Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Humanitarian aid and Israel’s ‘voluntary migration’ scheme
Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said earlier this week that, “We have offered ourselves to host injured people from Palestine but also children from Palestine to come to Europe and stay here until the war is over.” Israel would be thrilled at such an idea, for sure. “Voluntary migration”...
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Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba
Leafing through this book upon receiving it, the discrepancy between the thriving life in Palestine before the Nakba and the Zionist narrative of the barren land was striking. Reading and becoming familiar with the content, Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba (Haymarket Books, 2024), is...
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Genocidal intent, action and silence
While international institutions are still debating whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and Israel’s arms exports reached a record $13.1 billion in 2023, a report by AP details how the occupation state is killing “entire Palestinian families”. Genocide is happening and the international community is so impressed by...
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Weaponising aid beyond starvation
Israel’s raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp killed 274 Palestinians and wounded 700 more in order to free four healthy-looking Israeli hostages. The discrepancy was stark. However, what stands out in the murderous Israeli operation is the weaponising of aid to provide cover for the massacre. Denied by both...
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Genocide or forced transfer; Danon’s choice of colonial propaganda at the UN
“In the face of the diplomatic terror that rears its head these days, I am obliged to present the truth for the sake of the people of Israel and our common future in our homeland,” was Danny Danon’s response to being appointed Israel ambassador to the UN for a...
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The US role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza
US President Joe Biden’s interview with Time magazine attracted the attention of mainstream and Israeli media due to one particular comment. “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” he uttered in response to the question about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “prolonging the war...
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How Israel perceives threats to its existence when there are none
The UN helped to create Israel with the 1947 Partition Plan, Resolution 181, but that is not enough for Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan. In an interview with Israel National News at the Jerusalem Conference in New York, Erdan embarked upon a tirade on the dangers...
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Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom
“Israeli universities are not independent of the Israeli security state but, rather, serve as an extension of its violence.” Describing a raid by Shin Bet on Birzeit University in April 2022, Maya Wind sets the scene for her book Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian...
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Only decolonisation can stop Israel, not more futile resolutions
UN resolutions did not stop Israel’s colonial expansion or its violence. And neither will they stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As long as the international community fragments Israel’s violations into separate events in the same manner as news reporting, nothing will stop the genocide. On Tuesday, Algeria proposed a draft...
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Israel has killed displaced Palestinians since 1948, not just since 7 October
Israel’s latest bombing of Rafah, which killed at least 45 forcibly-displaced Palestinians, has rightly prompted an international outcry. It was a hypocritical response from the international community, though, which has contributed to, or watched passively, Israel’s slaughter of well over 35,000 Palestinians since October. Why do some air strikes...
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Genocide, recognising a Palestinian State and the two-state paradigm
“President Biden … has been equally emphatic on the record that the two-state solution should be brought about through direct negotiations through the parties, not for unilateral recognition,” White House National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, stated during a news briefing. Ireland, Spain and Norway’s decision to recognise a Palestinian...
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Diplomatic fatigue and heavy strain, but what about the genocide?
Anyone listening to EU officials speak about Gaza would think that the only problem that the enclave is facing is a disruption in the distribution of humanitarian aid. International law, however, describes what is happening in Gaza very clearly – genocide – so why can’t the EU High Representative...
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The macabre US reassurances approving of Israel’s genocide
US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew spoke in terms of protecting genocidal action and complicity last Sunday when he explained that, “fundamentally, nothing has changed in the basic relationship” between the US and Israel. They are words which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t really need to hear, of...
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The US continues to provide cover for Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains set in his plans to invade Rafah, with or without US assistance. Responding to US President Joe Biden’s warning earlier this week that arms supplies will be limited if Israel invades Rafah, Netanyahu responded, “If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails.”...
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Australia’s warped view of violence excludes Israel’s genocide
Australia, a country with a colonial legacy that still needs to be reckoned with, is the latest to find fault with the decolonial Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. The reasons given by Australian government officials for their opposition to the slogan are...
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The EU is careful not to antagonise Israel, so supports its genocide
Prioritising its trade and economic agreements with Israel puts the EU at a disadvantage when it comes to leveraging its purported influence with regard to human rights. It is both incapable and unwilling to disrupt the status quo, as the unfolding genocide over the past seven months has demonstrated....
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Two small protests in the Occupied West Bank that speak louder than words
As focus remains consistently on Gaza, so far, Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank have maintained their anti-colonial struggle. Stepping in where the Palestinian Authority fails to act, because it is beholden to the foreign powers allowing its existence, Palestinians protested against international diplomats who blatantly support Israel’s alleged...
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In Netanyahu’s warped mind, committing war crimes is Israel’s right
According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “The court established to prevent atrocities like the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people is now targeting the one state of the Jewish people.” That’s not true. Zionism created an exclusive Jewish state dependent upon the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while exploiting...
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Knowledge Production in Higher Education Between Europe and the Middle East
The perception of education has “historically been seen as enriching one’s Self through the encounter with an Other”, and this sets the scene for the collection of essays published in Knowledge Production in Higher Education Between Europe and the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2023), edited by Michelle Pace...
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Israel diplomatic harassment over the UNSC resolution
As expected, the US used its veto during the UN Security Council vote on whether Palestine should be given full UN membership. Twelve countries voted for the resolution and two – the UK and Switzerland – abstained. A US official who spoke to the Times of Israel opined that...
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From the river to the sea – a call for rightful decolonisation
Israeli media is celebrating another win for its narrative, as the US Congress passed a resolution condemning the Palestinian resistance chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, as anti-Semitic. The resolution’s text reads like a series of snippets that supposedly justify the anti-Semitic nature of...
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UK rhetoric shows that retaliation is of greater concern than genocide
Since 7 October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been including Iran in his rhetoric of violence, disseminating the image of poor, beleaguered Israel battling all alone in a hostile region. This image is entirely fake. Israel is an aggressive, expansionist settler-colonial state. Israel has turned Gaza into a mass...
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A change in rhetoric, not in humanitarian aid
To keep reading that Israel’s strike on the World Central Kitchen (WCK) that killed foreign aid workers besides Palestinians was the pivot point to slightly alter US President Joe Biden’s rhetoric, is nothing more but an ongoing affirmation that Palestinian lives do not matter. Referring to an interview which Biden...
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Appeasing Israel prevents neither deliberate air strikes nor genocide
The World Central Kitchen charity has just lost seven of its staff as a result of an Israeli air strike targeting their vans, and yet, in an op-ed for Ynet News, the organisation’s founder Jose Andres conveys a contradictory message: Israel has deliberately targeted the organisation but, at the...