Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ismail Salahuddin
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Epstein and the quiet financing of occupation
There are crimes that shock because they are brutal, and there are crimes that endure because they are respectable, well documented, tax-deductible, and protected by silence. The story that emerges from the Epstein financial records belongs firmly to the second category, not because it is less violent, but because it…
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When war won the Nobel: Trump, Netanyahu, and the gospel of genocide.
When Donald Trump stood before the Israeli Knesset and declared with his usual bravado, “We make the best weapons in the world, and we’ve given a lot to Israel,” he wasn’t talking about peace, he was boasting about war. His words were not a celebration of diplomacy but an open…
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Islamophobia is the new global currency of power
There is no more honest way to describe the world we live in than this: Islamophobia has become the new global currency of power. It is traded in the speeches of politicians, exchanged in the deals of diplomats, printed in the pages of media, and laundered through the language of…
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How Modi’s India became Israel’s loudest cheerleader in Gaza’s war
India once stood with Palestine. It was not just lip service: in the years of Nehru and Indira Gandhi, India spoke with moral authority against colonialism, apartheid, and occupation. Palestine was not just another cause; it was seen as part of India’s own story of freedom from empire. For decades,…
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Selective victimhood: How Western media shapes the census of lives that “deserve” outrage
The moral compass of our age can be measured not only by the wars that rage and the bombs that fall but also by the silences that follow. It is not the violence alone that defines the world we live in but the way that violence is narrated, the way…
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No alibis in resistance: Why Roy’s Penguin choice matters
Mohammad Faisal’s response “The futility of demanding purity” to my piece “Penguin, Palestine, and the price of Roy’s resistance” argues that the critique of Arundhati Roy amounts to a misplaced “purity test.” He suggests that an impossible innocence is being asked of her, and that doing so trivialises the very…
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Genocide as spectacle: The Netflix era of war
In an age where our phones glow with the endless stream of breaking news, short videos, and curated feeds, genocide itself has been transformed into consumable content. We live not simply in an era of wars but in what might be called the Netflix era of war, where livestreamed destruction…
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Gaza and the death of conscience
There are moments in history that strip away every illusion we carry about ourselves. Gaza is one such moment. For nearly two years, the world has witnessed a genocide live on its screens. We have seen children pulled from rubble, families starving in tents, hospitals turned to dust. We cannot…
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Penguin, Palestine, and the price of Roy’s resistance
There are some figures in our public life who become larger than their words. They begin as writers, but soon turn into symbols. Arundhati Roy is one such figure. For many in India and across the world, she embodies resistance: the novelist who abandoned the comforts of literary celebrity to…