Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Violence and Crime Among the Palestinian Community in Israel: The Shattering of the Indigenous
Through concise but extremely detailed chapters in their book Violence and Crime Among the Palestinian Community in Israel: The Shattering of the Indigenous, Nohad ’Ali and Asad Ghanem break down the politics, science and sociology of a rising violence and crime rate among Palestinians in Israel. Setting the scene immediately…
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The US creates convenient loopholes for Israel
Seizing 70 percent of Gaza is not part of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on Tuesday at the House Appropriations subcommittee meeting. “We have a plan. That plan does not envision such a thing. Netanyahu made that statement, but it is not part…
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As Israel encroaches upon Gaza, the UN should be reckoning with its colonial complicity
“A hundred percent of Gaza should be for the Palestinian people, right? That’s what we want to see. And we’ve been calling on Israel to pull back from its occupation from the so-called yellow line and that will continue to be our position,” UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric stated last week.…
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The EU’s fragmented focus rewards colonial violence
The EU focus on sanctioning Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir tells only a fragment of the story. Ben Gvir may be the face of Israel’s colonial dehumanisation at the moment, but Israel is the structure in which colonial dehumanisation is embedded. In a letter sent to the European…
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Resolutions are disconnected from the Palestinian reality
If Israel is not held accountable for colonialism, colonial violence and genocide, no amount of resolutions can provide even the slightest remedy for the Palestinian people. Last week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) adopted a resolution which will keep the institution busy with the collected data, but fail to change…
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Dehumanisation, colonialism and its accomplices
Colonialism is dehumanising. It is something akin to a spectacle that several world leaders and ministers have partially woken up to that fact, after a video showing Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir humiliating the kidnapped Global Sumud Flotilla activists generated much negative attention on social media. Israeli ambassadors were…
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Dishonouring Palestinian memory of the Nakba at the UN
Another Nakba commemoration has passed. At the UN, the rhetoric remains unchanged. It is chilling that even after a colonial genocide which Israeli officials called Nakba 2.0, the UN is determined to never mention colonialism. The UN will never, not even on the anniversary of the Nakba, face the Palestinian…
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Ongoing Return: Mapping Memory and Story Telling in Palestine
“The geography of Palestine is one, from the river to the sea. The settler military works in different ways to create a fragmented reality for Palestinians,” Rana Barakat writes in the preface to her book Ongoing Return: Mapping Memory and Story Telling in Palestine (University of North Carolina Press, 2026).…
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The Nakba between hypocritical remembrance and oblivion
On the eve of the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the silence around the world speaks volumes about oblivion. At the UN, a brief program, so far tentative, lasting 2 and half hours, is what the international institution will dedicate to an ongoing rupture that escalated to genocide. The…
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The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
While independent and alternative media wrought a change in US public opinion since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, mainstream media provided Israel with a coverup for its crimes. “This book does not make for easy reading,” Rashid Khalidi wrote in the introduction to Robin Andersen’s The Complicit Lens:…
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EU sanctions on settlers is turning a blind eye to colonialism
Some weeks ago, EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas commented about the futility of suspending the EU-Israeli Association Agreement, saying it would not stop settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. The EU has now sanctioned three Israeli settles and four settler organisations. “It was high time we move from…
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What has Guterres supported in Gaza?
In March this year, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had stated that the UN is “cooperating actively with structures created by the Board of Peace.” By the time Guterres made his statement, US Board of Peace High Representative for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov had already warned, in February this year, that…
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Football is not ‘the beautiful game’ when it collaborates with genocide
FIFA President Gianni Infantino played an infantile game at the 76th FIFA congress when he encouraged the Palestinian Football Association President Jibril Rajoub and Israel’s FA Vice President Basim Sheikh Suliman to shake hands. Faced with Rajoub’s refusal, Infantino then said, “We will work together, President Rajoub, Vice President Suliman.…
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Who truly faces an existential threat?
“What I saw today is the existential threat to the State of Israel,” former Mossad director Tamir Pardo stated after a visit to Palestinian villages that have been targeted by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. However, dismissing Zionist history to selectively focus on settler violence absolves Israel of…
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How the UN maintains Gaza as an exception to the detriment of the Palestinian people
“Lebanon cannot be another Gaza,” the UN Secretary General’s Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said last week in response to a question during a press briefing regarding Israel’s war in Lebanon. Earlier this month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich openly spoke about Israel’s plans to extend its non-declared borders into Syria and…
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Is the EU willing to deconstruct colonialism and its role in maintaining it?
Sanctions, deemed effective by the EU when applied so swiftly to Russia and Iran, do not have the same effect when it comes to Israel, according to EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas. Asked about the EU’s double standards when it comes to Israel so swiftly applied by the EU…
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Europe still blurs the line between support and betrayal
“Europe is the biggest supporter of the Palestinian people,” EU High Representative Kaja Kallas said to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee yesterday. However, while there have been shifts in individual European countries’ stances as regards Israel, mostly as a result of the economic ramifications of the US-Israeli attacks against Iran,…
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Beyond rhetoric, is there political will to move away from the two-state paradigm?
Europe’s stance on Palestine, although currently slightly shifting, remains “below the level required,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin said in a recent interview with Anadolu. “What is needed now are practical decisions, not more statements,” Shahin added while noting that several European countries are speaking more clearly on Israel’s…
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Cracks in Europe’s support for colonial violence and genocide
Spain was recently targeted by Israel’s antisemitism narrative after an effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blown up in El Burgo, during the Burning of Judas festival. “The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of the @sanchezcastejon government’s systematic incitement,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated on…
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Varying degrees of silence over colonialism and annexation
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of a settlement in Benjamin, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel will expand in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, widening its non-existent borders. The comments are the latest in a series of threats made by Smotrich in which bombing on…
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In Israel’s colonial ethnic cleansing, the world fails stand for decolonisation
From genocide in Gaza to the death penalty in the occupied West Bank, Israel seeks the annihilation of Palestinian resistance and, on a slower pace, further ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. The latest statistics, which have been considered conservative estimates but continue to be shared as the officially recognised…
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A quest for justice through the wrong channels
In his last interview as UNRWA’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini stated that he asked for a UN investigation into Israel’s killing of almost 400 aid workers since the start of the genocide in October 2023. Speaking to the press in Geneva, Lazzarini said that “a high level panel of experts”…
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Separating land from the people supports Israel’s colonial expansion
This year marked the 50th anniversary of Land Day in colonised Palestine. On 30th March 1976, Israeli forces killed 6 Palestinians protesting against colonial land grab in the Galilee. Fifty years later, the international community shows no recognition of land day and remains passively, purportedly opposed, to Israel’s colonial expansion…
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The envisaged five stages of Israel’s next colonial phase
Nickolay Mladenov, the former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, now the Board of Peace High Representative for Gaza, is misrepresenting Gaza to the full capability of Western complicity with colonialism. Over the span of eight months, the Board of Peace is supposed to implement the five…