Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Binoy Kampmark
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Sanctioning Fever: The United States, European Union and Free Speech
At present, there is a pot-calling-the-kettle-black approach being taken by the European Union and the United States regarding the imposition of sanctions upon individuals deemed hostile to free speech. On 23 December, the US State Department announced that it would bar five European citizens accused of spearheading efforts to pressure…
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Indiscriminate suppression: Attacking pro-Palestinian protests after the Bondi killings
It has become a wallowing cringe. The extolling of multi-cultural values, the incessant self-praise of diversity, variety and cosmopolitanism, only to then impose, in the name of such values, a restrictive regime of speech, language and conduct seemed suitable to – who else? – the jerky authorities. In diversity we…
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Using the slain: Israel exploits the Bondi Beach shootings
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely passes an opportunity to comment upon the way Jews in other countries are treated. While the manic hatred directed against Jews remains one of history’s grotesque legacies, opportunism in the Netanyahu government is a ready instinct. With a customary sense of perversion, Netanyahu has…
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Perfectly appropriate: Trump, Infantino and the FIFA Peace Prize
He craves it, and, to some extent, his desire was satisfied. President Donald Trump did get a peace prize. Not the peace prize picked out by self-important Norwegian non-entities, but the inaugural curiosity of FIFA, an organisation famed for opacity, corruption and graft. What the critics missed in all of…
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A ceasefire in name only: Gaza’s prolonged purgatory
A ceasefire can be a strange thing. The assumption, generally speaking, is that the parties to it restrain themselves for a period of time, ordering their forces and disciplining their charges from straying. But straying happens, transgressions inevitable. Some are genuine enough: silly misunderstandings, hot headed confusion, a fear that…
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Clownish proscriptions: Challenging the Palestine Action ban
On 20 June, members of Palestine Action broke into a Royal Airforce base at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, going on to spray paint two military aircraft activists claimed were being used in “direct participation in the commission of genocide and war crimes across the Middle East.” This was deemed so horrible…
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Things happen: Trump, the Crown Prince and killing Khashoggi
The Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is at it again. Gulling, wooing, and grinning his way into the establishment of another country, he is greasing palms and making deals. Effusive and flattering of his host, this time US President Donald Trump, he received a state welcome on 18…
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Clandestine cleansing: Al-Majd Europe, Gaza and Israeli policy
According to its website, the mission of Al-Majd Europe, yet another odd charity organisation operating in the mash and rubble of Gaza, is “dedicated to providing essential humanitarian aid, educational opportunities, and sustainable development projects to Palestinian communities.” Leaving little by way of information, the charity was clearly one of…
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Reviving UNRWA’s remit: The ICJ, Israel and humanitarian aid in Gaza
Few times in its history has the International Court of Justice been this busy, if ever. For anyone ignorant of the world court’s existence till now, it has blanketed news coverage with provisional orders and advisory opinions on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Each order is accompanied by another layering…
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Worlds extinguished: Hostage returns, central casting and the Gaza ceasefire
Depending on which source you consult, the twenty-point peace plan of President Donald Trump for securing peace in Gaza shows much exultance and extravagant omission. The exultance was initially focused on the return of the hostages. It then shifted to the broader strategic goals of the various parties. Commentary on…
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Outsized and eccentric: The farce behind the Nobel Peace Prize
The fuss about the Nobel Peace Prize has always been excessively outsized to its relevance. Like most prizes, the panel is bound to have its treasure trove of prejudices and eccentricities in reaching any decision. Thin resumes have swayed the Norwegian committee to acts of dottiness. Surprising moments of dark…
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Estranged realities: Israel and the Global Sumud Flotilla
Showing that cloddishness that we have come to expect from them, Israel’s detention of the activists on the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) was a coarse and violent affair. Having been intercepted in international waters on route to Gaza to break the Israeli-imposed blockade, the 470 or so activists, hailing from…
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Palestinian subordination: Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan
He had moments of discomfort and embarrassment – pressed into calling the Qatari prime minister by his host to apologise for striking Doha and made to pay lip service to the prospect of a Palestinian state – but Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu had many reasons to be pleased. On 29 September,…
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Elder abuse in international relations: Attacking the United Nations at 80
Elder abuse in the frothy swirl of debates regarding the role of the United Nations is currently modish. The body has, after all, reached the age of 80 years. It has been a life ramshackle, rickety and marked with failure. But it has also been one of audacity, experimentation…
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Attempts to delegitimise: Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly
It takes a lot to make UN delegates walk out from an address to the General Assembly. But this was precisely what Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, managed to achieve in his September 26 speech. His address began by attempting to show his country as a guardian of law and…
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Violating the terms of service: Microsoft, Azure and the IDF
On 6 August, The Guardian reported that “multiple individuals have asserted that the IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] is using Azure for the storage of files of phone calls obtained through broad or mass surveillance of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.” The tale began in 2021, when Microsoft, the…
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Symbolic declarations: Palestinian recognition at the UN General Assembly
“True to the historic commitment of my country to the Middle East, to peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, this is why I declare today, France recognises the state of Palestine.” So stated President Emmanuel Macron to more than 140 leaders in attendance at the United Nations General Assembly on…
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Clear conclusions: A UN commission finds Israel responsible for genocide in Gaza
Yet another blistering addition to the ghoulish accounts of cruelty regarding the ongoing actions of Israel in Gaza made its appearance on September 16. It came in the form of a report by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a lashing publication finding…
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Buying time: Israel’s rogue attack on Qatar
It’s all part of a stratagem, bleak and brutal. With Palestinian recognition being promised by France, the UK, Canada and Australia at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli aggression is becoming more brazen and panicked. Time must be bought on one vital front: creating a Greater…
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Destroying Gaza City
Destroying cultures and eradicating the legacies of a people is a game the parochial and the dim-witted delight in. While this should be shunned and punished in international law, a general discomfort of purpose seems to trouble the friends of Israel as the state goes about its business of ruining…
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Blunting Justice: Trump and the International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court bash fest is getting ever more frenetic in Washington and among the law shredding members of the Netanyahu cabinet in Israel. Last month, the Trump administration smacked sanctions on judicial members Kimberly Prost of Canada and Nicolas Guillou of France via Executive Order 14203. Prosecutors also…
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Nuclear snobbery and atomic anniversaries
How do we commemorate it? The atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War on 6 and 9 August 1945 by the United States remain the only examples of the use of such a weapon in history. Rather than banishing any temptation to use them, the wholehearted…
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Let them in: Opening Gaza to the foreign press corps
The Fourth Estate may not be in a good way, corrupted and compromised as it is, but in some instances, it remains the only light cast over the predations and ghastliness of power. For that precise reason, the state of Israel has been most cautious, to the point of folly,…
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Useful expedient: Expelling Iran’s ambassador to Australia
The rank odour of opportunity seems to have presented itself to Australia’s Albanese government. To balance its apparently principled promise to recognise Palestinian statehood come the 80th United Nations General Assembly next month, it seemed only fair that some firm measure be taken against another Islamic outfit to balance the…