY
DIANA
SAFIEH
Palestinian Liberation From Israeli Colonization Will Liberate the United States, Too
By Ida Audeh
Israeli forces arrest a 13‐year‐old Palestinian child during a protest near the Tombs of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron, West Bank, on April 16, 2025. Each year approximately 500‐700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. Since Oct. 7, rising numbers of Palestinian kids have been detained without charge and face violence and abuse while imprisoned, according to Save the Children.
SINCE THE BEGINNING of Israel’s genocidal rampage in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, various pundits across the political spectrum have intimated that the battle between Israelis and Palestinians is an existential battle and that it will bring about the end of Israel. Some argue that a new geopolitical order is being configured and that Israel has no role in it; for the new order to be realized, stability is required and Israel, which has bombed every country in the region, is clearly a destabilizing force. Others point to the state’s economic downturn, the emigration of Jewish citizens, the demoralization of the army and the very real possibility of civil war as an indicator that Israel won’t be around for the long haul. Another way of putting this is that
the artificiality of the state—its creation as an act of will by Western imperialist countries to serve their interests in a resource-rich area of the world—is finally catching up with it, and its implosion is inevitable. Historians like Ilan Pappé have argued that Israel is following the predictable trajectory of colonial powers whose grip on their colony is weakening and that it has now begun to unravel, the fate of most colonizers throughout history.
Casual observers like myself hold on to the belief that a state as uniquely, sadistically, flamboyantly evil as Israel has to end because it cannot be tolerated in the 21st century. To tolerate it is to normalize savagery, which is a direct threat to every person on the planet and an insult to what it means to be human.
Israel is a lab experiment gone hideously haywire. Israel is what happens when you take a group of people from around the
Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.
world and settle them in an ethnically cleansed geography; tell them they constitute a people; foster a sense of superiority ordained by the Almighty; encourage them to believe that the world owes them for the crimes of World War II and that norms don’t apply to them; give them unlimited financial, military and diplomatic support; and assist them as they subjugate populations who defy them. The outcome of nearly eight decades of such indulgence is the Jewish Frankenstein on a vicious rampage today, dismembering and crippling children in Gaza, dynamiting homes in the West Bank and southern Lebanon, and initiating an unprovoked war with Iran.
Historical precedents for the dissolution of similar monstrosities include Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and apartheid South Africa. None of these political systems had a “right to exist” as threats to humankind, and Israel doesn’t either.
The benefits to the Arab world of the demise of Israel are obvious and will be felt immediately. But here I want to focus on the benefits to the United States.
THE U.S. WITHOUT ISRAEL
The end of Israel would spell the beginning of the liberation of U.S. citizens, who may not fully appreciate the extent to which this country has been colonized and dominated by its client state.
Consider the implications on the U.S. political process. When presidential candidate Donald Trump accepted $300 million in campaign contributions from Miriam Adelson, whose single cause is Israel, no one dared to raise the obvious objection that he was being bought to serve foreign (Israeli) interests. To prove their servility to Israel, presidential candidates threaten to bomb without cause a Muslim country (Iran, Syria, Yemen) that has not attacked the United States, just to curry favor with the most genocidal proIsrael voters and money dispensers. With Israel out of the picture, such sick discourse and payoffs will disappear, because no other U.S. ally arouses such deranged expressions of fidelity.
Fighters of the Islamic Jihad and the Ezz al‐Din Al‐Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, stand on a stage before the release of Israeli hostages, Sagui Dekel Chen (2nd l), Iair Horn (speaking) and Alexander Sasha Troufanov (2nd r) in Khan Younis, on Feb. 15, 2025.
Dezionize the entity now called Israel and U.S. Middle East policy would be drafted by U.S. elected officials trying to serve U.S. interests (admittedly hardly benign) rather than by Tel Aviv or its lobbyists in Washington. No longer would members of Congress have American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) handlers assigned to them who draft legislation for them to ram through Congress. Indeed, there would not even be an AIPAC, and the disappearance of that unregistered and malevolent foreign lobby is reason enough to celebrate the demise of Israel. With Israel gone, the Anti-Defamation League could, with some effort and new staff, live up to its name and combat bigotry rather than acting in concert with Israel to smear Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. and to make Israel’s rampages against Arabs and Muslims in West Asia less objectionable to the general public.
U.S. legislators won’t make fools of themselves passing laws that are unconstitutional, and they won’t violate laws they have sworn to uphold, like the Leahy Law, which if implemented would have ended arms shipments to Israel decades ago. As of April 2024, at least 38 states had laws criminalizing Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) moves by U.S.
citizens; such legislation, clearly a violation of citizens’ constitutional rights, would become a thing of the past, relevant only in law classes to illustrate the need for mechanisms to curb rogue legislatures. Although all countries spy on one another, none spies on the United States more aggressively than Israel, especially in the areas of military and dual use technologies. Blackmail is part of its arsenal: The infamous Jeffrey Epstein, who hosted parties at which underage girls were made available to (in legal terms, raped by) political figures, was (according to former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe) a Mossad agent who had evidence against his guests, useful for blackmail purposes. Epstein died (or was killed) in prison, and the stories were hushed up.
Is this really an ally that deserves unlimited U.S. support?
Without Israel’s minions—in Congress, the elite media, rich donors—nudging the U.S. government, would the U.S. have destroyed Iraq, shelled Lebanon in 1982, bombed Syria, or bombed Iran even as the two countries were in the process of negotiating an agreement? Would it have shredded its reputation by joining in the shabby farce of working with the (Mossad-
conjured) “humanitarian assistance” hubs in Gaza that lure starving people to areas where they can be killed more easily?
THE COST OF SHIELDING ISRAEL FROM SCRUTINY
To examine Israel is to be appalled at the con job that has been foisted on the public for almost eight decades. Abandon Israel for your own self-respect as a nation. You have done everything humanly possible to coddle your deformed protégé, even making yourself look ridiculous everywhere in the world. The U.S. is the only country on the Security Council that consistently vetoes a resolution for a ceasefire during a genocide. Is Israel really worth living with the disgust that vote evoked in people everywhere?
To protect Israel, certain words are verboten. The Intercept reported that The New York Times instructed its journalists to avoid using words such as “refugee camps,” “occupied territory,” “slaughter,” “massacre,” “carnage,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” when writing about Gaza, even while it was doing all of these things in Gaza and the West Bank. Even the word “Palestine” is to be avoided when possible in text and headlines. The New York Times is hardly an outlier.
But where Israel is concerned, Israel’s U.S. agents go one step further and change the definitions of words. The new cynical definition of anti-Semitism makes it a form of hate speech to describe Israel in anything other than glowing terms. To speak out is to risk accusations of antiSemitism by people and organizations who are never required to provide evidence of their charges. A country that requires such minute policing of the conduct and speech of the U.S. public is clearly not sustainable in the long run, and it stifles the kind of political discourse that is associated with a free body politic.
The demise of Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state won’t make the United States a democracy; this country will still be controlled by corporations that own politicians and write legislation that protects their predatory practices. But corporate control
can at least be named and fought against. It has been much trickier combatting Israel’s pernicious control of and twisting of popular culture.
We see it everywhere. The gratuitous positive references to Israel or an Israeli character in movies. The ludicrous usurpation of Middle Eastern cuisine as being in any way associated with 77year-old Israel. The outrageous attacks on student speech and activism on global issues: the Jewish state cannot stand scrutiny and so students must be silenced, hounded, rendered unemployable. The failure of most U.S. journalists to denounce the assassination of more than 220 journalists in Gaza illustrates how thoroughly they have been groomed to serve power.
ROOTING FOR THE RESISTANCE
But perhaps the most glaring example of the corrosive effect of Israel on the U.S. body politic is the reluctance (or inability) of ordinary people to look at Gaza and describe accurately what is on display. The humanitarian catastrophe overwhelms everyone, but that is not the only story worth noting: there is also a remarkable and inspiring resistance. For more than 20 months, Israel has been carpet bombing the Gaza Strip and deliberately, methodically, sadistically massacring civilians. It has targeted children, families, journalists, medical staff, university professors, relief workers, U.N. staff, bakers, computer scientists and others. Despite the army’s brutality, the Palestinian resistance continues to fight back, with weapons it has made locally, often repurposing dud Israeli grenades and lobbing them back at their invaders. It has not surrendered.
Had people watched this in a movie, it would be clear whom to root for; the Israeli miscreants, sniping pregnant women and shooting children in the head and chest (and for boys, the groin, to deny them future reproductive ability), are the ones any normal viewer would want to see vanquished decisively by the resistance. Yet where Gaza is concerned,
the U.S. mind is so colonized by Israel that even after the genocide has been livestreamed month after month, people are still reluctant to give the resistance the credit it deserves for defying, against daunting odds, Israel’s determined erasure of Palestine and Palestinians. We should never be so terrorized by a putative “ally” that we can’t state the obvious truth: The Palestinian resistance, fighting a better armed and unscrupulous army, has been illustrating for close to two years what courage looks like. Every day, it makes the legends that will inspire generations to come.
In time, North Americans will look back with incredulity at the way a partisan force had them rooting for so long for a settler colonial project (Jim Crow on steroids, fraudulently packaged as “the only democracy in the Middle East”) that terrorized an entire region, wiped out at least 1,400 bloodlines in Gaza alone and celebrated the slaughter as necessary for its self-defense. The end of that settler colonial project, which will remove one shackle choking this country, cannot come soon enough. ■
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U.S. Support for Israel Comes at a Staggering, Multifaceted Price
By Brian McGlinchey
After completing their 40‐day hunger strike outside the Permanent Mission of the United States to the U.N. in New York, on June 30, veterans and pro‐peace groups protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the blocking of humanitarian aid.
WHEN ASKED ABOUT the cost of their government’s support for the State of Israel, some Americans will say it’s $3.8 billion a year— the amount of annual military aid the United States is committed to under its current, 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Israel. However, that answer massively understates the true cost of the relationship, not only because it doesn’t capture various, vast expenditures springing from it, but even more so because the relationship’s steepest costs can’t be measured in dollars. Since its 1948 founding, Israel has been far and away the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance. Though the Ukraine war created
Brian McGlinchey is an independent journalist from San Antonio, TX who publishes Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey at stark realities.substack.com. Printed with permission.
a brief anomaly, Israel generally tops the list every year, despite the fact that Israel is among the world’s richest countries—ranked three spots below the UK and two spots above Japan in per capita GDP. Driving that point home, even when using the grossly understated $3.8 billion figure for U.S. expenditures on Israel, the U.S. gave the Zionist state $404 per Israeli in the 2023 fiscal year, compared to just $15 per person for Ethiopia, the U.S.’ third-largest beneficiary that year.
Israel’s cumulative post-World War II haul has been nearly double that of runner-up Egypt. What most Americans don’t realize, however, is that much of Egypt’s take—$1.4 billion in 2023—should be chalked up to Israel too, because of ongoing U.S. aid commitments rising from the 1978 Camp David Accords that brokered peace between Egypt and Israel. The same can be said for Jordan—the U.S.’ fourth-
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largest beneficiary in fiscal 2023 at $1.7 billion. U.S. aid to the kingdom surged after it signed its own 1994 treaty with Israel, and a wedge of Jordan’s aid is intended to address the country’s large refugee population, comprising not only Palestinians displaced by Israel’s creation, but also masses who’ve fled U.S.-led regime-change wars pursued on Israel’s behalf.
Then there’s the supplemental aid to Israel that Congress periodically authorizes on top of the MOU commitment. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, these supplements have exceeded the MOU commitment by leaps and bounds. In just the first year of the war in Gaza, Congress and President Joe Biden approved an additional $14.1 billion in emergency military aid to Israel, bringing the total for that year to $17.9 billion.
One must also consider the fact that, given the U.S. government runs perpetual deficits that now easily exceed $1 trillion, every marginal expenditure, including aid to Israel, is financed with debt that bears an interest expense, increasing Americans’ tax-and-inflation burden.
SUMS SPENT TO SUPPORT ISRAELI ACTIONS
On top of money given to Israel, the U.S. government spends huge sums on activities either meant to benefit Israel or that spring from Israel’s actions. For example, during just the first year of Israel’s post-Oct. 7 war in Gaza, increased U.S. Navy offensive and defensive operations in the Middle East theater cost the United States an estimated $4.86 billion.
Those Gaza-war-related outflows have not only continued but accelerated. For example, earlier this year, the Pentagon engaged in an intense campaign against Yemen’s Houthis. In proclaimed retaliation for Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza, the Houthis have targeted Israel and ships the Houthis said were linked to Israel. In response, the U.S. unleashed “Operation Rough Rider,” which often saw $2 million U.S. missiles being used against $10,000 Houthi drones and cost between one and two billion dollars.
President Trump’s military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities—amid a war initiated by Israel on contrived premises—cost the U.S. another one to two billion dollars, according to early estimates. Even before the attack on a nuclear program the U.S. intelligence community continues to assess is not aimed at producing a weapon, the Pentagon was already spending more money on Israel’s behalf, helping to defend the country from Iran’s response to Israel’s unprovoked aggression. The run-up to U.S. strikes itself entailed a massive and costly mobilization of the U.S. forces and equipment to the region, as the Pentagon readied for multiple scenarios.
Propelled by Israel’s powerful U.S.based lobby, by Israel-pandering legislators, and by a revolving cast of Israel-favoring presidents, cabinet members and national security officials, the United States has consistently pursued policies in the Middle East that place top priority on securing Israel’s regional supremacy.
COST OF U.S. INTERVENTIONS
Among the many avenues used to pursue that goal, none has been more costly than that of regime change, where an outcome that results in a shattered, chaotic state is seemingly just as pleasing to Israel and its U.S. collaborators as one that spawns a functioning state with an Israel-accommodating government—and where the cost is often measured not only in U.S. dollars but in U.S. lives and limbs.
The most infamous such regimechange effort was the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. “If you take out Saddam, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” current Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu assured a U.S. congressional hearing. Doing his part to aid a Bush administration dominated by Israel-aligned neoconservatives bent on taking out one of Israel’s regional adversaries, Netanyahu also said there was “no question whatsoever” that Saddam Hussain was “hell-bent on achieving atomic bombs.”
The drive to topple Syria’s Iran-allied Assad government is another prominent
example of regime change on behalf of Israel, as the two countries sought to sever the “Shia Crescent” that—due in great part to Saddam’s ouster—presented a continuous pipeline of Iranian influence extending to Israel’s borders. To the contentment of the U.S. and Israeli governments, Syria is now led by an al-Qaeda alumnus who’s reportedly poised to relinquish Syria’s longstanding claim on the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967.
Taken together, the price tag of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria, including past and future medical and disability care for veterans, totals $2.9 trillion, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project. The human toll has been even more mindboggling: upwards of 580,000 civilians and combatants killed, with perhaps two to four times that number indirectly perishing from displacement, disease and other factors. More than 4,600 U.S. service-members died in Iraq and 32,000 were injured, many of them enduring amputations and burns. Alongside mass suffering, these and other U.S. interventions undertaken to ensure Israel’s regional supremacy have fomented enormous resentment of the United States across the region.
U.S. SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL OUTRAGED 9/11 ATTACKERS
Those resentments help drive another massive debit in Israel’s account with the United States: Any thorough assessment of the costs of the relationship must reflect the fact that U.S. backing of Israel is a principal motivator of Islamist terrorism directed against Americans, and there’s no greater example of that fact than 9/11.
From Osama bin Laden to the hijackers, anger over U.S. support of Israel was one of al-Qaeda’s foremost motivators: In his 1996 declaration of war against the United States, Bin Laden cited the first Qana massacre, in which Israel killed 106 Lebanese civilians who sought refuge at a U.N. compound. He said Muslim youth “hold [the United States] responsible for all the killings…carried out by your Zionist brothers in Lebanon; you openly supplied them with arms and finance.”
Bin Laden said he was initially inspired to strike U.S. skyscrapers when he witnessed Israel’s 1982 destruction of apartment towers in Lebanon.
The 9/11 Commission said mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s “animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel.”
9/11 hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta signed his will on the day Israel began its 1996 Operation Grapes of Wrath attack on Lebanon. A friend said Atta was furious and used his will as a means of committing his life to the cause.
An acquaintance of hijacker-pilot Marwan al-Shehhi asked why neither he nor Atta ever laughed. He replied, “How can you laugh when people are dying in Palestine?”
Addressing the motives of the 9/11 hijackers, FBI Special Agent James Fitzgerald told the 9/11 Commission, “I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States. They identify with the Palestinian problem…and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States.”
The 9/11 attacks killed 2,977 people, resulted in roughly $50 billion in insured losses, and opened the U.S. Global War on Terror. In addition to its use as a false pretext for invading Iraq on Israel’s behalf, 9/11 prompted the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the ensuing 20-year Fool’s Errand that took the lives of 2,459 U.S. service-members (among 176,000 people in all) and cost $2.3 trillion.
U.S. SUPPORT FOR RAMPAGE IN GAZA
With dread, we must now wonder what price may be extracted by terrorists motivated by U.S. support of Israel’s ongoing, bloody rampage in Gaza, which has killed more than 56,000 people—more than half of them women and children— and deliberately rendered much of the territory uninhabitable.
The death and destruction are being meted out with U.S.-supplied weapons,
from F-15s, F-16s, and F-35 fighters to Apache attack helicopters, precisionguided munitions, artillery shells and rifles. No weapon has figured more heavily in the shocking civilian death toll and catastrophic physical destruction than U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound MK-84 bombs, which have a lethal radius up to 1,198 feet. Outside observers were taken aback by Israel’s use of the bombs in densely populated areas, but the U.S. government continued to ship more of them to Israel.
As if the death and destruction weren’t enough to incite deadly retaliation against Israel’s sponsor, depraved Israeli soldiers have used social media to document themselves gleefully demolishing entire residential blocks, smashing shops, toys and personal possessions, and—in a disturbingly widespread trend—dressing in the lingerie of displaced Palestinian women. All along, Israeli politicians, pundits and citizens openly endorse ethnic cleansing, forced starvation and other war crimes. In June, multiple Israeli soldiers confirmed that, under orders, troops have been routinely using lethal weapons—including artillery shells—as a barbaric form of crowd control at food distribution points.
If innocent Americans are someday victimized by terrorists seeking to avenge the horror visited upon Gaza’s two million men, women and children with U.S.-supplied weapons, watch for a perverse dynamic in which the attack is cited as a reason to redouble U.S. support of Israel. Given the effectiveness of that spin, terrorism against the United States is a boon to the State of Israel. Reflecting that dark dynamic in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Netanyahu seemingly struggled to contain his enthusiasm as he spoke to the New York Times.
Asked what the attack meant for relations between the United States and Israel, then Prime Minister Netanyahu replied, “It’s very good.” Then he edited himself: “Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.”
This self-perpetuating phenomenon—in which terrorism motivated by U.S. support
for Israel is used to promote U.S. support for Israel—isn’t the only example of warped thinking about the relationship. The U.S. approach to the Middle East is swamped with circular logic. For example, Americans are told Israel is a critical ally because it serves as a “bulwark” against Iran—and that the U.S. needs a bulwark against Iran because it’s an adversary of Israel.
In one of several observations about Israel that led to him being relieved of his position leading the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Levant and Egypt branch in June, Army Colonel Nathan McCormack summed up the relationship this way:
“[Israel is] our worst ‘ally.’ We get literally nothing out of the ‘partnership’ other than the enmity of millions of people in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.”
Bit by bit, that realization is spreading throughout U.S. society, as citizens observe Israel’s conduct in Gaza, scrutinize the Israel-Palestine conflict as never before and grow increasingly wary of Israel’s attempts to drag the United States into another major war launched on false pretenses. That latter dimension has special resonance with countless U.S. combat veterans who’ve come to the terrible realization that their sacrifices and those of their fallen comrades were ultimately made for the benefit of a foreign government—and to the detriment of U.S. security.
Earlier this year, Pew Research found a majority of Americans now have a negative view of the State of Israel, with the most jarring shifts observed within Israel’s strongest bastion of support: the Republican Party. Guaranteeing that Israel’s standing is poised for more deterioration, bad feelings about Israel among Republicans under age 50 soared 15 points in just three years, with half of them now having an unfavorable view of the country.
In 2010, Meir Dagan, who headed Israel’s Mossad spy agency, warned a Knesset hearing that “Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.” Fifteen years later, Israel’s status as an enormous, multidimensional burden on the United States is more evident than ever. ■
Academic Freedom Ends Where Palestine Begins: Lessons from NYU, GWU and MIT
By Faisal Kutty
(L‐r) “None of us are free until Palestine is free,” said Cecilia Culver in her GWU speech; MIT’s Megha Vemuri said, “Right now, while we prepare to graduate and move forward with our lives, there are no universities left in Gaza...”; and Logan Rozos said at NYU’s Gallatin School graduation, “The genocide currently occurring is supported politically and military by the United States, is paid for by our tax dollars and has been live‐streamed to our phones.”
GRADUATIONS ARE SUPPOSED to mark the culmination of academic exploration and the celebration of intellectual growth. They are milestones of achievement, reflection and hope. But in the United States this year, several brave students have found themselves not being applauded for their courage but rather punished for it—simply for showing compassion for Palestinians in Gaza.
From New York University (NYU) to George Washington University (GWU) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), students who used their commencement platforms to speak about the ongoing atrocities in Palestine are facing investigations, withheld diplomas and bans from campus. These punitive actions not only betray the values of academic freedom but raise profound legal, ethical and political questions.
At GWU, valedictorian Cecilia Culver delivered a short but powerful speech at graduation in which she acknowledged the suffering
Faisal Kutty is a lawyer, law professor and regular contributor to The Toronto Star and Newsweek . You can follow him on X @faisalkutty.
of Palestinian students:
“I cannot celebrate my own graduation without a heavy heart, knowing how many students in Palestine have been forced to stop their studies, expelled from their homes, and killed for simply remaining in the country of their ancestors. I am ashamed to know my tuition is being used to fund this genocide.”
For these words—met with a standing ovation—Culver was immediately barred from all university campuses and events. Her remarks had been slightly different from the pre-approved version, and the administration deemed this a breach of protocol. But it was more than that: it was a message. Dissent, when it centers on Palestine, will not be tolerated.
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA), over 650 academics, and numerous civil rights groups swiftly condemned the university’s actions. MESA wrote that Culver’s speech was well within the bounds of academic expression and that punishing her is “a flagrant violation of her rights and an egregious act of institutional repression.”
At MIT, Megha Vemuri, the class president, gave an impassioned speech at the graduate student hooding ceremony:
“We are watching Israel try to wipe Palestine off the face of the earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it. As scientists, engineers, academics and leaders, we have a commitment to humanity, and right now, that means calling for an arms embargo on Israel.”
MIT’s response was swift. Vemuri was stripped of her ceremonial marshal role, banned from participating in the flagship OneMIT graduation and even had her family disinvited. She was accused of misleading the organizers and politicizing the event.
Vemuri responded:
“I see no need for me to walk across the stage of an institution that is complicit in this genocide.”
Student groups and human rights organizations rallied in her support, arguing that she merely voiced an urgent concern shared by many in the academic community.
At NYU’s Gallatin School, valedictorian Logan Rozos departed from his pre-approved script to say:
“As I search my heart today…the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”
NYU placed him under formal investigation, citing deviation from approved remarks and withheld his diploma.
Rozos’ brief statement aligned with conclusions by multiple human rights bodies. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a coalition of legal scholars have determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza—deliberate starvation, destruction of infrastructure, mass civilian death— amount to genocide.
Rozos was punished not for misinformation, but for moral clarity.
These university responses raise urgent legal questions. Can an institution withhold a diploma, bar a student from campus or punish students based on the political content of their speech? The answer is complex.
Public universities are bound by the First Amendment and cannot retaliate against students for expressing political views, particularly when such expression is peaceful and nondisruptive. Legal scholars note that punitive actions taken against students in these settings may constitute viewpoint discrimination and raise serious constitutional concerns.
Unlike public universities, private institutions, like GWU, NYU and MIT are not directly bound by the First Amendment. However, they are still obligated to uphold their own stated commitments to free expression and academic freedom. Moreover, many private universities, including GWU, receive substantial federal funding, which requires compliance with civil rights protections under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. These provisions prohibit discrimination based on race, color or national origin—including actions that may be construed as anti-Palestinian or anti-Arab bias.
Withholding a diploma over unapproved—but peaceful—speech is unprecedented and is likely to be legally challenged. These students are not radicals—they are conscientious objectors to silence. They are channeling the very purpose of education: to illuminate injustice, to foster critical thought and to stand on the side of humanity.
In the United States, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached the moral imperative of speaking truth to power, where Frederick Douglass reminded us that
power concedes nothing without a demand, where Sojourner Truth defied silence, where James Baldwin insisted that “I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually,” and where Prof. Edward Said challenged empire through scholarship, we are reminded that dissent is not disloyalty—it is the highest expression of democratic conscience. The struggle for Palestine echoes global struggles against colonization, apartheid and racial supremacy. The students being punished today are part of that lineage.
It is difficult not to view these events through the lens of our own histories—of who was allowed to speak and who was silenced. If universities cannot tolerate a call for human rights, what are we teaching students about moral responsibility?
At a university whose slogan promises to serve the public good, at institutions that claim to shape tomorrow’s leaders, the treatment of Rozos, Culver and Vemuri should concern us all.
Dissent is not a disruption of academic life—it is the evidence of it.
These students did not shame their universities. They dignified them. Their administrations, on the other hand, will be remembered in history classrooms as cautionary tales—examples of institutional cowardice in the face of moral clarity.
Let us hope others are paying attention. ■
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Why Mamdani Won
By Dr. James J. Zogby
IT WAS 2006 and Tim Kaine had recently won the Virginia gubernatorial election. I was at a meeting at Democratic Party headquarters with a group of party officials. One opined, “I believe that one of the lessons we should learn from Tim Kaine’s victory was that we need to talk more about our religion. Kaine did and he won. We should do it too.”
Over the month that followed, I observed that same official on TV and at public events awkwardly and uncomfortably talking about religion. Finally, at our next meeting I decided to speak with him. “I held back last month and didn’t challenge your observation about Tim Kaine’s victory. But I need to tell you that I don’t believe he won because he talked about religion. He won
Dr. James J. Zogby is co‐founder and president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, DC‐based organization, which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community.
because he was authentic. Because his religion is an important part of his identity, he had to talk about it, and he did so comfortably. After listening to you over the past few weeks, it’s clear that religion isn’t an important part of your life and so when you try to force it, you sound inauthentic. Please only talk about who you are.”
I was reminded of this story after watching Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic Party primary election. Over the next few days, the pundits and consultants had a field day giving self-serving explanations for his win. One, who’s been pushing the party to support young candidates to challenge its “old guard,” said, “Mamdani won because he’s young. We need more young candidates to defeat old-timers.” A consultant who earns his living designing messaging for poll-driven candidates noted Mamdani’s victory is “a great example of how far you can go if you genuinely center your campaign in an engaging way around the
New York Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at the Hotel & Gaming Trades Council building on July 2, 2025, in New York City. Mamdani celebrated his mayoral primary victory with leaders and members of the city’s labor unions.
PHOTO BY MICHAEL
issue that voters overwhelmingly say, in surveys, they care the most about.”
Still others pointed to his main opponent’s record of sexual harassment, corruption and cronyism. There was also the fact that instead of relying on millions of dollars in TV ads, Zohran Mamdani directly engaged with tens of thousands of voters, up close and personal. Last but not least, there were those who said that he won because of his avowedly progressive socialist agenda—calling for free public transportation, rent freeze, free childcare and city-owned grocery stores in underserved areas. While all of the above may, to varying degrees, be true, even adding all of them together would be insufficient to account for Mamdani’s striking victory.
The reason Zohran Mamdani won was because he was authentic and unflappable. He was comfortable in his own skin, unapologetic about his deeply held beliefs, and able to be direct and honest with media and voters with whom he engaged.
In this same vein, it was refreshing to see him field questions about statements he had made about Israel and Palestinian rights. Most other candidates I’ve known, when put in that position, hesitate and shift uncomfortably in their seats trying to recall how their “advisers” told them to handle tough questions. When they respond, they offer an incoherent word salad that reeks of inauthenticity and satisfies no one.
Not so with Mamdani. When questioned about his positions on Israel or Palestinian rights, he answers directly without hesitation, neutralizing the issue not with confusion, but with clarity and honesty. Look at these two quotes from his election night victory speech.
“I promise you will not always agree with me, but I will never hide from you. If you are hurting, I will try to heal. If you feel misunderstood, I will strive to understand. Your concerns will always be mine.”
“There are millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas. Yes, I am one of them, and while I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments grounded in the demand for equality, for humanity, you have my word to reach further, to understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree and wrestle deeply with those disagreements.”
It is this authenticity—his “ringing true, like a bell”—that voters find most com-
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pelling, including the substantial number of Jewish voters who supported and voted for him.
During the primary election, $30 million was spent against Mamdani in negative ads. He can expect that much many times over in the general election, as establishment Democrats and Republicans wage a campaign to smear, tarnish and make this young South Asian Muslim into a threat. It’s already begun on social media as Republicans and some in the pro-Israel community attempt to shape the negative narrative they will use to weaken his candidacy.
One compared his win to 9/11, saying: “After 9/11 we said ‘Never Forget.’ I think we sadly have forgotten.”
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Another depicted Mamdani's victory showing the Statue of Liberty shrouded in what is supposed to be a burka. And one rightwing Jewish group tweeted that it’s time for Jews to pack up and leave New York City.
Because the Democrats’ consultant class will cower in the face of this onslaught, they will apply pressure on Zohran Mamdani to convince him to tamp down his progressive agenda and back off his support for Palestinians. They will want to neuter him by inviting him to “join the fold” of consultant-driven mushmouthed politicians.
What they don’t understand is that if he were to succumb to this pressure, he would lose the very quality that energized young and progressive voters and decisively won this election—his authenticity. Mamdani has no need for their “expertise” and I suspect that, despite his youth, he is well aware that being true to himself and honest with the voters will continue to be his path to victory. ■
Islamophobia in New York’s Mayoral Elections—With the Statue of Liberty in a Burqa
(L‐r) The winner’s proud mother, award‐winning movie producer Mira Nair, State Rep. Zohran Mamdani (D‐NY), his wife illustrator Rama Duwaji and his father, Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mam ‐dani, on stage during an election night gathering at The Greats of Craft LIC on June 24, 2025, in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York City.
THE PROSPECT of New Yorkers electing their first Muslim mayor, come November, has ignited a rash of paranoid statements by rightwing U.S. politicians, including Islamophobia—the irrational fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims.
A Republican politician caricatured America’s iconic Statue of Liberty wearing a burqa—an outer garment worn by some Muslim women that covers the entire body and face. But that internet meme, spreading across social media, was deleted after protests.
And another right-winger falsely warned that Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic mayoral primary in June, may introduce
Thalif Deen is Inter Press Service United Nations bureau chief and regional director North America and has been covering the U.N. since the late 1970s. A former deputy news editor of the Sri Lanka Daily News, he was also a senior editorial writer for the Hong Kong daily, The Standard. He is a Fulbright scholar with a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, New York. Reprinted from IPS with permission.
By Thalif Deen
the Islamic sharia law into the statute books of New York City’s five boroughs—with adulterers stoned to death in public.
If that punishment becomes a reality, one cynic jokingly predicted, New York may run out of stones—as once recounted about the fallout from sharia law in a sandy Middle Eastern desert kingdom.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump, not surprisingly, jumped into the fray dismissing Mamdani as “a Communist lunatic.” That remark was a grim reminder of the spread of “McCarthyism” in the U.S. in the early 1950s: a campaign against alleged Communists in the U.S. government and other institutions.
Led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the campaign, which falsely accused scores of politicians and Hollywood celebrities as “Communists,” was labeled the “search for reds under every bed.”
The 33-year-old Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and a social media star, is currently a member of the New York State Assembly from the 36th district, based in the New York City borough of Queens.
At the primary elections last month, he defeated Andrew Cuomo, the thrice-elected governor of New York state. Mamdani’s father is a professor at the prestigious Ivy League Columbia University and his mother the celebrity award-winning movie producer Mira Nair.
Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda and his middle name Kwame was a tribute to Kwame Nkrumah, a political theorist and revolutionary, who served as prime minister of the Gold Coast (later Ghana) and president, from 1957 until 1966.
Mamdani immigrated to New York City when he was 7 years old and graduated from the Bronx High School of Science and later earning a bachelor’s degree in Africana studies from Bowdoin College.
Dr. James E. Jennings, president of Conscience International, said, “If New York is really a global city, having a Muslim mayor
PHOTO BY MICHAEL M. SANTIAGO/GETTY IMAGES
should be a welcome development. A quarter of the world’s population and almost 10 percent of New York’s citizens are Muslims. Where else but in the Big Apple could the United States better demonstrate our founding principles of liberty and justice for all?” he asked.
First, the horror of September 11 fascinated the world, then New York’s most disreputable playboy took charge in Washington, DC with global repercussions. Perhaps now an exemplary U.S. citizen like Mamdani, who happens to be a Muslim, could lead our current politics in a more rational and moral way. His election might help repair frayed ties with the world’s 50 Muslim-majority countries and lead U.S. politics out of its current antiimmigrant jingoism, said Dr. Jennings.
Prejudice against Muslims, he pointed out, is hopelessly entangled with the politics of the Middle East. A clear voice like Mamdani’s is needed to speak out for justice and repudiate the “attack first” mentality of the Netanyahu-Trump cabal that keeps the U.S. involved in unnecessary wars and fuels the military-industrial complex.
“Those in New York’s Jewish community who deplore the Likud Party’s abandonment of Israel’s founding principles and repudiate the genocide in Gaza have apparently already decided to vote for the progressive candidate,” said Dr. Jennings.
Ian Williams, president of the Foreign Press Association (FPA) and the Washington Report’s U.N. correspondent, said Mamdani’s biggest electoral asset is that when asked, he answers questions directly and factually without looking over his shoulders to see what the funders and political action committees (PACs) think. (PACs and super PACs play significant roles in federal election campaigns by raising and spending money to influence elections.)
“No hedging, no pandering no Clintonesque squirming about what the meaning of ‘is’ is. Voters will respect the courage even if they are not totally onside with the message,” said Williams, former speechwriter for Neil Kinnock, whose speeches derailed Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential run when he was caught out in unacknowledged plagiarism.
The turning point was when Mamdani fielded the “gotcha” question and redirected it against the other candidates paralyzed by fear of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group in the United States.
When asked about going to Israel, in effect, he challenged them to explain WHY a mayor of a city with so many problems would take time off to visit an eastern Mediterranean state committing war crimes. In many ways this was more effective than chanting on a stage at Glastonbury (see back cover).
It is less than a lifetime ago that J.F. Kennedy’s candidacy was considered dubious because he was a Catholic. The bigots who evoked Zohran’s Muslim background while applauding applied dogma from Opus Dei in the U.S. Supreme Court are irrelevant, declared Williams, a former president of the U.N. Correspondents’ Association.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle, said the attacks on Mamdani, a principled man with a solid following among people who are seeking value-based politics, are a strange amalgamation of all the tropes of the past: those that accompanied the McCarthyism era, those pertaining to any criticisms of Israel, and those that preceded and intensified after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
“This hodgepodge of accusations,” he said, “lacks a central theme, though the real, often unstated fear is that Mamdani is a danger to the ruling classes, frankly on both sides. They are simultaneously accusing him of being a Communist, an Islamist, a crazy person and an anti-Semite, among a long list of ridiculous accusations.”
This reflects not only the overriding racism and foolishness that continues to control political discourse in the U.S., but also a degree of desperation, said Dr. Baroud.
“The fallout of this madness is that they are repeating the same lines that many Americans are fed up with and no longer accept or tolerate. In other words, the attacks on Mamdani could very much be the reason behind his potential victory in the
New York mayoral race, which in turn will further elevate and make more meaningful the overall political discourse.”
The current level of so-called political debate is arguably the most debased in history, and it seems to be getting worse with time, where the president of what is supposed to be one of the greatest democracies in the world is making physical threats to arrest and deport popular politicians for disagreeing with him. This will bode very badly for the future of the country, thus highlighting the need for Mamdani-like politicians, declared Dr. Baroud.
Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and national director of RootsAction, told Inter Press Service a gradual trend of lessening racism and increasing anti-racism in the United States, especially among younger Americans, has been a major factor in making possible Mamdani’s primary victory.
Likewise, an overall reduction of ethnocentrism and increasing affirmation of multiculturalism in urban areas—contrary to the very real racism and xenophobia led by Donald Trump—have opened the door to electoral progress by progressives who are not white and do not fall into the category of Judeo-Christian heritage.
This is all to the good for the health of the society, and all to the good for the prospects of victory for genuinely compassionate and forward-looking political leaders like Zohran Mamdani.
But the big backlash against Mamdani’s victory and what it represents has just begun, he warned. “This is a longstanding kind of reactionary bigotry that has always been a motor force for cruelty and systemic injustice in this country.”
Mamdani’s win is a highly encouraging event that could foreshadow great progress for social justice and against Islamophobia in the United States.
Yet the hostility that this progress has provoked tells us that powerful attitudes and forces for bigotry are surging to roll back essential progress, declared Solomon, author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine ■
Online Film Salons The Vocabulary of Genocide
Settlers from Carmel raise an Israeli flag on Feb. 14, 2025, in a ceremony celebrating their illegal acquisition of Palestinian property in the village of Umm al‐Khair in the occupied West Bank. They raised the flag “Iwo Jima” style as though they “conquered” this land. Photo taken by an international ally who witnessed the event.
Pogroms and Ethnic Cleansing: Now On Our Watch
By Steve France
“A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME would smell as sweet,” Juliet tells Romeo. Similarly, a genocide by any other name would smell as foul. Yet unless you call the atrocities taking place in Gaza genocide, you won’t be able to haul Israel, as a state, into the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
That was one key point made by the expert panel in an Online Film Salon hosted by Voices From the Holy Land, May 25, titled “Pogroms and Ethnic Cleansing: Now on Our Watch.” When South Africa obtained a ruling from the ICJ in January 2024 that Israel was plausibly engaged in genocide in Gaza—and ordered member states to oppose further genocidal acts—the U.S. and Israel not only defied the order, but they also effectively banned the term genocide
Steve France is a journalist and lawyer (now retired) living in the DC area. An activist for Palestinian rights, he is affiliated with the Epis ‐copal Peace Fellowship Palestine Network and other Christian Pales‐tinian‐solidarity groups.
so the genocide itself could continue. Corporate media, almost all politicians and the U.S. elite in general have meekly avoided using the G word.
With its allies, Israel has long used such semantic tactics to deflect and diffuse criticism and to go on the offensive by falsely charging that applying words like apartheid, ethnic cleansing, pogroms, war crimes—and now, genocide—to Israel is anti-Semitic. Critics and others discussing Israel’s conduct often respond by switching to less pointed terms or to just describing specific violent actions without labeling them, thus muffling their arguments.
But avoiding the G word can have more costly consequences. U.S. officials know that; they have played the “see no genocide” game before: While the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was still raging, Clinton State Department personnel were forbidden to employ the G word for fear it would trigger a legal duty to intervene.
Panelist William A. Schabas of Middlesex University, former chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry into the 2014 attack on Gaza, underscored the crucial importance of using the word genocide as a legal term because it triggers immediate legal consequences under the 1948 Genocide Convention to force Israel to end its genocide. In the hierarchy of international human rights law, “genocide is a notch higher [than crimes against humanity or war crimes] in that it requires the ‘destruction of the [victim] group’” rather
than just “persecution of the group.” Schabas added that initially he held off declaring a genocide was being perpetrated in Gaza out of “concern about misuse of the term [undermining] the integrity of the term.” But by late 2023, “it had become very clear that what Israel is trying to do is to destroy the Palestinian people. When I say destroy, that means ‘physically destroy.’”
An authority on the Genocide Convention and a leading international human rights attorney, Schabas spelled out why it’s crucial to get Israeli atrocities “into the box that says ‘genocide.’” Specific acts of genocide may also be war crimes or crimes against humanity. “Crimes against humanity are what the Nazis were convicted of [as individuals] at Nuremberg. In many ways, those crimes are just as terrible as genocide. But [the term] needs to be genocide,” he said.
Palestinian panelist Omar Haramy directs the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. He shared his dismay at the way the U.S. has not just looked away from the Gaza genocide but tried to disguise it as acceptable and necessary. Incredibly, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu “can commit a genocide, get a standing ovation in Congress and still be welcomed in major cities around the world.”
“That is the crisis,” Haramy warned. “The speed of calling out the genocide has been a success. Because it has been live streamed, [we] have been able to provide evidence much faster than other cases of genocide. But for Palestinians, the people on the ground, our interest isn’t to label it as genocide or war crimes or crimes against humanity. Our interest is to stop it. All of the tactics that we have used, the techniques and the tools to try to stop a genocide have failed.”
The panel’s moderator, Washington University Professor Angela Miller, put a finer point on the problem, observing that, “The existing political and juridical mechanisms of international law are not designed to deal with a situation in which the United States is the culprit.”
Schabas fleshed out that point: “The legal mechanisms and institutions, the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice, appear to be quite active…compared with what happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago,” with apartheid and other issues, he said. “They’re doing a good job now, in my view, doing what they are supposed to do, but they’re only courts, and they cannot enforce their judgments.”
The U.N. Security Council, which should enforce their judgments, has been “blocked by the [vetoes] of a government that can talk about genocide of whites in South Africa,” Schabas said, “but considers that a genocide of Palestinians is an absurd or speculative or frivolous allegation, which is what the United States has said.”
Panelist Dina Matar, who directs the Center for Global Media and Communication at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, urged the VFHL Zoom audience to notice how Israel’s undisguised genocide in Gaza has made it plain that genocide has long been Israel’s underlying intention: “A genocide was already taking place. [Gaza’s annihilation] is part of a plan of ethnic cleansing that began with the Zionist project, and that [has been]
implemented from 1948,” when Israel was founded on the ruins of more than 500 villages and expulsion of 75 percent of the indigenous people of Palestine.
Matar explained that genocide depends on many nonmilitary forms of violence. The dehumanization of Palestinians, for example, referring to them as human animals, has been going on since even before 1948, she said, “as a way to legitimize war against the Palestinians.”
Genocide perpetrators, seeking to depict their victims as inhuman and worthless, work to destroy their victims’ culture. Panelist Peter Balakian of Colgate University, an expert on the 1915-1922 Turkish genocide of the Armenians, said, “the destruction of cultural institutions is an important component of genocide; schools, churches, monasteries, mosques, synagogues, libraries, [even] the cultural producers themselves. In the Armenian case, the cultural producers were all rounded up systematically and wiped out en masse, region by region...and of course, we see [Israel’s] massive destruction of culture in Gaza.” It’s about creating a supposedly dangerous “out group,” he explained, just as Americans have done to Native Americans, Blacks and others.
To prepare registrants for this panel discussion, they were encouraged to watch short films provided by Voices From the Holy Land examining various genocides, including the 1830s Trail of Tears of Native Americans, the Armenian genocide and the brutal displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, available at <https://www.voicesfromtheholyland.org>. ■
How to Respond When They “Speak Israel”
By Sabina Qureshi
HOW DO YOU have conversations about justice for Palestinians with people who reflexively defend Israel? On June 15, Voices From the Holy Land (VFHL) held an Online Film Salon—entitled “What to Do When They Speak Israel? A Practical Workshop”—that offered guidance for this endeavor.
Attendees had been encouraged to preview four short documentaries that addressed various factors that influence the impact of a conversation, such as the terms used; how issues are framed; the logic underpinning positions; the use of thought-provoking queries; and connecting versus being unnecessarily or unintentionally confrontational.
According to Alex McDonald, activist and author of two books on the language used to support Israel’s narrative—How I Learned to Speak Israel: An American’s Guide to a Foreign Policy Lan-
Sabina Qureshi holds a BSc in Genetics from the University of Alberta and comes from a multicultural, multilingual academic home. Most recently she worked as an English teacher and translator in Spain and Norway. Palestine has been on her radar for many decades. She is a volunteer with Share International.
guage and When They Speak Israel: A Guide to Clarity in Conversations about Israel—it’s essential to have these conversations, especially in the United States because “our politicians are complicit” in Israel’s occupation.
However, creating the conditions for productive conversation can be hard. Many of us have found ourselves in situations where we are unsure how to talk with someone who holds opinions that are very different from our own. We may have tried to show the other person that they are uninformed by disputing the facts they tell us, only to realize the futility of this approach as the other person becomes even more entrenched in their convictions.
The panelists for this workshop emphasized that, rather than seeking to prove yourself right, you must recognize that any one conversation is part of a long-term process. In each of several conversations, you can spotlight those values you believe in—such as justice and equality for all—and show where those values are present or absent in Israel’s policies toward Palestinians.
As the panelists asserted more than once, the aim is not to convince our conversation partners. “You can’t convince them,” said McDonald. “They have to convince themselves, at their speed.” He reassured everyone that these difficult conversations
can make a difference and also be enjoyable, connecting and transformational.
McDonald noted that conversations about Palestine-Israel can elicit change only if the person you are speaking with opposes racism—that is, opposes every form of ethnic discrimination, including religious discrimination. “If they don’t oppose all forms of racism, then there’s nothing really to talk about.”
He offered two main tips in approaching conversations. The first is changing the paradigm, that is, comparing the foundational Zionist story of a land bestowed by God on a chosen people who have to defend themselves against enemies who irrationally hate them (are Jew-hating), with the indisputable facts of occupation, refugees and settlements; Zionism reveals itself as “a preferential treatment of one ethnoreligious group at the expense of another.”
Some people are scared to have conversations because they feel they are not completely informed but, McDonald noted, “it’s easy” if you remember that the Zionist story is a mirage that doesn’t make sense logically and you bring the conversation back around to the question of racism.
The second tip he offered was to attend to the language used to defend Zionism—what he calls “Israel Speak”—because, al-
Cover art for Alex McDonald's book, How I Learned to Speak Israel
though the words sound like English, they actually have different meanings. In conversation you can try to unpack actual meaning. He offered examples:
Defensive: Can we describe taking land by force, oppressing people and violating their human rights as a defensive action? In normal English we would say that this is not a defensive action.
Democracy: A people under occupation who have no right to selfdetermination clearly aren’t living in a democracy.
Return: If you have the deed and keys to your home and you want to return, in normal English we would say you can. But in Israel Speak, such a person is called an “infiltrator.” At the same time, Israel has a Law of Return that applies to all Jews, many of whom might not be able to name a single relative of theirs who ever lived in the land they would be “returning” to.
For many people, the conversational journey out of Zionism can be traumatic. They’ve been taught a story by people they’ve trusted—their rabbis, ministers, parents and teachers—and when they begin to see the illogic and pull away from it, they are at risk of losing connection with family members and friends. So as their co-conversationalist, it’s important to go at their pace and stay empathetic.
McDonald then offered two more important recommendations: be visible and normalize conversations. For example, he always wears a T-shirt related to Palestine when going to the grocery store; when people ask him what he does, he says that he’s an activist. When he speaks about Palestine, he uses a normal tone. This shows people that he is comfortable with the topic, and he finds that helps open the door to conversation.
He encouraged everyone to develop friendships with people who hold divergent views and practice these conversations “because it is like a muscle: the more you do it, the more you will develop and improve your skills.”
The other two panelists also offered insights on how to have effective conversations.
Panelist Miko Peled, founder and president of the Palestinian House of Freedom, shared the paradigm he centers in conversation: “The liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea and the dismantling of the apartheid state. That’s it.”
Thomas Suárez, an historical researcher and author of Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State from River to Sea, offered how he might reply to the assertion that “Hamas started the war on October 7.” His response: “If someone had you in a chokehold and you tried to break free, would you be the one that started it?”
Peled also had a response to that question: “Nothing began on October 7 that didn't exist before that, except that now the world is paying attention.”
How to respond to the assertion that “Israel has a right to defend itself”? According to Peled, “They don’t [have that right], because they’re the oppressor and the aggressor.”
What about, “There would be peace if only Hamas put down its weapons and gave up the hostages”? Peled’s answer: “If Israel wanted the hostages back, they would release all 12,000 Pales-
tinian prisoners [in Israeli jails] and dismantle the Gaza concentration camp.”
McDonald interjected that it can be helpful to ask questions rather than make statements, because this makes a conversation partner less defensive. So, for example, when people say, “If they would just put down their weapons and return the hostages, there would be peace,” he responds by asking, “Then why is there so much mayhem in the West Bank? Hamas doesn’t hold any hostages in the West Bank. It’s the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, that controls the West Bank, and Israel is wiping out villages and refugee camps there.”
How do you handle your own feelings in heated conversations— for example when you feel frustrated, passionate and/or overwhelmed? How do you keep calm?
McDonald’s advice is to remind yourself that you are not having just this one conversation; you are in a process over time. If you’re feeling uncomfortable, say, “You know what, I’m feeling triggered. Would it be OK if we had a follow-up conversation sometime when I have had a chance to think about it?”
Peled said the key is to be well-informed. “The better informed we are, and the more we stick to the subject, the easier it is.”
Suárez said that when he is in a situation where his feelings are running strong, he mentally takes a step back. He doesn’t respond immediately using the terms that were presented to him; instead, he restructures the question to answer it in his own terms.
VFHL Online Film Salons always offer breakout room conversations after the main discussion; in a breakout observed by this reporter, we talked about uncomfortable moments when we didn’t know how to respond to our interlocutor. I shared an experience I had in which friends physically moved away from my phone while I was showing them a video clip of U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese exhorting European countries to join the Hague Group, a coalition of nine countries formed to support Palestinian rights and ensure compliance with international law.
At the time I was unsure how to respond to their body language and so did nothing, but breakout room participants offered helpful ideas. One woman who works as a primary school teacher said that when she observes children’s body language she doesn’t know how to interpret, she asks them what it means.
Another participant suggested I could simply state what I observed—“I notice you have moved away from my phone”—to open space for further conversation.
The importance of this Salon was underscored in the breakout room when a participant referenced Howard Zinn’s book, The Twentieth Century: A People’s History. The book’s thesis is that major social change in the world is the result of activism and always occurs from the ground up, not from the top down. One-on-one conversations can be part of that “ground up” work.
The event was cosponsored by We Are Not Numbers and the Indiana Center for Middle East Peace. Recordings of all Salons may be found at the VFHL website, <https://voicesfromtheholyland.org>. Books written by speakers are available from Middle East Books and More <www.middleeastbooks.com>. ■
Three Views The 12-Day Israel-Iran War
Israel, With 200 Nuclear Warheads, Fights for Nonproliferation
By MJ Rosenberg
IT IS LONG PAST time to question the sanctity of the global double standard on nuclear weapons—especially when applied to Israel and Iran. The dominant Western narrative insists it’s fine, even necessary, for Israel to possess nuclear weapons, while Iran must never be allowed to have them. This premise is not only hypocritical, it’s strategically unsound and morally indefensible. In a just world, no nation would have nuclear weapons. But we do not live in that world. We live in one where the U.S. alone has
M.J. Rosenberg worked at AIPAC from 1982 to 1986 and the Israel Policy Forum from 1998 to 2009. He was as a Congressional aide in the House and Senate on Capitol Hill for 15 years.
thousands of warheads, Russia about the same, and volatile and fanatical regimes like India and Pakistan each have dozens.
Since both India and Pakistan became nuclear powers in the late 1990s, they’ve fought several cross-border skirmishes and come close to all-out war—but nuclear weapons restrained escalation. Deterrence worked.
It would work for Iran and Israel too, which is why Israel is willing to plunge the world into war to prevent it. It wants Iran to be as vulnerable to Israel as Iraq was to the United States.
Israel has faced no serious international inspection or consequence for building its arsenal. It is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran is, and it reportedly holds between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. It has never been held accountable for this blatant defiance of international norms, because the United States shields it from scrutiny. No international watchdog team has ever inspected Dimona. (JFK demanded that the U.S. inspect it but Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion re-
People protest the involvement of the U.S. in Israel's war against Iran near the Wilshire Federal Building on June 22, 2025, in Los Angeles, CA. The Trump administration bombed Iran with the largest B‐2 bomber strike in U.S. history without obtaining Congressional approval.
PHOTO
fused.) No U.N. resolution has enforced disarmament. Israel’s nukes are simply accepted.
But why? Why is Israel allowed to have a nuclear deterrent, while Iran is threatened with war for allegedly seeking the same?
The usual answer is that Israel is a “responsible’’ democracy, while Iran is a rogue regime. This is a simplistic and dangerous excuse. Israel is currently waging war on at least two fronts—Gaza and Lebanon—and has been rightly accused by the International Court of Justice of genocide in Gaza. Tens of thousands of civilians have died under Israeli bombardment. In what world is that behavior more restrained or rational than Iran’s?
The notion that Iran is uniquely irrational or suicidal is a racist fantasy. Iran, like any state, pursues its national interests. But it has not invaded another country in over two centuries. It has regional ambitions, yes, and backs terrorists—but so does Israel. (Without Israel’s backing there would have been no Hamas to attack Israel on October 7.) The difference is, Israel directly enforces its ambitions with assassination campaigns, frequent airstrikes in sovereign nations like Syria and Lebanon, and an air of impunity backed by U.S. hardware and silence.
And this brings us to the most dangerous hypocrisy: Israel bombing other nations to prevent them from acquiring weapons that it already has. Israel has bombed nuclear facilities in Iraq (1981), Syria (2007) and Iran (right now). It has carried out dozens of covert assassinations on Iranian soil. Imagine if Iran assassinated a few dozen (or even just one) U.S. nuclear scientist in California. We’d be at war in hours.
It’s like the Taliban going to war to defend women’s rights.
The one strong and coherent argument against Iranian nuclear weapons is the fear that it would spark a regional arms race, pushing Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, or Egypt to follow suit. And that’s exactly why the JCPOA—known as the Iran nuclear deal—was so significant. It imposed strict, verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief. Iran complied. The United States, under President Donald Trump, tore it up. What followed was predictable: Iran resumed enriching uranium, and the world inched closer to yet another conflict.
And for what? To preserve a lopsided regional order where one country plays nuclear god while the others live under its shadow? Israel is not the world’s cop. It has no moral authority to dictate who can or cannot develop weapons of any kind—especially while it rains destruction on Gaza and routinely violates the sovereignty of its neighbors. A country charged with genocide has no standing to preach about anything. If the United States truly wants to prevent nuclear proliferation, it should stop enabling Israel’s nuclear monopoly and return to diplomacy that treats all states by the same rules.
And the last thing it should do is join Israel in this truly monstrous attack. We should not be dispatching our military to aid aggression and, make no mistake, in this war Israel is unambiguously the aggressor.
Will—And Can—Iran Now Race to a Nuclear Weapon?
By Dale Sprusansky
IN THE WAKE of Israel’s attack on Iran and the ensuing 12-day war, several think tanks held events to assess the impact of the conflict and what it means for the future of Iran’s nuclear program.
Thomas Countryman, former assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, dismissed the Israeli notion that Iran’s nuclear program was on the verge of being weaponized. “It is the same threat that [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu has repeated many times,” dating back to 1992, he noted during the National Iranian American Council’s (NIAC) June 27 briefing on Capitol Hill. “There was no immediate threat to Israel of an Iranian nuclear weapon.”
He pointed out that both the U.S. intelligence community and international experts agreed that Tehran had not yet decided to develop a nuclear weapon. “Iran had more fissile material than it had at any time in its history, thanks to the United States’ violation of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] agreement [2015 nuclear deal], but had not made a decision to weaponize, nor could it do so rapidly,” he pointed out.
The joint U.S.-Israel targeting of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was “without question a significant strike,” he said, as Iran suffered the assassination of nuclear scientists and damage to its facilities. However, the extent of the physical damage remains unknown, despite bold claims by the U.S. and Israel. “Whether this has set back Iran’s program by months or years or decades is something that we can speculate on, but we cannot be certain of” until independent inspectors are permitted to tour the impacted sites, Countryman stated. In late June, Iran threatened to suspend all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its inspectors due to the agency’s failure to condemn the U.S.-Israeli attacks.
Countryman’s best guess is that Iran suffered significant but not existential damage to its nuclear program. “If only a small number of those centrifuges are still available to operate, if the 60 percent enriched uranium has been, as the Iranians say, preserved and not destroyed in the military action, then we’re talking about months for the ability to move to a crude nuclear device; we’re talking about years to the ability to miniaturize a device and put it on a missile that could strike Israel,” he said.
Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University, believes the Israeli aggression will prompt Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon. “There is no doubt in my mind that Iranians will move toward weaponization of their nuclear program,” he said during the Arab Center Washington DC’s (ACWDC) virtual program on June 26. He noted the imbalance of the attack: Israel, a nuclear power that is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), attacked Iran, which lacks a nuclear weapon and is a member of the NPT.
Dale Sprusansky is managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
Assal Rad, a non-resident fellow at ACWDC, said the West’s overarching support for Israel’s illegal attack shows the complete collapse of the international system they purport to uphold. “Clearly the system has failed,” she said. “How do we allow a genocidal state to attack other sovereign states, and then…the states that lead that [international] system condemn not the genocidal state—not for its genocide nor for its aggressions—but condemn the state that is being attacked. That is a system that has been completely inverted; it no longer serves any real purpose.”
Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, noted that while Israel did inflict damage on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, it failed in its effort to impose regime change. This, he said at the NIAC event, shows the misguided thinking of those who assumed the Islamic Republic was fragile and would collapse under a little pressure. The opposite was true: the Israeli aggression caused many, even those opposed to the regime, to rally around their country. Dabashi, who can’t return to Iran due to his political beliefs, echoed this sentiment and said he instantly rose to defend the sovereignty of his country once the war began. “The nature of Iranians’ commitment to their homeland transcends ideology,” he said.
Toossi believes neither Israel nor Iran achieved a strategic victory in the war. Israel was able to establish a large degree of air superiority over Iran, hit significant targets and humiliate Iran by revealing the degree to which its intelligence agency was able to infiltrate its borders and launch attacks from within Iran. Meanwhile, Iran was able to constantly launch waves of missiles at Israel, forcing the
country to live on edge and rapidly deplete its supply of interceptors—which are expensive and hard to quickly replenish. While most of its missiles were shot down, those that broke through caused notable damage to military and civilian targets within Israel.
“We saw at the end of this 12-day conflict that the cost for Israel was also mounting,” Toossi said. Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli negotiator, agreed with this assessment on a June 26 webinar hosted by the Türkiye-funded SETA Foundation. “Israeli society was, I think, somewhat shaken by what happened,” he said. “Israel’s staying power was under question” and Israelis were wondering how long their country could survive a war of attrition.
NIAC president Jamal Abdi said the aftermath of the war shows that diplomacy was always the wiser path. The JCPOA, which Trump unilaterally withdrew from in 2018, would have set Iran’s nuclear program back 15 years by imposing restrictions and ensuring close monitoring. “At the time critics said, ‘we’re just kicking the can down the road, we need a permanent solution,’” he noted. However, now, “we dropped the biggest bombs on [the] Fordow [uranium enrichment plant] and other sites and it bought us maybe a couple of months, maybe a couple of years—at most five years.” Plus, Iran’s program has now been driven deeper underground, meaning the world no longer has eyes and ears on what Iran is doing. Additionally, the attack may prompt Iran to race to a nuclear weapon. “We have now tested both propositions and I would say diplomacy worked a hell of a lot better than dropping bombs,” he said. ■
The front entrance to Tehran’s Evin Prison, which was targeted by Israel on June 23. The prison houses many political prisoners, including human rights activists and journalists. The attack killed 71 people, including prisoners. The photo was taken on July 1, 2025.
Israeli-Fueled Fantasy to Bring Back Shah Has Absolutely No Juice
By Elfadil Ibrahim
THE MIDDLE EAST is a region where history rarely repeats itself exactly, but often rhymes in ways that are both tragic and absurd.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the current Israeli campaign against Iran—a campaign that, beneath its stated aims of eliminating Iran’s nuclear and defense capabilities, harbors a deeper, more outlandish ambition: toppling the regime and installing a friendly government under Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah. Perhaps even paving the way for a monarchical restoration.
This is not a policy officially declared in Jerusalem or Washington, but it lingers in the background of Israel’s actions and its overt calls for Iranians to “stand up” to the Islamic Republic. In April 2023, Pahlavi was hosted in Israel by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
During the carefully choreographed visit, he prayed at the Western Wall, while avoiding the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount and made no effort to meet with Palestinian leaders. An analysis from the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs described the trip as a message that Israel recognizes Pahlavi as “the main leader of the Iranian opposition.”
Figures like Gila Gamliel, a former minister of intelligence in the Israeli government, have openly called for regime change, declaring last year that a “window of opportunity has opened to overthrow the regime.”
What might have been dismissed as a diplomatic gambit has, in the context of the current air war, been elevated into a strategic bet that military pressure can create the conditions for a political outcome of Israel’s choosing.
The irony is hard to overstate. It was foreign intervention that set the stage for the current enmity. In 1953, a CIA/MI6 coup overthrew Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s last democratically elected leader. While the plot was triggered by his nationalization of the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the U.S. was motivated by Cold War paranoia, fearing the crisis would allow Iran’s powerful communist party to seize power and align the country with the Soviet Union.
The coup reinstalled the Shah, whose autocratic rule and dependence on the West bred a potent mix of anti-imperialist sentiment and religious fervor.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution, in its own way, was a delayed reaction to 1953, a radical assertion of national sovereignty over foreign interests. Today Israel and the U.S. seem to believe that a new foreign-backed intervention could be the solution to a problem the last one helped create.
Since June 12, Israel’s military campaign has gone beyond targeting nuclear facilities. Strikes have hit state institutions and state
Elfadil Ibrahim is a writer and analyst on Sudanese politics. His work has been featured in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The New Arab, Open Democracy and other outlets. Reprinted with permission from Responsible Statecraft.
(L‐r) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Sara Netanyahu, Crown Prince of Iran Reza Pahlavi and Israeli Minister of Intelli ‐gence, Gila Gamliel attend the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony held at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in West Jerusalem on April 17, 2023.
television headquarters. In its most symbolic attack yet, Israel also struck Evin Prison, the primary site for jailing political opponents.
President Donald Trump on June 23 announced that an agreement had been brokered between Iran and Israel to stop the fighting. It came hours after Iran had launched a limited attack on the U.S. base in Qatar. The missiles were intercepted and no injuries were reported.
Netanyahu has openly framed the conflict as a pathway to liberation for Iranians. Operation Rising Lion, the name given to the air assault, is itself a nod to Iran’s pre-revolutionary flag, a symbolic gesture toward the monarchy’s legacy.
“As we achieve our objective,” Netanyahu said in a video address to the Iranian people, “we are also clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom.”
For all the talk of regime change, however, there is little clarity about what, or who, should come next. Publicly, Israeli officials insist the Iranian people will choose their own leaders. Yet their public embrace of Iran’s exiled crown prince tells a different story.
Reza Pahlavi has spent decades cultivating an image as a democratic statesman-in-waiting. In interviews, he speaks of a future decided by a popular referendum, backed by detailed proposals like a 100-day transition plan. To Israel’s delight, his alignment extends beyond symbolism to the core of Israeli strategic thinking.
During his 2023 visit to Tel Aviv, he articulated the very logic driving Israel’s current attacks against Iran, dismissing nuclear negotiations as a “waste of time” and insisting that the “quickest way to eliminate all threats” was to invest in an alternative to the regime itself.
Moreover, he envisions a future rooted in what he calls the “Cyrus Accords,” a revival of the “ancient friendship” between the Persian and Jewish peoples, a vision reinforced by powerful personal gestures, such as his daughter’s recent marriage to a Jewish-American businessman.
But this vision, compelling as it may be in DC and Jerusalem, is almost entirely detached from Iranian realities. For many critics,
even within the fragmented opposition, this democratic messaging is a calculated strategy to rehabilitate the monarchy’s image and position Pahlavi as the only viable successor.
His high-profile meetings with foreign leaders—most notably in Israel—and his calls for Western support are seen not as statecraft for a future democracy but as efforts to secure foreign backing for his own return to power.
The Pahlavi name remains tainted for many by memories of SAVAK torture chambers, lavish corruption and dependence on foreign powers for viability. While dissent against the Islamic Republic is widespread, slogans from the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests— sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in custody over the mandatory hijab—reveal a deep-seated rejection of both autocracies with chants like, “Death to the oppressor, be it the Shah or the Leader.”
The monarchy Israel hints at reviving was not merely overthrown in 1979, it was actively rejected by a powerful coalition of Islamists, leftists and nationalists united against the Shah’s repression. This legacy of popular rejection severely curbs Reza Pahlavi’s appeal today.
While opinion pieces in Israeli media frame the choice for Iran as one between chaos and a restored monarchy, Pahlavi commands little tangible support inside a country where many see his movement as “opportunistic” and “disconnected from the Iranian people.”
For Israel to imagine a different outcome in Iran is to ignore the region’s bitterest truths. From the sectarian carnage of postSaddam Iraq to the militia-ruled wastelands that now scar Libya
and Yemen, the last two decades have taught the brutal lesson that foreign-imposed regime change does not produce compliant allies, but rather vacuums filled by extremists, proxy wars and humanitarian catastrophes.
It is this painfully learned lesson that drove the Arab Gulf states’ pivot to diplomacy with former rivals like Iran.
The Israeli hope that airstrikes and assassinations are “creating the conditions” for the Iranian people to “rise up,” as Netanyahu stated, is not only ahistorical—it is dangerous.
Even among Iran’s opposition, there is deep skepticism about foreign intervention. As exiled activists have told Western media, Iranians want to topple their leaders themselves, they do not want a “made-up state” or a new regime imposed by outsiders.
In addition, the fantasy that a successor regime in Tehran would be inherently friendly to Israel ignores deep-seated suspicion embedded through decades of conflict, propaganda and animosity now being cemented by overt foreign intervention. Even Reza Pahlavi, if somehow installed, would likely face immense pressure to distance himself from any perception of being “Israel’s man in Iran.”
Israel’s campaign may weaken the Islamic Republic, but it cannot conjure a new, friendly Iran from the ashes, least of all by championing a successor from a fallen dynasty that Iranians have long since rejected.
In the end, the future of Iran should be decided not in Jerusalem or Washington, but by Iranians themselves—on their own terms, in their own time. ■
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OTHER VOICES
FROM THE MIDDLE EAST CLIPBOARD
Israel Tried to Break Iran—but It may Have Actually Helped Unite it
BY MOHAMMAD ESLAMI
Israel’s ongoing military assault on Iran has already become one of the most consequential cross-border strikes in the region’s recent history. Far more than a targeted operation against missile silos or nuclear facilities, it has included high-profile assassinations and sophisticated cyberattacks. Among the most significant developments so far has been the assassination of several senior Iranian commanders, including Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami and the head of its Aerospace Force, Amir Ali Hajizadeh. These targeted killings represent the most severe blow to Iran’s military leadership since the 19801988 war with Iraq. Yet, beneath the surface, the assault is not merely a military maneuver—it is the expression of a political doctrine decades in the making.
While Israeli officials publicly framed the operation as a pre-emptive act to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, its deeper strategic logic appears increasingly clear: the destabilization—and eventual collapse—of the Islamic Republic. For years, Israeli and some American
Compiled by Janet McMahon
strategists have argued—sometimes discreetly, sometimes overtly—that the only durable solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions is regime change. The current campaign aligns with this longstanding objective, not only through military means but also via psychological, political and social pressure inside Iran.,
Recent developments suggest the operation was designed to provoke the early stages of an internal uprising. The playbook is familiar to observers of past regime-change efforts: assassinations of top military officials, psychological warfare, disinformation campaigns and the symbolic targeting of state institutions. In Tehran, Israeli-backed cyber-
VOL. 28 ISSUE 5—AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2025
Israel Tried to Break Iran—but It May Have Actually Helped Unite it, Mohammad Eslami, www.aljazeera.com OV-51
Iraqi Shi’i Demand Expulsion of U.S. Troops After Israel Attacks Iran, Juan Cole, www.juancole.com OV-52
“Not for You”: Israeli Shelters Exclude Palestinians as Bombs Rain Down, Aseel Mafarjeh, www.aljazeera.com OV-53
A Short Guide on How to Starve a Population to Death, Jonathan Cook, www.jonathan-cook.net OV-55
The “Chaos” of Aid Distribution In Gaza Is not a System Failure. The System Is Designed to Fail, Abdaljawad Omarj, mondoweiss.net OV-56
Zen and the Art of New York Times Headline Writing, Caitlin Johnstone, www.caitlinjohnstone.com.au OV-58
Where Is Netanyahu’s Blame For Hamas?, Jason Jones, theamericanconservative.com OV-58
Sanctioning Ben-Gvir and Smotrich Is but a Tiny, Sad Step in Ending the Gaza Massacre,” Gideon Levy, www.haaretz.com OV-60
“It’s so Painful”: Man City’s Guardiola Speaks Up on Israel’s War on Gaza, Hafsa Adil, www.aljazeera.com OV-60
The Surprising Campaign of Zohran Mamdani, Spencer Neale, theamericanconservative.com OV-61
Egypt’s Energy Gamble Has Left It Beholden to Israel, Elfadil Ibrahim, www.responsiblestatecraft.org OV-63
Yemen: U.S. Strikes on Port an Apparent War Crime, Human Rights Watch, www.hrw.org OV-65
attacks and precision strikes have reportedly hit government buildings and ministries, even temporarily disrupting national television broadcasts—a key pillar of the Islamic Republic’s communications infrastructure.
Israeli political rhetoric has echoed this direction. In closed briefings and selected media interviews, officials have acknowledged that Iran’s deeply fortified underground nuclear facilities—some reportedly buried more than 500 meters (1,640 ft.) beneath the Zagros and Alborz mountains—cannot be destroyed without full United States participation. Specifically, the operation would require the use of GBU-57 “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” bombs, deliverable only by American B-2 or B-52 strategic bombers. In the absence of such capabilities, Israeli leaders appear to have concluded that halting Iran’s nuclear program is impossible without a change in government.
This context lends new meaning to Israel’s concurrent military and political efforts. In the aftermath of the attacks, Israeli messaging aimed at the Iranian public intensified, portraying the IRGC not as national defenders but as the chief oppressors of the Iranian people. The messaging sought to separate the Islamic Republic from the Iranian nation with slogans such as: “This is not Iran’s war. This is the regime’s war.” Iranian opposition figures abroad—including Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last shah of Iran, and former footballer Ali Karimi—echoed these narratives, expressing support for the strikes and calling for regime change.
However, the strategy may have produced the opposite effect. Rather than igniting mass revolt or fracturing national unity, the attacks appear to have consolidated public sentiment across political lines. Many Iranians, including longtime critics of the regime, have expressed anger over what they perceive as a foreign assault on national sovereignty. The collective memory of external intervention— stretching from the CIA-backed 1953 coup to the Iran-Iraq war—has reacti-
vated a deeply embedded defensive reflex.
Even among activists from the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement— which sparked nationwide protests after the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody—there has been visible reluctance to align with foreign military intervention. As images of bombed-out buildings and fallen Iranian soldiers circulated, a mood of empathy and solidarity momentarily replaced the demand for regime change. For many, the conversation has shifted from political reform to national defense.
Notably, several public figures and former opponents of the Islamic Republic voiced support for Iran and denounced the Israeli attacks. Football legend Ali Daei declared, “I prefer to die rather than be a traitor,” rejecting cooperation with any foreign assault. Mohsen Borhani, a former judge and political prisoner, wrote, “I kiss the hands of all defenders of the homeland,” referring to the IRGC and other armed forces.
What began as a calculated strike on military targets may be achieving the opposite of its intended outcome. Rather than weakening the regime’s hold on power, Israel’s actions risk reinforcing it—by rallying national unity and silencing dissent. The attempt to engineer revolution from outside may not only fail—it may backfire.
If Israel’s ultimate aim was to catalyze a regime collapse, it may have underestimated the historical resilience of Iran’s political system and the unifying power of national trauma. As bombs fall and generals die, Iran’s social fabric does not appear to be fraying. Instead, it may be stitching itself back together.
Mohammad Eslami is an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Minho, a visiting fellow of international security at Dublin City University, Ireland, and a Max Weber Fellow of International Security at European University Institute, Florence, Italy. This article was first posted at <www.al jazeera.com>, June 18, 2025. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own
Iraqi Shi’i Demand Expulsion of U.S. Troops After Israel Attacks Iran
BY JUAN COLE
The Israeli-Iranian war of 2025 has put Iraq in an extremely difficult situation. The country’s Shi’i majority sympathizes with Iran and with the Palestinians, and resents Israel’s use of Iraqi airspace to attack their Shi’i neighbor.
On Sunday the Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Soudani met with Thomas Seiler, the European Union ambassador to Iraq. Al-Soudani said on that occasion that what he called “the recent Zionist aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran” represents “a direct threat to security and stability in Iraq and the region.” He said Israel’s attack on Iran was intended to disrupt diplomacy and that it flagrantly violated international laws and norms.
Al-Soudani called on the major powers, and the European Union in particular, to bring a halt to these hostilities.
The Iraqi prime minister stated that Iraq registered the strongest possible objection to the Israeli violation of its airspace. He pointed out that Iraq had exercised restraint, in the interests of the Iraqi people, despite the tensions in the region caused by Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called on Iraq to halt any further Israeli use of Iraqi air space.
Shi’i Arabic-speakers make up some 60 percent of Iraq, while Sunni Kurds form on the order of 22 percent, with most of the rest being Sunni Arabs along with some small minorities. The
government is in the hands of the Shi’i, but they are themselves divided by party, region and social class.
Shi’i hard-liners close to Iran formed militias in 2014 to fight off the hyperSunni terrorist organization ISIL (ISIS, Da’ish. These militias, the “Popular Mobilization Forces,” created parties and have substantial representation in parliament and ties to mainstream Shi’i parties. Over 60 such militant Shi’i groups exist, with some 238,000 members, and the Iraqi parliament recognizes them as a sort of National Guard and gives them a budget of nearly $300,000 a year. Several of them are very close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and say that they are glad to take orders from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s clerical leader.
Akram al-Kaabi, leader of the “Elect” (Nujaba’) militia, said that the Israeli attack on Iran was a signal that the American occupiers should be expelled entirely from Iraq. The Iraqi Party of God Brigades also demanded the removal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The Badr Corps, a major Iraqi paramilitary that has some 17 seats in parliament, denounced the U.S. for allowing Israel to fly over Iraq.
Several militias warned that if Washington directly intervenes against Iran on Israel’s behalf, they would respond by targeting American “interests and bases” in the region. As it is, they urged the closing of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
The U.S. does not have its own bases in Iraq anymore, but some 2,500 U.S. troops are hosted at Iraqi bases. In 2020 these bases were targeted by the Iraqi Shi’i militias and by Iran after Trump assassinated a general leading the Iraqi Shi’i militias as well as Qasem Soleimani, the then-head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. There are some 40,000 U.S. troops at bases in Kuwait, Qatar and elsewhere in the Gulf region, who are vulnerable to rocket attacks.
The Trump administration asked civilian dependents of U.S. diplomatic and other personnel to leave Iraq last week, in advance of the Israeli attack
on Iran. President Trump has threatened Iran with severe retaliation if it lashes out at American targets, and says he had nothing to do with Israel’s attack. His office even leaked that he vetoed an Israeli plot to kill Ayatollah Khamenei. It is not clear how he would respond to an attack on U.S. troops by an Iraqi Shi’i militia. In 2020 he had the U.S. Air Force bomb known Iraqi Shi’i militia bases, but this campaign was riddled with errors and had no significant military or political impact.
In January of this year, the Shi’i militias pledged to cease attacking the Iraqi bases hosting U.S. troops if Prime Minister al-Soudani would work quickly to see that the U.S. troop presene in the country was ended.
Prime Minister al-Soudani wants good relations with the Trump administration, and so is unlikely to take any practical steps in defense of Iran, but he is under severe pressure from Shi’i hard-liners. Asking the U.S. to pull out its remaining troops might be one symbolic measure he could take, but he and other mainstream politicians view the small American presense as a deterrent to any return of ISIL (the remaining members of which are delighted by the Israeli attack on Tehran).
Israeli Shelters Exclude Palestinians as Bombs Rain Down
BY ASEEL MAFARJEH
When Iranian missiles began raining down on Israel, many residents scrambled for cover. Sirens wailed across the country as people rushed into bomb shelters.
But for some Palestinian citizens of Israel—two million people, or roughly 21 percent of the population—doors were slammed shut, not by the force of the blasts and not by enemies, but by neighbors and fellow citizens.
Mostly living in cities, towns and villages within Israel’s internationally recognized borders, many Palestinian citizens of Israel found themselves excluded from life-saving infrastructure during the worst nights of the Iran-Israel conflict to date.
For Samar al-Rashed, a 29-year-old single mother living in a mostly Jewish apartment complex near Acre, the reality of that exclusion came on Friday night. Samar was at home with her five-year-old daughter, Jihan. As sirens pierced the air, warning of incoming missiles, she grabbed her daughter and rushed for the building’s shelter.
“I didn’t have time to pack anything,” she recalled. “Just water, our phones, and my daughter’s hand in mine.”
The panicking mother tried to ease her daughter’s fear, while hiding her own, gently encouraging her in softspoken Arabic to keep up with her rushed steps toward the shelter, as other neighbors climbed down the stairs, too.
But at the shelter door, she said, an Israeli resident, having heard her speak Arabic, blocked their entry—and shut it in their faces.
“I was stunned,” she said. “I speak Hebrew fluently. I tried to explain. But he looked at me with contempt and just said, ‘Not for you.’”
In that moment, Samar said, the deep fault lines of Israeli society were laid bare. Climbing back to her flat and looking at the distant missiles lighting up the skies, and occasionally colliding with the ground, she was terrified by both the sight, and by her neighbors.
A HISTORY OF EXCLUSION
Palestinian citizens of Israel have long faced systemic discrimination—in housing, education, employment and state services. Despite holding Israeli citizenship, they are often treated as second-class citizens, and their loyalty is routinely questioned in public discourse.
According to Adalah–The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, more than 65 laws directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens. The nation-state law passed in 2018 cemented this disparity by defining Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” a move critics say institutionalized apartheid.
In times of war, that discrimination often intensifies.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are frequently subjected to discriminatory policing and restrictions during periods of conflict, including arrest for social media posts, denial of access to shelters, and verbal abuse in mixed cities.
Many have already reported experiencing such discrimination.
In Haifa, 33-year-old Mohammed Dabdoob was working at his mobile repair shop Saturday evening when phones simultaneously all rang with the sound of alerts, triggering his anxiety. He tried to finish fixing a broken phone, which delayed him. He then rushed to close the shop and ran toward the nearest public shelter, beneath a building behind his shop. Approaching the shelter, he found its sturdy door locked.
“I tried the code. It didn’t work. I banged on the door, called on those inside to open—in Hebrew—and waited. No one opened,” he said. Moments later, a missile exploded nearby, shattering glass across the street. “I thought I was going to die.
“There was smoke and screaming, and after a quarter of an hour, all we could hear were the sounds of the police and the ambulance. The scene was terrifying, as if I were living a nightmare similar to what happened at the Port of Beirut,” he added, referring to
the 2020 Beirut port explosion.
Frozen by sheer fear and shock, Mohammed watched from his hiding place in a nearby parking lot as the chaos unfolded, and soon enough, the shelter’s door opened. As those who were inside the shelter began trickling out, he looked at them silently.
“There’s no real safety for us,” he said. “Not from the missiles, and not from the people who are supposed to be our neighbors.”
DISCRIMINATION IN SHELTER ACCESS
In theory, all citizens of Israel should have equal access to public safety measures—including bomb shelters. In practice, the picture is very different.
Palestinian towns and villages in Israel have significantly fewer protected spaces than Jewish localities. According to a 2022 report by Israel’s state comptroller quoted by the newspaper Haaretz, more than 70 percent of homes in Palestinian communities in Israel lack a safe room or space that is up to code, compared to 25 percent of Jewish homes. Municipalities often receive less funding for civil defense, and older buildings go without the required reinforcements.
Even in mixed cities like Lydd (Lod), where Jewish and Palestinian residents live side by side, inequality is pronounced.
Yara Srour, a 22-year-old nursing student at Hebrew University, lives in the neglected neighborhood of al-Mahatta in Lydd. Her family’s three-storey building, which is around four decades old, lacks official permits and a shelter. Following the heavy Iranian bombardment they witnessed on Saturday evening, which shocked the world around them, the family tried early on Sunday to flee to a safer part of the city.
“We went to the new part of Lydd where there are proper shelters,” Yara said, adding that her 48-year-old mother, who suffers from weak knees, was struggling to move. “Yet, they wouldn’t let us in. Jews from poorer areas were also turned away. It was only for the ‘new residents’—those in the
modern buildings, mostly middle-class Jewish families.”
Yara recalls the horror vividly.
“My mother has joint problems and couldn’t run like the rest of us,” she said. “We were begging, knocking on doors. But people just looked at us through peepholes and ignored us, while we saw the sky light up with fires of intercepted rockets.”
FEAR, TRAUMA AND ANGER
Samar said the experience of being turned away from a shelter with her daughter left a psychological scar.
“That night, I felt completely alone,” she said. “I didn’t report it to the police—what’s the point? They wouldn’t have done anything.”
Later that evening, a villa in Tamra was hit, killing four women from the same family. From her balcony, Samar watched smoke rise into the sky.
“It felt like the end of the world,” she said. “And still, even under attack, we’re treated as a threat, not as people.”
She has since moved with her daughter to her parents’ home in Daburiyya, a village in the Lower Galilee. Together, they can now huddle in a reinforced room. With the alerts coming every few hours, Samar is thinking of fleeing to Jordan.
“I wanted to protect Jihan. She doesn’t know this world yet. But I also didn’t want to leave my land. That’s the dilemma for us—survive, or stay and suffer.”
While Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stated after the attacks that “Iran’s missiles target all of Israel—Jews and Arabs alike,” the reality on the ground told a different story.
Even before the war, Palestinian citizens of Israel were disproportionately arrested for expressing political views or reacting to the attacks. Some were detained merely for posting emojis on social media. In contrast, calls for vigilante violence against Palestinians in online forums were largely ignored.
“The state expects our loyalty in war,” said Mohammed Dabdoob. “But when it’s time to protect us, we’re invisible.”
For Samar, Yara, Mohammed and thousands like them, the message is clear: they are citizens on paper, but strangers in practice.
“I want safety like anyone else,” said Yara. “I’m studying to become a nurse. I want to help people. But how can I serve a country that won’t protect my mother?”
A Short Guide on How to Starve a Population to Death
BY JONATHAN COOK
Ashort guide on how to engineer a genocide by starvation and ethnic cleansing:
1. Choose your moment. Ok, you’ve been ethnically cleansing, occupying, oppressing and killing your neighbors for decades. The international courts have ruled your actions illegal. But none of that will matter the moment your neighbors retaliate by attacking you. Don’t worry. The Western media can be relied on to help out here. They will be only too ready to pretend that history began on the day you were attacked.
2. Declare, in response, your intention to starve your neighbors, treating them as “human animals,” by blocking all food, water and power. You will be surprised by how many Western politicians are ready to support this as your “right to defend yourself.” The media will echo them. Important not to just talk about blocking aid. You must actually do it. There will be no serious pushback for many, many months.
3. Start relatively slowly. Time is on your side. Let a little bit of aid in. But
make sure to relentlessly smear the well functioning, decades-old aid distribution system run by the international community—one that is transparent, accountable and widely integrated into the community it serves. Say it is infiltrated by “terrorists.”
4. Use that claim—evidence isn’t really necessary, the Western media never ask for it—as the pretext to bomb the aid system’s warehouses, distribution centers and community kitchens. Oh, and don’t forget to bomb all the private bakeries, destroy all the farmland, shoot all the animals and kill anyone who tries to use a fishing boat, so that there are no other sources of food. You are now in control of the trickle of aid reaching what is rapidly becoming a severely malnourished population.
5. Time to move into higher gear. Stop the international community’s aid getting in all together. You will need a humanitarian cover story for this bit. The danger, particularly in an age of social media, is that images of starving babies will make you look very bad. Hold firm. You can get through this. Claim—again, evidence isn’t really necessary, the Western media won’t ask for it—that the “terrorists” are stealing the aid. You will be surprised how willing the media is to talk about babies going “hungry,” ignoring the fact that you are starving them to death, or speak of a “famine,” as though from drought and crop failure, not from your carefully laid plans.
6. Don’t lose sight of the bigger story. You are blocking aid to “eradicate the terrorists.” After all, what is the worth of a baby, of a child—all one million of them—in the fight to eliminate a ragtag army of lightly armed “terrorists” who have never waged their struggle outside of their historic homeland?
7. Now that the population are entirely at your disposal, you can roll out a “humanitarian” alternative to the existing system you have been vilifying and wrecking. Probably best to have been working on this part of the plan behind the scenes from early on, and to have regularly consulted with the Americans on how to develop it. You
may even find they are willing to fund it. They usually are. You can obscure their role by using the term “private contractors.”
8. It’s time for implementation. Obviously, the point is not to really distribute aid. It is all about providing a cover story so that the starvation and ethnic cleansing can continue. Make sure you provide only a tiny amount of aid and make it available only at a few distribution points you have set up with these “private contractors.” This has two advantages.
9. It forces the population to come to the areas you want them in. Like luring mice into a trap. Get them to the very edge of the territory, because from there you will be best positioned at some point to drive them over the border and get rid of them for good.
10. Your system will lead to chaos, as desperate, starving people fight for food. That’s great for you. It makes them look like a swarming mass of those “human animals” you were talking about from the start. Don’t they deserve their fate? And it means that young fit men—especially those from large, often armed, criminal families— will end up with most of the food. The stuff they can’t grab at the distribution points, they will ambush later as people try to return home laden with their heavy aid packages. That may seem counterintuitive, given that you’re claiming to want to eliminate the “terrorists.” Won’t these fit young men, as conditions degenerate further, provide a future source of recruits to the “terrorists”? But remember, the real goal here is to starve the population as quickly as possible. The young, the elderly, the sick and the vulnerable are the ones who will die first. The more of them who start dying, the faster the pressure builds on everyone else to flee the territory to save themselves.
You are nearly there. True, faced with the emaciated bodies of your victims, Western politicians will start making harsh pronouncements. But they have already given you a massive head start of 20 months. Be grateful for that. You don’t need much longer.
While they dither, you can get on with the job of extermination. Leave it to the history books to judge what really happened.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. A 2011 recipient of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism, he was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years, returning to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and has also contributed chapters and essays to several edited volumes on Israel-Palestine. This article was first posted at his blog, <www. jonathan-cook.net>, May 28, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
The “Chaos” of Aid Distribution In Gaza Is not a System Failure. The System Is Designed to Fail.
BY ABDALJAWAD OMAR
We are not witnessing a rupture with how things used to be.
What is unfolding today in Gaza, where food aid falls from the sky like ordnance and “humanitarian corridors” double as kill zones, is not the collapse of humanitarianism, but its logical consummation under conditions of settler-colonial necropolitics.
It is tempting to read these scenes— the parachute that failed, the sacks of flour soaked in blood—as tragic malfunctions. They are not.
They are the grammar of a system that has long sutured humanitarian concern to military logistics, relief to surveillance, and aid to domination.
But something has shifted—not in content, but in form.
For decades, Israel maintained an uneasy but instrumental alliance with the architecture of humanitarianism. In the long expanse between the years fol-
lowing the Nakba and the siege and destruction of Gaza, this alliance operated as a double gesture: securing international legitimacy through the performance of restraint, while choreographing violence within the idiom of “security” and “self-defense.” The Red Cross, UNRWA and a chorus of NGOs served as both witnesses and enablers, simultaneously limiting and legitimizing the occupation’s machinery.
In this war, humanitarianism is no longer simply absorbed and weaponized. It is being bypassed, discarded and cannibalized.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Israel’s new model for aid delivery, signals this shift with brutal clarity: aid is no longer mediated through international law or the optics of neutrality, but flows through private American contractors under military command.
The new aid plan is being used by Israel as part of its demographic war in Gaza: by orchestrating aid flows into selected zones, primarily in the south, Israel is working to condense the population into increasingly narrow and governable enclaves. This forced concentration is not a consequence of war—it is the war’s strategic aim.
In other words, aid is a tool for soft transfer, pushing Palestinians into regions that can be more easily monitored, controlled, and eventually severed from any claim to the land. Starvation and desperation are not side effects, but intended effects, forcing displacement through need.
Israel simply cannot do this with the existing humanitarian infrastructure of UNRWA and the WFP. It has tried to do so over 19 months of genocide and fallen short. This is why the removal of international aid organizations signals a shift toward the unilateral management of the Strip under a new apparatus of military-humanitarian control. By sidelining these bodies, Israel makes room for a more compliant infrastructure: private contractors, militarized aid programs, and internally cultivated Palestinian collaborators who can administer local populations without
challenging the broader regime of occupation and erasure.
These aid distribution sites, under the guise of relief, are also choreographed spaces of entrapment, where the architecture of chaos, desperation and humiliation is meticulously staged. People wait for hours in the scorching sun, under drones, under guns, under the gaze of an occupying army that controls what enters, who lives, and who dies. The crowd surges, the fences collapse, shots are fired, and Palestinians are killed.
The Palestinian is made visible only in hunger and at the edge of riot. In these moments, dignity is not just deferred, but is systematically stripped, replaced with the performance of disorder that justifies further killings and further control. The aid site becomes the set-piece where Israel can lure the starving into kill zones and use a loaf of bread as a pretext for a bullet.
THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM
This inaugurates a new paradigm in which humanitarianism is no longer mediated through international law or multilateral consensus, but is now militarized, privatized and securitized. It is disaster capitalism taken to the extreme, eroding liberal humanitarian institutions in favor of militarized neoliberal corporations.
The time is ripe for this because Israel has grown weary of performance. It no longer needs the restraint rituals, with the carefully measured body counts, the proportional language of conflict resolution, and the legal architectures erected after World War II. In their place, we find a new modality of power that openly transgresses, dares the world to respond, and thrives not on legitimacy, but impunity.
What happened in Tal al-Sultan on May 27 offered the world yet another glimpse into this emerging logic. At the launch of the GHF’s first aid distribution center, thousands of Palestinians gathered, driven by the extremity of hunger. As fences broke under the weight of the crowd, Israeli forces responded with what they called “warn-
ing shots.” By the end of the day, three Palestinians lay dead, 48 were injured, and seven others were missing. This was not the failure of humanitarian logistics; it was the logic fulfilled.
This is not merely a new war on Gaza. It is a war on the very category of the “human” as it applies to Palestinians, and eventually a remaking that will impact the whole world. Where once humanitarian discourse functioned as the frame through which violence could be rendered legible, disciplined by legalese, and tempered by press releases, humanitarianism itself is being disposed of as a limiting condition.
This reconfiguration also entails a war against memory. International organizations, however limited, often function as record-keepers of hunger, of attacks, of displacement and of death. With their expulsion comes the erasure of witnesses and the silencing of documentation. The absence of institutional observers allows Israel to proceed with its campaign of annihilation without the burdens of image, number or name. This is because the presence of the U.N. and other aid organizations, even if partly complicit, implied that the world was still watching and that aid was still being distributed in a manner not conducive to ethnic cleansing.
INEQUALITY OF HUNGER
Beyond achieving its demographic aims, Israel is also utilizing the GHF as part of its policy of what could effectively be termed “inequality of hunger”: the aid provided by the GHF is woefully insufficient to meet the vast and urgent needs of Gaza’s besieged population, with the U.N. estimating that a minimum of 500 aid trucks per day are required to sustain basic life, while fewer than 100 are permitted entry. The deliberate reduction of aid so far below the minimum threshold of survival isn’t just arbitrary cruelty; it is meant to create the conditions for social collapse.
It’s already been pointed out that this is the use of manufactured scarcity as a bargaining chip to extract political concessions from the Palestinian resistance. But it should also be stressed that the deprivation is an instrument of social disintegration: by distributing just enough food to kindle desperation, but never enough to sustain dignity, the system manufactures moral collapse. The social fabric fractures, resulting in the slow erosion of solidarity— the final battlefield of any collective struggle.
It is one thing to have a famine, which at least means equality in hunger. It’s quite another to trickle in just enough resources to create an internal struggle that results in the cannibalization of social relations, hitting harder than any massacre.
THE CRIMINALITY OF AID
There are, one might say, two criminalities at work in Gaza’s hunger corridors. The first is sanitized, institutional, and entirely rational, what we might call the criminality of logistics perpetrated by the colonizer. Deliberate starvation is achieved through border control, using aid as spectacle, the sealing of exits, and then the airdropping of salvation in neatly packaged boxes. This is not merely a failure of ethics but a success of policy. It is the criminality of biometric scans, of the humanitarian mask concealing the military boot, made possible by both Netanyahu’s cabinet and the likes of Trump Inc., that curious synthesis of gangster capitalism and state violence performing massacres in the name of order.
But this is not all. The organized internal collaborators, the micro-warlords who “tax” the aid and divert it before it reaches the starved, form a local apparatus of distribution grounded in theft-as-policy. This is the internalized supplement to the occupation—the colonized enforcer recruited in the midst of war to serve further social disintegration.
In this setting, the crime is everywhere: in the massacre itself, in the
very architecture of aid that creates the need for it. Israel is not the sole criminal; the entire configuration is criminal, including the aid agencies, the paperwork, the silence, the drone overhead, and the collaborator on the ground.
The other “criminality” unfolds when the crowd surges, breaching the fence and reaching for what was always theirs—bread, oil, rice, the right to live. This is not looting, but the repossession of stolen sustenance. It is the planning of those without a plan, the logistics of a community erupting through the fractures of engineered despair. It is the refusal to die standing in line beneath the drones, dignity deferred.
The people aren’t a mob, but a flood—a living force breaching the containment zone of famine, liberating food from its branded prison. What Israel frames as chaos is, in truth, collective clarity.
This second criminality—the crime of survival—is incomprehensible to the humanitarian and liberal gaze. It remains illegible to institutions conditioned only to distinguish the compliant needy from the dangerous deviant. But this collective act of taking is not a cry for help, but a disruption of the very logic that made help necessary. After 600 days of massacres and destruction, the fences fell, sacks were passed between hands, and colonial time stuttered.
This, too, is what unfolded last week—Palestinians in Gaza surged through the tightly scripted scene of domination, disrupting Israel’s illusion of total control even as it outsourced its sovereignty to American private contractors. The scene itself was torn apart twice: first, when most Palestinians in Gaza did not show up, refusing even the choreography itself, and second, when the crowd surged through the fence.
This, then, is the moment we are left with: one in which Israel no longer bothers to veil its actions behind humanitarian fig leaves, but openly scorns the very language that
once masked its violence. And the world is being dared—to intervene, yes, but more precisely, to confront the fact that its interventions and discourses were always part of the problem, always hollow and devoid of substance.
One could ask the liberals what remains of this language, not only in Gaza, but in the futures yet to come?
And amid all this, what remains central is that, despite everything, Palestinians still find a way—whether through deliberate planning or spontaneous rupture—to flood the infrastructure of annihilation.
Zen and the Art of New York Times Headline Writing
BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE
The New York Times has just published one of the most insane headlines I have ever seen it publish, which is really saying something.
“Gaza’s Deadly Aid Deliveries,” the title blares.
If you were among the majority of people who only skim the headline without reading the rest of the article, you would have no idea that Israel has spent the last few days massacring starving civilians at aid sites and lying about it. You would also have no idea that it is Israel who’s been starving them in the first place.
The headline is written in such a passive, amorphous way that it sounds like the aid deliveries themselves are deadly.
Like the bags of flour are picking up assault rifles and firing on desperate Palestinians queuing for food or something.
The sub-headline is no better: “Israel’s troops have repeatedly shot near food distribution sites.”
Oh? They’ve shot “near” food distribution sites, have they? Could their discharging their weapons in close proximity to the aid sites possibly have something to do with the aforementioned deadliness of the aid deliveries? Are we the readers supposed to connect these two pieces of information for ourselves, or are we meant to view them as two separate data points which may or may not have anything to with one another?
The article itself makes it clear that Israel has admitted that IDF troops fired their weapons “near” people waiting for aid after they failed to respond to “warning shots,” so you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened here. But in mainstream publications the headlines are written by editors, not by the journalists who write the articles, so they get to frame the story in whatever way suits their propaganda agenda for the majority who never read past the headline.
We saw another amazingly manipulative New York Times headline last month, “Israeli Soldiers Fire in Air to Disperse Western Diplomats in West Bank,” about the IDF firing “warning shots” at a delegation of foreign officials attempting to visit Jenin.
This was a story which provoked outcry and condemnation throughout the Western world, but look at the lengths the New York Times editor went to in order to frame the IDF’s actions in the most innocent way possible. They were firing into the air. They were firing “to disperse Western diplomats”—like that’s a thing. Like diplomats are crows on a cornfield or something. Oh yeah, ya know ya get too many diplomats flockin’ around and ya gotta fire a few rounds to disperse ‘em. Just normal stuff.
It’s amazing how creative these
freaks get when they need to publicly exonerate Israel and its Western allies of their crimes. The IDF commits a war crime and suddenly these stuffy mass media editors who’ve never created any art in their lives transform into poets, bending and twisting the English language to come up with lines that read more like Zen koans than reporting on an important news event.
It’s impossible to have too much disdain for these people
Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian opinion writer whose work, co-authored with her American husband, Tim Foley, is entirely reader-supported. Her newsletter is available on Substack and her website is <www.caitlin johnstone.com.au>. This article was first published on both sites, June 5, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
Where Is Netanyahu’s Blame for Hamas?
BY JASON JONES
Backers of Israel’s brutal campaign against Gaza have lately been trying to justify the high civilian casualties with the talking point that Palestinians voted for Hamas. Even if we set aside how outrageously unethical it is to suggest a civilian population, half of which is children, ought to be collectively punished for its government’s actions, a number of glaring facts deflate the argument anyway.
First of all, Gaza’s population is extraordinarily young, with the median age falling somewhere between 18 and 20. Only about 20 percent of today’s Gaza residents are old enough to have voted for Hamas in the last election, which took place in January 2006. Of those, about 75 percent voted. And of those, only about 45 percent voted for Hamas. And from those you can subtract the tens of thousands who, natu-
rally or unnaturally, have passed away since 2006. Do the math: It means that less than 7 percent of those now living in Gaza voted for Hamas.
Second, the State of Israel has spent years propping up and solidifying Hamas’ rule in Gaza—mostly under the leadership of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Here’s a quick look at the damning recent history that many of today’s Israel-backers would rather the world forget.
Palestinians have not had one opportunity to vote since the General Palestinian Legislative Council elections in the West Bank and Gaza that took place in 2006. When Hamas won 74 seats to the Fatah party’s 45, it did so under the “Change and Reform” list. And “Change and Reform” is likely all that many of the Palestinians who delivered Hamas’ victory wanted.
The election was widely seen as a protest vote against the Fatah party, which was then in power both in the West Bank and Gaza. Fatah was accused of rampant corruption and had failed to make progress on behalf of the Palestinian people in negotiations with Israel to achieve an independent Palestinian state.
What’s more, Hamas’ victory in Gaza was mixed. From the perspective of most Palestinian voters, it was also conditional. Hamas won just under 45 percent of the overall vote. In Gaza, Hamas won some electoral districts, but Fatah made a strong showing as well. And while Hamas’ victory was too weak to amount to a political mandate, a Near East Consulting opinion poll conducted immediately after the election showed huge majorities of Palestinians calling on the Islamist party to moderate its hard-line, unrealistic policy toward Israel and to make a peace deal.
So it’s no surprise that Hamas’ victory was not decisive enough to be the end of the story.
In 2007, a violent power struggle between Hamas and Fatah erupted in
Gaza. In the end, Hamas took over there, but left the West Bank under the control of Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority (PA).
In that political division between Palestinians, Israel saw a unique opportunity to scuttle any chance of renewed negotiations toward a Palestinian state. Israel acted quickly, blockading Gaza and preventing any normal economic activity between Palestinians in the two (now somewhat distinct) jurisdictions.
Before long, nothing and no one could go in or out of Gaza except under the strict control of Israel. And the divide between the Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza grew wider and deeper—ultimately amounting to a new situation that worked entirely against the interests of Palestinians and to the benefit of Israel: Two Palestinian semi-entities formed—one in the West Bank under the control of the PA, and one in Gaza under the control of Hamas.
Israel encouraged the division among the Palestinians at every opportunity. The more this new status quo could be entrenched, the easier it was for Israel to stall any real peace talks with the Palestinians to end its 58-year occupation of Palestinian territories. The excuse? That “there is no unified Palestinian authority to negotiate with.”
To deepen the divide between Palestinians and make it as close to permanent as possible, Israel even encouraged other countries, like Qatar, to support Hamas financially—thus encouraging Hamas to build its own state inside Gaza while Israel continued and sometimes ramped up its project of building illegal settlements in the West Bank.
As numerous mainstream news outlets have reported over the years, Netanyahu has gone so far as to secretly prop up Hamas by funneling millions of dollars in cash through the Qatari government.
In a widely reported comment that Netanyahu could only weakly deny, he told colleagues in 2019 that anyone “who wants to thwart the establish-
ment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.”
“Our strategy,” he reportedly explained, is “to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Netanyahu hardly had to say that out loud for it to be clearly and obviously the case.
And in a sense, the strategy has worked well for Israel, because it freed their hands to grab more Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Jerusalem and to ward off any possibility of a two-state solution and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
But in a much deeper sense, Netanyahu’s gambit has not worked well.
Today we live in the burning wake of Israel’s cynical, cruel and foolhardy policy of oppression and control—an approach that rivals the Bush-Obama foreign policy establishment of the U.S. in its deep unpopularity and in the carnage it has brought about.
Netanyahu has not only destroyed tens of thousands of lives—including those of the countless women and children brutally killed in Gaza—but he has empowered the very terrorists who committed atrocities against Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, and he has deeply damaged Israel’s standing in the international community.
The damage both to Israelis and to the Palestinian community will take decades to repair, perhaps half a century or more.
A first step will be a complete, permanent, global rejection of Israel’s current, indefensible policy of lies and barbarism.
Sanctioning Ben-Gvir and Smotrich Is but a Tiny, Sad Step in Ending the Gaza Massacre
BY GIDEON LEVY
Alas and alack! Woe be unto us, for we have sinned: Five countries have imposed sanctions on Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The war in Gaza will now stop immediately, and maybe the occupation, too, certainly the apartheid.
Smotrich, who has devoted his life to studying Ibsen’s works and loves to roam the streets of Oslo, inspired by the dramas, will no longer be able to visit Norway.
Ben-Gvir, the passionate birder, will no longer be able to track the kiwi, that fascinating bird whose sole habitat is New Zealand. Those two countries, along with Britain, Canada and Australia, have decided to impose on these two gentlemen a punishment that they, the government and the Israeli public will probably not be able to withstand. Naughty, naughty, Bezalel and Itamar, tsk, tsk, tsk! The two bad boys of Israel will stand in the corner.
It is hard to know whether these countries are being naïve or cowardly. Are they just paying lip service, or do they really believe this punishment will have some sort of effect on Israel’s moves? In one regard, the move is definitely welcome. At long last, countries are taking concrete action, not just engaging in empty talk, which could hopefully signal more to follow.
Perhaps this tiny, ridiculous step is meant only to be a wake-up call to a world that has been dozing peacefully amid the slaughter of Gaza, and in its
wake will come the deluge. Yet from another perspective, one can’t help but scoff. We deserve a lot more. These countries’ decision is based on a number of disgusting utterances by our two government ministers. They are careful not to punish them for their actual deeds. That’s not nice, Bezalel, that you said Hawara must be wiped out. “Death to the Arabs,” Itamar?
Besides these distinctions between the bad boys and the good government, everyone else threatening to impose sanctions is also careful to distinguish between the government and the people. It’s all because of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government, not because of you, dear Israelis. We want to maintain with you the relations of “strong friendship” and “shared values.” It’s not every day that you get the only democracy in the Middle East with the most moral army in the world.
The five countries that have taken the baby steps have joined the United States of the previous administration, which imposed personal sanctions on two and a half violent settlers. That was the American contribution that preceded the war on apartheid. But apartheid looked straight into the whites of those sanctions’ eyes—and has grown even stronger, along with settler violence.
So too is the determination that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are the worst sinners. Four countries of the British Commonwealth and Norway have made life easy for themselves. What Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip is not happening because of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. They aren’t even the main culprits. Blaming them and only them is self-righteousness and hypocrisy.
Both the Gaza Strip and Israel are desperate now for international sanctions that will lead to an end to the slaughter in Gaza. We can’t wait any longer, Mumbling like the five countries won’t suffice. The slaughter will not stop without sanctions, and the slaughter cannot continue.
The sanctions must be directed at the entire government, from Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, to the least senior government minister. Sanctions should also target the military officers and the bureaucrats who are carrying out the slaughter in Gaza.
A majority of Israelis, as public opinion polls indicate, support the slaughter and are even waiting for the population transfer that is to come in its wake. Therefore, the pressure and the punishment must be directed at Israel in its entirety.
And we can’t move on without a comic interlude: The leader of the “Israeli résistance,” Benny Gantz, head of the National Unity party, sees the decision on the sanctions against Smotrich and Ben-Gvir as “a profound moral failure on the part of the world.” Diplomats and decision-makers, do you get this? In Israel, all of us are now BenGvir and Smotrich. All of us.
“It’s so Painful”: Man City’s Guardiola Speaks Up on Israel’s War on Gaza
BY HAFSA ADIL
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola says the images of children being killed during Israel’s war on Gaza are “painful” and have left him “deeply troubled.”
The Spanish manager of the English Premier League club urged the world to speak up instead of choosing to stay silent “in the face of injustice” as he addressed an audience after receiving an honorary degree at the University of Manchester on Monday.
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“It’s so painful what we see in Gaza. It hurts all my body,” Guardiola said.
“Maybe we think that when we see four-year-old boys and girls being killed by bombs or being killed at a hospital, which is not a hospital any more, it’s not our business. Yeah, fine, it’s not our business. But be careful—the next fouror five-year-old kids will be ours.”
Mentioning his three children— Maria, Marius and Valentina—Guardiola said that every morning “since the nightmare started” in Gaza, whenever he sees his two daughters and son he is reminded of the children in Gaza, which leaves him feeling “so scared.”
About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are children.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 17,400 children, including 15,600 who have been identified, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Many more remain buried under the rubble and are presumed dead.
Many of the surviving children have endured the trauma of multiple wars, and all of them have spent their lives under an oppressive Israeli blockade.
Over the past 20 months, Israeli attacks have left their homes in ruins, destroyed their schools, and overwhelmed their healthcare facilities.
“DEEPLY TROUBLED” BY WARS
During his emotional speech, which has been widely shared on social media, Guardiola said the world remains silent in the face of injustice.
“We feel safer [staying silent] than speaking up,” he added.
“Maybe this image feels far away from where we are living now, and you might ask what we can do,” he added.
He then went on to narrate the story of a bird trying to put out a fire in a forest by repeatedly carrying water in its beak.
“In a world that often tells us we are too small to make a difference, that story reminds me the power of one is not about the scale—it’s about choice, about showing up, about refusing to be silent or still when it matters the most.”
The former Barcelona coach and player said the images out of Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine left him “deeply troubled.”
Guardiola, who has formerly voiced his support for the independence of his native Catalonia, lashed out at world leaders for their inability to stop the wars.
“We see the horrors of thousands and thousands of innocent children, mothers and fathers.
“Entire families suffering, starving and being killed and yet we are surrounded by leaderships in many fields, not just politicians, who don’t consider the inequality and injustice.”
An independent United Nations commission report released on Tuesday accused Israel of committing the crime against humanity of “extermination” by attacking Palestinian civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites in Gaza.
“While the destruction of cultural property, including educational facilities, was not in itself a genocidal act, evidence of such conduct may nevertheless infer genocidal intent to destroy a protected group,” the report said.
While the report focused on the impact on Gaza, the commission also reported significant consequences for the Palestinian education system in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as a result of ramped-up Israeli military activity, harassment of students and settler attacks.
“Children in Gaza have lost their childhood. With no education available, they are forced to worry about survival amid attacks, uncertainty, starvation and subhuman living conditions,” the report added.
“What is particularly disturbing is the widespread nature of the targeting of educational facilities, which has extended well beyond Gaza, impacting all Palestinian children.”.
It wasn’t long ago now when the political comeback of the former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo seemed all but assured. It was just this March, in fact. Cuomo held what appeared to be an insurmountable lead in a crowded Democratic primary field running to become the next mayor of New York City. In an Emerson College poll of likely voters taken between the 21st and 24th of that spring month, Cuomo garnered 38 percent of voters, with New York State Rep. Zohran Mamdani and Mayor Eric Adams earning only 10 percent and 8 percent, respectively.
Despite repeated allegations against Cuomo’s character and leadership during his time in Albany, many voters in the state and its biggest city still revere the former governor. POLITICO called it the “Cuomo Paradox,” noting in May that the 67-year-old statesman is “unpopular, yet still leading the New York City mayor’s race.” After the sitting Mayor Eric Adams exited the Democratic primary competition in April, most analysts just assumed Cuomo would cakewalk to Gracie Mansion.
And so it seemed that nothing short of a Hail Mary could propel any of Cuomo’s challengers to within a puncher’s chance of slowing the former governor’s emphatic return to the New York political scene. Then, the 33-yearold Muslim socialist behind a series of sleek, street-smart TV ads promising to freeze the rent, provide no-cost childcare, and make public busing free catapulted in out of nowhere. As the Democratic establishment spends millions of dollars researching how to “connect with young men,” Mamdani has found it easy to connect with the sort of figures the establishment struggles to contain.
“My political journey begins with Bernie’s 2016 run, which gave me the
language to describe myself as a Democrat socialist campaign,” Mamdani explained during an interview with the Majority Report in January. In one of his first acts as an assemblyman, Mamdani rallied with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance [NYTWA} and was arrested for disorderly conduct during a sit-down protest in the middle of Broadway. Then began Mamdani’s hunger strike in front of City Hall.
For two weeks, the man who was born in Uganda and immigrated to New York City at the age of 7 joined NYTWA members who refused to eat as pressure mounted on then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. In the end, the taxi drivers, and Mamdani, won. “I could not shake the sense that I was witnessing the doomed last stand of yet another group of working-class New Yorkers who would be crushed by the hedgefund Bretts who run this city,” Mamdani said of the successful protests.
And so that is who Mamdani is, politically: an activist, someone who has shown a willingness to fight in ways that his establishment peers simply cannot. When Border Czar Tom Homan taunted Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) in Albany this March, Mamdani had to be held back by state troopers as he demanded to know if Homan “believed in the First Amendment.”
That same fighting spirit was on display in the two most recent mayoral debates where Mamdani faced off against the field and its moderators who were all eager to know where the slick-talking son of a Bollywood filmmaker stood on the escalating situation in the Middle East.
When moderators asked the nine candidates where they would visit on their first foreign trip, every candidate except Mamdani promised to visit Israel. Without missing a beat, Mamdani answered simply: “I would stay in New York City, my plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs and focus on that.” When pressed to elaborate, Mamdani promised to “stand up for Jewish New Yorkers” and said he believed that “Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights.”
Cuomo immediately went on the attack, noting that Mamdani won’t visit Israel and that the assemblyman refused to say Israel should exist “as a Jewish state.” The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the sudden outbreak of war between Israel and Iran, which began less than two weeks following the debate in question, has no doubt muddied the waters of Mamdani’s ascension. Nearly 1 million Jews call New York City home, and they play an outsized role in the cultural, political and financial realities of America’s great northern city. Carrying the primary ballot without appealing to this demographic on some level would appear to be an insurmountable obstacle.
In New York, Mamdani is known for his anti-Zionist sentiments. In 2021, he led “boycott, divestment and sanctions” protests during a pro-Palestinian rally across from the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan. He introduced a bill to ban funding for Israeli settlers and declined to support a New York Assembly resolution marking the founding of Israel. And in 2023, he introduced the “Not on our dime!” bill to target tax-exempt charities that provide money to Israeli settler organizations. Which is why in May, Mamdani responded directly to rumors that he is an anti-Semite. In a one-minute video posted to Twitter, Mamdani clarified his legislative support for Holocaust remembrance during his time as a state assemblyman. “I have repeatedly supported allocating millions of dollars in the state budget for Holocaust survivors and my campaign has proposed the largest fiscal commitment of any candidate to combat anti-Semitism,” Mamdani stated. “As mayor, I will protect Jewish New Yorkers and build a city that every person is proud to call home.”
But it’s not just Jewish New Yorkers who are concerned about Mamdani’s views on the Middle East. Nearly 1 million Muslims call New York City home and not all of them are in agreement with Mamdani’s views on Israel, which some characterize as soft. Just last
week, Mamdani was confronted in a West Village church over his statement that Israel “has a right to exist.” The protester accused Mamdani of pandering to Israel and questioned the sincerity of his Muslim faith. “To call into question how I consider myself Muslim is a step too far,” Mamdani responded.
On Wednesday, Mamdani reiterated that he is not an anti-Semite in an emotional speech in which the 33year-old politician responded to the verbal attacks: “I get messages that say, ‘the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.’ I get threats on my life.” The speech came a day after an appearance on the Bulwark Podcast during which Mamdani declined to condemn the phrase “Globalize the Intifada.” Mamdani defined the word “intifada” as “struggle” and argued that the word “has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic.” The U.S. Holocaust Museum in response denounced Mamdani on X Thursday morning. The situation is evidence of how Mamdani’s Muslim faith has been an integral and unpredictable element of his campaign, one that has forced him to repeatedly and loudly condemn what critics view as anti-Semitic tendencies.
According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, roughly 350,000 of the nearly 1 million Muslims that live in New York City are registered to vote. Of those 350,000 people, only about 12 percent actively participate in elections. And of those 12 percent, Mamdani has struggled to convince the more socially conservative contingent who are prone to question his progressive social values.
“It’s really hard to convince people, because obviously Zohran is representing all New Yorkers,” said Ashraf Chowdhury, a volunteer for Mr. Mamdani’s campaign. “So some of the selling points have to be: We support all the Jewish people.” The lack of registered voters in the Muslim community and Mamdani’s progressive message leaves a sizable gap in representation at
the ballot box, one Mamdani will have to make up through non-Jewish, nonMuslim white voters, the demographic with which the assemblyman polls best.
Mamdani’s recent surge in polling has upended the political class in New York. Though hard data is always difficult to find in the lead-up to any election, polling released by Data for Progress in early June found Mamdani only down two points on the final ranked-choice ballot. That same poll found Mamdani well ahead of Cuomo in the favorability category.
Mamdani’s attitude explains, as much as any single thing, how the youthful politician has found himself with a fighting chance against the aging and dated Cuomo. Mamdani’s appeal on the left is not unlike how President Donald Trump found bottlerocket momentum in 2015 against a cast of Republican neocons who were brutally and sincerely out of touch with the voting public. Riding new momentum, Mamdani secured two of the most high-profile endorsements favored by any progressive running for office in America in the last month. With his polling numbers rising, both Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) endorsed Zohran, with AOC going as far as to dance with Mamdani on a float during the Puerto Rican Day Parade in NYC.
Though Mamdani’s message of cityrun grocery stores and no-cost childcare has played well among the progressive ranks who carry hard power in the New York electorate, moderates and conservatives have pointed to a checkered past that was even more liberal than the messages pitched by Mamdani today. During his time representing the 36th District of New York in June 2020, Mamdani called for the abolition of the capitalist system and the defunding of police. His softer, more polished pitch in 2025 has failed to move the opinions of editorial boardrooms in the city.
“The New York Times Leads the Movement to Stop Zohran Mamdani,”
shouted a critical headline from the New Yorker published on Tuesday morning. “The newspapers don’t want New Yorkers to put Zohran Mamdani on their ballots,” argued City and State. And it’s true. The New York City newspapers really don’t want Mamdani to be the next mayor of their city.
The Queens Chronicle demanded “anyone but Mamdani.” The New York Post called Mamdani “a uniquely awful menace” who “would be a disaster for New York.” [The free daily] amNewYork highlighted Mamdani’s stances on the Holocaust and Israel, arguing that Mamdani is “unfit to lead.” In response to the barrage of dismissals, Mamdani stated that the editorials were “the opinions of only about a dozen New Yorkers. A democracy will be decided by close to a million New Yorkers.”
And while Mamdani is correct to assert that voters will have the final say, there is no doubt that the heavyhanded criticism levied against him by online critics and the city newspapers will likely play some small but not inconsequential role in how the winner of the Democratic primary field is selected on Tuesday, June 24. Worse for Mamdani, his meteoric rise may have plateaued: Prediction markets have swung back toward Cuomo as the dominant favorite in the last 72 hours. On Polymarket, Mamdani holds a 21 percent chance of winning next week’s election, a big jump from his 5 percent chance to win it in late May but a precipitous drop from his local high of 40 percent chance on June 12.
Even more worrying are the latest polls from Marist showing Cuomo cruising to victory. And new data from the Manhattan Institute finds Cuomo up 12 points in the final round of a hypothetical ranked-choice ballot. And while Zohran has worked recently to pivot the race toward a referendum on ICE deportations, the backdrop of war between Israel and Iran has dampened Mandani’s late surge, as renewed criticism of Mamdani’s statements on Israel and the pro-Palestine movement proliferates on social media.
So can a 33-year-old Muslim immigrant who styles himself as a “democratic socialist” and refuses to outright condemn the intifada actually win the New York Democratic primary race next week? It appears unlikely. But has Mamdani shown himself to be a competitive figure in the broader arena? Certainly. His people-first politics and genuine showmanship are resonating sincerely with progressive voters who have, again and again, been misled and overpowered by establishment Democratic players. Where Mamdani lands after next Tuesday’s primary election is anyone’s best guess, but in my estimation, he’s likely to feature in the new Democratic Party for years to come.
[Update: Mamdani won the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary with 56 percent of the vote to Cuomo’s 44 percent. In the November general election he will face current Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, which Cuomo is also considering doing, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.—Ed.]
Egypt’s Energy Gamble Has Left It Beholden to Israel
BY ELFADIL IBRAHIM
As the scorching summer season approaches, Egypt finds itself once again in the throes of an uncomfortable ritual: the annual scramble for natural gas.
Recent reports paint a concerning picture of what’s to come, industrial gas supplies to vital sectors like petrochemicals and fertilizers have been drastically cut, some by as much as 50 per-
cent. The proximate cause? Routine maintenance at Israel’s Leviathan mega-field, leading to a significant drop in imports.
But this is merely the latest symptom of a deeper, more chronic ailment. Egypt, once lauded as a rising energy hub, has fallen into a perilous trap of dependence, its national security and foreign policy options increasingly constrained by an awkward reliance on Israeli gas.
For years, the Egyptian government assured its populace and the world of an impending energy bonanza. The discovery of the gargantuan Zohr gas field in 2015, hailed as the largest in the Mediterranean, was presented as the dawn of a new era. By 2018, when Zohr began production, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi declared that Egypt had “scored a goal,” promising self-sufficiency and even the transformation into a regional gas exporter. The vision was that Egypt, once an importer, would leverage its strategic location and liquefaction plants to become a vital conduit for Eastern Mediterranean gas flowing to Europe.
Billions were poured into new power stations, further solidifying the nation’s reliance on gas for electricity generation, which today accounts for a staggering 60 percent of its total consumption.
However, the dream of abundant domestic gas has, like so many ambitious projects in the region, begun to wither. Just three years after its peak, Zohr’s output alarmingly declined. Experts now suggest Zohr’s recoverable reserves may be far less than initially estimated. Furthermore, as Egyptian energy expert Khaled Fouad notes, the political leadership’s “impatience” to accelerate production for quick economic returns— especially to capitalize on European demand amid the Russia-Ukraine war— led to technical problems and damage to the wells.
Compounding this internal mismanagement is Egypt’s chronic foreign currency crunch, and the multi-billion dollars in arrears it owes to international oil and gas companies.
These financial troubles have, in turn, curtailed crucial investments in new exploration and the maintenance of existing fields, effectively strangling domestic production. Consequently, by 2023, Egypt had dramatically reverted to being a net natural gas importer, a precipitous swing of over $10 billion from its brief surplus just a year prior. And in 2024, Israeli gas accounted for a dominant 72 percent of Egypt’s total gas imports. This growing dependence has, perhaps inevitably, transformed a commercial transaction into a formidable tool of leverage.
The true vulnerability of this arrangement was laid bare following the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023. Israel, citing “security concerns,” abruptly forced Chevron, the field’s operator, to shut down production at its Tamar field, causing imports to Egypt to plummet. This marked the first of several disruptions, with another significant cut occurring in May of this year. While officially attributed to maintenance, Egyptian analysts widely interpret these interruptions, coinciding with heightened political tensions due to the Gaza war, as a form of political “blackmail.”
This energy dependence has profoundly constrained Egypt’s national security and foreign policy calculus, particularly concerning the Gaza conflict. For Cairo, the war next door poses an existential threat due to persistent calls from figures like U.S. President Donald Trump and far-right elements in the Israeli government for the displacement of Gaza’s population into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
This prospect, a “red line” for Egypt, is fiercely resisted by Cairo, which views Israel’s active push of Gaza’s inhabitants toward the Egyptian border as a calculated attempt to extinguish the possibility of a future Palestinian state. In addition to the political fallout for Cairo if realized, such a move would displace upwards of a million Gazans, including Hamas militants, onto Egyptian soil, which would in turn transform Sinai back into a volatile conflict zone.
The region was only recently stabilized after a costly, over decade-long campaign against extremist militants, a campaign in which Hamas, for a period, even provided clandestine aid to some of these groups. The potential for renewed instability could far exceed its previous peak.
In addition to exacerbating security challenges, a mass displacement will also dramatically spike Egypt’s domestic energy demands, already strained by the sudden influx of over 1.2 million Sudanese refugees into Egypt since the outbreak of war in Sudan in April 2023, according to Egyptian government estimates.
Furthermore, Egypt’s economic and energy vulnerability limits its room for maneuver. The absence of a new Egyptian ambassador to Tel Aviv, a symbolic gesture of protest against Israel’s Gaza offensive, masks the deeper, uncomfortable truth that Cairo’s ability to exert meaningful influence in the ongoing tragedy is severely hampered by its reliance on Israeli energy.
Confronted by these immense pressures, Egypt cannot afford to provoke a direct confrontation that could jeopardize its national security, energy supplies, or critical foreign aid, which has historically been disbursed by the U.S. in direct support of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Instead, Cairo is relying on a combination of military posturing, diplomatic initiatives, and regional alliances to push back against Israeli actions—while being careful not to cross a line that would trigger severe retaliation or broader destabilization.
Faced with this awkward and increasingly untenable predicament, Egypt is now scrambling for alternatives, embarking on a multi-pronged outreach strategy that underscores the desperation of its energy crunch. Capitalizing on its thawing of relations with Turkey, President el-Sisi’s visit to Ankara in September 2024, followed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reciprocal trip to Cairo in December of the same year, cemented the rapprochement with agreements on energy cooperation, among other areas of shared interest.
Crucially, Egypt has inked a deal for the long-term lease of a Turkish Floating Storage and Regasification Unit (FSRU) from Höegh Evi Ltd., signaling a sustained reliance on LNG imports for at least a decade. In parallel, Cairo is in advanced talks with Qatar, a global gas giant, for long-term supply contracts.
While these external maneuvers are underway, Egypt is simultaneously intensifying domestic exploration efforts. Minister of Petroleum Karim Badawi recently announced the drilling of 75 wells and 40 new discoveries in the past year, estimated to hold significant, albeit relatively modest, reserves.
However, substantial discoveries take years—typically three to five, especially for offshore fields—to develop and connect to the grid. Renewable energy, championed by Egypt with ambitious targets to meet 42 percent of its electricity demands from green sources by 2035, offers a crucial long-term pathway. But, the upfront investment is immense, and the immediate impact on bridging the current energy deficit is negligible. All these efforts, while necessary, are long-term fixes, offering little respite for the immediate summers to come.
The reliance on Israeli gas, initially framed as an economic boon, has proven to be a strategic liability, eroding Egypt’s foreign policy autonomy and tethering its domestic stability to external forces. Achieving true energy self-sufficiency or, at the very least, a diversified and resilient energy mix, will require years of sustained investment, prudent resource management, and a strategic vision that prioritizes national security over short-term economic expediency.
Until then, Egypt remains caught in the current, its fate disproportionately swayed by the flow, or interruption, of gas from its neighbor across the Sinai.
Elfadil Ibrahim is a writer and analyst on Sudanese politics. His work has been featured in The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The New Arab, Open Democracy and other outlets. This article was first posted at <www.responsible statecraft.org>, June 4, 2025. The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft
Beirut—U.S. military strikes on the Ras Issa Port in Hodeidah, Yemen on April 17, 2025 caused dozens of civilian casualties and significant damage to port infrastructure, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack should be investigated as a war crime.
As part of its military campaign against the Houthis, who control much of Yemen, that began on March 15, the United States targeted Ras Issa Port, one of three ports in the town of Hodeidah through which about 70 percent of Yemen’s commercial imports and 80 percent of its humanitarian assistance passes. Human Rights Watch identified via satellite imagery multiple attack sites. The independent research group Airwars found that the strikes killed 84 civilians and injured over 150.
“The U.S. government’s decision to strike Ras Issa Port, a critical entry point for aid in Yemen, while hundreds of workers were present demonstrates a callous disregard for civilians’ lives,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch. “At a time when the majority of Yemenis don’t have adequate access to food and water, the attack’s impact on humanitarian aid could be enormous, particularly after Trump administration aid cutbacks.”
Sources in Yemen said that the Houthis have threatened and reportedly arrested people from areas hit by U.S. strikes for speaking to the media or nongovernmental organizations, making it difficult to verify information about the strikes.
Human Rights Watch interviewed one person whose uncle was killed in the attack and two sources with knowledge of the destruction, including a staff member of Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, an independent research institute. Human Rights Watch also analyzed satellite imagery, reviewed photographs and videos of the attack site, and assessed data published by the Yemen Data Project, another nongovernmental group, and Airwars. Human Rights Watch wrote to the U.S. Defense Department on May 8 with preliminary findings but received no response.
Based on satellite imagery and other sources, the attacks on Ras Issa took place between the morning of April 17 and the morning of April 18. They destroyed fuel tanks and considerable areas of port infrastructure. Two sources said that several berths, the customs area, and cargo unloading facilities had been severely damaged or destroyed. Both sources said that initially after the attack, the destruction had significantly reduced the port’s operations. Port operations are still limited.
Satellite imagery comparison between the mornings of April 17 and 18, 2025 shows the locations of the strikes on Ras Issa Port. Fuel tanks are visibly destroyed, and possible fuel leaks appear in the sea.
Airwars identified 84 civilians who were killed in the attack through analyzing social media posts. Forty-nine were people who worked at the port, several were truck drivers, and two were civil defense personnel. Others may have been workers’ family members. Three were identified as children. The list contained one person identified as a “colonel,” but who was not necessarily a military member. The Hodeidah Branch of the governmentowned Yemen Oil Company posted photographs of 49 employees they said were killed. Human Rights Watch has not independently verified the identities of those who were killed.
U.S. Central Command said in an April 17 statement about the attacks: “Today, U.S. forces took action to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-
backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years.…The objective of these strikes was to degrade the economic source of power of the Houthis.”
A United Nations spokesman stated that the secretary-general was “alarmed by reports of significant damage to the port infrastructure and of possible oil leaks into the Red Sea,” and that at least five humanitarian workers were reportedly injured. In a satellite image collected on the morning of April 18, long trails that appear to be fuel leaks are visible from the location of strikes and extending into the sea.
The applicable international humanitarian law during the fighting in Yemen prohibits deliberate, indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks on civilians and civilian objects. An attack not directed at a specific military objective is indiscriminate. An attack is disproportionate if the expected civilian loss is excessive compared to the anticipated military gain. When used by an armed force or non-state armed group, port facilities and oil storage tanks can be valid military objectives. However, attacking the port fuel depot because it is an “economic source of power of the Houthis” or provides them revenue would make virtually any entity that provided economic benefit subject to military attack.
Under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2534 (2020), the U.N. Mission to Support the Hodeidah Agreement is mandated to oversee Hodeidah city and the ports of Hodeidah, Ras Issa, and Salif to ensure that no military personnel or material are present.
No information has been made public indicating that weapons or military supplies were stored at or delivered to the port, or that the oil, monitored under Resolution 2534, was being diverted to the Houthi military, which would make the U.S. attack unlawfully indiscriminate. However, even if the attack were against valid military objectives, the harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure most
likely made the attack unlawfully disproportionate. In addition to the civilian casualties, the damage to the port facilities would appear to inflict excessive immediate and longer-term harm for many Yemenis who rely on the Hodeidah ports for survival.
Under international humanitarian law, serious violations of the laws of war committed by individuals with
criminal intent are war crimes. Commanders may be criminally liable under the principle of command responsibility if they knew or should have known about crimes their subordinates committed and failed to adequately prevent the crime or punish those responsible.
The U.S. should credibly and impartially investigate this and other attacks in Yemen with civilian casualties in apparent violation of the laws of war and provide prompt compensation or “ex gratia” payments to civilians harmed. These include an April 28 attack on a migrant detention center in Saada that killed dozens of migrants and asylum seekers.
U.S. airstrikes in Yemen began on March 15 and continued until May 6, when President Donald Trump announced an end to the strikes. The U.S. Defense Department said it had carried out over 1,000 strikes in Yemen between March 15 and April 29.
The U.S. has been implicated in lawsof-war violations in Yemen since it began “targeted killing operations” in 2002 against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Those strikes continued until at least 2019 and killed many civilians, including 12 people attending a wedding in 2013. To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, the U.S. has never acknowledged or provided compensation for civilians harmed in this or other unlawful attacks.
The U.S. also provided direct military assistance to the Saudi-led coalition in their conflict against the Houthis, starting in March 2015. Numerous coalition attacks during that conflict violated the laws of war.
“The recent U.S. airstrikes in Yemen are just the latest causing civilian harm in the country over the past two decades,” Jafarnia said. “The Trump administration should reverse past U.S. practice and provide prompt compensation to those unlawfully harmed.”
This article was first posted at <www. hrw.org>, June 4, 2025 under a Creative Commons license. Reprinted with permission.
Meet the Israeli Fanatic Running Ted Cruz’s
Office
AFTER SENATOR TED CRUZ’S (R-TX) humiliation by Tucker Carlson, attention has focused on a top staffer of the self-proclaimed “leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate.”
On June 18, former Fox host Tucker Carlson published a video which, though marketed as an interview, was more of a snuff film. Over the course of two hours, Carlson can be seen rhetorically disemboweling his debate opponent, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, on the politician’s determination to see the U.S. attack Iran on Israel’s behalf.
While Cruz presents himself as a Christian Zionist moved by his own zealotry to support Israel, the politician’s Tel Aviv-driven policy line can also be traced back to his senior adviser for policy and communications, an Israeli-born Zionist lobbyist named Omri Ceren.
By Wyatt Reed Special Report
Before overseeing Cruz’s public relations, Ceren managed his foreign policy docket as his national security adviser. Prior to joining the senator’s staff, Ceren served as the press director for The Israel Project, a Zionist pressure group which was forced to close down after being exposed as a de facto Israeli government front by Al Jazeera’s groundbreaking undercover investigation, “The Lobby.” Before that, Ceren cut his teeth lobbying for Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who relied on Ceren as a registered foreign agent lending his marketing expertise to the embattled regime.
Senator Ted Cruz (R‐TX) and conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson during a two‐hour interview that aired on June 18, 2025. Carlson who generally argues for American isolationism from foreign wars, challenged Cruz’s knowledge of Iran, which the Republican hawk has advocated attacking. “How many people live in Iran, by the way?” Carlson asked. “I don’t know the population at all,” Cruz replied. “You don’t know the population you seek to topple?” Carlson pressed. Cruz claimed “we are car‐rying out military strikes today,” when at the time it was only Israel bombing Iran.
barking on her career of Israel lobbying as a college student.
Ceren has consistently opposed a nuclear deal with Iran since at least 2015, when he declared that any agreement would simply ensure Tehran was “able to cheat with impunity.” At a talk hosted by the neocon Hudson Institute think tank in 2018, he suggested Washington should continue preaching about “freedom” and encouraging Iranian protesters to pursue regime change while simultaneously maintaining Trump’s ban on Iranians entering the U.S.
Omri’s sister, Merav Ceren, previously worked under the supervision of the Israeli Defense Ministry, as well as another Israeli government cutout in Washington, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The pair were born in Haifa, Israel, with Merav em-
Wyatt Reed is the managing editor of The Grayzone, an indepen‐dent news website producing original investigative journalism on politics and empire. As an international correspondent, he’s covered stories in more than a dozen countries. Follow him on Twitter at @wyattreed13.
Upon Merav Ceren’s appointment to head the Israel and Iran desks of Trump’s National Security Council in April 2025, one Israeli publication declared her “One of Our Own.” The authors went on to boast that Ceren’s “presence…in the discussion rooms gives significant space to voice Israeli interests.” Just a month later, however, she was fired as tensions between the Republican Party’s America First and Israel First wings came to a head.
While his sister looked for a new gig, Omri Ceren continued to represent his home country as the national security adviser to a senator who has pantomimed “America First” conservatism while zealously advancing Israel’s objectives. Cruz’s messaging since the U.S. bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 21 clearly bears his Israeli adviser’s imprimatur.
Since the attack, Cruz has posted 14 comments on Twitter/X. Twelve of them consisted of breathless statements cheering the bombing or attacks on opponents of the war, whom he branded as “the death to America crowd.” The remaining two posts expressed affection for the senator’s hometown NBA team, the Houston Rockets. ■
Stepping Up to Address a Humanitarian Crisis
By Ibrahim Ghandour and Staff
IN 2022, three Palestinian women educators—Mai Abdul Rahman, Najat Khalil and Mariam Ryan—came together to create a platform that would raise awareness and offer hope to orphaned children in Gaza. Their vision became Americans for Palestinian Orphans (APO), an organization dedicated to spotlighting the plight of children in Gaza—children who, by the age of 14, have endured at least seven wars and military incursions. These young lives, marked by trauma and loss, deserve a chance for a better future.
The context that shapes APO operations is especially challenging. Our team lives and works in Gaza, adapting in real time to the harsh and unpredictable conditions. Like the people we serve, our staff are often displaced and must relocate just like the general population. We have operated out of four different locations in Jabalia, set up tent-based services in Deir Balah and Khan Younis, refurbished damaged buildings and rented day care facilities in Gaza City. Our programs shift as the needs and realities on the ground change.
We’ve learned that flexibility and agility are essential. Operating in Gaza is unlike anywhere else in the world. The need is immeasurable, the costs are high and what is rebuilt today may be lost tomorrow. These challenges are difficult for a small organization like ours to absorb, but we persevere out of a deep commitment to the children we serve.
Following the escalation of Israel’s blockade and military campaign in October 2023, APO’s mission evolved from raising awareness to meeting the urgent, life-saving needs of orphaned children in Gaza. According to an April 2025 report by Al Jazeera, more than 39,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both parents—many with no surviving relatives to care for them. Our work has never been more urgent.
We are part of the communities we serve. When bombs fall and families flee, our staff and the children we care for must also move. We adapt quickly, setting up services in tents, converting damaged buildings into makeshift classrooms, and creating safe spaces wherever possible. In this constantly shifting environment, we remain steadfast in our mission: to offer continuity, care and compassion.
When we began, we served 450 orphans—ranging from newborns to children aged 13. It was a modest start. With a team of 15
Ibrahim Ghandour coordinates services in Gaza for Americans for Palestinian Orphans.
Children have fun and receive services from Americans for Palestinian Orphans.
dedicated staff and committed volunteers, we provided education, medical and mental healthcare, nutrition and emotional support. But beyond the basics, we offered dignity: a haircut, a dental check-up, an occasional festive clown performance, or simply the freedom to play and be a child.
For our youngest, we ensured access to milk, diapers and mental health support for overwhelmed caregivers. We ran educational programs outdoors, in tents and in rehabilitated spaces—mixing play with learning to give children not just knowledge, but joy.
When the total blockade on Gaza took effect, conditions worsened. Food and medical supplies were cut off, hospitals destroyed, and surviving children left malnourished and traumatized. APO responded immediately providing meals, vitamin-fortified biscuits and peanut butter sandwiches to combat hunger. We partnered with local pharmacists and pediatricians to offer essential health care.
We partner with well-established organizations as well as local organizations, including Caritas Jerusalem, Anera, Roots Association, Hayat Washington and the Aisha Association for Women and Child Protection. These collaborations help us deliver medical, nutritional and educational support where it’s needed most. In collaboration with local mental health professionals—especially those connected with Caritas—we assess, diagnose and provide trauma care and therapy in our own facilities, ensuring that none of our children faces their pain alone and without support.
Many of Gaza’s orphans are not only coping with trauma but are now living with permanent disabilities and without a caretaker. They need layered, sustained support. When the bombing ends, APO plans to expand its services across the Gaza Strip and establish a comprehensive, yearround boarding school for at least 100 orphans under the age of 13. This facility will offer education, healthcare, psychological and social services, as well as a playground and a vegetable garden—an oasis of healing and hope.
To learn more about our work and to support our mission, visit <https://a4po.org>. ■
A makeshift classroom sponsored by Americans for Palestinian Orphans.
Support for Palestinians Deeply Entrenched in Malaysia
By John Gee
TWO DAYS AFTER the latest war in Palestine began, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim appeared in parliament wearing a scarf bearing the pattern of a keffiyeh and a Palestinian flag. He called for both sides to cease all acts of violence but made clear his government’s support for the Palestinian people, condemning much of the international community for taking a one-sided, proIsrael stand, despite the relentless Zionist drive to seize Palestinian land and property. He said that his government would continue to maintain relations with Hamas.
The government’s official position is in harmony with public opinion. Pro-Palestinian rallies are enormous. Some critics say that the prime minister devotes too much attention to Palestinian rights at the expense of dealing with domestic problems, but they don’t say that he should not be supporting Palestine. Palestinian
John Gee is a free ‐ lance journalist based in Singapore and the author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel.
students and academics have always been made welcome at Malaysian universities.
Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, and Malay Muslims’ support for the Palestinians was grounded in shared faith, but over time, the basis of solidarity has broadened.
Some Malays began to follow events in Palestine in the 1920s, when both Palestine and Malaya were under British rule. Some Malays went to study in Arab countries where they heard a great deal about Palestine. One of the most radical groups of Malays studying abroad in the 1920s was in Cairo where, together with Indonesian students, they launched two journals that were both religious and strongly anti-colonial. In December 1931, two of their leaders were among around 145 delegates from 22 countries who attended the ten-day Islamic Congress organized by the Mufti of Jerusalem, then the most prominent Palestinian leader. The congress adopted a series of resolutions in favor of Palestinian rights and against the expansion of Zionist settlement in Palestine. Sig-
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim waves as he leaves a rally after his speech in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in support of the Palestinian people on Oct. 24, 2023.
nificantly, it affirmed its solidarity with the Christians of Palestine.
Some Malays who went on pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina also went to Jerusalem, particularly in the 1930s, and saw for themselves the threats that the Palestinian Arabs were facing.
If solidarity with co-religionists played a big part in the origins of Malay solidarity, it was not the only factor. A basic human empathy with a people facing a particularly vicious form of colonialism grew up, and present-day pro-Palestinian views among Malays are as likely to be expressed in terms of basic human and national rights as in religious terms. Pro-Palestinian feeling is by no means limited to Malay Muslims: many Malaysians of other religions and national origins are supportive of Palestinian rights.
Israel has tried to gain support in Malaysia. On Oct. 4, 1956, an approach was made to Tunku Abdul Rahman, leader of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), the party expected to form a government when Malaya became independent, but it led nowhere. Nor did a telegram from Israeli premier David Ben Gurion saying that Israel would support the Federation of Malaya’s admission to the United Nations shortly before Independence Day (August 31, 1957). The Tunku later explained that his country could not establish relations with Israel because of the opposition it would meet from Arab and Muslim countries, and also from Muslim parties and organizations within Malaya itself.
Malaya became the most populous component of the Federation of Malaysia, formed in September 1963. The attitude of the federation toward diplomatic ties with Israel remained the same as the Federation of Malaya’s: to this day, Malaysia has not established diplomatic relations with Israel, because of its solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Israel did succeed in building covert trade relations with Malaysia, which probably reached their strongest in the 1990s to early 2000s, even as then prime minister, Mahathir Mohamed, was making fiery antiIsrael speeches that sometimes included anti-Semitic statements. Trade has largely
A composite image highlights the destruction caused by Israeli attacks on the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza. The photo on the left, taken on Aug. 22, 2024, shows treatment continuing despite a fuel shortage which caused generators to stop working. In contrast, the photo on the right, dated Jan. 20, 2025, shows destruction after Israeli troops besieged, fired on and occupied the hospital.
been conducted through third countries. Since 2014, pro-Palestinian Malaysian NGOs have pressed their government to end trade with Israel. In 2023, Israeli exports to Malaysia were worth U.S. $24.6 million; those from Malaysia to Israel were valued at U.S. $352 million. Whenever attention has been drawn to this trade, it has attracted strong public criticism. It is not clear at present to what extent the war has resulted in its reduction.
A HOSPITAL BUILT ON SOLIDARITY
“The construction of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza, Palestine, by the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee with donations from the community, is a clear proof of the solidarity of the Indonesian people with the Palestinian people,” said Jusuf Kalla, then vice president of Indonesia, when he opened the hospital on Jan. 9, 2016.
The hospital had 110 beds, including 10 in its intensive care unit, and four operating theaters, and it employed 400 local staff. Its cost was 126 billion rupiah (U.S. $9 million), which was raised from donations by the Indonesian public and contributions from the Muhammadiyah, one of the largest Muslim NGOs in Indonesia, and the Indonesian Red Cross Society. (Unlike most countries with Muslim majorities, Indonesia retains the name “Red Cross.”) There was no gov-
ernment money involved.
Anyone following news of Israel’s latest attacks on Palestinians will have heard of the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, the northernmost community in the Gaza Strip. In November 2023, it was besieged and fired on; it was occupied by the Israeli army the following month. Israel said that the hospital was being used to hide a “terror base”—rather like all the other hospitals, and with a similar absence of evidence. The claim was denied by Indonesia as well as by the Palestinian authorities in Gaza.
When the Israeli army pulled out of the hospital, returning medical staff found that every medical device had been smashed and broken. Despite repeated Israeli assaults, staff have tried to restore services as best they could, repairing what they could and improvising. The kidney dialysis unit attached to the hospital, but not in the main building, was able to resume work in spring 2025: it is the only such unit in the whole of the northern Gaza Strip. Israeli forces destroyed it on June 2, 2025 and levelled what remained in the following days.
Indonesian NGOs intend not only to restore the Indonesian Hospital when that becomes possible, but have started to raise money, with a target of U.S. $25 million, for the construction of a larger hospital to serve the people of Gaza. ■
PHOTO BY KHALIL RAMZI
Canada Calling
“Bubble Zone” Bylaw Could Impact Protests
By Candice Bodnaruk
Canadians at Nathan Phillips Square on April 17, in Toronto, ON, demonstrated against a controversial “bubble zone” bylaw that will restrict protests to certain areas. Additionally, the rally commemorated the 43rd anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms coming into effect.
AFTER MORE THAN A YEAR of consultations with the public that included public opinion surveys and city hall debates, Toronto passed the “bubble zone” bylaw that the city’s social planning council argues may have a “chilling effect” on demonstrations against Israel’s wars on Gaza and Iran.
The new bylaw prohibits demonstrations within a 50-meter (165 feet) area around “vulnerable institutions” such as schools, childcare centers or places of worship. Institutions can apply to the City of Toronto for a one-year, 50-meter buffer area to prohibit specific activities tied to protests near their property.
The law could impact at least 3,000 institutions in Toronto and will include fines of thousands of dollars for anyone found in violation. Last year three other Ontario municipalities—Brampton, Oakville and Vaughan—passed similar laws.
Even though public consultations over the past year found that 63 percent of Toronto residents were unsupportive of the decision, the bylaw passed 16-9 and came into effect July 2. In total, 184 di-
Candice Bodnaruk has been involved in Palestinian issues for the past 14 years through organizations such as the Canadian BDS Coalition and Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Her political action started with feminism and continued with the peace movement, first with the No War on Iraq Coalition in 2003 in Winnipeg.
verse civil society groups contacted the mayor and city council to voice their disapproval of the “bubble zone” bylaw.
Toronto Center city councilor Chris Moise voted against the legislation. He wrote to his constituents, “I remained steadfast in my opposition to any bylaw that would limit our charter-protected rights.” He went on to explain that he voted against the bylaw because he argues that the Charter already provides “robust protection” for both freedom of worship and the right to peaceful protest.
Rev. Dr. Paul Shepherd, a minister at Chapel in the Park United Church in Toronto who has advocated for justice in Palestine and Israel for more than 40 years, told the Washington Report the bylaw will increase distrust of religious institutions and may lead to a rise in anti-Semitism. Shepherd said if Canada stood up to Israel, the protests would stop.
Shepherd also argued that places of worship are not always neutral. “No place of worship should be allowed to commit immoral acts and hide behind the flag of being a religious institution,” Shepherd said, pointing to a Thornhill, Ontario synagogue that hosted property sales of illegally stolen lands in the West Bank in March 2024. The Great Israeli Real Estate event was subject to large protests at the time because selling land in the West Bank violated Canadian social values.
“The genocide in Gaza is immoral and illegal and needs to be
protested,” Rev. Shepherd emphasized. People of faith should be challenging the bylaw, he said, because Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canadian values are more important than any sectarian ideologies.
James Turk with the Center for Free Expression called the bylaw “absolutely terrible” and described the bylaws as either unnecessary or unconstitutional.
“There is a lot of pressure from pro-Zionist lobby groups on politicians,” Turk said, adding that newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney has also promised to pass legislation prohibiting protests outside religious institutions. Zionist groups are concerned about anti-Israel protests and conflate anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel.
“Almost everything the bylaw is calling for is already illegal, such as engaging in violence, engaging in threats of violence, harassing people, blocking them from entering a building,” he said, adding that police have made it clear they are not in favor of the bylaw.
He added that if the intent of the bylaw is to restrict disruptive but legal behavior, then it infringes on Charter rights.
“Peaceful assembly does not mean they are not disruptive. What changes something from peaceful to not peaceful is violence,” he said. Turk added that disruption is generally included in what is a peaceful assembly in Canada, stressing that there is no right not to be offended in Canada. He thinks the issue may ultimately end up in the Supreme Court of Canada.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow supported the bylaw and did not respond to the Washington Report’s request for comment.
CANADA INTRODUCES MORE SANCTIONS ON ISRAEL
In mid-June Canada targeted two Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and introduced a fourth round of sanctions on facilitators of extremist settler violence against civilians in the West Bank.
“With today’s sanctions, we are sending a clear message that the continued expansion of settlements and acts of settler violence in the West Bank are unacceptable and pose serious obstacles to peace and the two-state solution,” Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said in a press release.
Canada introduced the Special Economic Measures (Extremist Settler Violence) Regulations last May 2024. The country also implemented three rounds of sanctions in May 2024, June 2024 and February 2025, listing 15 individuals and 7 entities for their role in extremist settler violence. The sanctions include freezing assets and ban-
ning the ministers from entering Canada.
Yet groups advocating for Palestinians insist that Canada is not going far enough. The sanctions came after recommendations by both Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and Just Peace Advocates (JPA). “While sanctioning Israeli government ministers is a significant diplomatic signal, it remains largely symbolic and imposes little genuine cost on Israel,” said Corey Balsam in an IJV press release.
IJV and JPA would like to see Canada sanction all Israeli leaders and military personnel responsible for war crimes, to impose an arms embargo on Israel, cancel the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement and prohibit Canadian charities from financing activities associated with Israel’s unlawful occupation.
CANADA’S NATIONAL POLICE FORCE INVESTIGATING WAR CRIMES
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada’s national police force, has been conducting a structural investigation into the Israel-Hamas conflict since 2024 but the probe was only made public in a June press release.
“Should a perpetrator of core international crimes such as genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity, with the appropriate nexus to Canada be identified, the RCMP will initiate a criminal investigation. To date the RCMP has not initiated any criminal investigation,” the organization said in the press release. It cautioned the public from drawing conclusions about their role or intent.
The organization Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) has written to Canada’s Justice Minister Sean Fraser to express concern about the lack of information surrounding the investigation. CJPME is now calling on the Canadian government to make an urgent public statement about the current RCMP investigation and also confirm that the investigation includes examining the participation of Canadian nationals in attacks in Gaza, as well as the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.
The organization said the government should issue a warning to Canadian nationals that serving or volunteering with the Israeli military may make them criminally liable under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. ■
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Pakistan, India and the War of Narratives
By Jack McGrath Special Report
While not immediately actionable, India’s threat to cut off access to the waterway is existential for Pakistan, which relies on the Indus River system for over 75 percent of its freshwater.
India alleges that its air raids, which killed 31 civilians, targeted “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Islamabad responded by shelling the border district of Poonch, killing one Indian soldier and 16 civilians. The tit-for-tat strikes continued over several days, with both nations targeting the other’s military facilities with missile and drone strikes. A ceasefire agreement on May 10 averted a further escalation spiral and ended 87 hours of active conflict between the nuclear powers.
ALTHOUGH A FRAGILE ceasefire agreement ended the four-day military confrontation between India and Pakistan in early May, the conflict continues to be waged on the diplomatic front.
On May 7, New Delhi launched “Operation Sindoor” after blaming Islamabad for the massacre of 26 civilians by The Resistance Front insurgency at a tourist site in India-occupied Kashmir. While Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has supported militants in Kashmir, New Delhi has not substantiated its claim that the agency orchestrated the attack and has denied Pakistan’s requests for an independent investigation.
Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, a landmark water-sharing agreement that divides the six branches of the Indus River between India and Pakistan.
Following the ceasefire, both governments dispatched senior diplomatic delegations to Washington, DC and other capitals to advance their respective narratives and appeal for political support. On June 5, the Middle East Institute hosted members of the Pakistani delegation at its event, “Pakistan-U.S. Relations Under the Trump Administration: Challenges and Opportunities.”
Federal Minister for Climate Change Musadik Malik stridently denounced India’s aggression while commending Pakistan’s military performance. After calling India’s preemptive strike doctrine “bizarre and very dangerous,” Malik warned that it treats international relations as “a Wild West where the fastest gun prevails.” He argued that New Delhi’s suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty set a dangerous precedent for the legitimacy of international agreements. “If India says we have a right because we’re upper riparian to choke you off [from] your only water supply, then what are treaties worth… they’re not worth the piece of paper on which they are written if any
Jack McGrath is Middle East Books and More director and Washing‐ton Report editor.
A policeman stands as water flows from the Lower Jhelum Hydel Project Dam over the river Jhelum in Baramulla, Jammu and Kashmir, on May 5, 2025. India suspended the Indus Waters Treaty and threatened to cut water flow to Pakistan in May.
country can unilaterally withdraw from this new world order.”
Throughout the discussions, Pakistani representatives emphasized the longstanding relationship between Washington and Islamabad, which included close collaboration during the Cold War and the War on Terror. Beyond military ties, panelists expressed enthusiasm about opportunities to expand economic trade and foreign investment with the United States. Khurram Dastgir, a former minister of defense and foreign affairs, praised the Trump administration’s trade policies as a “new and fresh approach” that set simple conditions for tariff reduction compared to the “massive rigmarole of a free trade agreement, which took decades or years to negotiate.”
Pakistan’s long-standing economic and military ties with China are increasingly viewed with suspicion in Washington amid growing tension between the great powers. This relationship was brought to the fore during the conflict, as Pakistan used Chinese jets and surface-to-air missile systems to down an estimated two to four Indian aircraft. Malik rejected the claim that “Pakistan is in the China camp” and questioned whether India’s use of Russian missile systems, Israeli drones or French fighter jets placed New Delhi in their camps. Pakistan’s air force also flies U.S. F-16s, although these aircraft are dated in comparison to the Chinese J-10Cs used in the fighting. Malik emphasized Pakistan’s desire for advanced U.S. air defense, bluntly asking Washington to “Bring it on man, give us those technologies, we’d buy them from you.”
WILD WEST DIPLOMACY
Malik had a bravado-laden message for India. “We say this with humility, we say this with confidence,” he prefaced. “If this becomes the Wild West, we’ve shown that we were the faster gun. So, after being the faster gun, we bring peace to you. Have no illusion, you bring war to us, we’ll take you on.”
Numerous Pakistani officials praised the Trump administration for its mediation of ceasefire negotiations with India. According
Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party, Bilawal Bhutto, warns that without agreeing to water rights and Kashmir’s right to self‐determination, India will damn future generations to violence.
to Anne Patterson, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, “the administration was late to get involved, but when it did get involved, it did a good job...Secretary of State Rubio seemed to play an absolutely essential part in this.” India, for its part, continues to deny that Washington played any role in the ceasefire talks, a point that Pakistan’s officials were eager to highlight.
On June 20, Pakistan nominated President Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, citing his “decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership during the recent IndiaPakistan crisis.” The ill-timed nomination was announced less than 24 hours before the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, which Islamabad condemned as “a serious violation of international law.”
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has experienced an unprecedented surge in Hindu ethno-nationalism, known as Hindutva. In 2005, Modi was denied a visa to the United States due to his complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots, a Hindu-led pogrom that killed at least 790 Muslims. In an impassioned speech, former Pakistani Federal Minister Nasim Ashraf claimed that “Hindutva is akin and synonymous with Nazism” and seeks to establish Akhand Bharat (Greater
India), comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Myanmar. As evidence, he pointed to a mural in India’s new parliament building depicting a map of Akhand Bharat. Ashraf asserted that it would be a “moral cop-out” for the United States to ignore this “root cause” of the India-Pakistan conflict and warned that “unless this appeasement is stopped, the world will pay the same price as we did in the ’20s and ’30s.”
The event concluded with a keynote speech delivered by Bilawal Bhutto, chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and former foreign minister. Scion of the Bhutto political dynasty, Bilawal has led the PPP since age 19, when his mother, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated in 2007. Describing the delegation’s mission as “peace through dialogue and diplomacy with our archrival India,” Bhutto stated that, since India “refused to talk,” Pakistan believes “the United States will be able to speak to them as a friend and explain to them that this [conflict] is not in their interest.”
Denying that Pakistan had any involvement in “the terrorist attack that took place in Indian-occupied Kashmir,” Bhutto
Continued on page
Genocide, Ghost Wars and Gold: How the Genocide Convention Loophole Helps Fracture Sudan
By Mustafa Fetouri
People who fled the Zamzam camp for the internally displaced after Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control , rest in a makeshift camp in a field near the town of Tawila in war ‐torn Sudan’s western Darfur region on April 13, 2025. The famine‐hit Zamzam camp, home to more than 500,000 refugees, endured two days of heavy shelling and gunfire, amid the ongoing war.
SINCE THE OUTBREAK of war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in 2023, Sudan—led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto head of state—has accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of fueling the conflict by bankrolling and supplying the RSF with weapons, including drones. By backing renegade General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (commonly known as Hemedti), the UAE is blamed for deepening Sudan’s civil war. Sudan took the matter
Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He received the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written extensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues, and has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafa fetouri@hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri.
to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last April, accusing the UAE of complicity in genocide.
On May 5, the ICJ dismissed Sudan’s case, ruling it lacked jurisdiction. The 15-judge panel did not assess the genocide allegations themselves but focused on whether the Court had authority to hear the case. Pointing to the UAE’s refusal to recognize Article IX of the Genocide Convention, the Court concluded it was powerless—a textbook example of procedural technicalities blocking justice. The decision was surprising to many observers.
Predictably, Emirati officials and allies celebrated the dismissal as a victory. Reem Ketait, the UAE’s ICJ co-agent, claimed the Court had rejected “the SAF’s campaign of misinformation and distraction from its own responsibility.” Emirati media echoed this,
painting the UAE as a law-abiding nation. But this framing distorts reality. The ICJ made no judgment on Sudan’s genocide charges—it ruled only that it had no authority to hear the case because the UAE does not recognize Article IX. This was a legal technicality, not vindication.
LEGAL LOOPHOLE, REAL CONSEQUENCE
Article IX of the Genocide Convention allows disputes between states to be submitted to the ICJ upon request by either party. But countries can—and some do—opt out. The UAE exercised this right when ratifying the Convention in 2005, effectively shielding itself from ICJ jurisdiction. This loophole undermines the spirit of the Genocide Convention and exposes a contradiction: genocide is universally condemned as a crime, yet its enforcement depends on voluntary state consent. The UAE remains a signatory, claiming to uphold the Convention—only when convenient, not from principled commitment to justice.
A Sudanese army officer inspects equipment seized after capture of a base used by the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) after it evacuated from the Salha area of Omdurman, the twin‐city of Sudan’s cap‐ital, on May 26, 2025. Sudan, Africa’s third largest country by area, has been ravaged by more than two years of war between the army and the RSF. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 13 million and created what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Many scholars criticize Article IX as a “compromissory clause,” claiming it weakens the Convention’s purpose. For Sudan, the irony is bitter: despite evidence that the UAE supports forces accused of genocide, it cannot bring the case before the ICJ because the Convention allows states to opt out of its jurisdiction. The very court meant to prevent genocide is blocked from even hearing the evidence of complicity.
OIL, ARMS AND PROXY MIGHT— UAE’S SHADOW WARS
The UAE’s destructive reach spans from Sana’a to Tripoli to Khartoum. Over two decades, it has weaponized its oil wealth to stoke conflict and interfere militarily across the region—often through proxies and covert operations, as seen in Yemen, Libya and now Sudan. Cloaked in flimsy justifications, the consequences are un-
mistakable. In Libya, the UAE’s air force conducted some 300 bombing sorties as part of NATO’s 2011 intervention ostensibly to protect civilians and promote democracy, while at home the UAE ruthlessly crushes dissent. A poem or social media post can lead to prison. Behind its glossy image, the UAE remains one of the region’s most repressive regimes.
In Yemen, the UAE played a central role in the Saudi-led war of extermination, relying heavily on U.S. intelligence and advanced American weaponry. Its air force bombed funerals, weddings, schools and civilian infrastructure—leaving devastation and mass casualties. All this was done under the guise of supporting Yemen’s so-called “legitimate” government—a regime never democratically elected.
UAE’S REGIONAL PROXIES
Libya here serves as a good example of a useful UAE proxy. In April 2019, General Khalifa Haftar, Libya’s eastern warlord and long-time Abu Dhabi ally, launched a major assault on Tripoli; the assault was
greenlit by then-President Donald Trump and backed by the UAE, Russian mercenaries and Egypt. By January 2020, the offensive stalled, and Haftar again turned to the UAE for support. Evidence shows Abu Dhabi deployed Chinese-made Wing Loong II drones to strike militias and regular forces loyal to Tripoli’s government. On Jan. 26, 2020, a drone bombed a military academy, killing more than 26 unarmed cadets in seconds. During the 14month siege, UAE drones also struck civilian homes on the city’s outskirts, as Haftar tried to seize the capital. Despite mounting evidence of civilian casualties, the UAE denied involvement.
As soon as fighting broke out in Sudan between the SAF and the rebel RSF, the UAE reactivated its alliance with Haftar— using him to funnel weapons and supplies to the RSF through the Kufra border crossing, which he controls. Unconfirmed but persistent reports suggest Haftar also helps coordinate mercenaries, recruited by the UAE, to fight alongside the RSF. In at least one report by the U.N.’s panel of experts, the UAE is named as a sup-
PHOTO BY EBRAHIM HAMID/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
plier of weapons and equipment to the RSF.
The UAE’s backing of Sudan’s RSF seems less about concrete strategic aims and more about outsourcing conflict using vast financial resources. The devastation is staggering.
Ties between Abu Dhabi and the RSF date back to the Omar al-Bashir era, when the RSF (which evolved from the notorious Janjaweed militias) was legitimized by the Sudanese regime. The UAE seized the opportunity and backed the RSF with money, weapons and diplomatic cover, enabling it to grow and eventually become a powerful rival to Sudan’s national army. U.N. reports, human rights organizations and regional monitors have documented Emirati planes landing in Chad with arms and gold-smuggling networks financing the RSF and coordinated disinformation campaigns. For the UAE, it is a low-cost, high-impact strategy: projecting power without direct involvement. For Sudan, it’s a nightmare—cities like Khartoum and El Geneina lie in ruins, civilians are caught in the crossfire and the country’s future is torn apart in a proxy war it never chose.
SAF’S PROUD HISTORY
In SAF bases, slogans like “I am Sudan” or “One Army, One People” are common; they embody a deeply held belief in the army’s unifying role. Since its founding in 1956— the year of Sudan’s independence—the SAF has withstood waves of ideological shifts and political upheavals. Although tensions exist, these have typically related to broader power struggles rather than fracturing the army’s national character or cohesion. The SAF has been the state’s stabilizing force and fallback during political deadlocks, promising national rescue and democracy. Although it has been unable to build stability, the SAF remains largely intact and coherent.
A DIFFERENT BEAST: RSF’S URBAN INSURGENCY
By backing a militia accused of war crimes, the UAE may be achieving what
decades of internal conflict never could: fracturing the SAF. The SAF isn’t just a military institution; it’s the backbone of the Sudanese state, a source of national pride and a long-held symbol of unity. Even the 1983 defection of about 1,000 soldiers led by Colonel John Garang barely rattled the SAF’s institutional core and arguably reinforced its image as guardian of the nation.
The RSF is a different beast—larger, better armed and deeply embedded in Sudan’s urban and political fabric. General al-Burhan told the U.N., “Without this support...the war in Sudan would have ended,” a pointed reference to the UAE. Yet many regional powers remain blind to this threat—or worse, quietly endorse it.
Indeed, the RSF could not have sustained its two-year war—devastating entire communities, especially in Khartoum and northern Sudan—without the UAE’s funding and military support. That backing has come at a high cost: not only in human lives, but in geopolitical consequences. In return, the RSF’s rise has significantly expanded Abu Dhabi’s influence in Sudan and the wider region. The UAE’s interference now threatens Sudan’s unity, territorial integrity and regional stability. As civilians flee to neighboring countries, Sudan’s natural resources are looted—stripping the nation of desperately needed revenue and further undermining its future.
WILL THE UAE EVER LEAVE?
The UAE’s exit from Sudan seems unlikely anytime soon. Unless Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and the African Union recognize the threat and exert meaningful pressure, Abu Dhabi has little incentive to stop. Counting on U.S. or European intervention to pressure the UAE out of Sudan is a grave miscalculation, given the UAE’s close ties with Washington, Paris and London.
Unless Abu Dhabi faces mounting political and financial conse-
quences for its disruptive role, it will continue its destructive path.
UNEXPECTED BROKER: ISRAEL?
A wildcard in Sudan’s crisis could be Israel, given its growing sway over the UAE and eagerness to advance ties with Khartoum. Tel Aviv—either directly or via Washington—could shift the dynamics or even push for an end to the war. But Israeli involvement would come at a cost Sudan is ill-prepared to bear. Bizarre ideas like the Netanyahu-loved, Trumpproposed “Riviera of the Middle East” could suddenly resurface—this time with Sudan as the sandy backdrop for forced Palestinian relocation. With Netanyahu publicly vowing to “cleanse” Gaza, quiet pressure has already emerged for Sudan to accept displaced Gazans into its vast territory. It sounds far-fetched—until you recall precedent. In the 1980s, Sudan’s thenpresident Jaafar al-Nimeiri, another SAF general, secretly aided the Mossad in airlifting thousands of Ethiopian Jews (Falasha) to Israel. If Sudan once enabled Israel to bring Jews in, the reverse—helping send Palestinians out—may not be so unimaginable. In this region, the absurd has a way of becoming policy. ■
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THE WORLD LOOKS AT THE MIDDLE EAST
The Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE
Cartoon Movement, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cartoon Movement, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cartoon Movement, Leidan, Netherlands
Cartoon Movement, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Cartoon Movement, Leidan, Netherlands
MUSIC & ARTS
Ancient Treasures from Gaza on Display in Paris
While the genocide taking place in Gaza is constantly in the news, the history of Gaza as a civilizational crossroads has been overlooked and little appreciated, even before the horrific circumstances that exist today.
Trésors sauvés de Gaza- 5000 ans d’histoire, currently at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris until November, is an important look at the rich historical record of Gaza as an ancient land whose archaeological sites today are being reduced to rubble along with much of the coastal enclave. The 130 masterpieces on display in this exhibition cover a period of 5,000 years, spanning the Bronze Age (3300 BCE-1200 BCE) to the Ottoman occupation (1516-1917). Also included are artifacts from the Iron Age, Philistine, Assyrian, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Muslim eras. The exhibit contextualizes Gaza’s importance as an ancient crossroads between numerous civilizations, peoples and religions.
The exhibition was made possible through the collaboration of the Geneva Museum of Art and History (MAH), with the support of the Palestinian National Authority.
Included in the first part of the exhibition, Gaza- 5000 ans d’histoire, are architectural elements, such as amphora, oil lamps, statues, coins, funerary objects and a massive Byzantine mosaic. Some of the objects were uncovered during the 1995 Franco-Palestinian excavations in Gaza, while others are from the MAH collection, including the Byzantine mosaic masterpiece of Abu Barakah (579 CE).
Many of the objects are from the private collection of Gazan Jawdat Khoudary, who in 2018 donated them to the Palestinian National Authority for inclusion in a proposed future museum.
Khoudary, who made his personal fortune in the construction business, began collecting artifacts as his workers uncovered them during excavation on projects. He also purchased artifacts from Gaza fishermen, who
captured them from the sea in their nets. One masterpiece that Khoudary purchased from two fishermen is an elegantly carved small Hellenistic or Roman marble statue of Aphrodite or Hecate, who is portrayed leaning on a herm, while to her right are the fragments of a missing Pan’s hooves.
After signing an agreement with the City of Geneva in 2005, the Khoudary collection in 2007 was first exhibited there as “Gaza at the Crossroads of Civilizations.” At the conclusion of the exhibition, the artifacts were stored in the Geneva Freeport warehouse until they were moved to Paris for the present exhibition.
After October 2023, a concerted effort of “cultural cleansing” has been undertaken by Israel to erase any vestiges of Gaza’s ancient history. Khoudary’s renowned garden, as well as his home and museum in Gaza City, were destroyed by Israel last year. In a 2024 article in Geneva Solutions, a non-profit news platform, Khoudary was quoted as saying that Israel’s rampant destruction, purportedly for “security reasons,” is actually “only to destroy.”
The same article quotes the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as saying that “as of March 2025, it has verified damage to 94 cultural and archaeological sites, includ-
ing 12 religious sites, 62 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, three depositories of movable cultural property, nine monuments, one museum and seven archeological sites.”
In the exhibition’s second section, Un patrimoine en péril, the subject of damage and destruction of Gaza’s history is displayed, showing before and after photographs of important sites, along with satellite images and maps depicting the thoroughness of the destruction inflicted on Gaza’s archaeological record, while also denoting the damage done to UNESCO World Heritage sites within the territory.
Another section addressing the “urgent challenges of heritage…in times of war” presents an assessment of the present condition of recent archaeological discoveries, and strategies for their preservation.
Finally, a collection of historic black and white photographs of Gaza circa 19051922 from the l’École biblique archéologique de Jerusalem collection shows how the area once looked.
The exhibition stands as a reminder that Gaza and Gazans share a long and proud history and that, regardless of the ravages they are now suffering and will suffer in the future, their cultural and archeological patrimony must survive.—Phil Pasquini
A Byzantine church mosaic floor from Gaza, uncovered in 1997 and now on display in Paris.
WAGING PEACE
Documentation and Accountability in Gaza
The Arab Center Washington DC held a conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on June 11 titled, “A Historic Juncture: Israel’s Destruction of Gaza and the Palestinian Future.” The event’s first panel provided a devastating overview of the comprehensive nature of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Yara Asi, assistant professor at the School of Global Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida, relayed the short- and long-term health impacts of Israel’s full assault on Gaza’s healthcare system, including the deliberate destruction of hospitals and clinics, and the targeting of doctors, nurses and ambulances.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz now estimates that at least 100,000 Gazans have been directly killed by Israel since Oct. 7, 2023. However, the indirect death toll is likely much higher—and rising. “Most people that die [in such wars] do not die from battle-related injuries,” Asi pointed out. “As disturbing as the images from bombing, snipers, raids, etc. have been, it’s estimated that three to five times more people will die in the years after an armed conflict from indirect causes like the spread of infectious disease, lack of access to healthcare for people with cancer and other ailments, increases in maternal and infant mortality, and lack of access to food and water.”
This reality is already unfolding throughout Gaza, Asi observed. There have been outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as polio; patients in need of treatment for cancer, heart disease and diabetes have been left without access to care; pregnant women cannot receive prenatal assistance or care for complicated pregnancies or deliveries, causing a 300 percent increase in cases of miscarriages and many premature and underweight births; and children are being severely malnourished amid a famine.
Then there are the negative impacts from environmental exposures. Unexploded mu-
A child stands amid destroyed shelters following overnight Israeli airstrikes targeting tents for displaced Palestinians outside the Al‐Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, in Deir al‐Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on May 17, 2025.
nitions pose a long-term risk, as do damaged water and sanitation facilities that have spread dangerous chemicals into the soil and water. “We know from Iraq that children born in these settings are more likely to have congenital abnormalities and cancers,” Asi said.
Infectious diseases, psychological trauma and malnutrition have “intergenerational effects,” Asi emphasized, causing irreversible stunted growth, poor educational achievement and life-long behavioral issues. “Future generations will have to deal with the consequences of this health catastrophe,” she said.
The past two years have revealed “how multifaceted and intentional the nature of these [Israeli] attacks on life itself are,” Asi noted. It’s clear, she added, that Israel’s goal is to make Gaza unlivable and to force genocide survivors to flee. “Research shows us that populations will choose to stay on their land as long as humanly possible, in even the most fragile of conditions,” she pointed out. “But their one motivator to finally leave is when the healthcare system becomes destroyed or inaccessible.”
Jehad Abusalim, executive director of the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, provided an overview of the widespread physical destruction inflicted on Gaza. As of May 2025, more than two-thirds of the territory’s
agricultural land has been destroyed, he noted, and much of that land is now untillable due to exposure to dangerous chemicals. Due to the destruction of water pipelines and sewage infrastructure, 91 percent of Gazans lack access to safe drinking water and hygiene. Educational sites, from elementary schools to universities, have been deliberately targeted and destroyed. Cultural and historic sites, such as museums, mosques, churches, libraries, archives and archeological landmarks have been obliterated.
“When you destroy a school, you block a future; when you destroy a hospital, you end a life; but when you destroy a library, an archive, a manuscript, a theater, you erase a people’s past, present and future,” Abusalim said. “If this isn’t a genocide, what is?”
Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, noted Israeli leaders and soldiers have openly boasted about their war crimes and genocidal intent. “Israeli leaders and Israeli officers have been telling us from the beginning what they plan to do—and then they did it,” he said.
It is long past time for the world to stand up for Palestinians, Segal implored. “If we take ‘never again’ seriously, we should be forefronting the voices of Palestinians
facing Israeli genocide,” he said. They are “calling on us—calling on you—pleading urgently, desperately to stop the violence, not to support the Israeli perpetrators, not to allow the flow of weapons to the violent Israeli state, not to give it diplomatic cover, but to stand with Palestinians in their struggle for truth and justice.”
Dale Sprusansky
“Have We Done Enough?” Building Mass Power Against Genocide
After more than 20 months of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, organizers across the movement for Palestinian liberation are confronting the question of tactics and strategy. Millions have mobilized in demonstrations, boycott and divestment campaigns have gained momentum across the world and groups have taken direct action against complicit governments and corporations. Yet, Israel’s mass killing and starvation of the people of Gaza has only continued with increased brutality.
In a virtual discussion hosted by Palestine Deep Dive, Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq spoke with Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), one of the UK’s largest organizations mobilizing against the genocide in Gaza. They engaged the question that has reverberated across the movement: “Have we done enough?”
Jamal’s answer was a decisive “no.” However, he argues that no single tactic is sufficient to bring the genocide to an end. Alnaouq referenced the feelings of despair many have that mass mobilizations have failed to stop Israel’s assault, but Jamal responded that each tactic must be considered in relation to the fundamental question: “Is [this] going to increase our power” not only to end the genocide but to “dismantle the infrastructure of oppression on which this genocide is founded?”
Jamal maintained that mass mobilizations, many of which have been organized by the PSC, are one tool of many that advance critical goals in the movement for the liberation of Palestine. He explained that mobilizations send a message of solidarity and mass power that gives renewed hope to those suffering in Gaza—and those
Activists attend a “Defend the Right to Protest” demonstration outside New Scotland Yard in London, on May 21, 2025. Speakers demanded that the police drop charges against non‐violent pro‐Palestinian protesters, including Ben Jamal.
faced with looming defeatism in the West. Most importantly, mobilizations serve to bring people into campaigns and organizations and galvanize them toward other forms of action that have substantial material effects, such as boycott and divestment campaigns. This, Jamal contends, “is how you build a sustainable movement.”
Jamal is currently facing charges for a protest in January that allegedly violated police restrictions on gathering outside the BBC headquarters in central London. Jamal asserts, however, that the protest broke no such restrictions, and that the true motivation behind the charges and the British state’s repression of protests for Palestine is “because they’re afraid of the strength of the movement.” Part of the increasing pressure facing the British state is that the PSC, alongside many other organizations, is not only mobilizing in the streets; they’re also building power with British trade unions, over 14 of which have joined the PSC in their demands, uniting the Palestine movement with the power of organized labor and “frighten[ing] the government.”
While Jamal criticized trade unions that have not acted for Palestine, he believes that the role of organized labor in the struggle for Palestine is vital. He referenced the historical role of British trade unions in refusing to participate in the transfer of
weapons to Pinochet’s Chile, and contends that organizers need to be asking, “how can we still push to the absolute limit the ability of our workers and support workers who say, ‘I don’t want to be complicit?’”
The PSC has worked with trade unions to adopt policies supporting an arms embargo on Israel and organize regular “days of action for workers to take action in their workplaces.” Jamal also emphasized their importance in the context of the current Labour Party government, which won a landslide electoral victory against the Conservative Party last year, yet has not significantly altered the UK’s policy toward Israel. The Labour Party has long relied on organized labor as a critical segment of its base, making labor action for Palestine especially important in winning changes in British policy toward Israel.
Fundamentally, Jamal believes that the tide is turning. “There is a whole generation that’s been politicized on this issue,” who have undergone irreversible shifts in consciousness on the question of Zionism. However, “the end of Zionism” is not inevitable on its own, he argues. “What’s required for that is actually that the rest of the world is simply not going to sustain or allow [Zionism], and that means that across the world there are enough progressive people who will be able to employ
power….And that’s the bit that’s only true if we make it true.” —Lance Lokas
The Hunting of Palestinian Journalists
Israel has killed more journalists in Palestine since October 2023 (more than 230 as of early June 2025) than were killed in World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Ukraine combined. They were deliberately targeted—often with their families. One can imagine the uproar among Western journalists if Russia hunted down their Ukrainian peers in similar fashion, but they show little solidarity with Palestinians who put their lives on the line to report what they are witnessing.
The casual killing of Palestinian journalists and the silence of Western journalists was the focus of a recent Al-Shabaka podcast, “Israel’s War on Palestinian Journalists,” featuring West Bank journalist Mariam Barghouti and independent reporter Sharif Abdel Kouddous.
Barghouti argued that “Israel’s targeting of Palestinian journalists is really an attempt to target the narrative.” In the West Bank, she asserted, Israel kidnaps journalists and imprisons them in torture centers. Some never make it out alive. And in that way, local voices are silenced, and the official narrative can be offered without greater challenge.
Abdel Kouddous noted that Israel’s violent assault on the Palestinian population is linked to its assault on journalists: “We’re living in a moment where both journalism and Palestine are coming under the most violent assault we’ve seen in generations,” and the linking of the two is not coincidental. Both speakers struggled to describe the level of violence directed at journalists. Reports of assassinated, burned alive, decapitated, disabled and kidnapped journalists have become commonplace. There is no accountability, even when Israel kills in broad daylight a well-known journalist who has U.S. citizenship, like Shireen Abu Akleh. Abdel Kouddous added that “the editorial lines of Western media institutions have all paved the way for what is happening to Palestinian journalists in Gaza right now.”
The Israeli rationale for its murders has changed since October 2023. In the past the pattern was clear: deny responsibility, claim the journalist was caught in crossfire and then describe the killing as an accident. Now their approach is sloppier and more brazen. To explain the assassination of journalist Ismail al-Ghoul, for example, they claimed he had received military training and a rank in Hamas in 2007— when he was all of 10 years old. The Israelis clearly aren’t even trying to develop a plausible story.
Even more brazenly, they now announce who they plan to assassinate, as they did by placing journalists Anas Sharif, Hossam Shabat and others, all working for Al Jazeera Mubasher, on a “hit list,” labeling them as terrorists. Shabat’s car was targeted in March 2025 and his legs were blown off, killing the 23-year-old. Abdel Kouddous recounted the even more outrageous assassination of Hassan Islaih, a veteran journalist who was attacked in a media tent. He survived the attack and was taken to the burn unit of Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis—and Israel bombed the hospital in May 2025, killing him. It’s the sort of over-the-top compounded savagery that has not generated
the media coverage it deserves. How can the targeting of a hospital to kill a journalist not be front page news?
Abdel Kouddous offered a possible explanation for the media’s indifferent response: on certain issues, “their coverage does not fall outside the span of political debate in Washington.” They accept establishment orthodoxy and reflect the political consensus. Slowly this has been generating a backlash against legacy media like the New York Times, where staff have resigned in protest.
Barghouti believes that many Western journalists have a defeatist, pass-the-buck approach and blame their editors for the framing of what gets reported; others do not regard Palestinian journalists as professionals. “We are left alone in one of the most violent and rogue regimes of this era,” she said. And this takes a toll. “We’re terrified,” she admitted.
For Palestinian journalists, the goal is to get information out to the world with the hope that it will mobilize change. Indeed, Palestinian journalists are the world’s only way to see what is happening in Gaza, as Israel prohibits foreign journalists from entering the territory. Abdel Kouddous observed that if Gaza is destroyed and the
Mourners gather by the body of Palestinian photojournalist Moamen Abu Alouf, who was killed in Gaza along with three paramedics the previous day by Israel, on June 10, 2025.
media is not held accountable for its role, the future of journalism will be much darker.
Ida Audeh
Gaza and the Problem of Political Tyranny in the Islamic World
In a conversation at Georgetown University’s Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding entitled “Gaza and the Problem of Political Tyranny in the Islamic World,” Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl addressed why so many Muslim-majority countries have failed to take greater action in defense of Palestinians since October 2023.
The talk, held on April 30, was originally intended to be the first of three events featuring Fadl that week. However, in a textbook example of the censorship he discussed in his talk, Fadl was disinvited at the last minute from the latter two events, both of which were to be held in the mosque on Georgetown’s campus. Fadl, who is widely regarded as one of the foremost authorities on sharia (Islamic law) and the field of human rights, was unsurprised by the slight.
“Unfortunately, I am too accustomed, too well acquainted, too well adapted to the type of trauma that comes from fellow Muslims censoring you and blacklisting you,” he said in his opening remarks, addressing attendees with a bleak honesty that set the tone for the event.
The cycle of cowardliness and repression, Fadl argues, “is core to the plight of Muslims in the modern age.”
Under despotic Muslim regimes, Fadl said, “you cannot speak without debates prevented, lectures banned, exhibitions canceled, police entering institutions of higher education and prosecutors imposing orthodoxy.” This repression is evident in the stifling of opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Fadl, who spent much of his childhood in Egypt, lambasted the country for its suppression of popular dissent and economic collaboration with Israel. “There’s no way that you can beat around the fact that the Egyptian military has profited handsomely from this genocide,” he said, adding that “showing the Palestinian flag in Egypt is an offense, and you will be arrested.”
Egypt is not the only comprador Arab regime the professor called out, noting that trade between Israel and countries such as Jordan, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates has increased since Oct. 7, 2023. “But for tyranny, that is impossible,” he remarked.
Fadl said this repression has stifled any large-scale popular movement in support of Palestine in the Arab world. “Tyranny and authoritarianism are embedded in the generational trauma that we pass on to our children,” he said. This trauma manifests itself in the creation of a kind of panopticon, in which self-censorship is commonplace. This fear is reinforced by demonstrations of extreme violence by a given regime’s coercive apparatus. “Muslims in Egypt or Arabs in Jordan, they will not protest, because they know what will happen,” Fadl said. “Our history with [our] militaries has always been a history of brutalization, because ultimately they only hold themselves accountable to the foreigner.”
Only two weeks after the event, people of conscience from around the world embarked on the Global March to Gaza, or the Sumud Convoy, to the Rafah border crossing in Egypt, intending to break the blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza. It ended in violence before it truly began—violence at the hands of the Egyptian authorities. This response, characteristic of the regime, exemplifies “the extent to which…
despotism has become a part of our cultural thinking, part of our generational legacy.”
Aiya Bettinger
Vietnam Then, Palestine Today
Robert Buzzanco, professor emeritus at the University of Houston, author of Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era and co-host of the “Green and Red” podcast, spoke at the Palestine Center’s lunchtime lecture series on June 13. His talk was titled “Vietnam Then, Palestine Now: U.S. Subversion of Liberation Movements.”
Land ownership served as a driver of resistance in Vietnam, and continues to do so today in Palestine, according to Buzzanco. In pre-war Vietnam, “less than two percent of Vietnamese owned land,” and most arable land was owned by elites tied to the French colonial power. Land reform became a central demand of revolutionaries, with key slogans like “land to the tiller” emerging from the Viet Minh nationalist movement. In the 1950s, when the Viet Minh briefly controlled a unified Vietnam, they implemented land reform policies that were later repealed with U.S. support. “Land which had been given to peasants and others was returned to many of these older landholders,” Buzzanco said. The radicalizing effects of dispossession can also be seen in Palestine, where land seizures have been a catalyst for rebellion,
Jordanian police monitor a rally in support of Palestine, in Amman, on Feb. 7, 2025.
memorial wall for slain Palestinians, on Nov. 4, 2023, in Hanoi, Vietnam.
dating back to the 1936 Arab Revolt. Nearly a century later, Hamas cited the illegal expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah as a reason for its 2021 war with Israel.
In both countries, indigenous populations were labeled as “invaders” to justify their displacement. In Vietnam, the U.S. and allied media perpetuated the idea that North Vietnam had invaded the South, but Buzzanco explains, “there really weren’t two Vietnams. One was just artificially invented” by the U.S. Washington labeled the indigenous resistance as foreign aggression, a strategy that Buzzanco argues has been used against Palestinians. This framing attempts to legitimize the occupiers’ claim that they must protect themselves from the threat of native populations. In Palestine, it is used to justify displacement and settlement expansion, while in Vietnam, it legitimized the forced transfer of South Vietnamese villagers to “strategic hamlets,” which “were referred to at the time as concentration camps,” Buzzanco noted. Buzzanco likened Israel’s expansion of its war on Gaza into Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran to Washington’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and Laos. He noted that the U.S., while already deeply engaged in Vietnam, dropped millions of tons of explosives on both nations, the effects of which are still present today. Pointing out that “there are still 80 million unexploded little bombs” in Laos, Buzzanco said that “the level of environmental de-
struction still really hasn’t been reckoned with.” Since October 2023, Israel is estimated to have dropped over 100,000 tons of ordinance on Gaza. “Who knows what Gaza will look like going forward...but it’s really a terrifying thought,” Buzzanco said.
The media narratives regarding Vietnam and Palestine mirror each other closely. According to Buzzanco, the Vietnam War was widely framed by establishment journalists as a moral war. He cites Ken Burns’ 2017 docuseries on the Vietnam War as perpetuating the common trope “that the Vietnam War was more or less a noble cause…the U.S. went in there with the best of intentions and they made a mistake.” Buzzanco noted that the legacy media repeats Israeli talking points about having “the most moral army in the world, or the only democracy in the region.” Similarly, anti-colonial groups have been stripped of nuance in order to villainize them. “In Vietnam, the rationale for…opposing anti-war people was that they were communists, or they were communist dupes. Today, calling somebody Hamas fills the same role,” said Buzzanco. “In 1969, Ho Chi Minh was the new Hitler…today it’s Hamas.”
Dehumanization is crucial to manufacturing consent for scorched earth military aggression in both countries. In Vietnam, “the United States established free fire zones, search and destroy missions…they deforested entire areas with herbicides, napalm, Agent Orange, white phosphorus…if you were to put together a list of the kinds of things the United States did, it would match with great synchronicity to what’s happening today with Israel.”
The pattern of villainization followed by destruction reveals the continuity between Vietnam and Palestine. “It’s an old playbook,” said Buzzanco, “they’ve learned well from it…the lengths to which it [the United States] will go to defeat these movements, often very violent means, is worth knowing.”
Silas Gaughran-Bedell
On the morning of May 31, hundreds of participants gathered in Washington, DC’s Rock Creek Park for UNRWA USA’s Gaza 5K fundraiser. The race brought together community members, activists and support‐ers for an urgent cause, with all donations going di‐rectly to UNRWA mental health programming for Palestinian children suffering genocide in Gaza. Nu‐merous sponsors contributed thousands of dollars to help cover the cost of the DC run, including Albi, the Qatari Embassy, Falafel Inc., KinderUSA, Busboys and Poets, Bawadi, Middle East Books and More and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. In addition to DC, UNRWA USA will also be hosting Gaza 5ks in Seattle on August 3 and New York City on October 12. From the capital to cities across the United States, the Gaza 5K continues to build solidar‐ity and facilitate support for Palestinian children. Visit <gaza5k.org> to support a Gaza 5K near you.
Palestinian Ambassador to Vietnam Saadi Salama writes a message on a
Trump’s Military Parade and U.S. Imperialism
On June 14, tanks rolled through the streets of Washington, DC for the first time in three decades, marking the 250th anniversary of the United States Army and the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump. The last time such a parade was held in the U.S. capital was in 1991 as a display of American military dominance to mark the victory of U.S.-led forces over Iraq in the First Gulf War.
Just as it was 34 years ago, this year’s procession aimed to project the unmatched power of U.S. forces to impose American state interests in every corner of the world. The organizers of the event made this clear in the arrangement of the performance; the parade consisted of consecutive blocks of marching troops, each dressed in historical military uniforms and holding flags to represent past U.S. military offensives. Beginning with the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the parade traced through World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and finally, the socalled “Global War on Terror.”
At the same time that F-35s flew over DC to scattered applause, identical Israeli-operated fighter jets, manufactured in the United States, flew over the skies of Tehran to the screams and wails of Iranian men, women and children. President Trump’s address dispatched his message to “America’s enemies” under the hail of U.S.-Israeli firepower: “Your defeat will be certain, your demise will be final and your downfall will be total and complete.”
Coming days after the National Guard was deployed to Los Angeles to brutalize and crush protests against mass deportations, President Trump’s threats echoed within the U.S. borders as well: anyone who dares to resist American authority and state violence will be met with the might of our military.
Yet, for all the comparisons to parades held by anti-imperialist nations across the world, the Trump’s parade embodied none of their coordination or bravado. As a photographer there, I watched soldiers march out of sync and tanks squeak by in single file on a fenced-off road in complete silence.
A police officer observers the crowd as tanks roll past the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, during President Donald Trump’s military parade, on June 14, 2025.
The crowd, which barely covered the length of the procession, gawked more than they cheered, and I spent much of my time pressing my way through frustrated red hats trying to make their way to the other side of the street as they were yelled at by police officers.
Despite spending up to $45 million of taxpayer money, Trump’s military parade only demonstrated the emptiness of Washington’s grandiose portrayals of unbreakable strength. After bombastic assertions of obliterating Iran’s nuclear program, American officials have been forced to admit that they do not know where Iran’s enriched uranium is, and leaked reports show that Iran’s nuclear sites were not “obliterated,” as Trump claims. Even the sectarianism and regional divisions that the U.S. and Israel hoped to exploit have not lived up to expectation; the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Arab League, Muslim Brotherhood and Iran’s longstanding regional adversaries, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all issued strong condemnations of Israel’s attacks on Iran. The U.S. and Israel have been revealed as untrustworthy partners more than ever before, and regional recognition of U.S. imperialism has only increased.
Lance Lokas
HUMAN RIGHTS
Badar Khan Suri Recounts ICE Detention
Nearly two months after his abduction by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri was released from a Texas detention facility on May 14. Federal judge Patricia Giles ordered Khan Suri’s release effective immediately and without bond, stating that it was “in the public interest to disrupt the chilling effect on protected speech.” On June 3, Khan Suri reflected on his experiences during a conversation with Nader Hashemi at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC.
Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, asked Khan Suri to walk the audience through his arrest on March 17. As Khan Suri returned to his apartment building after a Ramadan iftar, his path was blocked by a black unmarked car. “I saw a guy, masked, jump out of this car, and then he said, ‘Are you Badar?’ I was shook,” Khan Suri remembered. “He was not wearing any kind of uniform, no badges, nothing….I was petrified at that moment; all I could say was ‘Yeah.’ He said,
‘You are under arrest.’” After a masked agent told Khan Suri that his “student visa is revoked,” he was handcuffed and put into the car while his wife attempted to show agents his passport and J-1 visa form. In the car, Khan Suri questioned the agents, who responded that “someone very high at the secretary of state’s office doesn’t want you here” and “we will deport you.”
After being informed that he had a court date in May in Texas, Badar Khan was shackled and driven to an ICE detention facility in Farmville, VA. He slept on a cell floor with no blanket, and agents denied his requests for a suhoor (pre-dawn) meal and a phone call to his wife. Several hours later, he was transferred with other detainees to a facility in Richmond, where he briefly stayed before being loaded onto a plane and flown to a holding center in Louisiana. While Khan Suri’s chains were being unlocked, an officer “punched the back of my knee,” he recalled, adding that he feels “ligament pain till today, maybe because of that or because of acute malnutrition…I limp when I walk.”
Khan Suri’s first phone call with his lawyer, Hassan Ahmed, came on his third day in Louisiana. Ahmed, who was present at the Busboys event, recounted how he made contact with his client. “I was able to get the cell phone number of the New Orleans ICE field office director, who put me through and was able to get an officer at
the Alexandria Station facility to call me back…if I hadn’t had that connection, it wouldn’t have been possible,” he explained. “It wasn’t a private attorney line; I couldn’t be assured of any confidentiality, so we just spoke in Urdu.” By the time Khan Suri arrived in Texas, he had been transferred to five ICE facilities across three states in four days.
Asked when he realized that he was arrested because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on students and faculty, Khan Suri responded, “Frankly speaking, I can say never.” Unlike other political prisoners such as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, Khan Suri was not involved in Palestine protests or even active on social media. “All I was able to understand was that they are taking me for my color, for my religion and because I’m married to an American citizen of Palestinian origin.” The couple were targeted in a Zionist doxing campaign prior to Khan Suri’s arrest, due to his father-in-law’s former position as an adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, the late political leader of Hamas. “When they [the doxxers] realized that she [Khan Suri’s wife] is an American citizen, they were shocked, and maybe they did a little bit more research [and found out] she has a husband who is just on a regular visa here,” he speculated.
In his time as a prisoner, Khan Suri remained committed to the teachings of his
role model, Mahatma Gandhi. While incarcerated, he taught other inmates about the Indian leader’s philosophy of nonviolence and forgiveness. Khan Suri recalled speaking with younger detainees, telling them to “try to have control on yourself, try to learn about forgiveness try to be minimalist, try to know about nonviolence.”
Although Khan Suri still faces a lengthy legal battle before his residency status is secure, he believes that he has a responsibility to speak out about Palestine. “We still have in these tough times moral obligations to guide our students, to guide our children…I see in my children every child, and I don’t want kids to go through what they went through during the Holocaust or what they are going through during this genocide in Gaza.”—Jack McGrath
Nakba Descendants Seek Justice Through Family Archive
In observance of the 77th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in 1948 to enable the creation of the state of Israel, the Arab Center Washington DC (ACWDC) hosted Adel Bseiso at the National Press Club on May 15 to discuss the launch of his Bseiso Family Archive (BFA).
ACWDC executive director Khalil Jahshan, moderator of the program, described the archive, which chronicles Palestinian life from 1906 to 1997, as “the largest known collection of original documents from a single Palestinian family detailing land ownership before the Nakba.”
Adel Bseiso said his grandfather Mahrous Mustafa Bseiso, a prominent businessman whose life spanned both the end of the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate period in Palestine, once held some of the most valuable real estate in the heart of Beersheva (Bir al-Sabi).
At gunpoint, Israeli forces seized his family’s “hundreds of thousands of dunams” of land on May 15, 1948, along with their home and possessions, Bseiso said. Later, their land was officially designated “Israeli” under absentee property laws of 1950. The original land deeds, contracts, tax receipts, maps, historical records and official correspondence—meticulously
Georgetown researcher and Indian national Badar Khan Suri (center) at Washington Dulles International Airport, after a judge ordered his release from an immigration detention center in Texas, on May 14, 2025.
Adel Bseiso speaks about the land Israel stole from his family in 1948, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on May 15, 2025.
preserved by his grandfather and later passed on to his father—are “irrefutable proof of ownership,” he emphasized.
Today, the land is unrecognizable, having been transformed into high-rise buildings, shopping malls, industrial complexes and modern-day residential buildings worth billions.
Following his grandfather’s death in 1968, the family resettled as refugees in the United States where Bseiso and his siblings were sheltered from the family’s plight of loss by their parents who rarely spoke of their past, although his father did give him the preserved documents.
In 2019, Bseiso began to organize the research, translate and digitize documents and map out his grandfather’s extensive properties. He developed the archive in 2020 for his family, scholars, researchers and journalists. In 2023, he agreed to have the family archives serve as a Digital Library Center in the Edward Said Modern Arab Studies Program at Columbia University, establishing the collection as the largest repository of land ownership documents belonging to a single Palestinian family within the academic world.
“This year, we launched our portal <BFarchive.org>,” Bseiso announced. “We continue to enhance the portal and the content for a broader audience and to raise awareness of the Palestinian struggle.”
“The preservation of family histories, documents and cultural materials is essential to maintaining a counter narrative and for
enabling future generations to understand their past and to assert their claims for justice in the future…and is a model for justice for all Palestinian victims and victims globally,” ACWDC Palestine Project coordinator Hanna Alshaikh said.
Political science lecturer Samah Elhajibrahim, a descendant of Nakba survivors who fled from Haifa to Lebanon, noted that the plight of displaced Palestinians “is an ongoing injury that is rooted in current injustices, military occupation and systematic policies that have denied generations of Palestinians their basic rights and dignity. Displacement isn’t just about losing homes and land…it’s also an attempt to erase Palestinian identity, history and future claims to the land. To be a Palestinian refugee is to exist in a state of permanent limbo…to live on hold.”
Addressing the legal context of the Bseiso family property, human rights attorney Jonathan Kuttab, a leading expert on Palestinian land law, deemed the archive’s documentation “courtroom quality,” adding “eventually we will bring a case.” Presently, he pointed out, there isn’t a single jurisdiction that is willing to hear the case. “But the day will come when we will be able to bring these cases, so the evidence should be preserved.”
International law recognizes certain crimes to be of universal jurisdiction, permitting national courts to act if international courts fail to do so. “I think the day will come when Israelis and Zionists will be pursued
all over the world for the crimes that they are committing now,” Kuttab predicted. “The level of criminality is now clear…the myths are being destroyed. The world is changing, and I think we will be able to bring justice to some of these people.”
“I’m interested in what the future has to offer,” Bseiso said. “The landscape around the world is changing. People are starting to look at, especially with events that are occurring now, the Palestinians through a different lens. I want to be prepared when those doors open.”
Elaine Pasquini
BOOKS
Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry
“Here’s the miracle of poetry that interrupts failed notions of ‘peace’ with insistence on Palestinian living,” George Abraham read from the introduction of the recently released anthology he co-edited, Heaven Looks Like Us: Palestinian Poetry, at its launch at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC on May 30. Abraham is an award-winning Palestinian American poet, memoirist and scholar who currently serves as the executive director of Mizna, a nonprofit contemporary Arab and Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) arts organization based in Minnesota. The anthology’s other co-editor, Noor Hindi, is a Palestinian American poet, essayist and reporter whose debut poetry collection, Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow., was published in 2022.
While Hindi could not appear at the book launch, four other contributors to the anthology appeared alongside Abraham, reading Palestinian poems from both within and outside the anthology and offering their reflections on Palestinian poetic production in the present moment.
Abraham and Hindi began curating the anthology in 2020, simply at the request of the publisher, Haymarket Books, which was hoping to print a collection of Palestinian poetry. However, over the five years of its curation, the anthology took on new purpose, especially after the start of Israel’s
STAFF PHOTO PHIL PASQUINI
genocidal bombardment of the Gaza Strip in October 2023.
One of the most notable dynamic shifts that took place after October 7 for Abraham was the transformation of poetic metaphors into realities. He illustrates this through the case of anthology contributor Dr. Refaat Alareer, the world-renowned writer and professor from Gaza who Israel murdered in a targeted attack on his home on Dec. 6, 2023. Abraham explained that Alareer’s poem, “If I Must Die,” which is included in the anthology, was written in 2011 not as a literal will but a metaphor for the conditions of living under occupation, bombardment and besiegement in Gaza. However, after Alareer’s murder, the metaphor become reality, and likewise the anthology had to reckon with the concept of ‘Palestine the metaphor’ being shattered, as Abaraham put it in the event’s questionand-answer session.
Abraham and Hindi organized the anthology into thematic sections, each with a unique through-line, such as the environment, metapoetry, feminism and futurism. Each section contains poets from across decades and geographies, putting writers in conversation with each other despite the
colonial fragmentation of Palestinian society. In Heaven Looks Like Us, works of poets displaced in the Nakba are printed next to those of Palestinian youth in occupied Palestine. Legends such as Mahmoud Darwish sit opposite up-and-coming poets such as Leena Aboutaleb. Poems of recently martyred writers from Gaza appear alongside those of Palestinians whose families have lived in the far diaspora for generations.
In this manner, Heaven Looks Like Us rejects a monolithic understanding of Palestinian poetry, celebrating the multitude of subjectivities, perspectives and experiences that define contemporary Palestinian identity. “Resisting what it means to write the Palestinian poem,” Abraham explained, was the crux of curating the collection, emphasizing the editors’ intention to expand the definition of Palestinian poetry to its furthest extent. In total, the anthology includes poems from over 100 contributors.
Heaven Looks Like Us takes its name from a line from Fargo Tbakhi’s poem “Palestine Is a Futurism: Prophecies (Cruising Jerusalem),” which appears in the anthology and which Tbakhi sang at the book launch. The poem, written entirely in capital letters, passionately describes the decolonization of Palestine, from armed struggle against the violent conditions of settler colonialism and the superstructure of imperialism to the futurist creation of a material, liberated Palestine. Reflecting on the poem and the curative logic of the anthology, Abraham mused, “What is the relationship of a collective to an idea of paradise, of liberation, of utopia, dare I say?” He suggests that Tbakhi’s poem offers an answer. “I love that the line of Fargo’s inverts the logic,” he explained, “no, we don’t project ourselves onto heaven. Heaven itself should look like us. We’re dragging it back down to earth, and there’s something about that logic that really speaks to the whole of what Noor and I were trying to do with the anthology.”
Abraham also noted a double meaning to the title. Aside from the metaphorical interpretation, Abraham said it alludes to the material experiences of surveillance and bearing witness. “Heaven looks like us. Heaven is looking. Heaven is watching, so
I’m also just thinking about looking and surveillance,” he said.
The anthology’s cover features a panel from Palestinian installation artist and filmmaker Jumana Manna’s series “The Cleaning Collages.” It depicts a celestial array of overlapping geometric figures of whites, blues and lavenders, interspersed with clouds and rays of light. Speaking on the anthology’s cover art, Abraham explained, “We wanted something abstract. We didn’t want to just be yet another Palestine anthology with insert figural nationalistic symbolic iconography, like 99 percent of other Palestinian anthologies. We wanted something a little bit different, also something that felt on theme, something that felt like it was cohesive with the title as well.”
Abraham concluded the event with a brief reflection on the entire project. “An anthology is a living, breathing object. ‘Anthology’ means ‘collection of flowers’ etymologically, and these [poems] are not dead things. These are things that live, that are gifted, that are circulated… And I think that Heaven Looks Like Us has enough contained-ness and abstraction to float and mean a million different things to a million different people.”—Lukas Soloman
Middle East Books Review
All books featured in this section are available from Middle East Books and More, the nation’s preeminent bookstore on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. www.MiddleEastBooks.com • (202) 939-6050 ext. 1101
I’ll Tell You When I’m Home: A Memoir
By Hala Alyan, Avid Reader Press, 2025,
hardcover, 272 pp. MEB $28.99
Reviewed by Aiya
Bettinger
Hala Alyan said that in high school, she was best at learning what people wanted and giving it to them: “a mirror smuggled in the form of a story.” Maybe it is simply a testament to Alyan’s skill as a writer—or her skill as a mirror—but reading her memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, evoked a feeling of familiarity, as if I was being trusted with a family secret by an older version of myself, a mother, even. Falastaniya, Beirutiya, living in diaspora on the East Coast of the United States and feeling dispossessed in every sense of the word. Our dysfunctional attachment styles and our proclivity for storytelling. When she spoke of her fear of running into that younger version of herself on Beirut’s Gemmayzeh street I was there, stumbling out of Torino, fixing my bad bangs, adjusting my torn shirt and too drunk—forgetting to pace myself in the excitement of not having to use a fake ID—to notice the older woman in front of me. But one does not need to share quite so much with Alyan to see themselves reflected in the pages of her debut memoir.
After Kuwait…every place was just a place. When we’d leave, it stopped existing for me.
Alyan’s narrative is christened with the stories of two leavings that will reinvent themselves again and again throughout the
Aiya Bettinger is a Middle East Studies major at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and an intern at the Washington Report
author’s life in her tireless pursuit of fixing what cannot be undone, of staying. Both leavings belong to women that would one day become her grandmothers, tetas, in Palestine and in Syria. The former, rushed and forced by occupation soldiers, ushers Teta Siham from al-Majdal on the sea to Haret el Daraj in Gaza. The latter brings Teta Fatima from Damascus to Beirut, where she is a bride, and then a wife, and then a mother. Neither of these women remain in their new places. From then on, the leaving became an inevitability, and every story was written with that end in mind. The veracity of this truth is demonstrated to the reader with cartographic precision as Alyan lays bare every exit, whether it be from a marriage, a country, even a womb.
What is landlessness that takes root, turns inward, what is it to carry that lack, that undoing.
Untethered, afloat, Alyan is free to be the best thing a young girl can be: whatever you want her to be. Whether it was out of the conviction that if she became enough of what you wanted, you wouldn’t leave, or
the assurance that when you did leave you wouldn’t be leaving her, Alyan describes relishing in the performance. The performance of being Arab. The performance of being a woman. The performance of being American. The lying—to the self and the other—inherent in it all. She likens herself to Scheherazade, the cunning storyteller at the center of One Thousand and One Nights, who wove a web of tales so compelling they bought her her life. Through this comparison, erasure becomes synonymous with survival, and looming over all is the fear of what happens when the show is disrupted. When they stop believing. The exile—within and without—that follows. When five miscarriages disrupt Alyan’s performance of womanhood, she is forced to reckon with this fear.
America taught me to want, and my mothers taught me to fear, but nobody taught me what to do with things when I got them.
A woman with loss mapped onto her body, Alyan learns to covet what she has and to yearn for what will always be unrequited, because to belong to something— a lover, a land, a self—is to surrender yourself to the truth of being left. Her narration style is characterized by the passive tone of reflection, only to be undercut by the tension produced between the content and the structure of the text; the author describes all the ways in which she has learned to run away from a thing, all the while the chapters count down, running us together toward the birth of her child. An arrival for the many departures.
A reader of the Washington Report may shy away from the typical celebrity memoir, struggling to read the story of a life whilst being so acutely aware of all the life stories being cut short in Gaza right now. Alyan loves Scheherazade because she “knew the stakes of an untold story.” The stakes of Gaza’s untold stories lie in the gnarled hands of Gazawi fishermen, the zaghrouta of elderly women in Nablus, the libraries of the scholars of al-Quds. What’s at stake is Palestinian peoplehood itself. However, by situating her experiences in their social and political context, Alyan manages to speak to these themes of peoplehood and exile while simultaneously delivering a devastat-
ingly honest, personal account of what it means to be a Palestinian woman in diaspora. Through it all, with a pen seasoned from years of writing award-winning fiction, Alyan has followed in her fairytale heroine’s footsteps and produced a story so enthralling that, once started, cannot be stopped.
…how was I supposed to know the ending before I knew the beginning? Wasn’t the ending something that would announce itself? Or—more precisely— wouldn’t the ending be made through the telling? And isn’t there sometimes no ending at all?
The fragmentation of the narrative mirrors the fragmentation of the Palestinian people, a body dismembered by the Nakba and its parts scattered by Oslo and a genocide after that. Just as her teta’s “dementia echoed the wreckage of Syria,” Alyan’s prose is shaped like so many severed limbs and then, re-membered by the telling of the story to the audience. The body, more or less whole, is rebirthed. With no concrete resolution, the final pages of I’ll Tell You When I’m Home invite the reader to join the author in the discomfort of not knowing. Even the title implies uncertainty as to when the conclusion might be, putting us on notice. There is a challenge in the nonending, for both the reader and author, one that Alyan has well prepared us—and herself—to face. You will not know. Life goes on.
Vanished:
The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa
Ouda
By
Ahmed Masoud, Just World Books, 2025, paperback, 208 pp. MEB $23.95
Reviewed by Ida
Audeh
Ahmed Masoud’s novel Vanished: The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda is in equal measures a mystery novel and a story about a Gaza boy’s coming of age in the 1980s and 1990s. Central to the novel is a boy’s search for his missing father and, years later, his attempt to explain to his own son why he suddenly left their comfortable home in London to return to Gaza
Ida Audeh is senior editor of the Washington Report
NEW ARRIVALS
Gaza in My Phone by Mazen Kerbaj, OR Books, 2025, paperback, 144 pp. MEB $19.95.
Gaza is the first genocide to be captured in real-time images on devices we hold in our hands. Two days after October 7, the Lebanese comic artist Mazen Kerbaj began drawing in reaction to what was appearing on his phone. This powerful and original book brings together that work. Kerbaj draws in part to bear witness and raise awareness, but also as a coping mechanism, to remain sane amid the unfolding madness. His straight-to-the-point, high-contrast blackand-white art is accompanied by striking slogans and captions. It has been shared widely around the world, helping people express their solidarity with Palestine. Produced from Berlin, a city where the repression of Palestinian support has been particularly fierce, Kerbaj’s drawings raise fundamental questions about seeing as an act of solidarity when those in power seek to suppress news of what is happening. Gaza in My Phone is an extraordinary sequence of images and messages that ask us to pause for a moment, to stop, look, mourn and summon the resolve to head out and join the fight for the living, for life, for justice.
To See In The Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7 by Nicholas Mirzoeff, Pluto Press, 2025, paperback, 168 pp. MEB $19.95.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, urban, networked Gazan youth have documented and shared their struggle with the world using social media strategies, derived from movements from Tahrir Square to Black Lives Matter. In To See In The Dark, Nicholas Mirzoeff explores how these videos and photos transmitted and viewed outside Palestine, via platforms like Instagram and TikTok, enabled a dramatic switch in public opinion, leading to the global uprising against genocide. In this groundbreaking analysis, he also connects the personal and the political via his own anti-Zionist Jewishness, weaving an autotheory of domestic, political and sexual violence. Through this exploration, he finds new collective anticolonial ways of seeing, combining online and embodied experiences.
Letters from Gaza: By the People, From the Year That Has Been edited by Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq and Mahmoud Alshaer, Penguin Random House, 2025, hardcover, 250 pp. MEB $28.99.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, we have lamented the visuals of unimaginable destruction, loss and insurmountable pain in Gaza. As we process this genocide from afar, we are reminded that people in Gaza are forced to live this unbearable reality. This collection is pertinent in bringing focus to the diverse human stories behind the crisis. Letters from Gaza explores the feelings, fears, memories, thoughts and hopes of 30 people living in the Gaza Strip, of varied ages and ethnographies. Each story is a reminder of the world held within every person and how humanity at large is at stake with them. Collected and compiled by Mahmoud Alshaer and Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq, two prolific writers in Gaza, this collection, with an introduction from Atef Abu Saif, stands as a testament to unparalleled resilience and unveils the unimaginable emotional scars of war—leaving us overcome with tenderness and compassion.
during a war to retrieve a photograph from a family home. Omar Ouda describes his short-lived childhood, his political activity during his adolescence, and, after the Oslo Accords are signed, his participation as a loyal foot soldier in the Palestinian Authority until his eventual disillusionment and emigration to the United Kingdom. That account constitutes the main story line. (The trip to Gaza in 2014 to retrieve the family photo is the secondary story line.)
The non-linear structure of the narrative expands what Masoud is able to convey. In a webcast hosted by Just World Books (the U.S. publisher of the book, originally published by Cyprus-based Rimal Books in 2015), Masoud explained that the structure gave him the flexibility he needed to touch on subplots and layers of social history that might have been difficult to do in a conventional novel with a linear timeline.
This is very much a story about the father-son relationship and how sons navigate their lives without fathers. The absence of his father and the visible agitation of adults when the subject is raised puzzle Omar, so he decides to investigate, enlisting a trusted friend in his detective work. His search takes him to the most powerful adult he knows, an Israeli military officer, and that encounter shapes his life.
Without a father and with a malevolent foreign force taking minute interest in every Palestinian life, Omar has to grow up quickly. Politicized young—how could he not be, when curfews are imposed frequently and neighbors are shot dead casually—he participates in demonstrations during the First Intifada and is shot. People look up to him as a hero because he took
a stand against their oppressor.
A major theme of the novel is collaboration with the enemy, often the only way to secure the all-important Israeli approval for travel, treatment, education or employment (or to try to buy Israel’s silence about one’s transgressions or secrets). One of the more painful scenes in the novel tells how the child Omar becomes a collaborator himself; the Israeli military general who rapes and grooms him is the forerunner of the Israelis sadistically torturing and executing Gazans today. A trusted teacher is later revealed to be a collaborator; so is a family member. Masoud reveals this in a way that, while showing the damage they do, nevertheless avoids turning the Palestinian victim-collaborators into two-dimensional figures; they are clearly trapped. As he begins to understand the dynamics at play and the ways in which people are ensnared by the occupation, Omar takes risks to warn a collaborator that his cover was blown, another indicator of the maturity thrust on Gaza’s children.
The child Omar is rehabilitated because adults around him take an interest in freeing him from the Israeli grip. The way in which that is accomplished is an especially touching part of the book, bringing together as it does the themes of collaboration, group solidarity and social cohesion. Guilt-ridden that his actions are leading to assassinations of community leaders, Omar confides in a trusted neighbor, Um Marwan, who throughout the book appears as his guardian angel. She introduces him to the resistance (of which she is a part), which gives him a task to perform as part of his rehabilitation, at the completion of which he goes into hiding. Soon thereafter, the Oslo Accords are signed, the military occupation structure withdraws from Gaza, and Omar is free.
The novel realistically conveys the public’s mixed reception of the Oslo Accords—with excitement and hope by some, with trepidation by others. Omar joins the Palestinian Authority apparatus, and through his eyes we see the inevitable consequences of such a shabby agreement. When he is required to shoot at Hamas figures (the same ones who were instrumental in his rehabilitation), he refuses. Even early on, it became clear that the Israelis
only ever intended to retain their role as puppet masters while turning over policing to Palestinians.
The U.S. edition of this book was released during the genocide in Gaza, and readers will bring that awful reality to their reading of the novel. The novel’s depiction of once-vibrant towns and cities in which people planned their futures are painful reminders of just how much has been lost by Israel’s systematic obliteration of the landscape and the Palestinians who called it home.
The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan
By Aaron Magid,
Universal Publishers, 2025, paperback, 254 pp. MEB $35.95
Reviewed by Daoud Kuttab
Few leaders in the Arab world have cooperated with independent authors to produce objective biographies. King Abdullah II of Jordan, a “moderate” Arab leader favored by the West and now the longestreigning Arab head of state, is no exception. Gaining a genuine sense of such a monarch is difficult when relying solely on orchestrated public pronouncements and official interviews.
The Most American King seeks to break through this barrier by offering readers a unique and in-depth portrait of the ruler of one of the most strategically significant countries in the Middle East. This book may be the first comprehensive and nuanced portrayal of King Abdullah II in book form. Unable to secure a direct interview with the king or access to his closest family members or current aides, Aaron Magid, who has been closely following developments in Jordan for over a decade, relied on publicly available sources and conversations with more than 100 individuals based in Jordan. He interviewed former top
Daoud Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist, media activist and columnist living in Amman. He is a former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and is currently director-general of the Ammanbased Community Media Network, a notfor-profit organization dedicated to advancing independent media in the Arab region.
aides, including former Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh, former Royal Court Chief Jawad Anani and various former Jordanian ministers. He also spoke with the king’s former commander in the Jordanian military and the king’s former classmates. Magid additionally interviewed former U.S. officials, including former CIA director Leon Panetta, General David Petraeus and multiple U.S. ambassadors to Amman. The book also relies on archival research in the U.S. and the UK.
The Most American King leans heavily on extensive citations, more than 700 footnotes, offering perhaps more insight into the country than into the monarch himself. The author draws extensively from interviews given by the king, mostly to Western media, to paint a picture of the challenges and political reasoning of Jordan’s longstanding ruler.
Magid’s book uncovers numerous anecdotes and facts that even seasoned Jordan watchers and locals may not have known, simply because not every interview or public statement by the king is widely circulated in Jordanian media.
For instance, he sheds light on King Abdullah’s final, behind-the-scenes attempts to dissuade U.S. President George W. Bush from going to war against Saddam Hussain’s Iraq. In one particularly striking episode, we learn that President Bush “yelled” at King Abdullah during a White House meeting after the Jordanian leader voiced his concerns over the planned invasion.
Also revealing is the king’s reaction to Sept. 11, 2001. In Texas at the time, King Abdullah tried to show solidarity by flying to
Daughters of Palestine: A Memoir in Five Generations by Leyla K. King, Eerdmans, 2025, paperback, 208 pp. MEB
$22.99.
Leyla King has been a keeper of family stories since long before she sat down across from her grandmother with a tiny cassette tape recorder. In this beautifully crafted memoir, she braids matriarchal memory into a vivid saga of love and survival as her ancestors flee war and poverty. From Haifa to Ramallah, Damascus, Beirut, and finally Texas, King makes global politics deeply personal as family squabbles, ambition, mental illness, romance and religion shape their immigrant journey. Narrated in immersive, lyrical vignettes, Daughters of Palestine is both an urgent testimony from Palestinian Christians and a timeless story of resilience.
The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza, Catapult, 2025, hardcover, 400 pp. MEB $29.
“You were dead, Sarah, you were dead.” In October 2019, Sarah Aziza, daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees, is narrowly saved after being hospitalized for an eating disorder. The doctors revive her body, but it is no simple thing to return to the land of the living. Aziza’s crisis is a rupture that brings both her ancestral and personal past into vivid presence. The hauntings begin in the hospital cafeteria, when a mysterious incident summons the familiar voice of her deceased Palestinian grandmother. In the months following, as she responds to a series of ghostly dreams, Aziza unearths family secrets that reveal the ways her own trauma and anorexia echo generations of violent Palestinian displacement and erasure—and how her fight to recover builds on a century of defiant survival and love. Weaving timelines, languages, geographies and genres, The Hollow Half probes the contradictions and contingencies that create “nation” and “history.” Blazing with honesty, urgency and poetry, this stunning debut memoir is a fearless call to imagine both the self and the world anew.
Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir’s Conflict by Ipsita Chakravarty, Hurst, 2025, paperback, 344 pp. MEB $29.99.
In Kashmir, folktales often begin with the word dapaan—“it is said.” So too do local narratives told and retold about the past, among people who have lived through nearly eight decades of a bitter contest between India and Pakistan. This is a story about stories. Kashmir is home to long habits of storytelling, its communities intensely engaged with history-keeping. For centuries, folk traditions of theatre, song and fable have flowed into a reservoir of common talk. Mythology, hearsay and historical memory coexist here without any apparent hierarchies. By the time armed rebellion spread through Kashmir in 1989, many of these traditions had died out, or been forced underground. But they have left traces in the way ordinary people speak about the conflict—in their songs of loss and jokes about dark times. From partition to the 2019 Indian crackdown, Ipsita Chakravarty discovers a vivid, distinctly Kashmiri vision of events that have often been narrated from the top-down. Her interviewees conjure a kaleidoscope of towns and villages shaping their own memories.
Washington to stand by President Bush and publicly denounce the attacks, despite the nationwide flight ban. It was Queen Rania who contacted the U.S. ambassador in Amman, urging him to convince her husband not to attempt the trip amid the chaos.
Because King Abdullah did not serve as crown prince for long before succeeding his father, some U.S. intelligence officials were skeptical about his readiness. One senior American official remarked in 1999 that Abdullah was “not ready for prime time,” and a CIA analyst noted that all eyes were on Jordan’s General Intelligence Director Samih Battikhi to ensure the young king’s political survival.
When the Arab Spring reached Jordan, King Abdullah’s deep relationships with American officials helped shield him from the kind of pressure that doomed Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and others. According to the book, then-U.S. Ambassador to Jordan Stuart Jones stated that “Washington had no specific policy proposal for Jordan regarding reform efforts during the Arab Spring.” Magid also includes quotes from then-President Barack Obama, who, despite multiple meetings with King Abdullah, made no specific demands for reform during that turbulent period. This differs from the pressure Obama placed on Mubarak, another strong U.S. ally, to pursue reform amid popular protests.
While King Abdullah’s strong ties with the U.S. have served him well, the book suggests he may, at times, have trusted—or submitted to—Washington more than warranted. When questioned by an Italian newspaper about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the king responded that he believed Saddam Hussain did possess them, echoing the narrative pushed by the U.S. administration.
Still, the book notes that King Abdullah was determined not to repeat what he saw as his father’s mistake—King Hussein’s silence during Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Once it became clear that war with Iraq was inevitable, King Abdullah refrained from public criticism, though he continued to advise U.S. leaders. That advice, however, was often ignored, such as his caution against dissolving the Iraqi army.
In another policy reversal, the king
agreed to accept Iraqi refugees, to avoid offending the United States. In hindsight, that decision proved beneficial. Unlike the later wave of poor and vulnerable Syrian refugees, many Iraqis arriving in Jordan were wealthy Sunni Arabs who brought capital, bought property and invested in businesses. Most eventually moved on to Western countries like Australia and Canada, with few returning to Iraq.
Magid offers a readable, politically grounded narrative of Jordan over the past 25 years. It’s a compelling resource for students of Middle Eastern politics and anyone seeking to understand the quiet resilience and complex diplomacy of one of the region’s most enduring rulers.
In a global era where the U.S. is the sole superpower, it is a no-brainer for the leader of a small Middle Eastern country to want to be allied with Washington. However, King Abdullah’s partnership with the U.S. goes beyond mere strategic thinking, reflecting his personal affinity for the U.S. and its people. Being called “the most American king” may not play well in certain Jordanian circles, but it certainly reflects reality.
The Most American King and a new book by scholar Sean Yom scheduled for release in September, Jordan: Politics in an Accidental Crucible, offer those closely following Jordan two well-documented, independently written books about the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Islam and Statecraft: Religious Soft Power in the Arab Gulf States
By Jon Hoffman, I.B. Tauris, 2025, paperback, 288 pp. MEB $29.95
Reviewed by Faisal Kutty
Jon Hoffman’s Islam and Statecraft: Religious Soft Power in the Arab Gulf States offers a timely and nuanced exploration of the role of religion in international relations, particularly within the context of the Arab Gulf states. By reframing religion not merely as an influence on political outcomes but as a tool actively shaped by political elites, Hoffman challenges prevailing paradigms in international relations and Middle East studies.
Hoffman’s central thesis is that religion
serves as a flexible instrument of soft power that the Arab Gulf states deploy to navigate both domestic and international political challenges. Instead of treating religion as a static influence, Hoffman presents it as a variable that states mold to achieve their objectives.
Structured across five chapters, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations of religious soft power. It then applies this framework to three case studies: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. Each state, Hoffman argues, adopts distinct yet adaptable religious soft power strategies that fluctuate according to shifting geopolitical landscapes.
Saudi Arabia has historically positioned itself as the custodian of Sunni Islam, using religious influence to reinforce its legitimacy and counter ideological threats, particularly from Iran and domestic opposition groups. The kingdom’s approach includes funding religious institutions abroad and leveraging its control over the Hajj pilgrimage to reinforce its leadership role in the Muslim world.
Qatar, in contrast, employs a more bottom-up approach, fostering ties with political Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood while simultaneously branding itself as a mediator in global conflicts. Doha’s media strategy, through platforms like Al Jazeera, has also played a crucial role in shaping Islamic discourse internationally, often in ways that challenge Saudi dominance.
The UAE takes a top-down approach, promoting a state-controlled interpretation of Islam that emphasizes moderation and counter-extremism while also leveraging religious narratives to suppress dissent. The
Emirates have been active in promoting an anti-Muslim Brotherhood stance while positioning themselves as a hub for global religious tolerance initiatives.
Hoffman’s analysis suggests that religious soft power is not merely an auxiliary force but a core component of statecraft, intricately tied to regime survival and geopolitical strategy. He successfully demonstrates that these states do not merely react to religious trends but actively shape them to align with their national interests.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its methodological rigor. His emphasis on the agency of political elites in shaping religious narratives is particularly insightful, moving beyond deterministic views that portray religion as an immutable force in politics. The book effectively combines theoretical insights with empirical case studies, making it both conceptually robust and grounded in real-world examples.
Additionally, Hoffman successfully challenges Orientalist assumptions that Islam inherently dictates political behavior. Instead, he argues that states strategically construct religious identities to suit their political needs—a perspective that aligns with recent scholarship on political Islam and religious statecraft. This approach counters reductionist arguments that treat Islam as exceptional or uniquely resistant to secular governance.
The book’s detailed case studies provide a nuanced view of how each Arab Gulf state formulates and implements religious policies. By drawing on historical context, policy decisions and geopolitical rivalries, Hoffman paints a complex picture of how Arab Gulf states engage in religious soft power as a deliberate strategy rather than a mere consequence of their religious identity.
Islam and Statecraft raises several questions that warrant further exploration. First, while Hoffman convincingly argues that political elites shape religious narratives, he does not fully address the role of societal actors in either contesting or reinforcing these narratives. Future research could examine how religious scholars, civil society groups and transnational networks influence or resist state-driven religious soft power strategies. The role of new digital media, including social media influencers
and grassroots religious movements, also remains an area for deeper analysis.
Second, Hoffman’s focus on the Arab Gulf states, while justified, limits the book’s broader applicability. Comparative analysis with other Muslim-majority states—such as Türkiye, Iran, Indonesia or Malaysia—could provide additional insights into how different political systems engage with religious soft power. The role of non-state actors, including religious movements and diasporic communities, also warrants further investigation.
Finally, while Hoffman critiques dominant international relations theories, his proposed framework remains somewhat ambiguous in terms of predictive power. A more systematic articulation of how different variables interact to produce specific religious soft power outcomes would strengthen his argument. For instance, the book could benefit from a more detailed discussion of how economic factors, such as
oil wealth and foreign aid policies, influence the deployment of religious soft power. Additionally, further research could explore whether religious soft power strategies can backfire, leading to unintended diplomatic consequences.
Hoffman’s work will undoubtedly shape future debates on the intersection of religion and statecraft, inviting further inquiry into the evolving role of religion in global politics. It will also serve as a valuable resource for policymakers seeking to understand the nuanced ways in which religious soft power can be wielded in diplomacy and statebuilding efforts. The book’s theoretical contributions and empirical depth ensure its place as a landmark study in the field.
Faisal Kutty is a lawyer, law professor and regular contributor to The Toronto Star and Newsweek. You can follow him on X @faisalkutty.
Other People’s Mail
Compiled by Dale Sprusansky
WHAT DID IRAN ATTACK ACCOMPLISH?
To The Blade, July 6, 2025
After bombing Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites without congressional approval, Donald Trump now declares the war to be over and told Iran and Israel to uphold his declared ceasefire.
It appears that America’s strikes on these nuclear sites did not totally destroy them, and satellite video showing a line of trucks outside one major site before the strikes suggest the Iranians moved much of their enriched uranium to an unknown location.
What has Trump accomplished?
Trump ignored information from his Director of National Intelligence that said Iran likely was not trying to make a nuclear bomb.
Certainly, Iran now knows that if you do not possess nuclear weapons, countries like America and Israel can strike you any time they want.
Why would Iran not now secretly pursue obtaining nuclear weapons for their own survival and defense just as Israel has?
Although Iran suffered a huge military defeat, they have proven that their most potent missiles can penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome and other defenses, as many buildings in Tel Aviv and elsewhere have been destroyed.
This is the first time Israel has suffered this kind of damage, and Iran reportedly has more missiles to send if Israel wants to continue attacking them.
After this, who in the Middle East can trust what America and Israel say or might do?
U.S. Navy Admiral James W. Kilby re-
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP
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cently expressed concern to Congress that the Navy is firing top ballistic missile interceptors at an alarming rate.
The same could be said for Israel.
Meanwhile, China has severely restricted exports of the rare earth minerals America and Israel need to make their smart missiles and bombs.
A smart president would quit giving away America’s stockpiles of these weapons to Israel and put the defense of America first.
Ernest Ryan, Temperance, MI
U.S. COMPLICITY IN GAZA MUST END NOW
To The Washington Post, June 4, 2025
Regarding Shadi Hamid’s June 1 Sunday opinion column, “A genocide is happening in Gaza. We should say so.”
We owe a debt of gratitude to Hamid for saying out loud what needs to be said out loud: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The civilized world should condemn Israel’s decision to loosen its own rules about protecting civilians from bombing, the high civilian death toll in the war, and Israel’s steps to cut off electricity to Gaza, including to the desalination plant that produces potable water, and to allow only minimal deliveries of food and medicine, regardless of whether these actions are labeled “genocide.” But as Hamid pointed out, calling what is happening “genocide” could create a legal obligation to intervene (much like acknowledging that the treatment of detainees amounted to “torture” became a legally important question during the war on terrorism). It appears that a moral responsibility alone is not compelling enough to some world leaders.
SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO
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There is one word that no one with the power to intervene can avoid, and that word is “complicit.” How long will we allow the suffering and death in Gaza to continue? How long will we be complicit? We should ask that question out loud and push our leaders for answers.
Michael Curry, Austin, TX
FASTING TO RAISE AWARENESS FOR GAZA
To the Little Village Magazine, June 10, 2025
On May 22, two of my friends, Kathy Kelly and Mike Ferner, along with four others, began a 40-day fast outside of the U.N. in New York City. They are limiting themselves to 250 calories per day. Why? Two simple goals: 1) Unimpeded humanitarian aid for Gaza; 2) Halt to U.S. arms to Israel.
After an oft-violated ceasefire, on March 2 Israel imposed a blockade on all humanitarian aid into Gaza. [Aid later resumed under the U.S.-funded Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while waiting to receive aid from the GHF, which has been widely condemned.]
I was surprised when I heard of their fasting, but not shocked. I was concerned because they are in their 70s and have existing health issues. But I understood, because I know the strength of their dedication to peace and the depth of their solidarity with the starving people of Gaza. Kelly said that in contrast to people in Gaza, they have easy access to clean water and are not being bombed. What realistically can the fasters expect
to accomplish? They don’t expect millions of Americans to join the fast (over 700 have joined). But what if everyone witnessing their fast were to close their eyes for five minutes and contemplate their own family going without food, and then demand their government make those two goals happen, now?
Ed Flaherty, Iowa City, IA
COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT OF PALESTINIANS
To the Ithaca Times, June 11, 2025
A justification sometimes offered for Israel’s destruction of Gaza is that residents of the Gaza Strip freely elected the terror group Hamas.
However, a poll by Arab Barometer conducted just before Oct. 7, 2023, found that, if there had been an election at that time, the Hamas candidate was likely to receive less than 25 percent of the vote. Furthermore, Gaza’s population is extremely young, so the majority of the population wasn’t born or old enough to vote when Hamas came to power in 2006.
After the murder of a young couple outside of a Jewish museum in Washington, DC, as well as the horrific attack on Jews in Boulder, CO, Sen. Chuck Schumer (DNY) asserted, “Collective blame is traditionally one of the most nasty, dangerous forms of anti-Semitism.”
Collective punishment should also be condemned when it is inflicted upon Palestinians.
Terry Hansen, Ithaca, NY
THE U.S. IS ENABLING CARNAGE IN GAZA
To the New Hampshire Union Leader, June 16, 2025
The U.S. has consistently stood by while Israel perpetrates its internationally condemned war on Palestine. Besides the enormous atrocities Israel has committed in it’s avowed ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, a new low has been its starvation campaign.
The “targeted” air strikes and raids on families, refugee camps, medical facilities and essential infrastructure are just the daily background white noise when, if at all,
any reporting documents the ongoing slaughter by the thoroughly corrupt Netanyahu regime.
And all this is justified by doing unto others what was historically done unto them [the Jewish people], so that it won’t be done unto them again! Yet if history is any guide, that doesn’t work!
Meanwhile, aware and concerned citizens are forced to give to heroic non-profits to address the carnage our diplomatic, financial and military support has enabled.
I guess might makes right as long as it’s perpetrated by a friend or ally. What a shining city on a hill we are.
Gregory Davis, Salem, NH
CONGRESS NEEDS TO ACT TO STOP FAMINE IN GAZA
To The Journal of the San Juan Islands, May 22, 2025
We are deeply concerned about the war in Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis. For months now, there has been little food, water, fuel or medicine allowed to reach over two million Palestinians and the remaining Israeli hostages. Massive starvation is imminent. The problem is not a lack of food.
Gaza is on the brink of catastrophic famine that could claim tens of thousands of lives. This is an entirely preventable crisis. Congress must act now to press for the immediate reopening of Gaza’s borders. This will allow humanitarian aid to reach those in desperate need.
We ask that our representative in Congress, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), take the following three actions:
1) Cosponsor legislation to restore funding to UNRWA, the agency charged with facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
2) Cosponsor legislation to stop the flow of offensive weapons of war to the region.
3) Make a public statement calling for unfettered humanitarian access into Gaza in compliance with international law.
The way to build peace is to provide aid, not arms. We want our tax dollars to alleviate suffering, not prolong it.
We are grateful to Rep. Larsen for supporting humanitarian relief measures in the
past. We ask him to step up again at this crucial time.
The San Juan Islands Advocacy Team, San Juan Islands, WA ■
Pakistan and India at War
Continued from page 75
argued that New Delhi was deflecting blame from the root cause of the violence, namely India’s denial of Kashmir’s right to self-determination. “If India is serious about combating terrorism, they have to create a more conducive environment in Kashmir,” he contended. “Those facing suppression and repression like the ones in Maqbooza [occupied] Kashmir will react, they will be the cannon fodder for either an existing terrorist group or some new terrorist group or some future terrorist group.” Bhutto pivoted to the rise of terrorism in Pakistan following the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2021. The lack of secure borders with Afghanistan has helped “extremists and separatist groups” coordinate and conduct attacks in Pakistan, he said. Bhutto also alleged that India provides support to several of these organizations, including the Balochistan Liberation Army and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
Bhutto charged India with “damning my generation, future generations, not only to fight over Kashmir, not only to go to full out war whenever there’s a terrorist attack, but now we’re damning future generations of Indians and Pakistanis to fight over water.” He implored the U.S. and other nations to prevent India from violating the Indus Waters Treaty and warned that India “shutting off Pakistan’s water supply is laying the foundations for the first nuclear water war.” Although Bhutto expressed hope that India and Pakistan would meet the shared challenges of climate change through cooperation, he made one thing clear. “If we don't rise to this occasion, then let there be no mistake: the blame for the carnage, the devastation, the scourge, the quarry will lie at the footsteps of Narendra Modi and his government.” ■
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August/September 2025
Vol. XLIV, No. 5
(L‐r) Mo Chara, DJ Provaí and Móglaí Bap of Kneecap from Northern Ireland perform on June 28, 2025, at the Glastonbury Festival, the UK’s largest music festival. Known for their socially conscious lyrics, the Irish‐language rap band criticize Israel and call Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide during their live performances. Mo Chara compares the Irish and Palestinian struggles, telling crowds that, “we understand colonialism and we understand how important it is for solidarity internationally.” Their statements have drawn adulation from fans, who wave Palestinian flags during concerts, and ire from politicians—the State Department revoked their U.S. visas ahead of their 26‐day U.S. tour this summer. (PHOTO BY MATT CARDY/GETTY IMAGES)
