Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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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…
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The international community, Israel’s security narrative and the two-state paradigm
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might project being vindicated after the recent mass shooting at Bondi Beach, which claimed the lives of 15 Jewish people celebrating Hanukkah on Sunday. When Australia announced it would recognise a Palestinian state, Netanyahu wrote to Prime Minister Albanese stating that recognition furthers antisemitism and…
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Bolivia restores diplomatic relations with Israel; while the world still chases the two-state mirage
Bolivia and Israel restored full diplomatic relations on Tuesday this week, marking a shift in the country’s politics as the country’s right-wing President Rodrigo Paz followed upon his intention in October “to lead Bolivia toward a reopening to the world and reestablishing ties with Israel.” This recent development can of…
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The UN exposes its failed humanitarian paradigm
The UN is exposing how its humanitarian paradigm, always destined to failure, has failed. The Global Humanitarian Overview assessment, notes that 239 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and the financial requirement stands at $33 billion. However, only 135 million people will be collectively assisted, with 87 million…
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The UN never gets to the root of the problem
The UN General Assembly has passed another non-binding resolution which is unlikely to dent Israel’s colonial expansion in colonised Palestine. Any resolution that speaks of the two-state compromise defends and endorses colonialism. Stating that Israel must withdraw from territories it occupied in 1967 does not change Israel’s colonial existence, especially…
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Protecting Israeli colonialism also protects Israel’s torture practices
Asking Israel to investigate its torture practices, while knowing that torture is an integral part of Israel’s political violence, is one of the tactics the UN employs to gloss over colonialism. In a press release, The UN Committee Against Torture stated that Israel has been implementing “a de facto State…
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On the anniversary of the UN 1947 Partition Plan, the PA asserts its allegiance with colonialism
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had the opportunity to denounce the UN for its hypocritical “International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People”, which glosses over the fact that on 27 November 1947, the UN gave the green light for Zionist colonialism through the Partition Plan. Instead, through a message…