Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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Borrell’s ‘five-dimension plan’ aligns Israeli and EU interests
After the Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell outlined the reasons why peace should be given a chance. Not only was genocide completely missing from his narrative, it was also said that Sinwar’s killing “should mark a turning point at…
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CNN has just tried to garner even more impunity for Israel and its genocide
When Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza in which it has killed at least 43,000 Palestinians, and displaced the entire population, CNN’s way of showing some humanity in the face of such violence was to focus on the trauma of those responsible for the killing and maiming. The colonisers’…
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Gender and Political Support: Women and Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Minna Cowper-Coles’s quantitative and qualitative research on the gender gap in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) shows that women are more likely to support Hamas. Gender and Political Support: Women and Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Routledge, 2023) gives a detailed analysis of the findings of the research, against…
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The US approves of all of Israel’s genocidal methods
In April this year, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is known to have been involved in covert operations for regime change, delivered its report on Gaza to Congress. It concluded that Israel is deliberately blocking aid from reaching Palestinians in the enclave. So did the State Department’s…
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Australia relies on Israeli weapons, which means it now relies on genocide
A month after the UK suspended 30 arms licences out of 350 on account of the weapons being used in violation of international law in Gaza, Australia has announced its own review of its arms sales to Israel. Australia says that it has not supplied weapons to Israel since the…
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The West’s hypocrisy is a bottomless pit for Palestinians
At the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted a war against Hamas. After killing 42,500 civilians, displacing the entirety of Gaza’s population and killing prominent Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, Netanyahu took to his colonial podium again to remind the…
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The psychological manipulation behind the Generals’ Plan
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contemplated implementing the Generals’ Plan in Gaza, backed by former Israeli Defence Forces planning and operations chief General Giora Eiland who has described the siege as “compliant with international law”. The plan, Eiland explained, would give Palestinians a week to evacuate and anyone…
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Desensitised politics is a gift for Israel’s genocide in Gaza
The US government’s hypocrisy is a bottomless pit that matches Israel’s penchant for the cruel and macabre. “The images and video of what appear to be displaced civilians burning alive following an Israeli air strike are deeply disturbing, and we have made our concerns clear to the Israeli government,” an…
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Netanyahu preaches to the world as if it is a basic human right to commit genocide
On the first anniversary of the cross-border incursion on 7 October 2023 and the start of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, all that the UN can boast of can be summed up in one word: complicity. Western countries have either provided Israel with weapons or endorsed the genocide…
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Exporting Israel’s settler-colonial narrative by exploiting children
As Palestinians marked a year since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on 7 October, Israel’s settler-colonial society marked the occasion in selective oblivion. One example is a children’s book published by Yediot Books titled The Heroes of October 7th: Heroic Stories for Children, which the Times of…
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The consequences of ignoring the 1947 Partition Plan and the 1948 Nakba
World leaders will never admit that “7 October” actually started well before 7 October last year; that the entire history of the Zionist state brought to fruition through enabling colonisation in Palestine is to blame for the current Israeli genocide in Gaza and the unleashing of its killing machine in…
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The UN wants what Israel wants: genocide and its spillover across the region
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council on Friday, “We must avoid a regional war at all costs.” Gaza, he added, remains the epicentre of the violence. After Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and was lauded by the US for doing so as “a measure of…
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We need to call out the hypocrisy of the humanitarian paradigm
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the Lebanese people before bombing their country was eerily similar to the rhetoric usually associated with Gaza. Hezbollah, he told the Lebanese, are using them as human shields and hiding weapons in their homes; the latter was made to sound more familiar by…
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Internationalism is needed urgently to stand against the politics of genocide
Western leaders want to stop the repercussions of genocide from hitting non-Palestinians, but stopping Israel from committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is not on the political or humanitarian agenda. At the UN General Assembly, Australia will be inviting countries to sign a pledge to protect humanitarian aid workers. The…
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Israeli and international dehumanisation of Palestinians
After almost a year of genocidal intent and action, the Israeli military said it would be investigating “a serious incident that is not in line with IDF values and what is expected of Israeli soldiers.” The statement was regarding footage of soldiers throwing the bodies of three Palestinian resistance fighters…
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The UN’s protection of pariahs
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese told a recent press conference in Geneva, “I think it is unavoidable for Israel to become a pariah in the face of its continuous, relentless, vilifying assault of the United Nations, on top of millions of Palestinians.” She also asked: “Should there be a consideration…
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Harris or Trump? They are two sides of the same imperialist, settler-colonial coin
The US presidential election debates expose the fact that there is no real choice, other than opting for the lesser of two evils, when it comes to Washington’s policy on Palestine. When US President Joe Biden took office in January 2020, the mainstream narrative of getting rid of Donald Trump…
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The perils of pathetic political games
Israeli media outlets are stirring up a frenzy about the occupation state facing a serious threat from a draft resolution which the Palestinian Authority has presented to the UN General Assembly. The resolution seeks to implement the International Court of Justice’s 19 July advisory opinion. The opinion reiterated the illegality…
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The failure of the UN humanitarian paradigm
As Palestinian children in Gaza start to receive the polio vaccines, the contradictions regarding the delivery of humanitarian aid, ceasefires and hostages surface incessantly. “Great progress! Every day in the Middle Areas of Gaza, more children are getting vaccines against polio,” Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and…
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Invoking international law to shield genocide and complicity in genocide
The UK has suspended 30 out of 250 arms licences for exports to Israel over concerns that the weapons may be used in violation of international humanitarian law. British Foreign Secretary David Lammy was, however, quick to reassure us all that, “The UK continues to support Israel’s right to self-defence…
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Speaking about Palestine by leaving Palestinians out
EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell reiterated recently the importance of a ceasefire in Gaza to avoid “a full blown war” in the Middle East. Ceasefires started out as the means to get humanitarian aid into Gaza; the reasons given now are as far removed from Gaza as can be.…
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Weapons’ shipments and ceasefire absurdities
The US, which says it is tirelessly working for a ceasefire, has also tirelessly supplied Israel with military equipment and weapons. Yesterday, the 500th US plane transporting military equipment landed in Israel. Since October last year, 500 transport planes and 107 ships have delivered over 50,000 tonnes in weapons and…
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We Are Palestinian: A Celebration of Culture and Tradition
“When I started to write this book, I imagined my daughters, two strong Palestinian girls, growing up away from their homeland. I wanted them to know how beautiful their culture is and that they can take part in and be proud of it no matter where they are in the…
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The relentless brutality of settler-colonialism must not be overlooked
In a series of posts on X, the Senior Communications Officer of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Louse Wateridge, gave a brief but succinct description of Gaza after ten months of Israel’s ongoing genocide. Palestinians in Gaza, she said, are “never more than a few…