Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Israel is controlling the humanitarian paradigm
Since the early days of the latest and ongoing phase of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, humanitarian aid has become a major weapon. It was on 9 October 2023 that the then Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a complete siege to be imposed on Gaza. “There will be no...
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To Stand With Palestine: Transnational Resistance and Political Evolution in the US
“At the very centre of it, settler-colonialism is a zero-sum game. It’s either the coloniser’s account or that of the indigenous inhabitants.” The preface to Karam Dana’s recent publication, To Stand with Palestine: Translational Resistance and Political Evolution in the US (Columbia University Press, 2025) is bleak in terms...
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Funding the PA is for the benefit of Israel and the EU, not the Palestinians
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas met with the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, in March. The meeting was replete with the usual hyperbole that still clings to the defunct two-state paradigm, the PA’s reform and funding for this purpose. Yesterday, Reuters reported that the...
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Exposing the UN’s hypocrisy of humanitarian aid and ceasefires
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council this week that, “As aid has dried up, the floodgates of horror have re-opened. Gaza is a killing field – and civilians are in an endless death loop.” With not a single mention of the word genocide in his entire...
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The two-state paradigm is killing Palestinians in conjunction with genocide
Two announcements within the span of a few days about a Palestinian state, or the absence of it, should be enough evidence to prove that the international community is playing diplomatic games for its own benefit, nobody else’s. “A Palestinian state will not be established,” said Israeli Economy and Industry...
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The humanitarian paradigm is as deadly as genocide
As Israel omits Palestinians from Gaza in its depraved genocide, let the international community omit all its hypocritical rhetoric of “concern”, “deeply disturbed”, “deplores” and “catastrophic”. The international community is comfortably ensconced in its complicity and the humanitarian paradigm is its veneer. Meanwhile, the world was regaled with more horrific...
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The Lives of Rain
The many facets of exile are immediately apparent in Nathalie Handal’s collection of poetry, The Lives of Rain. Voices in the diaspora are made of memory and new experiences, in places that feel as fleeting as the place of origin. Yet the realities, whether derived from memory, inherited from...
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The road to colonial land grab ties into humanitarian deprivation
Within Israel, a big reckoning with the entire Zionist colonial enterprise should be taking place. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a further land grab in Gaza, ostensibly to force Hamas to surrender and bring the hostages back, relatives were reportedly shocked. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum issued...
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Wasting time has never been deadlier for Palestinians
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found it pertinent to reiterate that, “We are negotiating under fire.” The brief statement was how he framed the decision to continue the genocide in Gaza, only this time there was a full admission that the genocide is the way towards implementing the...
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What EU-enforced oblivion looks like
If there has ever been a blatant form of oblivion in the EU’s political communications, the European Council’s conclusions on 20 March exceed all previous examples. “The European Council is deeply alarmed by the dramatic military escalation in the Middle East and the risk this represents for the entire...
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Fake compassion will not protect Palestinians in Gaza
In a message to AFP, Fatah spokesman Monther Al-Hayek said that Hamas must show compassion for Gaza’s population and called upon the resistance movement to “step aside from governing and fully recognise that the battle ahead will lead to the end of Palestinians’ existence.” If Palestinians are annihilated, though, it...
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What normalising genocide looks like in terms of rhetoric
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that, “From now on, negotiations will be conducted under fire.” His words were total nonsense, of course, because the previous negotiations for the ceasefire agreement were definitely conducted under fire. Netanyahu’s statement condemns to oblivion the previous long months of Israel’s genocide...
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Unenforced ICC arrest warrants are just part of the wider Zionist impunity framework
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be following up on his Hungarian counterpart Victor Orban’s invitation to visit his country, Israeli media have reported. This, despite the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu, which signatories to the Rome Statute are obliged to enforce. As is usually the case...
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Israel’s use of human shields in Gaza is part of its genocide against Palestinians
Now that attention has shifted from the genocide in Gaza to the Trump administration, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has admitted that it is investigating instances where Palestinians were used as human shields by its troops in the coastal enclave. “In several cases, the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division opened...
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External impositions only create more oppression for Palestinians
Palestinians in Gaza are caught between two externally-imposed plans, neither of which prioritises the decolonisation of their land. The US plan to take over Gaza and develop it as a “Rivera of the Middle East” for Israel’s benefit, which the latter has of course endorsed, is countered by the...
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The EU needs to clarify where it stands on Gaza
Speaking at the Emergency Summit of the League of Arab States this week, European Council President Antonio Costa’s intervention was replete with normalised inaccuracies. Besides the usual two-state rhetoric – the EU and the international community continuously display a tenacity towards the moribund “solution” – Costa’s speech seemed to...
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Whose interests do the plans for Gaza serve?
While US President Donald Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and create the “Riviera of the Middle East” has been largely opposed by the rest of the world, the proposal put forth by Egypt leaves much unanswered. What stands out from the details revealed so far is...
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The Time Beneath the Concrete: Palestine Between Camp and Colony
Finalised during the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which Israel started on 7 October, 2023, Nasser Abourahme’s study, The Time Beneath the Concrete: Palestine Between Camp and Colony (Duke University Press, 2025), brings the Palestinian refugee camp and its many layers of context and significance to the helm. “The only...
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Universities should stop acting as mouthpieces for Israel
Australia’s Group of Eight (GoE) leading research universities has drafted a new definition of anti-Semitism which is set to be adopted across all of the country’s 39 universities. Its text specifically bans calling for Israel’s elimination and conflates Judaism with Zionism to reinforce the Israeli narrative. “For most, but not...
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Palestinians are being displaced by rhetoric and action
Rejecting Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians by rhetoric does not work. However, the Palestinian Authority and world leaders seem to convolute statements into purported displays of action, when the only action being taken is by Israel in its quest for ever more colonial expansion. At the 12th session of the...
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Gaza in My Phone
It is one thing to watch the news, and another to internalise the human aspect. While world leaders debated the slightest form of temporary relief for Palestinians, making it clear to the rest of us watching the Israeli genocide in Gaza unfolding that our political opposition does not matter,...
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Forced transfer and the West’s reliance on the humanitarian paradigm
Emboldened by the US and the international community’s acceptance of its genocide, Israel is not taking long to emerge from the shadows of its own rhetoric. After US President Donald Trump said that there is no right of return for Palestinians under the proposed take-over of Gaza for real...
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The PA’s delusions are dangerous for Palestinians
“Whoever believes that he can impose a new deal of the century, or displace our Palestinian people and seize any inch of our land is delusional,” said Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas at the 38th African Summit in Addis Ababa on Saturday. Such words would have resonated well had...
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The international community sold out the Palestinians decades ago on the right of return
“Gaza is an essential part of a future Palestinian state,” the EU Spokesman for Foreign Affairs Anouar El Anouni stated belatedly in response to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of taking over Gaza and remodelling into a so-called “Riviera of the Middle East”. While the EU retained its diplomatic posturing...