Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Ramzy Baroud
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From Gaza to the West Bank: Israel’s unyielding war machine
“A year of combat”—this is how Israel’s new Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, described 2025 at a conference organised by the Israeli Ministry of Defence. The exact sentence, translated from Hebrew, was: “The year 2025 will continue to be a year of combat.” The word ‘continue’ is crucial, suggesting that…
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The great march of hope: Gaza’s defiance against erasure
The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on 27 January felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory. Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of…
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Politics or empty rhetoric? Trump’s call for ethnic cleansing in Gaza
Just as nearly a million Palestinians began returning to their destroyed region in the northern Gaza Strip on 27 January, US President Donald Trump began speaking of something else entirely: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians out of Gaza. His statements, which he repeated on multiple occasions, were typical of Trump’s…
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Dear world: This is what Palestinian unity looks like
Even those of us who have long emphasised the importance of the Palestinian people’s voice, experience and collective action in Palestinian history must have been shocked by the cultural revolution resulting from the Israeli war against the people in Gaza. By cultural revolution, I mean the defiant and rebellious narrative…
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Gaza’s unbreakable resistance: A historical perspective on the war and its aftermath
The problem with political analysis is that it often lacks historical perspective and is mostly limited to recent events. The current analysis of the Israeli war on Gaza falls victim to this narrow thinking. The ceasefire agreement, signed between Palestinian groups and Israel under Egyptian, Qatari and US mediation in…
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Gaza ceasefire at last: How Israel’s ‘first defeat’ will shape the country’s future
The headline in the Times of Israel says it all: “For the first time, Israel just lost a war.” Regardless of the reasoning behind this statement, which the article divides into 14 points, it suggests a shattering and unprecedented event in the 76-year history of the state of Israel. The…
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The fight for dignity: Reshaping Gaza’s post-war narrative
Following every Israeli war on Gaza, numerous narratives emerge. Some claim victory for one side and defeat for the other, while others – knowingly or unknowingly – attempt to exploit the aftermath for their own purposes. The latter is not always nefarious, as the humanitarian calamities resulting from Israel’s actions…
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The Gaza Genocide: the fall of Israel’s immunity
A dramatic escape was cited by Israeli media as the reason that Yuval Vagdani, a soldier in the Israeli army, managed to escape justice in Brazil. Vagdani was accused by a Palestinian advocacy legal group, the Hind Rajab Foundation, of carrying out well-documented crimes in Gaza. He is not the…
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Israel destroyed Gaza ‘for generations to come’ and the world stayed silent
The first official reference to Gaza becoming increasingly uninhabitable was made by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2012, when the population of the Gaza Strip was estimated at 1.8 million inhabitants. The intention of the report, “The Gaza Strip: The Economic Situation and the Prospects…
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The war criminal ‘victim’: Netanyahu’s inevitable fate
Israel’s notorious former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has suddenly disappeared into obscurity. The man who served in his country’s military for about 35 years, in politics for nearly 10, and oversaw major wars, including the ongoing genocide in Gaza, has retreated quickly from the headlines and political significance. In his…
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As it fights Israel’s war in Jenin, can the Palestinian Authority be saved?
The latest news about the Palestinian Authority’s so-called “Protecting the Homeland” operation in the Jenin refugee camp paints a grim picture. Nine Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing crackdown which began on 5 December, including a young journalist, Shatha Al-Sabbagh. The campaign, as reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz,…
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Letters from Gaza – ‘Alhamdulillah. We are not okay’
Over the past 14 months, I have received hundreds of messages from family members throughout the Gaza Strip. The nature of the messages often conveyed a sense of urgency and panic but, at times, contentment in God’s will. Some of those who wrote these notes have been killed in Israeli…
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A Palestinian year in review: Genocide, resistance and unanswered questions
The story of the Israeli war on Gaza can be epitomized in the story of the Israeli war on Beit Lahia, a small Palestinian town in the northern part of the Strip. When Israel launched its ground operations in Gaza, Beit Lahia was already largely destroyed due to many days…
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The West Bank’s CIA men: Why is the PA killing Palestinians in Jenin?
Following a ten-day siege, the Palestinian Authority began a violent raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on 14 December. The PA security forces used tactics similar to those used by the Israeli occupation forces in their routine attacks on the area. The camp, which is…
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Israel is ready to annex the West Bank, but why now?
Israel is getting ready to annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The annexation will be a major step backwards on the road to Palestinian freedom and will likely serve as a catalyst for a new Palestinian uprising. Although annexation has been on the Israeli agenda for years, this time around…
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The road for Palestine liberation can only go through Palestine itself
A new kind of unity around Palestine is finally finding its way to the Palestine solidarity movement worldwide. The reason is obvious: Gaza. The world’s first live-streamed genocide is taking place in the Gaza Strip. The growing compassion and solidarity with the Palestinian victims have helped to re-centre priorities from…
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The world owes Palestine this much – please stop censoring Palestinian voices
Social media censorship is a global phenomenon, but the war on pro-Palestinian views on social media represents a different kind of censorship, with consequences that can only be described as dire. Long before the current devastating war on Gaza and the escalation of Israeli violence and repression in the Occupied…
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The Gaza genocide and the limits of Israeli propaganda
The ongoing genocide in Gaza is unprecedented. Nothing that Israel and its supporters can say or do will avoid the historical accountability of the extermination of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The above assertion is critical, both for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and achieving Palestinian freedom.…
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Israel and the West’s war on itself: The true meaning of ICC arrest warrants
The arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are a diplomatic disaster for Israel, reported the Economist, a “hard stigma” for the Israeli leader, wrote the Guardian, and a “major blow”, said others. But a term that…
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‘Genocide’ vs ‘Bigger Genocide’ in Gaza: Time to decolonise our minds
“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well,” wrote Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth (1961). What the iconic anti-colonial philosopher and psychiatrist was essentially arguing is that the mind must be decolonised first,…
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No more ‘deals’: what Palestinians want and will fight to achieve
A major problem in American thinking about the Middle East is the utter rejection of the notion that Palestinian rights are fundamental, if at all relevant, to the coveted peace and stability of the region. Long before Donald Trump’s first “Deal of the Century” was revealed officially on 28 January,…
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A nation in denial: Why Israel’s defeat is imminent
The paradoxical phrase “running away forward” is one of the most apt descriptions that illustrates the state of affairs in Israel right now. It seems that everything that the Zionist state has done in the past year or so is a mere attempt to deny, distract from or escape imminent…
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End of empathy: Did the Gaza genocide render the UN irrelevant?
Francesca Albanese did not mince her words. In a strongly worded speech at the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee on 29 October, the UN Special Rapporteur deviated from the typical line of other UN officials. She directed her statements to those in attendance. “Is it possible that after 42,000…
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Voting against genocide: How Gaza defeated the Democratic establishment
Arab and Muslim American voters did not remove Democrats from office, nor did they cost Kamala Harris the Oval Office. They merely sent a strong message that Palestine matters, not only to Arabs and Muslims but to many Americans as well. The ones who cost the Democrats the elections are…