Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ziyad Motala
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The UAE: Anti-Islamic alignment and the politics of illusion
The defining feature of the UAE model is not strength but illusion. The Iran war has exposed the fraud at its core: a glass city pretending to be a fortress. Its entire edifice rests on a belief it cannot manufacture, that it is safe, neutral, open, and insulated from the…
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Not radicalism but rivalry: Why autocrats fear the Brotherhood
The Washington Post has published many fine pieces over the years. This piece, published on March 25, 2026, entitled “The Mideast pushed out the Muslim Brotherhood. Here’s where it landed” (https://wapo.st/4v2kHhF), is not one of them. It is instead an illustration of a broader and troubling pattern in which influential…
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Rented power, borrowed strength: The illusion of Gulf power in war
There is increasing talk of Gulf monarchies entering a war with Iran. This prospect invites not admiration but scrutiny. It would expose, in stark and unforgiving terms, the difference between purchased power and actual capacity. Frankly, a cynic of these regimes might be tempted to welcome such a development. It…
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Bribes, bombs and blind eyes: The West’s war on principle
There is something tragic about the present moment, a theatre of contradictions staged around the attack on Iran, so brazen that one is tempted to admire the choreography before confronting the wreckage it produces. At its centre stands Donald Trump, declaring with unflinching confidence that the war has been won,…
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Selective law and convenient outrage
On 11 March 2026 two statements emerged from the international system that together reveal more about contemporary diplomacy than any solemn lecture on international law. First, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution condemning Iran for missile and drone attacks across the Gulf and for actions affecting navigation in…
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Teaching international law in an age that no longer pretends to obey it
Teaching international law has always required disciplined idealism. For those of us in the academy who reject the conceit of a benign American imperial order, it is an exercise in professional candour. One must teach rules while explaining, without euphemism, that the most powerful states do not feel bound by…
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Never again, except for Palestinians: The moral realignment
Western leaders readily rediscover moral language when horror arrives on their own shoreline. After the murderous attack at Bondi Beach, Australia’s political class, rightly, denounced terrorism and mourned the dead. A nation gathered. Candles were lit. The grammar of moral clarity briefly returned to public life. That clarity evaporates the…
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FIFA’s moral collapse: The day FIFA forgot what peace means
The leadership of FIFA has always had a talent for mistaking theatrics for virtue. Under its president, Gianni Infantino, the organisation has elevated that habit into a new low with its latest contribution to global farce. It has decided to drape a peace prize around the neck of Donald Trump.…
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Britain, Canada and Australia’s hollow recognition: Recognition without consequence
On 21 September 2025, Britain, Canada, and Australia announced their recognition of a Palestinian state. The announcement was trumpeted as historic, a long-delayed acknowledgment of the obvious. Yet the prose of their declarations betrayed a nervousness that renders the act more symbolic than substantive. It is one thing to proclaim…
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Israel’s bombing of Qatar: A lesson in servility
Israel’s strike on a Qatari building housing Hamas negotiators was not a military necessity. It was a declaration. By attempting to assassinate those seeking to mediate an end to the siege of Gaza, Israel made plain that peace is intolerable because peace requires sharing. The only peace Israel desires is…
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Courtiers in kufiyas: The grotesque spectacle of Arab “scholars” subjugation before Israeli power
There is something nauseating, indeed obscene, about watching Arab dignitaries such as Hassen Chalhoumi, the state sponsored Imam in France and others in tailored thobes and expensive drapes extend obsequious courtesies to the very figurehead of a regime that has unleashed genocidal fury on Gaza. To witness the Israeli President,…
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The desert pharaohs: Gulf monarchs, Trump, and the great betrayal of Palestine and the Islamic conscience
In the annals of modern statecraft, there are few spectacles as garish, or as morally bankrupt, as the partnership between the Gulf monarchies and Donald Trump now serving his second term as President of the United States. These family dynasties, gilded in petro-wealth and at times draped in religious symbolism,…
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The white man’s burden redux: Trump, Musk, and the fabricated persecution of Afrikaners
With all the moral clarity of a man who once mused about injecting disinfectant to treat COVID; recently floated the idea of taking over Greenland; and reportedly thought nuclear weapons might be a fun tool for hurricane management, Donald Trump has now taken up the righteous cause of South Africa’s…
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Big Tech’s complicity in genocide: The unforgivable silence of online platforms
A damning report, “Palestinian Digital Rights, Genocide, and Big Tech Accountability”, by 7amleh, a Palestinian-led non-profit organisation that is focused on protecting the human rights of Palestinians, has laid bare the disturbing and active role that major online platforms and big tech companies play in perpetuating human rights abuses against…