Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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When humanitarian aid and death are intertwined in Gaza
Humanitarian aid for Palestinians has always been a macabre game which the international community has played so well, to the point that aid and death have become intertwined. Not only did the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) face Israel’s political violence while forced to remain steeped…
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Obliterating Palestinian identity
Earlier this month, Palestinian footballers, clubs and rights groups submitted a 120-page file to the International Criminal Court accusing FIFA President Gianni Infantino and UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin of “aiding and abetting war crimes … and crimes against humanity.” The complaint cites both organisation’s inclusion of Israeli clubs based in…
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Reconstructing the details of Israel’s obliteration of Palestinians
A joint report released recently by Forensic Architecture and Earshot reconstructs Israel’s massacre of aid workers in March 2025. Commencing with Israel’s first violation of the ceasefire on 18 March 2025, in which 414 Palestinians were killed, the report focuses on 23 March, when two Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances…
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Where is the international community’s accountability for Israel’s latest annexation phase?
The international community does not want to be held accountable to history or its role in Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. With each violation, the UN and world leaders issue statements as if Israel is for the first time acting in violation of international law. “The moves could lead to settlement…
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Continuing genocide, with full international approval
The international community has truly illustrated its fragmented approach to both international law, order and human rights. Not only did the UN Security Council members vote the international community out of its usual process in favour of the US 20-point plan which places Gaza in the hands of President Donald…
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France’s censorship of voices calling out international complicity with genocide
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has once again been targeted, this time by French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot, for her speech at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Saturday, in which she denounced the entire complicit system that supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The term…
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Australia should not provide a platform for Israel’s security narrative
Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia was largely tied to the Bondi memorial. However, in a Q&A session with Jewish students attending Moriah College in Sydney, the tone shifted to Israel’s security narrative. “I know that the demonstrators and protesters who are cursing us, saying the biggest lies and…
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No international reaction to Israel’s admission of killing over 70,000 in Gaza
The international community ought to be acknowledged for its role in blotting out the meaning of genocide since October 2023. Without global complicity, the Geneva Convention’s definition of genocide would have retained its relevance. Instead, as Israel killed Palestinians, world leaders dismissed Palestinian voices calling out the genocide. What veneer…
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Supporting Israel’s security narrative puts aid workers at risk
Doctors Without Borders has decided it will not share details of its staff with the Israeli authorities. In a statement published last Friday, the humanitarian organisation announced that Israel gave no assurances of security. As the statement partly reads, “it became evident in recent days that we were unable to…
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Strengthening the UN? For what purpose?
France and Brazil had different reactions to US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, although ostensibly pointing towards the same outcome. France rejected the invitation, stating that it would undermine the UN framework. Brazil asked the US to limit the Board of Peace to Gaza and to include Palestine. Recently…
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Neutrality imperils aid organisations
Earlier this week, Doctors Without Borders issued a statement saying it will comply with Israel’s requirements to share details of its Palestinian and international staff, “subject to clear parameters with staff safety at its core”. In its statement, the humanitarian organisation noted that it was doing so, knowing that such…
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Stating there is no Plan B allows colonial violence to create one
Rebuilding Gaza has always been the UN’s favourite part of Israel’s colonial, violent aftermath. The genocide Israel unleashed on Gaza after 7th October 2023 was no different at first in terms of responses. Paving the way for Israel’s impunity, the UN stood by as the world witnessed firsthand what genocide…
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Neutrality contributes to UNRWA’s precarious standing
“It is UNRWA’s neutrality that allows it to operate on all sides and among various parties, to ensure the safe, sustained and unimpeded delivery of assistance and protection in an effective and efficient manner.” Hypothetically, one should add. Despite UNRWA’s insistence on neutrality, and despite neutrality becoming a condition for…
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Decades of oblivion and Trump’s Board of Peace
In November 2025, the UN Security Council endorsed Resolution 2803 which completely marginalised the UN while handing over the rebuilding of Gaza to the US. Yet one issue was made clear from the start, as China had stated: “Palestine is barely visible in the draft.” Russia also added its own…
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The UN’s misplaced urgency and loyalties
The UN breeds impunity for international law violations. Never has this been more evident than in its attitude towards Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, defended at an international level through Israel’s own security narrative. It was not diplomats and UN officials who raised awareness of genocide, but the Palestinians themselves…
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What diplomats do not say about humanitarian aid
Humanitarian aid is a catchphrase in diplomatic rhetoric. The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas made statements to that effect while on a diplomatic visit to Egypt last week, where she spoke about Israeli revoking access to Gaza for 37 non-governmental organisations involved in the distribution of humanitarian…
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The Slightest Green: A Novel
A novel that opens immediately with the rupture that is so prevalent in the Palestinian experience, The Slightest Green (Interlink Publishing, 2025) immediately presents land as the central theme. Sundus, a widow whose son Hafez is dying of cancer, is living under threat of eviction by Abdul Waheed, who had…
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Israel’s security narrative in the absence of foreign media in Gaza
Since October 2023, Israel killed 278 journalists in Gaza and 706 of their family members. In December, the Knesset voted in favour of a bill that would permanently ban the presence of foreign media outlets until the end of 2027. In response to a petition by the Foreign Press Association,…
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Will the international community stop acting like killing Palestinians is a human right?
What levels of normalised violence has Zionism reached, if plans to annihilate Palestinians are not just bordering on, but fall right into the realm of, the horror genre? The more absurd, and the further away, Israel positions itself from the concept of human rights, the more the statements and actions…
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Statistics alone put the PA’s rhetoric to shame
Two very different images of the current plight of the Palestinian people were presented at the end of 2025 – one based on statistics and the other on hypocritical hyperbole. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) noted that from 7 October 2023 to the end of 2025, there has…
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A “humanitarian superpower”?
The US Department of State and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs signed a memorandum of understanding yesterday that outlined US humanitarian aid contributions, significantly reduced from previous years to just $2 billion. Amid the rhetoric, the US Department of State’s press release summarises the “new paradigm’…
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UN inaction protects ‘practical sovereignty’ for Israel
Israeli ministers are becoming unequivocally clear about colonialism in Gaza. Not that there was any shard of doubt since the start of the genocide in 2023 and even before. However, now that the international community is back in its comfort zone where Israel is only discussed in terms of ‘the…
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What has the UN done for Palestine except help Zionism colonise it?
For decades, the UN has been the epitome of hypocrisy, bleeding into awareness when it comes to Palestine. The recent screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab at the UN Headquarters in New York is no exception. Organised by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of…
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Generalised jargon increases impunity of Israel’s genocide in Gaza
In a statement on Wednesday this week, Amnesty International issued a statement regarding the consequences of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Storm Byron, which exposed the enclave’s destruction further as dwellings already bombed collapsed, tents flooded and more Palestinians died. Guevara Rosas noted that both Israel’s ongoing genocide and refusal…