Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ramona Wadi
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UK rhetoric shows that retaliation is of greater concern than genocide
Since 7 October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been including Iran in his rhetoric of violence, disseminating the image of poor, beleaguered Israel battling all alone in a hostile region. This image is entirely fake. Israel is an aggressive, expansionist settler-colonial state. Israel has turned Gaza into a mass...
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A change in rhetoric, not in humanitarian aid
To keep reading that Israel’s strike on the World Central Kitchen (WCK) that killed foreign aid workers besides Palestinians was the pivot point to slightly alter US President Joe Biden’s rhetoric, is nothing more but an ongoing affirmation that Palestinian lives do not matter. Israel takes aim at aid deliveries...
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Appeasing Israel prevents neither deliberate air strikes nor genocide
The World Central Kitchen charity has just lost seven of its staff as a result of an Israeli air strike targeting their vans, and yet, in an op-ed for Ynet News, the organisation’s founder Jose Andres conveys a contradictory message: Israel has deliberately targeted the organisation but, at the...
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Israel not only wants to destroy UNRWA, but all humanitarian endeavours
To eliminate the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) completely, Israel is pushing a false narrative that it operates as “part of the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas”, in response to the UN’s independent report on allegations that just 12 out of 13,000 UNRWA staff members were...
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Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System
Reading Anne Irfan’s study on Palestinians and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) at a time when Israel is committing genocide in Gaza illustrates how the allegedly apolitical premise of the UN cannot translate to neutrality, given that the agency is enmeshed with the UN,...
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Putting a deadly rhetorical spin on genocide
Following the UN Security Council resolution that called for a ceasefire in Gaza for the remaining days of Ramadan, which the US failed to veto, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a meeting in Washington for his top aides, allegedly as a warning to Hamas that no pressure would...
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Diplomatic games and genocide
Antony Blinken apparently told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that, “You need a coherent plan, or else you’re going to be stuck in Gaza.” According to the US Secretary of State, Netanyahu’s genocidal actions will either consolidate Hamas in Gaza or lead to anarchy and more “terrorism”....
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Kushner’s vision for ‘rebuilding Gaza’ is shameful
“It’s unfortunate that no one’s taking in the refugees,” lamented former White House advisor during the Trump administration Jared Kushner. He made his comment during an interview at Harvard University last month. The reason? Gaza is being eyed as potential space for valuable waterfront property, so why shouldn’t Israel...
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There’s no protection from genocide in the colonial framework of international law
The entire Palestinian population in Gaza has been declared “acutely food insecure” by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. “The famine threshold for household acute food insecurity has already been far exceeded,” explained the IPC. Very belatedly, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has declared that Israel is provoking...
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Putting a spin on ‘obstacles’ to peace in Palestine
It took the EU far too long to connect the dots between besieged Gaza and the West Bank, after creating political divisions that pitted the occupied Palestinian territories against each other in terms of political narratives. EU Foreign Affairs Chief Josep Borrell shifted attention to the occupied West Bank...
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Humanitarian aid is a genocidal tool in the hands of Israel and the US
Israel has no intention of allowing any meaningful amount of humanitarian aid to reach Gaza. Even its settler society has been recorded as saying that Palestinians in Gaza do not deserve aid until all the Israeli hostages are released, despite there being no link between imposing a genocidal famine...
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An honourable way out of complicity in genocide does not exist
Canada is considering the resumption of funding the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), amid the macabre spectacle of humanitarian aid drops and limited delivery, which worked more as traps for Palestinians than a temporary alleviation of hunger. According to Norwegian Foreign Minister, Espen Barthe Eide,...
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The inhumanity of humanitarian aid
The genocide in Gaza is reaping no end of collaboration. Israeli settlers have been blocking humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians, purportedly in protest at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not doing enough to secure the hostages’ release from Gaza. Yet the protest is not eliciting any response from the Israeli...
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Palestinians are paying the price for the UN’s colonial complicity with Israel
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees was established in December 1949 and commenced its operations in May 1950, supposedly until a solution to what the UN termed “the Palestinian refugee problem” is found. In those early days of Israeli colonisation, the UN had the option to...
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Normalising UN terminology leads to normalising genocide
The unfolding genocide committed by Israel in Gaza is being muted by terms which, for decades, did nothing to even alleviate the consequences of settler-colonialism for Palestinians, let alone provide any safety or liberation. Every time that the root cause of the violence is not mentioned by politicians, diplomats...
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Where is the ‘morality’ in Israel’s erasure of Palestinians?
Had the world retained its sensitivity, the myth of “the most moral army in the world” would have shattered already. But the Israeli military is utilising its tactic of isolating individual cases of human rights violations and pointing fingers at individuals, rather than blame the genocidal policy of Israeli...
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Arms sales and diplomacy encourage Israeli genocide
The White House issued a briefing on 8 February regarding a National Security memorandum that conditions US military aid to its allies. Or rather, pretends to condition aid. One of the listed objectives, for example, reads, “prevent arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human...
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Wasting time emboldens Israel’s genocide of Palestinians
Israel attacking Rafah poses “a grave and imminent threat that the international community must urgently confront,” said the prime ministers of Spain and Ireland yesterday. In a joint letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Prime Ministers Pedro Sanchez and Leo Varadkar asked “the Commission undertake...
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The UN is complicit in the forced displacement of the Palestinians
Never, ever, trust the UN’s concept of human rights. As Israel continues its genocide in Rafah, supposedly a safe zone designated by Israel itself while it hounds out Hamas in other areas of Gaza, the UN held its daily press briefing and made use of its usual jargon, carefully...
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Palestinian Music in Exile: Voices of Resistance
“There is no location of Palestinian exile that has not produced its own musicians or musical experiences.” Louis Brehony’s book Palestinian Music In Exile: Voices of Resistance vividly portrays the Palestinian anti-colonial resistance through music by bringing forth Palestinian voices mainly through the refugee experience, which is also a...
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Killing Palestinians through useless debate is the international community’s tactic
As Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people unfolds for the entire world to see in real time on social media, world leaders have only managed to debate humanitarian “pauses” rather than a ceasefire. Even the context of such temporary “ceasefires” is grossly misplaced, with the focus resting solely on...
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UNRWA is a direct consequence of Israeli colonialism
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has agreed to investigate the neutrality of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees’ (UNRWA). Three institutes will be participating in the independent review: the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway and the Danish Institute for Human...
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Humanitarian aid and mass starvation
Zionist attempts at rationalising Israel’s violence are devoid of any logic. As Palestinians face mass starvation in Gaza, Israeli settlers have taken it upon themselves to block humanitarian aid from entering the enclave, describing their actions as a protest until the hostages held by Hamas are released. State and settlers...
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Genocide is the result of the international community’s waiting game
What we are witnessing today in Gaza is the result of the UN normalising the Zionist colonisation of Palestine and the establishment of Israel on Palestinian territory in 1948. To exacerbate the consequences of colonisation, the UN determined that settlements established after 1967 are illegal under international law, which...