Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
While independent and alternative media wrought a change in US public opinion since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, mainstream media provided Israel with a coverup for its crimes. “This book does not make for easy reading,” Rashid Khalidi wrote in the introduction to Robin Andersen’s The Complicit Lens:…
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EU sanctions on settlers is turning a blind eye to colonialism
Some weeks ago, EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas commented about the futility of suspending the EU-Israeli Association Agreement, saying it would not stop settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. The EU has now sanctioned three Israeli settles and four settler organisations. “It was high time we move from…
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What has Guterres supported in Gaza?
In March this year, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had stated that the UN is “cooperating actively with structures created by the Board of Peace.” By the time Guterres made his statement, US Board of Peace High Representative for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov had already warned, in February this year, that…
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Football is not ‘the beautiful game’ when it collaborates with genocide
FIFA President Gianni Infantino played an infantile game at the 76th FIFA congress when he encouraged the Palestinian Football Association President Jibril Rajoub and Israel’s FA Vice President Basim Sheikh Suliman to shake hands. Faced with Rajoub’s refusal, Infantino then said, “We will work together, President Rajoub, Vice President Suliman.…
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Who truly faces an existential threat?
“What I saw today is the existential threat to the State of Israel,” former Mossad director Tamir Pardo stated after a visit to Palestinian villages that have been targeted by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. However, dismissing Zionist history to selectively focus on settler violence absolves Israel of…
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How the UN maintains Gaza as an exception to the detriment of the Palestinian people
“Lebanon cannot be another Gaza,” the UN Secretary General’s Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said last week in response to a question during a press briefing regarding Israel’s war in Lebanon. Earlier this month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich openly spoke about Israel’s plans to extend its non-declared borders into Syria and…
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Is the EU willing to deconstruct colonialism and its role in maintaining it?
Sanctions, deemed effective by the EU when applied so swiftly to Russia and Iran, do not have the same effect when it comes to Israel, according to EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas. Asked about the EU’s double standards when it comes to Israel so swiftly applied by the EU…
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Europe still blurs the line between support and betrayal
“Europe is the biggest supporter of the Palestinian people,” EU High Representative Kaja Kallas said to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee yesterday. However, while there have been shifts in individual European countries’ stances as regards Israel, mostly as a result of the economic ramifications of the US-Israeli attacks against Iran,…
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Beyond rhetoric, is there political will to move away from the two-state paradigm?
Europe’s stance on Palestine, although currently slightly shifting, remains “below the level required,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian Shahin said in a recent interview with Anadolu. “What is needed now are practical decisions, not more statements,” Shahin added while noting that several European countries are speaking more clearly on Israel’s…
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Cracks in Europe’s support for colonial violence and genocide
Spain was recently targeted by Israel’s antisemitism narrative after an effigy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blown up in El Burgo, during the Burning of Judas festival. “The appalling antisemitic hatred on display here is a direct result of the @sanchezcastejon government’s systematic incitement,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated on…
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Varying degrees of silence over colonialism and annexation
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of a settlement in Benjamin, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel will expand in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, widening its non-existent borders. The comments are the latest in a series of threats made by Smotrich in which bombing on…
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In Israel’s colonial ethnic cleansing, the world fails stand for decolonisation
From genocide in Gaza to the death penalty in the occupied West Bank, Israel seeks the annihilation of Palestinian resistance and, on a slower pace, further ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. The latest statistics, which have been considered conservative estimates but continue to be shared as the officially recognised…
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A quest for justice through the wrong channels
In his last interview as UNRWA’s commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini stated that he asked for a UN investigation into Israel’s killing of almost 400 aid workers since the start of the genocide in October 2023. Speaking to the press in Geneva, Lazzarini said that “a high level panel of experts”…
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Separating land from the people supports Israel’s colonial expansion
This year marked the 50th anniversary of Land Day in colonised Palestine. On 30th March 1976, Israeli forces killed 6 Palestinians protesting against colonial land grab in the Galilee. Fifty years later, the international community shows no recognition of land day and remains passively, purportedly opposed, to Israel’s colonial expansion…
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The envisaged five stages of Israel’s next colonial phase
Nickolay Mladenov, the former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, now the Board of Peace High Representative for Gaza, is misrepresenting Gaza to the full capability of Western complicity with colonialism. Over the span of eight months, the Board of Peace is supposed to implement the five…
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Torture, genocide and erasure
“This is not incidental violence. It is the architecture of settler-colonialism, built on a foundation of dehumanisation and maintained by a policy of cruelty and collective terror.” The concluding sentence to the summary of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s report to the UN Human Rights Council on torture and genocide…
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The UN leaves UNRWA isolated, and Palestinians prone to genocide
The most exalted UN creation – the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees – is being isolated by the UN. While Israel destroyed UNRWA’s infrastructure several times and more severely during the genocide that started on 7 October 2023, the UN has failed its own humanitarian paradigm not…
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The Spectral Palestinian: Presence Before Politics
Language in Western discourse abandoned the Palestinian people. In a global framework that renders Palestinians invisible unless visibility is required to satisfy the mainstream narrative, the West has talked about Palestinians in terms of projections that are far removed from the reality of a colonised indigenous population. “One way to…
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Global attention must not lose sight of Palestine
For all Palestine, particularly Gaza, is reduced to visibility or invisibility depending on how it best serves the Israeli and Western narratives, the spotlight should remain on Palestine until it is decolonised from Israel’s settler colonial enterprise. In recent comments, Colombian President Gustavo Petro described Israel’s genocide in Gaza as…
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Making humanitarian aid work for everyone but the recipients
The EU yesterday confirmed €458 million in humanitarian aid for Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Palestine will receive €124 million to cover the needs of 3.3 million people in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. In a war-torn Middle East, the European Union is stepping up while others step…
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Creating impunity through diplomatic statements
Settler violence in the occupied West Bank is unacceptable, the EU and the UK stated yesterday. “Impunity for such acts risks provoking further violence,” an EU spokesperson stated, while referencing the killings of six Palestinians since 28th February by “extremist Israeli settlers.” Germany’s spokesman for Berlin’s Foreign Office called the…
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A colonial choice: The Board of Peace, or the UN?
A report presented to the UN Human Rights Council last month noted that Israel destroyed 92 per cent of Gaza’s housing units and displaced over 90 per cent of Palestinians, while 86 percent of the territory was under orders for displacement or incorporated into military zones. Based on the evidence…
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Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Struggle for Land Justice in Palestine
Rural Palestine stands between idealised and romanticised images of abundant land, and the reality of settler violence and the effects on agricultural territory. Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Struggle for Land Justice in Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2026) asks, “What might we learn from rural Palestine if we…
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Care packages, brought to Palestinians by colonialism
Nickolay Mladenov, former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and now High Representative for the Board of Peace, is no stranger to diplomatic jargon. “Essential supplies, including Ramadan care packages, are once again reaching families in urgent need,” Mladenov stated, as various aid organisations warned of another…