Archives: Articles

By Rima Najjar

How Eroding the NPT Framework Undermines Global Security and Rewrites the Ethics of Naming, Punishment, and Strategic Immunity

Author’s Note

This essay exposes the asymmetry at the core of the global nuclear order. It confronts how legal frameworks like the NPT and JCPOA are not universally upheld but strategically deployed — punishing transparency while shielding opacity, enforcing restraint on adversaries while exempting allies. Through the cases of Iran and Israel, and the silenced testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, it argues that legality has been hollowed out — transformed from a standard of accountability into a scaffold for strategic immunity. The essay also traces the contours of escalation should juridical containment collapse: a landscape where military retaliation, proxy saturation, and symbolic disruption emerge from the erosion of the law’s credibility, the selective enforcement of its norms, and the abandonment of its protective function.

I. Compliance Without Equal Treatment: The Snapback Crisis and Iran’s Exasperation

On September 26, 2025, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Human Rights Kazem Gharibabadi announced that Iran would cancel the Cairo Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if sanctions were reimposed. Framing the move as a response to diplomatic sabotage, he accused Western states of undermining Iran’s efforts to revive negotiations. He described the joint Chinese-Russian proposal to extend the snapback deadline as a final opportunity to prevent regional escalation, warning that any threat to Iran’s interests would be met with decisive retaliation.

Sanctions on Iran were first imposed in 2006, through UN Security Council Resolution 1737, in response to Iran’s refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. These sanctions were supported by all five permanent members — including Russia and China — and marked the beginning of a decade-long regime of expanding restrictions targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Their legal force derived from Chapter VII of the UN Charter, making them binding across member states.

Under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to which Iran is a signatory, many of these sanctions were lifted in exchange for Iran’s compliance with strict limits on its nuclear activities.

But here’s the rub: the very mechanism meant to enforce compliance has been weaponized by the United States and Israel — one that formally exited the agreement, and one that was never a signatory to begin with.

A snapback mechanism embedded in JCPOA allows any signatory — such as the United States, France, or the United Kingdom — to reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran if they believe it is violating the agreement. It was designed as a safeguard to ensure swift accountability in the event of significant non-compliance, preserving the integrity of the deal without requiring consensus among Security Council members.

Rather than upholding the integrity of the agreement, President Trump in 2020 — acting for overtly political reasons and without evidentiary basis — sought to unilaterally reimpose UN sanctions on Iran by invoking the snapback mechanism, despite the United States having formally withdrawn from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018. At the time, the US justified the withdrawal by claiming that the JCPOA failed to adequately constrain Iran’s ballistic missile program, regional influence, and long-term nuclear ambitions. Yet the decision was shaped most decisively by pressure from Israel, which opposed the deal and actively lobbied for a more confrontational stance toward Tehran.

Other signatories — including Russia, China, and key European powers — rejected the move, arguing that the U.S. had forfeited its legal standing by exiting the agreement. The attempt to trigger snapback was not acknowledged by the UN or most of the international community. Nevertheless, the U.S. declared sanctions reinstated, asserting a claim that lacked formal recognition.

Although the U.S. snapback declaration lacked juridical legitimacy, it had material consequences. The United States reimposed its own sanctions and pressured other countries and companies to comply through secondary sanctions and financial deterrence. This unilateral enforcement deepened Iran’s economic isolation, disrupted international trade, and undermined the multilateral framework of the JCPOA — effectively weaponizing non-recognition into strategic impact.

This episode laid bare the political nature of enforcement within the international legal order, revealing how mechanisms designed for collective accountability can be repurposed for unilateral coercion: legal instruments like snapback are not governed by treaty logic alone, but by strategic alignment and power asymmetry. Iran, still a formal participant in the JCPOA, remains subject to inspection and sanction threats. Meanwhile, Israel, which never signed the JCPOA or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), remains untouched by such mechanisms.

Iran’s threatened withdrawal must be understood not as a rejection of diplomacy, but as a response to its juridical exhaustion. When compliance yields only surveillance and sanction — while opacity is rewarded with immunity — exiting the framework becomes a form of strategic survival. In this context, escalation is not simply a breach of order; it is a symptom of its collapse.

The consequences are not confined to legal abstraction. Iran’s deepening nuclear cooperation with Russia — described by Iranian Atomic Energy Chief Mohammad Eslami as “historic” — signals a recalibration of alliances in the face of eroded multilateral legitimacy. The acceleration of joint planning, personally endorsed by President Putin, reframes Iran’s posture not as isolationist, but as strategically realigned. Treaty erosion does not merely weaken global security — it reconfigures it, shifting the axis of legitimacy from juridical consensus to bilateral coordination.

The shape of escalation, in this landscape, is not just military — but if it were, it would be asymmetrical, fragmented, and regionally entangled. Iran cannot match Israel’s air superiority or nuclear capability head-on. Instead, escalation would likely unfold across multiple theaters: proxy activation in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen; missile and drone salvos targeting strategic infrastructure; cyberattacks on critical systems; and symbolic strikes designed to fracture the illusion of Israeli invulnerability. These acts would not aim for parity — they would aim to expose the fragility of a system that punishes transparency and protects silence.

In such a world, the erosion of legal containment does not just invite confrontation — it removes the buffers that once distinguished diplomacy from retaliation. The architecture of global security, once scaffolded by treaties and inspections, begins to collapse under the weight of its own asymmetry. What remains is not law, but alignment. Not accountability, but immunity. And not deterrence, but the threat of unbuffered escalation.

__________________________________________________________

II. What Happens When Israel’s Nuclear Secrets Are Exposed

Iran’s recent intelligence leak about Israel’s nuclear arsenal did not shock the international community — it confirmed what had long circulated as an open secret: that Israel possesses a substantial and operational nuclear arsenal. This tacit understanding was thrown into sharper relief when Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in a widely reported statement from July 2025, declared that Israel must be ready to “use its full power” against existential threats — a phrase widely interpreted as a public invocation of nuclear capability.

Smotrich’s remarks broke from Israel’s long-standing policy of strategic ambiguity, shifting its posture from silence to threat. His statement did not merely signal deterrence — it gestured toward deployment. In doing so, it transformed opacity into escalation. The Iranian leaks, which detailed warhead counts and site-specific infrastructure, did not introduce new knowledge; they gave form to what had long been denied juridical recognition. Smotrich’s rhetoric gave it urgency. The danger was no longer in possession — it was in the willingness to name and invoke.

This shift — from ambiguity to assertion — exposes the fragility of the global system that protects Israel from scrutiny. Strategic opacity, once justified as a stabilizing force, becomes a tool of provocation. And when exposure is met not with accountability but with rhetorical escalation, the architecture of legal coherence begins to fracture.

According to Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, the leaked cache includes thousands of classified files, images, and recordings tied to Israel’s nuclear sites and global defense ties. These documents function less as revelations than as formal acknowledgments of what has long been known but never officially admitted. They do not rupture the archive — they confirm it.

The impact of the leak was not juridical — it was symbolic. Israel’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) means there is no formal mechanism to investigate or penalize its nuclear activities. The leak did not prompt inquiries or sanctions. Instead, it was framed as an act of espionage. The focus shifted from the content of the archive to the motives of the exposer. Iran was cast not as a witness, but as a destabilizing force. The archive became a threat, not a testimony; the leaker, a provocateur, not a truth-teller.

This rhetorical inversion protects Israel’s opacity by delegitimizing the act of exposure itself. It reinforces a system where transparency is punished and secrecy rewarded — especially when secrecy aligns with the interests of powerful allies. The significance of the leak lies not in what it revealed, but in how the global order responded: by shielding power from consequence and treating testimony as provocation.

This pattern extends beyond state-level exposure to the treatment of individuals who break strategic silence. Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility, exposed the scale of Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal in 1986, sharing photographs and technical details with the British press. His revelations suggested Israel possessed up to 200 nuclear warheads. In response, Israeli intelligence abducted Vanunu in Rome, secretly returned him to Israel, and tried him behind closed doors. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, including 11 in solitary confinement.

Upon his release in 2004, Vanunu faced sweeping restrictions: barred from leaving the country, forbidden from speaking to foreigners, and repeatedly re-arrested for minor parole violations. Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience; human rights advocates praised his courage. He received the Right Livelihood Award and was hailed by figures like Daniel Ellsberg as a hero of the nuclear era. Yet despite international recognition, Israel continued to treat him as a traitor. His punishment was not just legal — it was symbolic. It signaled that internal exposure of nuclear secrets would be met not with protection, but with isolation and erasure.

Unlike Vanunu, Iran’s revelations— whether about its own program or Israel’s — are state-led. They lack a singular figure whose dissent can be framed as moral testimony. Iran’s transparency has taken institutional forms: declarations to the IAEA, public statements, compliance reports. Its retaliatory leaks are treated as geopolitical maneuvers, not ethical acts. The difference is not just in how these exposures are received — it is in their form. Israel punishes the individual to preserve ambiguity; Iran performs exposure through the state and is punished collectively — through sanctions, isolation, and suspicion.

In both cases, the system defends itself not by disproving the content, but by discrediting the form. When exposure comes from within, as in Vanunu’s case, it is framed as betrayal. When it comes from a rival state, it is cast as provocation. Either way, the architecture of strategic opacity remains intact — shielded by a global order that treats testimony as threat and silence as stability.

Yet Israel’s refusal to join the NPT does not place it beyond the reach of international law. As a member of the United Nations, Israel is bound by the UN Charter and has ratified key human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the Geneva Conventions. These treaties prohibit arbitrary detention, collective punishment, and the targeting of civilians — principles routinely violated in the context of occupation and military operations.

While none of these instruments directly regulate nuclear weapons, they offer juridical pathways for challenging the conditions under which nuclear secrecy is maintained. For example, the ICCPR’s protections for freedom of expression and against cruel and inhuman treatment could be invoked in cases like Vanunu’s prolonged solitary confinement and speech restrictions. Likewise, the Geneva Conventions — designed to govern the conduct of war and protect civilian populations — intersect with the strategic implications of nuclear capacity when that capacity is shielded from scrutiny and potentially deployed in occupied territories. In such contexts, opacity about nuclear weapons is not just a diplomatic posture — it becomes a legal concern, especially if the threat or use of such weapons undermines civilian protections guaranteed under international humanitarian law.

__________________________________________________________

III. Strategic Retaliation and the Collapse of Legal Containment

Iran’s threatened withdrawal from treaty frameworks — whether the Cairo Agreement, which outlines principles for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which obligates non-nuclear states to forgo weapons development in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology and international safeguards — signals more than diplomatic fatigue. It marks the potential collapse of a system that once mediated conflict through verification, inspection, and juridical restraint. When legal containment no longer offers protection, retaliation becomes not a breach but a form of strategic survival.

In this recalibrated landscape, where legal frameworks no longer constrain and alliances replace accountability, the question emerges: if containment fails, what shape might retaliation take?

The shape of escalation, in this context, is not merely military — it is layered, asymmetrical, and regionally entangled. Iran cannot match Israel’s air superiority or nuclear capability in a conventional head-to-head confrontation. But escalation, if it comes, will not be symmetrical. It will unfold across multiple theaters, each calibrated to fracture the illusion of strategic immunity and expose the vulnerabilities that lie beneath the architecture of deterrence.

Proxy Activation and Regional Saturation:
 Iran’s most immediate lever is its regional network of non-state actors — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, and Houthi forces in Yemen. These groups form a distributed web of influence capable of opening simultaneous fronts. Their operations would likely target Israeli assets, U.S. military installations, and critical Gulf infrastructure. The goal would not be decisive victory, but saturation: a persistent, low-intensity conflict that stretches resources, destabilizes logistics, and dramatizes the cost of regional entanglement.

Missile and Drone Salvos:
 Iran has already demonstrated its capacity to strike deep into Israeli territory, including urban centers and strategic sites. Future salvos could be calibrated to target oil refineries, airbases, and maritime chokepoints like the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz. These strikes would not only signal reach but disrupt global energy flows, transforming regional escalation into a global economic tremor.

Cyber Warfare and Infrastructure Disruption:
 In the digital domain, Iran could pursue strategic retaliation without direct confrontation. Cyberattacks on Israeli power grids, water systems, and financial networks would weaponize invisibility — eroding civilian confidence, sowing chaos, and demonstrating that deterrence does not shield against the intangible. These operations would blur the line between war and sabotage, dramatizing the porousness of modern infrastructure.

Naval Threats and Gulf Disruption:
 Iran’s naval doctrine emphasizes asymmetric tactics: fast boats, sea mines, and mobile missile platforms. These assets could be deployed to threaten commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean. Even limited disruption — an attack on a tanker, a mine near a key strait — would spike global oil prices and dramatize the vulnerability of maritime commerce. The message would be clear: strategic immunity is a fiction when the arteries of global trade are exposed.

Symbolic Retaliation and Strategic Messaging:
 Beyond tactical targets, Iran may strike symbolic sites — intelligence hubs, command centers, or civilian infrastructure — not to achieve parity, but to rupture narrative control. These strikes would be designed to fracture the illusion of Israeli invulnerability, to dramatize the cost of opacity, and to reassert Iran’s capacity to shape the terms of confrontation. In this theater, symbolism is strategy, and retaliation becomes a form of storytelling.

Such escalation would not aim to win a war — it would aim to expose the fragility of a system that punishes transparency and protects silence. In this landscape, the erosion of treaty frameworks does not just invite confrontation — it removes the juridical buffers that once distinguished diplomacy from retaliation.

Iran’s threatened exit from the NPT would dismantle the inspection regime and remove the legal distinction between suspicion and proof. Without treaty participation, accusations of non-compliance no longer require verification; retaliation can be justified by narrative alone. In such a system, opacity becomes a weapon, and testimony becomes a threat.

This is the collapse of legal containment: a shift from regulated deterrence to unbuffered escalation. It reveals a global order in which law is not a shield but a sieve — applied to adversaries, withheld from allies. Strategic immunity is not earned through compliance; it is engineered through exemption.

If global security is to be rebuilt, it must begin with a reckoning — not just with the weapons we fear, but with the silences we protect. The architecture of immunity must be dismantled. The ethics of naming must be defended. And the archive must remember what the law refuses to hold.

__________________________________________________________

Conclusion: Testimony, Legality, and the Ethics of Naming

The crisis at the heart of the global nuclear order is not simply about weapons — it is about the architecture of law, narrative, and accountability. Iran’s threatened withdrawal from treaty frameworks exposes a system that enforces rules selectively, punishes transparency, and rewards silence. Israel’s undeclared arsenal, shielded by strategic ambiguity and political exemption, reveals how opacity can be engineered into immunity. And the treatment of whistleblowers like Mordechai Vanunu shows that testimony itself is criminalized when it threatens the architecture of silence.

Withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or the Cairo Agreement would offer Iran strategic latitude: freedom from inspections, juridical restraint, and the asymmetrical burden of compliance. The NPT obligates non-nuclear states to forgo weapons development in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology and international safeguards; the Cairo Agreement envisions a nuclear-free Middle East, a vision undermined by Israel’s non-signatory status and undeclared arsenal. Exiting these frameworks would dramatize Iran’s rejection of a system that demands restraint from some while exempting others. Yet the cost is steep: diplomatic isolation, intensified sanctions, and the forfeiture of legal legitimacy. It would mark a shift from defiant compliance to open provocation — a move that may signal strategic survival, but also accelerate confrontation.

Together, these dynamics fracture the legal coherence of nonproliferation regimes. They reveal a world in which legality is not a universal standard but a strategic tool — applied to adversaries, withheld from allies. If global security is to be rebuilt on ethical foundations, it must begin with a reckoning: not just with the weapons we fear, but with the silences we protect.

The archive must remember that those acts, absences, and asymmetries that fall outside juridical recognition remain central to the story of power, survival, and resistance.

Note: First published in Medium

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

27 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud 

Every day brings new indictments for Israel. The early accusations of genocide by South Africa are now quickly becoming an accepted legal definition among international bodies and governments alike. The latest indictment came from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

“The Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have had and continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the UNHRC’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) report unambiguously stated. While this may seem obvious to those watching the Israeli genocide unfold in real time, the step is historic nonetheless.

According to Prof. Triestino Mariniello, an international law expert and a member of the legal team representing Gaza victims before the International Criminal Court (ICC), the report is of “historic importance” and “unprecedented.” Though previous UN commissions had repeatedly accused Israel of committing war crimes in Palestine, “they had never gone so far as to say that Israel is also responsible for what represents the most serious crime at the international level: the crime of genocide.”

Desperate to see enough international pressure to force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government to end their mass extermination of Palestinians in Gaza, many wonder if such reports are enough to hold Israel to account. Navi Pillay, a South African judge who headed the International Tribunal for the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, admits that justice “is a slow process,” but does not consider it “impossible that there will be arrests and trials” in the future. For those eager to see some measure of justice, the specific references to arrests and trials are of some comfort. The images of thousands of innocent people, mostly women and children, being slaughtered are simply impossible to bear.

The report is particularly important as it ties into the ICC’s ongoing actions against accused Israeli war criminals, Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

Though the report is not binding on the ICC and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), it provides a strong legal foundation for their investigations. For example, similar reports were taken into account during the war crimes investigation in Sudan. The credibility of the UNHRC, the COI, and its reputable judges is of immense value.

Equally important is that the report is not an isolated conclusion; it is the culmination of two years of extensive research and aligns with the findings of other well-regarded international legal and human rights bodies, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The latest of such significant statements was the resolution by the world’s leading organization of scholars on genocide, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). In a resolution that passed by an absolute majority on August 31, the reputable body concluded that Israel’s “policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition” of genocide.

Many hope that all of these conclusions, reports, and resolutions will ultimately push the ICJ to speed up its investigation into Israel’s conduct in Gaza. But even if the ICJ continues to drag its feet under pressure from the US and other European allies of Israel, the report is still of great value. Now, individual governments and civil society organizations can use the findings of the report to take independent action, thus continuing to mount pressure on Israel and its supporters. In fact, this process is already in motion.

A group of lawyers on September 19 filed a criminal complaint against German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and leading officials, including arms trade executives, for “openly and repeatedly boasting about their unconditional and unlimited support” for Israel. “Given the undeniable, genocidal consequences of this support,” they argued, they should be held accountable.

Similar efforts for accountability are underway in Italy. The Italian movement Alleanza Verdi-Sinistra (AVS) has filed a complaint against its government, not in an Italian court but with the ICC—an indication of the globalized nature of the legal struggle against Israel. The group asked the court to investigate possible Italian complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Within the same time frame, Spain’s attorney general has authorized an official investigation into Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. The investigation is a direct response to a request by the Chief Prosecutor for Human Rights and Democratic Memory, Dolores Delgado.

These are just a few examples of how the label of genocide by UN-linked and independent organizations can propel direct actions by legal experts, national police, and attorneys general across the world.

Though Netanyahu continues to act with the same old arrogant attitude that he, his government, and country are above the law, including international law, it is incumbent on all of us to remind him and other war criminals that no individual, no entity, and no government is immune to accountability when it comes to the blood of the innocent.

This struggle is not solely for the sake of Gaza; it is for the very soul of humanity. Should Netanyahu’s actions succeed in normalizing genocide in the 21st century, this horrific crime could become a sanctioned political strategy for tyrants and regimes worldwide. The world cannot afford to let this happen. The future of global justice hangs in the balance. 

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

26 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ranjan Solomon

I still remember the moment I first saw the clip: Subramanian Swamy, with his usual fire, telling a VICE interviewer that, under the Indian Constitution, “Article 14 guarantees equality of equals… all people are not equal,” and insisting that Muslims “are not in an equal category” (Vice, Apr 2020). That line struck me—how casually he stripped away the equality that millions believe is their right. I watched him, furious and frustrated, because someone who describes half the country as lesser people isn’t speaking in abstraction. They are defining enemies—for minorities, and for the idea of the republic itself.

Swamy’s remarks are not mere eccentricities. They are dangerous, racist, and hateful. When he declares that Muslims are not equal, he is striking at the heart of India’s Constitution, its secular identity, and its plural promise. Such words attempt to delegitimize the citizenship of millions of Indians, sanctioning discrimination and violence under the guise of political analysis.

This pattern goes back more than a decade. In July 2011, after the Mumbai bombings, Swamy published an op-ed in Daily News & Analysis (DNA) that stunned readers for its brazenness. He claimed Muslims were being “programmed” to become radical and suggested extreme measures to counter what he portrayed as a civilizational threat. Among his proposals: demolishing mosques at sites where temples once stood, disenfranchising Muslims and Christians who did not acknowledge “Hindu ancestry,” and banning conversions from Hinduism (DNA, July 16, 2011). These were not vague musings but concrete proposals that dismantled fundamental rights: the right to vote, the right to religious freedom, and the right to equality.

The most telling response came not from India but from abroad. At Harvard University, where Swamy had long taught economics during the summer, his article prompted outrage. More than 200 students petitioned the administration, arguing that his proposals amounted to hate speech and created a vision of India where not all religious groups were welcome (The Hindu, Dec 8, 2011). In December 2011, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to cancel his courses, declaring his views incompatible with the university’s values (Harvard Crimson, Dec 8, 2011). Harvard had acted on principle, making clear that hate speech carries consequences. In India, however, no such censure followed. His words were absorbed into the bloodstream of public discourse, and life went on.

Far from retreating, Swamy doubled down in subsequent years. In the same VICE interview, he added that “if Muslims become more than 30 per cent (of the population), that country is in danger,” and repeated the warning that “where the Muslim population is large, there is always trouble” (The Week, Apr 2020). The rhetoric continued. In July 2024, Swamy suggested that India, Israel, and the United States should form a military alliance to “wipe out violent Muslims,” adding that “rational Muslims” might join in the project (The Wire, July 22, 2024). Years earlier, after a terror attack in Bangladesh, he had tweeted that the “only true Muslim is an ISIS certified Muslim,” dismissing the rest as “expendable” (India Today, July 2016). Such statements reveal a worldview where Muslims are always suspect, never trustworthy, forever on probation in their own country.

Even his views on democracy betray a deeply majoritarian instinct. Swamy has argued that democracy in India survives only because Hindus are a majority. Where Muslims are numerous, he has claimed, there is neither democracy nor secularism (Outlook, Aug 2012). In Vadodara, he went further, insisting that everyone living in India is “essentially a Hindu” by ancestry and should acknowledge it, even proposing DNA as proof of belonging (The Times of India, Sept 2013). In his telling, Muslims and Christians are not citizens in their own right but Hindus-in-denial who must submit to an imposed identity.

These are not slips of an eccentric elder statesman. They form a consistent ideological pattern: delegitimize Muslims as equal citizens, paint them as demographic threats, and demand their submission to a Hindu identity or risk exclusion. His statements move steadily from cultural chauvinism to open calls for disenfranchisement and militarized suppression.

Placed against the Constitution, this worldview is an outright betrayal. Articles 14, 15, and 25 are unambiguous in guaranteeing equality before law, prohibiting discrimination on grounds of religion, and protecting freedom of conscience. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar warned that political democracy could not endure without social democracy—that liberty, equality, and fraternity must go hand in hand (Constituent Assembly Debates, Nov 25, 1949). Swamy’s ideas deny all three.

India is not, and never has been, the preserve of one religion. Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Parsis, and Jains are not outsiders but equal inheritors of this land. Centuries of shared culture—the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb, composite art and architecture, languages enriched by cross-pollination—prove that India was never the creation of one community alone. To reduce this plural heritage to a monochrome identity is to falsify history and insult the sacrifices of those who fought for independence, many of whom were Muslim and gave their lives for a secular India.

Some dismiss Swamy as a maverick politician whose words carry little weight. But such complacency is dangerous. His rhetoric provides oxygen to the politics of hate, normalizing prejudice and emboldening those who thrive on division. In Europe or the United States, similar rhetoric often meets institutional checks, whether through hate speech laws or public condemnation. In India, however, the selective application of law allows hate to circulate freely. The danger is not merely in what Swamy says, but in how easily society shrugs it off.

Silence in the face of such words is complicity. Every time the law fails to act, it signals to minorities that their dignity and safety are expendable. Every time political leaders treat hate speech as harmless opinion, the boundaries of the acceptable shift further toward exclusion. And once minorities are portrayed as lesser citizens, the entire democratic fabric begins to unravel.

India still has the chance to be a uniquely secular, multi‐religious nation, not by erasing identities but by affirming them equally. Secularism here has never meant the absence of religion. It has meant respect for all faiths, equal protection under the law, and the right of each community to live without fear. In a world riven by polarization, India could stand as a model of pluralism—if it resists the poison of communal politics.

Subramanian Swamy represents a strand of politics that thrives on division. But he is not India. His hate does not define this land. The millions of Indians who live together, sharing festivals, food, and struggles, represent the true face of the country. If India is to remain true to itself, such hate must be rejected—not only morally, but legally and politically.

Muslims are not lesser citizens. They are equal inheritors of this land. To deny that is not only to betray them, but to betray the republic itself. Every citizen is important to an understanding of a common humanity. Caste, class, and exclusion must be consigned to the dust.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator and human rights defender who subscribes to the values of secularism and an inclusive society

26 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Azmat Ali

On 23 September, as the United Nations opened its 80th General Assembly in New York, two men thousands of miles apart spoke almost directly to each other. Donald Trump, back at the UN podium, declared that Iran must “never be allowed” to possess nuclear weapons. In Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared on state television, ruling out talks with Washington and warning that negotiations “under such threats” would inflict “serious and possibly irreparable harm.”

Between those two statements lies Europe’s snapback: Britain, France and Germany — the E3 — have triggered the “snapback” mechanism of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, opening a 30-day window that could restore the sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal. The result is a diplomatic clock ticking loudly above the heads of inspectors, negotiators and regional capitals.

Two red lines collide

Trump’s message to the General Assembly was blunt. “My position is very simple,” he said. “The world’s number one sponsor of terror can never be allowed to possess the most dangerous weapon.” For Washington, the red line is absolute: Iran must not be allowed a nuclear weapon under any circumstances.

Khamenei’s reply was equally uncompromising. “Accepting negotiations under such threats would mean that the Islamic Republic of Iran is susceptible to intimidation,” he said. He accused Washington of dictating terms: “The United States has announced that the only acceptable result of negotiations is the shutdown of Iran’s nuclear activities and enrichment. That would be dictation, that is imposition.” For Tehran, enrichment is not a bargaining chip but a matter of sovereignty and pride. “It means that this great achievement…should entirely be destroyed and wasted. That is the meaning of ‘no enrichment.’ Clearly, a proud nation like Iran will reject such words outright.”

The two red lines — America’s denial of a weapon, Iran’s defense of enrichment — leave little space for compromise.

Europe’s move and the fractured order

Into this stalemate stepped the Europeans. On 28 August, the E3 triggered the snapback clause of Resolution 2231, setting a 30-day countdown for the automatic restoration of UN sanctions. Their stated aim is narrow and technical: to force Iran to restore International Atomic Energy Agency access and account for uranium enriched up to 60%. But the move is also strategic, placing the issue squarely before the Security Council as the deadline looms.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian sought to soften Tehran’s stance at the UN. He insisted Iran “has never sought and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb,” while condemning the snapback as “illegal” and driven by American pressure. Tehran sees verification demands as coercion; the E3 see snapback as their last remaining tool of leverage.

The move is risky because the international order enforcing it is already fractured. Russia and China have denounced the E3 move and signaled they will not comply with restored sanctions. That split diminishes the practical bite of snapback while heightening its symbolic pressure, creating a world in which sanctions may be selectively enforced and political blocs harden further against each other.

A narrowing path to verification

What unites all sides is recognition that time is short. The snapback deadline sharpens incentives but also raises the cost of failure. Tehran has said it will not bow down to ultimatums, and it is already threatening to reduce cooperation with the IAEA if sanctions return. Officials insist that oil sales to China and others will continue, blunting Europe’s economic pressure. Meanwhile, Russia and China are pushing for alternative council language — extensions or freezes that would delay reimposition.

The confrontation is therefore about leverage as much as legality. For Trump, it is the threat of denial; for Europe, the authority of resolutions; for Khamenei, the politics of resistance. Each frames the problem differently, and each uses language that narrows rather than broadens the diplomatic horizon.

The real test, though, lies far from the podiums. Diplomacy will be judged in centrifuge halls and inspector reports — in whether the IAEA can verify stockpiles, monitor facilities and secure compliance. If Europe cannot translate its legal move into a workable verification plan, if Washington insists only on surrender, and if Tehran digs in on sovereignty, the snapback could harden estrangement rather than resolve it.

Trump’s red line and Khamenei’s defiance frame the standoff. One says never a nuclear weapon. The other says “never surrender enrichment.” Between them ticks the clock of Europe’s snapback. Whether that clock winds down to verification or to further fracture may decide not just the future of the nuclear deal, but the balance of diplomacy in a divided world.

Azmat Ali is a student at the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

26 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rebecca Gordon,

Warning: dangers in the mirror are often closer than they may appear. In other words, the next few paragraphs may seem to be hyperbole but are, in fact, expressions of reality (animated by a cold fury).

On September 8, 2025, the Supreme Court did its best to murder what’s left of civil rights in this country. As Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported, in an unsigned 6-3 ruling, it overturned a lower court’s order forbidding ICE and the Border Patrol in Los Angeles from stopping, interrogating, and detaining people based on any of four factors: “apparent race or ethnicity; the fact that they speak English with an accent or speak Spanish; their presence at particular locations like farms or pickup sites for day laborers; and the type of work they do.”

Those six conservative justices might as well have stood in front of the court and set fire to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation and discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin in a wide variety of venues and actions, including public accommodations, education, the provision of government services, housing, transportation, and voting. The Civil Rights Act outlawed exactly the kind of racial profiling now being practiced — and permitted by our highest court — in the Trump administration’s war on immigrants.

While they were at it, those six robed arsonists might as well have burnt the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which outlaws unreasonable searches and seizures and requires a court-issued warrant for arrests. They could have added the Fourteenth Amendment to their bonfire, which was one of three passed and ratified during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. Those three amendments established full citizenship rights for emancipated Blacks and future generations of U.S. denizens, regardless of race. The Thirteenth Amendment, of course, outlawed slavery, and the Fifteenth secured voting rights for all (male) citizens regardless of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment, while establishing birthright citizenship, also guarantees “all persons” (regardless of citizenship status) due process under the law — including those suspected of being in the country illegally.

Centuries of Struggle Undone

No one gave us those rights. Successive generations of Americans fought for them, starting in the late 1780s and in the 1791 passage of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to our Constitution. That’s when the Fourth Amendment established the rights that centuries later would be invoked to prevent people from being stopped for “driving while Black” or seeking work while looking Latino. (It’s also when, thanks to the First Amendment, we secured freedom of speech and the press, which gives me the right to state publicly, even in the wake of his despicable assassination, that the founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, built his organization on explicit contempt for women, especially women of color, and LGBTQ people.)

It took a civil war and the deaths of almost 700,000 soldiers on both sides to end legal slavery in this country and give us those three Reconstruction amendments, passed between 1865 and 1870.

And it took decades of mostly nonviolent struggle and sacrifice (and more deaths) to win passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Those two laws essentially reiterated the same rights that had been secured back in the 1860s but had been denied in practice in the southern states of the former Confederacy. “Denial” is a weak word for the life-destroying discrimination and segregation that was then systematically enforced by state-sponsored terrorism (all too often in the form of lynching) against those accused of violating the Jim Crow regime of that era.

The Supreme Court had already torn the guts out of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, deciding in Shelby County v. Holder that states with a history of race-based voter suppression would no longer have to seek “preclearance” from the Department of Justice for changes to their voting procedures. The court’s argument was essentially that voting discrimination no longer exists in the states named in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, observing that ending preclearance was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

The fact that a storm of suppression was indeed still raging became clear almost immediately, as affected states began passing laws making it more difficult for people of color to vote. Ironically, President Trump’s crew hasn’t yet completely purged the Department of Justice’s website of support for voting rights. You can, for instance, still find there a 2023 blog post by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke lamenting the depredations of Shelby and praising the Biden administration’s support for the — never passed — John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as a remedy.

Now, in a one-paragraph decision, the six right-wing justices, appointed by a series of Republican presidents including Trump, have made another contribution to his administration’s all-out attack on race and gender equality. Justice Brett Kavanaugh found it necessary to amplify the court’s decision in a lengthy concurrence. In words untethered from the real world, he wrote:

“The Government sometimes makes brief investigative stops to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs; who work or appear to work in jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture, or car washes that often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English. If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”

Let me repeat that: “If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.” Tell that to Kilmar Abrego García.

Oh, California

In the last few decades, some very bad ideas have come out of my own state, California. This may surprise readers who think of Californians as living in a great blue expanse on the country’s “Left Coast.” They may think our governor, Gavin Newsom, is an avatar of liberalism. (Despite my criticisms of the man, I will admit that his recent trolling of Donald Trump’s ALL-CAPS MEDIA STYLE is pretty funny.)

Nevertheless, some seriously bad ideas have triumphed as ballot propositions here. In 1978, there was Proposition 13, which made it all but impossible to raise taxes in the state — especially property taxes, which provide almost half the funding for our public schools. That “taxpayer revolt” (as it came to be known) spread rapidly to other states. Then, in 1994, Republican Governor Pete Wilson transformed his flagging reelection campaign by inflaming White anxiety about immigration in California. He launched a series of TV ads with the tag line “they keep coming,” a reference to people crossing the Mexican border looking for work in my state. Weaponizing White anxiety was something Donald Trump would borrow when he ran for president in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

To ramp up his 1994 gubernatorial campaign, Wilson endorsed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187, or “Save Our State” initiative. And Californians then indeed did reelect him, while passing the proposition, which outlawed the provision of any government services — including health care and education — to any undocumented immigrant. Government employees at any level were required to report anyone (including schoolchildren) they suspected of being in the country illegally. In language forebodingly similar to the rhetoric of both of Trump’s presidential campaigns and his two administrations, Proposition 187 began:

“The People of California find and declare as follows:

“That they have suffered and are suffering economic hardship caused by the presence of illegal aliens in this state. That they have suffered and are suffering personal injury and damage caused by the criminal conduct of illegal aliens in this state. That they have a right to the protection of their government from any person or persons entering this country unlawfully.”

What happens in California doesn’t always stay in California. As the Washington Post reported 25 years later, “Since 1994, 65 initiatives and referendums to change state immigration laws were attempted via direct democracy mechanisms.”

Almost immediately, federal courts prevented the implementation of most parts of Proposition 187. Three decades later, however, the Supreme Court has effectively validated Proposition 187’s premise, permitting the use of racial profiling to identify possible “illegal aliens.”

The right wing wasn’t done with legislating racism in my state. In 1996, Proposition 209, also known by the (completely unironic) ironic title its proponents gave it, the “California Civil Rights Initiative,” outlawed affirmative action at any level of government in the state, including access to public colleges and universities.

Though it faced legal challenges, Proposition 209 remains in force today. There’s no doubt that earlier Supreme Court decisions, including the 1978 finding in University of California v. Bakke, had indeed laid the groundwork for it. In it, a 30-year-old White man had challenged his rejection by the medical school at the University of California, Davis. He sued and was eventually admitted. In his case, the court upheld the principle of affirmative action to address racial or other discrimination against protected classes of persons, but outlawed specific numerical quotas.

By 2023, however, an ever more right-leaning Supreme Court had ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that affirmative action violates the equal protections guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. As we’ve seen repeatedly, the hard-won legal remedies for racism are now being turned against both the historic and present-day targets of racism.

Then, in 1998, another ballot initiative outlawed most bilingual education in California public schools (though it was finally repealed at the ballot box in 2016).

Disparate Impact

By 2003, however, in part because of changes to the demographic makeup of the electorate, California voters had had enough of legally weaponizing White anxiety. They roundly rejected Proposition 54, known as the “Racial Privacy Initiative,” which, as the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California put it, “would have banned most agencies from collecting data on race, ethnicity and national origin, with disastrous consequences for health, education, public safety, and civil rights.”

But in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the right-wing strategists for a second Trump presidency made it very clear that their plans included implementing a national version of the Racial Privacy Initiative. The author of the section on labor advocated prohibiting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, from collecting employment data based on race. The mere existence of such data, he wrote, “can then be used to support a charge of discrimination under a disparate impact theory. This could lead to racial quotas to remedy alleged race discrimination.” In other words, if you can’t demonstrate racial discrimination in employment (because you’re enjoined from collecting data on the subject), then there’s no racial discrimination to remedy. Case closed, right?

It seems that Donald Trump agrees. In April 2025, he issued an executive order entitled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy.” In it, he noted that “disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability.” Trump and his handlers don’t see taking systemic racism and contemporary bias into consideration as a solution to a problem. Such consideration is the problem. “It not only undermines our national values,” says the order, “but also runs contrary to equal protection under the law and, therefore, violates our Constitution.”

Whatever Trump may decree, current employment law (as implied in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, affirmed in 1970 by the Supreme Court in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., and codified in the 1991 Civil Rights Act passed under the presidency of George H.W. Bush) supports the use of disparate impact. As of now, plaintiffs can still seek to prove discrimination by demonstrating the disparate impact of a company’s “facially neutral” hiring, firing, or promotion policies. How long will it be, however, before this Supreme Court reverses decades of progress in equal employment?

We’ve already seen the “disparate impact” of Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency’s destruction of the federal workforce, which has disproportionately affected Blacks, and especially Black women. It’s a major factor explaining why 300,000 Black women have lost jobs since Trump took office.

If you have any doubt whether race (and sex) bias continues to exist at the highest levels in this administration, consider the words of a man Trump thought of as “sort of like a son,” the recently assassinated right-wing firebrand Charlie Kirk:

“If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”

“If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?”

And about a list of prominent Black women, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Kirk said: “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

Circling Backwards?

I used to suggest to my philosophy students that you could view the last 2,000 years of “western” history as a gradual widening of the circle of beings who count as full persons. At first, that circle contained only high-born men. Centuries of struggle saw the inclusion of men without noble birth, and later without property. Racial concepts, themselves a human invention, long excluded men who were not deemed White. Eventually, fitfully, they, too, were admitted to the circle of personhood. Most recently, women seem to have become persons, and with that addition, people of a variety of genders and sexual orientations have also joined the circle.

But right now, six people on the Supreme Court, along with the Trump administration, are doing all they can to tighten that previously ever-widening circle of personhood and Donald Trump is on board in a big-time way. Let us hope that we can stop them from turning that circle into a noose.

Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, taught for many years in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco.

26 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Shariq Us Sabah

France’s recognition of Palestine is welcome, but without follow-through it risks joining the long list of empty declarations that Palestinians have heard for generations. Symbolic gestures do not alter the structures of occupation, nor do they dismantle systems of domination. History shows that real change comes only when the international community chooses action over words.

The precedent of apartheid South Africa is instructive. By the mid-1980s, Europe had severed relations with Pretoria. In 1986, the United States Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto to impose sanctions. The regime’s legitimacy collapsed once its allies withdrew support. South Africa’s rulers did not embrace democracy out of benevolence; they yielded because isolation left them with no alternative.

The parallel with Palestine is unavoidable. Leading human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have concluded that Israel’s policies amount to apartheid under international law. The evidence includes systematic segregation, unequal rights, and the denial of Palestinian self-determination. Yet unlike the consensus that formed against South Africa, Israel still enjoys Western protection.

That protection takes the form of billions in military aid, preferential trade, and diplomatic cover at the United Nations. Far from moderating Israeli policy, such indulgence has entrenched settlement expansion, deepened the occupation, and enabled repeated assaults on Gaza. The promise of a two-state solution grows ever more remote, yet the subsidies and weapons continue to flow.

This contradiction undermines Western credibility. Governments invoke international law to condemn Russian actions in Ukraine, but ignore the same principles in Palestine. They demand accountability elsewhere while shielding an ally. The double standard corrodes the very notion of a rules-based order. If international law is applied selectively, it ceases to be law and becomes mere political convenience.

The tools of accountability are already known. Cutting military assistance, suspending trade privileges, and conditioning diplomatic relations are not radical innovations. They are the same measures that once dismantled apartheid South Africa. Then, as now, critics warned that sanctions would harden attitudes and close the door to dialogue. In reality, they created the conditions that made dialogue inevitable.

There is also a moral question. For decades, Palestinians have lived under occupation, siege, and dispossession. The right to self-determination is a principle enshrined in international law. To deny it indefinitely is to legitimise permanent subjugation. The longer the West shields Israel, the clearer the message: some nations’ rights are negotiable, others sacrosanct. That is a dangerous precedent in an already fractured world.

Recognition of Palestine is a necessary step, but it must be more than symbolic. What is required is coordinated international pressure, the deliberate use of economic and diplomatic leverage, and the political will to apply the same standards to Israel that once brought down apartheid in South Africa.

The international community has faced this test before. Few believed white minority rule in South Africa would collapse. Yet global pressure, combined with internal resistance, forced change. It happened not through war but through persistence, solidarity, and isolation of the oppressor.

The Palestinians deserve the same clarity and commitment. If Western governments act only with words, they will prolong suffering and diminish their own standing. The choice is clear. Either sustain an unjust order or summon the resolve that history demands.

Palestine cannot wait another generation for justice.

Shariq Us Sabah is a writer and commentator on geopolitics and human rights.

26 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Huda Skaik

Riyad Nofal, a photographer from Jabaliya, has been displaced 14 times since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began almost two years ago.

Despite being constantly uprooted, Riyad remained within Gaza City most of the time. That changed earlier this month.

After the Israeli army launched a major ground invasion, threatening to take control of Gaza City, Riyad was forced to relocate to Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.

Riyad, 69, worked as a photographer for 43 years and owned a studio, 12 shops and 14 apartments. All were located in Jabaliya, northern Gaza.

On 7 October 2023, Riyad’s eldest son Omar was killed in a massacre in Jabaliya and left behind nine children. Riyad has been taking care of them since then.

Another son of Riyad, the photojournalist Mohammad, was killed alongside his renowned colleague Anas Al-Sharif and five other journalists when Israel targeted their tent near Al-Shifa Hospital on 10 August 2025.

On 22 June 2025, Riyad’s wife died from wounds inflicted when Israeli shrapnel pierced her head a few days before.

For almost two years of Israeli genocide, Riyad “refused to abandon everything” he owned and leave Gaza City.

“But in the end,” Riyad said, “it was all destroyed – I lost my wife, my two sons and even my health.”

Riyad cannot bear all this loss, feeling like he has “aged 10 years in two years of war.”

“Sometimes I wish for death,” Riyad said, “because it is easier than this life.”

Homeland

To Riyad, Gaza City means life.

If the war ends, he said, he wants to return to Gaza City and pitch a tent even if on the rubble – only there will he feel alive again, surrounded by the scent of the people he loves.

Montaser Terzi, a 37-year-old Christian from Gaza City, shares the same feelings.

“Every time I hear the words ‘occupation of Gaza,’ I feel shaken inside,” Terzi told The Electronic Intifada.

For him, being displaced from the city – with Israel occupying it directly – is an existential fear.

“My life is tied to my home – the voices of my mother and father, family gatherings and the aroma of food during the holidays,” Terzi said.

When Israel attempted a ground invasion on Gaza in October 2023, Terzi found refuge at the Latin Catholic Church when bombardments grew too close to his house in al-Daraj neighborhood.

“Christians have ancient roots in this City,” he said. “It’s not just about life and death, but about our existence here.”

But this time, Terzi – again taking refuge at the Latin Catholic Church – is afraid the Christian community will lose their churches, memories and their presence.

Despite the destruction, people always returned. But this time, Terzi said, people are afraid they won’t be allowed back.

“Gaza is my homeland – I cannot imagine my life away from it,” Terzi said. “I believe we will return no matter what.”

Collective memory

For 22 months of Israeli genocide, Ahmad Mortaja, 30, a child protection and psychosocial support coordinator from the Shujaiya neighborhood, has refused to leave Gaza City and relocate to southern parts of the Strip.

He lost his two houses in Shujaiya at the first months of the genocide. The first was the house he was raised in and the second was the one his father had built and they grew up in.

“Our existence has become meaningless – we own nothing in this city,” he said. “The war has devoured both our homes, not caring about us or the memories and belongings we carried inside.”

Though he has been displaced within Gaza City itself, each time Mortaja left, he said, he left a piece of himself behind.

Before he stopped counting, Mortaja had been displaced more than 15 times. Displaying dark humor, his friends joke that he deserves an award for being the most displaced.

Mortaja’s last displacement was on 1 June 2025.

“I’m displaced in the west of the city, in one of the high-rise towers, to which eyes have recently turned,” he said, referring to Israel’s campaign to level Gaza’s high-rise towers.

People in Gaza City are, Mortaja said, exhausted and move south driven by their fear.

Mortaja and his family – just like the majority in Gaza that feel helpless – couldn’t find a place for themselves to evacuate to in the south.

What shapes the people of Gaza City, Mortaja said, is their memory.

His greatest fear is losing his memory – and with it, losing the city itself, along with himself, his friends and his family.

“If I leave to the south,” he said, “I won’t be able to convince my memory to leave with me – it will surely flee through the city streets, beyond my reach.”

Bittersweet love

Memory for Nadra al-Tibi is also what roots her in Gaza City.

Al-Tibi, 25, a freelance correspondent for China’s CGTN, left her house in Nasr neighborhood and is still displaced in Beach refugee camp in Gaza City, refusing to leave the city altogether.

“Every corner of the house holds a small memory: a laugh hanging in the corners, my mother’s prayers in the kitchen, my first steps in the hallway and the winter nights,” al-Tibi said. “It’s all these simple details that keep me rooted in this place.”

Al-Tibi – who was displaced at least six times inside Gaza City and then to southern Gaza for 400 days – felt like each displacement involved leaving pieces of her heart behind.

When a ceasefire was announced on 19 January 2025, and the road north reopened on 27 January, al-Tibi returned to Gaza City.

For al-Tibi, Gaza City is a mirror of her dreams, but it is also a mirror of her patience and hunger.

“Gaza is an open wound that teaches people the meaning of life and resistance and makes them believe that identity can grow even from beneath the rubble,” she said.

If Gaza City is lost, al-Tibi fears she will lose her sense of belonging – a sense that Gaza, despite its cruelty, is her home.

With every news story about a journalist being targeted, al-Tibi remembers that she could be the next journalist to be targeted.

“This feeling never leaves me,” she said. “But instead of silencing me, it makes me cling to my language, my pen and my voice more.”

The invasion of Gaza City, al-Tibi said, is not only about stealing the land, about stealing street names, the voices of children in the alleys and memory itself.

Sara Awad, an English literature student, says she is losing her memory after leaving Gaza City.

“I feel like my memories are disappearing and parts of me are shrinking,” Awad said.

On 11 September, Awad, 21, left her house in Sheikh Radwan, a neighborhood in the northern part of Gaza City, where she lived for 20 years, and moved to a tent in al-Zawayda, central Gaza.

Awad thought Israel’s campaign to invade and take direct control of Gaza City was just a “psychological war,” never believing she would be forced out of her neighborhood or house.

“This is my home, my room, our kitchen, our living room, our stairs, our roof and our garden, where my grandfather used to plant crops before he died,” she said. “I feel like Israel is occupying me and killing me – not just my city.”

Awad’s grandfather, Rafeeq, was 73 when he succumbed to cancer on 21 October 2023 due to the lack of vital treatment.

Israel is trying to make people in Gaza hate living there by bombing the places they love and belong to – restaurants, cafes, schools, universities and mosques.

“I hear [on the news] about the blowing up of houses in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood,” Awad said, referring to Israel’s use of explosive-laden robots to obliterate houses.

Though Awad has been displaced three times since October 2023, this displacement, she said, is different and worse since there is no coming back to the house.

“We will return because the land is ours, but I have no hope that I will return and find my house,” Awad said.

In William Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet, the protagonist declares: “I must be cruel only to be kind.” He meant that causing pain could at times serve a greater good.

Gaza and Hamlet are alike.

“Gaza is the mother who can be cruel to her children,” said Ahmad Mortaja. “Yet no matter what she does to them, her children continue to love her and remain attached to her.”

It is a phoenix, Mortaja said, always rising from the ashes, declaring that hope still lies beneath the rubble.

“When Gaza rises again,” Mortaja said, “we must dust it off and live once more.”

Mahmoud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian poet, once wrote: “We have on this land what makes life worth living.”

Mortaja affirmed: “And who deserves life more than us.”

Huda Skaik is a student of English and a journalist based in Gaza.

26 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Haya Hijazi 

In Gaza, destruction is not limited to homes, hospitals, and markets. Less visible, yet equally tragic, is the erasure of memory, knowledge, and culture: the obliteration of libraries.

For decades, libraries—university archives, public collections, school libraries, and even personal shelves in family homes—were fragile lifelines to the outside world. In a besieged enclave where travel and access to education are restricted, books were more than paper; they were passports, companions, and windows to a world most Gazans could never touch.

Today, many of these collections lie in ruins. Bombed universities have lost research and historical archives. Schools where children once held storybooks now stand silent, with torn pages fluttering in the rubble. Private libraries, painstakingly built over decades, have turned to ashes. Every lost book is not just paper destroyed—it is a dream, a voice, a life’s work silenced.

I spoke with students who described their despair. Nadia, a medical student, told me:

“I was working on my thesis about women’s health, relying on rare journals that no longer exist after the library was destroyed. It feels as if my future was buried with those books.”

At a local school, a 10-year-old boy held a torn page from his favorite book and said:

“I tried to save it, but it’s not the same. It feels like a piece of my childhood is gone.”

Even home libraries have not been spared. Take my own father, a pediatrician and passionate reader. He had collected over two thousand books over forty years in our home in northern Gaza. He never sold a single book—they were a part of him, of his life and knowledge. When our home was bombed, the library burned completely, taking decades of passion, research, and memories with the flames.

Similarly, the Abu Ali family, who gathered their books over three decades, found most of their library reduced to ash after their neighborhood was hit. The father said:

“These books are not just books. They are our memories, our children’s dreams. Now everything is gone.”

The destruction of libraries is not collateral damage—it is an assault on memory and identity. To erase books is to erase the ability to remember, to learn, and to pass on culture. In Gaza, where generations already struggle under siege, the loss of libraries is a wound that will outlast the war.

Global conversations about Gaza often highlight destroyed hospitals, lives lost, and displaced families. These are urgent tragedies, but they do not tell the full story. There is a slower, quieter death: the death of memory. A society without its libraries is robbed not only of its present but of its past and future.

Libraries are not just buildings; they are guardians of language, history, imagination, and dreams. When Gaza’s libraries burn, it is not only Gazans who lose. The world loses stories, research, voices, and perspectives that might change how we understand resilience, struggle, and humanity.

Rebuilding Gaza will not only be about reconstructing homes and hospitals. It must include rebuilding memory—schools, archives, and libraries. Without that, the people of Gaza will remain displaced even in their own land, unable to reclaim the written traces of their identity.

Having grown up surrounded by these books, I mourn not only the buildings destroyed but also the dreams they held. When books turn to dust, memory itself is endangered. And when memory burns, so does the hope of a future built on knowledge.

Haya Hijazi is a 29-year-old obstetrician and gynecologist from Gaza, a humanitarian activist, and a freelance writer.

26 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Rima Najjar

Author’s note: This essay confronts the global failure to protect Palestinian life by exposing the gap between rhetorical recognition and material consequence. It argues that the tools to dismantle occupation — legal, diplomatic, and economic — already exist, and that their non-use is not a matter of complexity but of political refusal. Through a region-by-region analysis of the European Union, United States, Latin America, Africa, and Arab states, the essay outlines concrete actions that could be taken today if there were sufficient will. It dismantles the myth of impossibility by drawing on historical precedents — from South Africa to East Timor — and shows that rupture with the system of hypocrisy is not only survivable, but necessary. The final section indicts the architecture of inertia and calls for strategic, unapologetic action: sanctions, severed ties, and international protection. Palestinian liberation is not a diplomatic abstraction. It is a political imperative — and it will not be achieved through recognition alone, but through consequences to the occupier.
 — -

Section I: Concrete Actions and Legal Pathways

The world does not suffer from ignorance. It suffers from cowardice. Palestine is not unseen — it is unprotected. Every summit, every statement, every gesture of recognition has not affirmed Palestinian sovereignty — it has fragmented it. From partial UN observer status to selective recognition of a “State of Palestine” within undefined borders, these gestures have acknowledged slivers of Palestine while evading the totality of its dispossession. They have treated recognition as resolution, while leaving the machinery of occupation intact.

In a recent interview with Al Mayadeen, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan declared:

“International recognition of the State of Palestine is a step in the right direction, but what is needed are practical measures — namely, an end to the aggression. These practical steps do not come through imposing guardianship on the Palestinian people, but through imposing sanctions on the occupation.”
 (الاعترافات الدولية بدولة فلسطين تمثّل “خطوةً في الاتجاه الصحيح”، والمطلوب هو “إجراءات عملية، وهي وقف العدوان”… لا تكون عبر فرض وصايا على الشعب الفلسطيني، بل في فرض عقوبات على الاحتلال.)

Hamdan’s statement is not a plea. It is a demand for material consequence. If the goal of two-state negotiations is to end aggression, dismantle apartheid, and protect Palestinian life — not merely to manage optics or defer confrontation — then the message is clear: put your actions where your declarations are. This essay outlines what those actions look like — concretely, legally, and politically. They are not impossible. They are not utopian. They are entirely feasible if there is political will.

And they are not ends in themselves. They are steps toward the only horizon that matters: Palestinian liberation and self-determination in our homeland. Not as a diplomatic abstraction, but as a lived reality — where Palestinians govern themselves, protect themselves, and narrate themselves without foreign guardianship or settler veto. This is not a distant dream. It is the trajectory of our struggle, and it will remain so until the architecture of occupation is dismantled — not symbolically, but structurally.

European Union: Dismantling the Façade of Conditionality

The European Union has long positioned itself as a defender of human rights and international law. Yet its relationship with Israel reveals a stark contradiction: rhetorical commitment to Palestinian sovereignty paired with material complicity in its erasure. This contradiction is not abstract — it is codified, funded, and diplomatically maintained.

The EU routinely affirms its support for a two-state solution and the rights of Palestinians to self-determination. It has recognized the State of Palestine in various symbolic forms, including observer status at the UN and diplomatic missions across member states. But these gestures have acknowledged fragments of Palestine — selective borders, provisional governance, and deferred sovereignty — while leaving the machinery of occupation untouched.

Meanwhile, the EU-Israel Association Agreement, signed in 1995 and ratified in 2000, remains the cornerstone of economic and political cooperation. It grants Israel preferential trade status and deep scientific, cultural, and technological collaboration — all under the condition, stated in Article 2, that such cooperation is contingent on respect for human rights and democratic principles.

Israel has violated these principles systematically and publicly. From the siege of Gaza to the expansion of illegal settlements, from extrajudicial killings to the apartheid wall, the evidence is not ambiguous. It is overwhelming. And yet the agreement remains intact.

Suspension is not unprecedented. The EU has frozen association agreements with Belarus, Syria, and Russia under similar grounds. The legal mechanism exists. The political will does not.

Beyond trade, the EU continues to fund Israeli institutions through Horizon Europe, its flagship research and innovation program. Millions of euros have flowed to Israeli universities and tech firms directly involved in developing surveillance systems, military hardware, and predictive policing tools used against Palestinians. These are not neutral technologies. They are instruments of suppression.

Exclusion is not radical. Russia was barred from Horizon Europe following its invasion of Ukraine. The precedent is clear: when aggression is European-coded, rupture is swift. When it is Palestinian-coded, delay becomes doctrine.

The EU also possesses a targeted sanctions regime: the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, adopted in 2020. It allows for asset freezes and travel bans against individuals and entities responsible for serious human rights violations. It has been used against officials in Myanmar, Iran, and China. It has never been used against Israeli generals, ministers, or settlement financiers — despite their documented roles in war crimes and systemic apartheid.

The tools are there. The European Union possesses binding legal frameworks, enforceable human rights clauses, and targeted sanctions regimes designed precisely for moments like this. Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement provides a clear basis for suspension. Horizon Europe funding can be revoked. The Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime is operational. These are not aspirational instruments — they are ready for use.

So what stands in the way?

Member states fear economic backlash, diplomatic strain, and the erosion of strategic alliances. But these are not insurmountable costs. They are calculated preservations of comfort. Economic consequences are negotiable. Diplomatic tension is survivable. Strategic partnerships are mutable. What is feared is not collapse but accountability. What is feared is the precedent Palestine would set: that occupation can be punished, apartheid can be isolated, and complicity can be named—not just in Palestine but everywhere.

To act on Palestine is to admit that accountability need not be exceptional. It can be universalized. That if Palestine’s occupation is punishable, so too are the annexations in Western Sahara, the enclosures in Kashmir, the racialized border regimes across Europe. That if apartheid can be isolated here, it can be isolated in refugee camps turned into carceral zones. That if complicity can be named in the EU’s dealings with Israel, it can be named in its arms exports, its surveillance partnerships, its border fortifications.

Palestine threatens not just a rupture in policy but a rupture in precedent. It demands a grammar of accountability that does not stop at the gates of strategic interest. And that is what stands in the way: not the cost of action, but the contagion of clarity.

This is why complexity is invoked — not to clarify, but to paralyze. It becomes the shield behind which cowardice is rationalized. Politicians fear accusations of antisemitism, the loss of defense contracts, and the destabilization of alliances built on surveillance and suppression. They defer action not because they cannot act, but because they choose not to. This is not a failure of capacity. It is a failure of will.

United States: Exceptionalism as Immunity

No state has done more to shield Israel from accountability than the United States. It is not merely a strategic ally — it is the guarantor of impunity. Through military aid, diplomatic cover, and veto power at the United Nations, the U.S. has transformed its rhetorical support for a two-state solution into a structural endorsement of apartheid.

The U.S. provides Israel with over $3.8 billion annually in military assistance. This aid is governed by binding legal frameworks — frameworks that, if applied, would trigger immediate suspension.

• The Leahy Law prohibits U.S. military assistance to foreign security forces implicated in gross human rights violations. Israeli units operating in Gaza and the West Bank have been repeatedly documented committing such violations. Yet no unit has ever been sanctioned under Leahy.
• The Foreign Assistance Act bars aid to governments that engage in consistent patterns of human rights abuse. The State Department’s own reports confirm these patterns in Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Still, the aid flows uninterrupted.
• The Arms Export Control Act requires that U.S. weapons be used for legitimate self-defense. The use of American-made bombs, drones, and rifles in the killing of civilians, the destruction of homes, and the targeting of journalists violates this condition. Yet enforcement is absent.

These are not obscure statutes. They are foundational. They have been used to restrict aid to Colombia, Egypt, and Indonesia. Their non-application to Israel is not a legal oversight — it is a political exemption.

This exemption is sustained by a bipartisan consensus rooted in strategic interests, electoral calculations, and ideological alignment. Politicians fear backlash from powerful lobbying groups. They fear being labeled antisemitic. They fear losing campaign contributions and media favor. But these fears are not insurmountable. They are manufactured constraints — designed to preserve a status quo that is morally indefensible.

The refusal to act is not born of complexity. It is born of exceptionalism. Israel is treated as untouchable — not because it is innocent, but because its impunity is useful. It serves as a proxy, a partner, and a pillar of U.S. influence in the region. To condition aid, to impose sanctions, to support international protection mechanisms would mean rupturing that utility. It would mean choosing justice over dominance.

Latin America and Africa: Reviving the Legacy of Anti-Apartheid Diplomacy

Latin America and Africa have long served as moral compasses in the international arena — regions where anti-colonial and anti-apartheid movements shaped foreign policy with clarity and conviction. From the Non-Aligned Movement to the global boycott of South Africa, these blocs once led the charge against imperialism and racial domination. Today, that legacy is being tested.

Several states have already taken steps toward rupture. Bolivia severed diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009 following the assault on Gaza, and again in 2023 amid renewed atrocities. South Africa recalled its ambassador and referred Israel to the International Criminal Court, invoking the Genocide Convention. Namibia, Algeria, and Colombia have issued scathing indictments of Israeli aggression, framing it as apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

But these gestures must become infrastructure.

• Recall ambassadors and suspend diplomatic relations: This is not symbolic. It is a declaration of non-consent. It signals that normalization with apartheid is not acceptable. Bolivia and Venezuela have done this. Others must follow.
• Impose trade restrictions on settlement goods: While the EU debates labeling, Latin American and African states can ban imports outright. These goods are produced on stolen land, often by exploited labor. Their presence in global markets legitimizes dispossession.
• Mobilize regional blocs: The African Union (AU) and Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) have the capacity to issue binding resolutions, coordinate sanctions, and create diplomatic pressure. These blocs were forged in the crucible of resistance. They must now act as engines of accountability.
• Support international legal mechanisms: States can file amicus briefs to the ICC, support UN investigations, and fund legal infrastructure for Palestinian civil society. South Africa’s recent referral to the ICJ is a model — not an exception.
• Withdraw from military and intelligence cooperation: Surveillance regimes are transnational. Israeli firms export technologies tested on Palestinians to governments across Africa and Latin America. Severing these ties is not just solidarity — it is self-defense.

The legacy of anti-apartheid diplomacy is not a relic. It is a blueprint. These regions have shown that rupture is survivable, that moral clarity can be policy, and that solidarity can be statecraft. The question now is whether they will act not just in memory of past struggles, but in defense of a present one.
 — -

Arab States: From Normalization to Strategic Rupture

No region has been more entangled in the contradictions of Palestine than the Arab world. Arab governments have long positioned themselves as defenders of Palestinian rights — issuing statements, convening summits, and funding humanitarian aid. Yet many have simultaneously deepened security cooperation with Israel, signed normalization agreements, and treated Palestinian sovereignty as a bargaining chip in broader geopolitical negotiations.

The Abraham Accords, signed by the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan, exemplify this contradiction. Framed as peace deals, they normalized relations with a state actively expanding settlements, besieging Gaza, and annexing land. These agreements did not end occupation — they entrenched it. They did not protect Palestinians — they bypassed them.

This is not diplomacy. It is abandonment.

To reorient Arab diplomacy toward liberation, the following actions must be taken:

• Sever intelligence and military cooperation: Arab states have shared surveillance infrastructure, border technologies, and counterterrorism protocols with Israel. These systems are used to monitor, suppress, and criminalize Palestinian resistance. Ending this cooperation is not symbolic — it is strategic.
• Withdraw from normalization frameworks: The Abraham Accords and similar agreements must be dismantled. They treat suppression as stability and occupation as inevitability. Their existence signals that Palestinian rights are negotiable. Their dissolution would signal that they are not.
• Recall ambassadors and suspend diplomatic ties: This is a minimal threshold of moral clarity. It communicates that apartheid is not a partner, and that ethnic cleansing is not a basis for cooperation.
• Redirect financial and diplomatic resources: Arab states must invest in Palestinian civil society, legal defense infrastructure, and international advocacy. This includes funding ICC referrals, supporting UN mechanisms, and amplifying Palestinian testimony in global forums.
• Mobilize the Arab League: Once a platform for anti-colonial solidarity, the League has become a site of paralysis. It must be revived as a bloc capable of issuing binding resolutions, coordinating sanctions, and confronting occupation with unified clarity.

These actions are not unprecedented. Egypt and Jordan suspended ties in moments of rupture. Algeria and Iraq have maintained principled distance. Kuwait and Qatar have resisted normalization. The infrastructure of refusal exists. It must be activated.

Arab states must decide: will they continue to treat Palestine as a diplomatic instrument, or will they act to protect it as a sovereign struggle? The time for summit statements has passed. The time for strategic rupture has arrived.
 — -

Section II: The Myth of Impossibility

The refusal to act is often framed as necessity. Governments invoke complexity, instability, and geopolitical risk to justify paralysis. They say the situation is “too delicate,” “too entrenched,” “too unique.” But these are not diagnoses. They are defenses. What they obscure is the truth: rupture is not impossible. It is feared because it is precedent-setting.

Palestine is not the exception. It is the mirror.

The collapse of apartheid in South Africa was not gradual. It was sudden, disorienting, and — until it happened — widely dismissed as impossible. Western governments had spent decades propping up the regime, rationalizing its brutality, and criminalizing its opponents. But when rupture came, it came fast. Sanctions were imposed. Diplomatic ties were severed. Cultural and academic boycotts gained traction. The myth of impossibility dissolved under the weight of sustained pressure and moral clarity.

East Timor was occupied by Indonesia for nearly 25 years. The international community remained largely silent, citing strategic alliances and regional stability. But after relentless advocacy, civil society mobilization, and a shift in global consciousness, the occupation ended. A UN peacekeeping force was deployed. A referendum was held. Independence was achieved.

Portugal’s colonial empire collapsed under similar conditions. So did the regimes in Chile, Argentina, and the Balkans. In each case, rupture was framed as unthinkable — until it became inevitable.

What these examples reveal is not inevitability, but contingency. Occupation ends when the cost of complicity exceeds the cost of rupture. When civil society refuses to be anesthetized. When governments are forced to choose between moral clarity and strategic comfort.

Palestine is no different. The occupation persists not because it is unresolvable, but because it is useful. It serves as a testing ground for surveillance technologies, a laboratory for military doctrine, and a pillar of regional control. To dismantle it would mean dismantling the architecture that benefits from it.

And that is why impossibility is invoked — not to describe reality, but to defer responsibility.

But the precedent exists. The tools exist. The will can be built. What is needed is not another summit. What is needed is rupture — strategic, sustained, and unapologetic. Not for its own sake, but for the sake of liberation.

And rupture is survivable. The myth of insurmountability collapses under the weight of political testimony. The constraints invoked to justify inaction are not structural — they are strategic. Manufactured to preserve a status quo that is morally indefensible, but not immutable. Politicians who have bucked the system and endured prove that the cost of courage is often exaggerated to paralyze dissent.

• Jeremy Corbyn (UK)
   Despite relentless media attacks and political isolation, Corbyn maintained his position as Labour Party leader for five years while openly criticizing Israeli policies and advocating for Palestinian rights. He faced accusations of antisemitism weaponized against his platform, yet his stance catalyzed a generational shift in discourse within the UK. His survival — and the movement that outlived his leadership — demonstrates that political backlash is not fatal when rooted in moral clarity.
• Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib (US)
   Both congresswomen have publicly condemned Israeli apartheid, called for conditioning aid, and supported BDS-related measures. They have faced censure, smear campaigns, and threats — but they remain in office, re-elected by constituents who value their integrity. Their presence in Congress proves that critique of Israel is not a political death sentence, even in the heart of American exceptionalism.
• Evo Morales (Bolivia)
   Under Morales, Bolivia severed diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009 following the assault on Gaza. The move was framed as a rejection of state terrorism. Morales remained in power for over a decade, and Bolivia’s rupture with Israel was later reaffirmed by subsequent governments. The backlash was minimal compared to the moral weight of the decision.
• Nelson Mandela and the ANC (South Africa)
   Mandela’s unwavering support for Palestine — despite Western pressure — was not a liability. It was a cornerstone of post-apartheid foreign policy. The ANC’s solidarity with Palestine has persisted across administrations, and South Africa continues to lead global calls for accountability, including recent moves to refer Israel to the ICC.

These examples reveal a pattern: the cost of dissent is real, but it is not terminal. Politicians who act with clarity and conviction may face backlash, but they also reshape the discourse, embolden civil society, and prove that the machinery of complicity can be disrupted. The fear invoked by most governments is not of collapse — it is of precedent. Palestine threatens to normalize rupture. And that, more than anything, is what the status quo cannot afford.

To invoke impossibility is to preempt accountability. The politicians who endure backlash do not merely survive; they expand the terrain of discourse, making space for testimony that was once unspeakable. Their endurance is not proof of exceptionalism — it is proof that the machinery of complicity can be interrupted. What remains is not a question of feasibility, but of will. And will, unlike myth, can be built.
 — -

Section III: Indicting the Architecture of Inertia and Calling for Action

The international system is calibrated to defer Palestinian liberation. It rewards delay, incentivizes ambiguity, and punishes clarity. It treats Palestinian suffering as a humanitarian crisis to be managed — not a political condition to be dismantled. It elevates negotiations that entrench occupation, and silences demands that threaten its scaffolding.

But the scaffolding is not immutable.
 It can be dismantled — legally, politically, and strategically.
 The tools exist. The precedents are clear. The cost is survivable.
 What remains is the question of will.

So let us be precise:

1. Dissolve Association Agreements

Dissolve association agreements with the State of Israel that condition cooperation on human rights while systematically ignoring their violation. The EU-Israel Association Agreement, signed in 1995 and activated in 2000, explicitly ties economic and political cooperation to respect for human rights and democratic principles. Yet the EU continues to deepen trade, research, and defense ties with Israel while it annexes land, bombs refugee camps, and imposes biometric control over millions of Palestinians. This is not oversight — it is endorsement.

• Suspend Horizon Europe partnerships that funnel research funding into Israeli institutions complicit in occupation, including those developing surveillance technologies used in the West Bank and Gaza.
• Terminate bilateral agreements that enable joint policing, border control, and counterterrorism operations — operations that treat Palestinian resistance as pathology and Israeli militarism as innovation.

These agreements are not neutral frameworks. They are instruments of normalization.
 To dissolve them is not to abandon diplomacy, it is to restore its integrity.
 Human rights clauses must not be decorative. They must be enforceable.
 And when they are violated, cooperation must end.

2. Sever Diplomatic Ties

Sever diplomatic ties with the State of Israel — a regime that sustains apartheid through annexation, siege, and ethnic cleansing. This is not metaphor. It is policy.

• Israel has annexed East Jerusalem, expanded settlements across the West Bank in violation of international law, and imposed a 17-year blockade on Gaza.
• It has deployed white phosphorus on civilian populations, bombed hospitals and refugee camps, and executed mass displacement campaigns under the guise of “security.”

Cut ties with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which coordinates global propaganda campaigns to sanitize occupation.
 Expel ambassadors who defend the bombing of schools as “self-defense.”
 Suspend bilateral agreements that facilitate arms transfers, intelligence sharing, and joint surveillance operations.
 End participation in trade forums that normalize apartheid as diplomacy.

Sever ties not just symbolically, but structurally:

• Cancel military cooperation with Elbit Systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and Israel Aerospace Industries — firms that export occupation as technology.
• Withdraw from academic partnerships that whitewash apartheid as innovation.
• Refuse cultural exchanges that rebrand siege as resilience.

Diplomatic ties are not neutral. They are endorsements.
 To maintain them is to legitimize ethnic cleansing as policy.
 To sever them is not extremism — it is precedent.
 South Africa did it. Bolivia did it. Venezuela did it.
 The cost is survivable. The moral clarity is overdue.

3. Impose Targeted Sanctions

Impose targeted sanctions — not generically, but surgically.
 Name the financiers, commanders, and technologists who sustain the machinery of apartheid.

• Sanction Caterpillar Inc. for supplying bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes.
• Sanction Lockheed Martin and Leonardo for providing weapons deployed in Gaza.
• Sanction Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), and IBM for building surveillance infrastructures that enable biometric control, predictive policing, and digital targeting of Palestinian civilians.
• Sanction Airbnb and Booking.com for profiting from illegal settlement tourism.
• Sanction HD Hyundai for supplying machinery used in territorial erasure.

These are not passive actors; they are active collaborators.
 Their technologies, logistics, and capital flows are embedded in the architecture of dispossession.

And sanction the military commanders whose names are known:
 Those who oversaw the bombardment of hospitals, refugee camps, and schools.
 Their ranks are not anonymous. Their strategies are not accidental.
 The chain of command is traceable.
 The refusal to name them is not caution — it is complicity.

To dismantle occupation, dismantle the scaffolding that sustains it.
 Not just the ideology, but the infrastructure.
 Not just the rhetoric, but the revenue.
 Sanctions must be precise, public, and persistent.
 Anything less is performance.

4. Mobilize International Protection Forces

Mobilize international protection forces — not to manage optics, but to protect life.
 Not to perform neutrality, but to interrupt annihilation.

The United Nations has deployed peacekeeping missions in Rwanda, Bosnia, East Timor, and South Sudan.
 It has the infrastructure. It has the precedent.
 What it lacks is political will.

• Deploy forces to Gaza — not to monitor ceasefires that never hold, but to shield civilians from bombardment.
• Station observers in the West Bank — not to document settler violence after the fact, but to prevent it in real time.
• Activate the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate — not to issue reports that gather dust, but to authorize intervention.

Call upon regional bodies — the African Union, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — to send protection units, not just statements.
 Demand that NATO and the EU confront their complicity by refusing to treat Israeli aggression as security cooperation.

Protection forces must not be symbolic. They must be material:
 Armored vehicles, medical units, communications infrastructure.
 Their presence must disrupt the calculus of impunity.
 Their mandate must be clear: protect Palestinian life.
 Not manage perception. Not negotiate delay. Protect.

5. Withdraw from Normalization Frameworks

Withdraw from normalization frameworks that treat suppression as stability.
 The Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States, rebrand apartheid as diplomacy — offering Israel regional legitimacy while entrenching Palestinian dispossession.

These agreements are not peace deals. They are strategic alliances that reward annexation, siege, and ethnic cleansing with trade, arms, and surveillance partnerships.

• Suspend participation in the Negev Forum, which convenes Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, and the United States under the banner of regional cooperation while excluding Palestinian representation.
• Dismantle bilateral frameworks that facilitate joint counterterrorism operations — operations that criminalize resistance and export Israeli military doctrine as a model of “security.”

Normalization is not reconciliation. It is erasure.
 It demands silence in exchange for access, complicity in exchange for capital.
 To withdraw is not to abandon diplomacy — it is to refuse its weaponization.
 Stability built on suppression is not peace.
 It is scaffolding for apartheid.

6. Redirect Resources Toward Palestinian Sovereignty

Redirect resources toward Palestinian civil society, legal infrastructure, and testimonial preservation.
 Not to manage suffering, but to fortify sovereignty.

• Fund organizations like Al-Haq, Addameer, Samidoun, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights — groups that document violations, litigate in international courts, and archive testimony under siege.
• Support the work of Defense for Children International — Palestine, which exposes the detention and torture of minors.
• Channel resources to grassroots networks in Gaza and the West Bank that sustain food distribution, medical care, and trauma support — not through intermediaries, but directly.

Invest in digital infrastructure that protects archives from erasure.
 Equip libraries, cultural centers, and oral history projects with the tools to preserve testimony in the face of bombardment and displacement.
 Support legal teams preparing cases for the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice — not with symbolic gestures, but with sustained funding, translation, and forensic expertise.

Redirect academic grants, cultural funds, and humanitarian budgets away from institutions that normalize occupation and toward those that resist it.
 Aid must not be aestheticized. It must be politicized. It must be strategic.
 To preserve Palestinian life is to preserve Palestinian testimony.
 And testimony, under siege, is resistance.

Final Invocation

These are not radical demands.
 They are the baseline of ethical diplomacy.

Anything less is endorsement by inertia.
 Every refusal to act is a reinforcement of occupation.
 Every delay is complicity.

The time for symbolic gestures has passed.
 The time for strategic rupture is now.

Palestinian liberation is not a diplomatic abstraction.
 It is a political imperative.
 And it will not be achieved through recognition alone.
 It will be achieved through consequence — to the occupier.

Note: First published in Medium

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa.

25 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ismail Al Sharif

“…As though you and your superiors had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit this world – we find that no one, that is no member of the human race, can be expected to want to share the earth with you. This is the reason, and the only reason, for which you deserve to be hanged,” – Hannah Arendt, German-Jewish philosopher.

When you read the sentence: “We had to create conditions more painful than death,” you might think it’s taken from a horror novel or a dystopian narrative that depicts future or imaginary societies in which values collapse, injustice prevails, and environmental and social devastation rages. It’s the “corrupt city,” the exact opposite of utopia, the ideal city.

You might think the sentence appeared in one of Ahmed Khaled Tawfik’s “Utopia,” George Orwell’s “1984,” or Albert Camus’s “The Plague.” You might think it was a line in the testimony of a serial killer who plagued the police for a full decade before dozens of bodies were discovered buried in his garden.

But would you believe that this statement was uttered by Minister of “Zionist Heritage,” Amichai Eliyahu? He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t agitated, and no spittle was flying from his mouth. He said it with calm, measured calm, wearing a smart suit and tie, his face sporting a trimmed beard that, at first glance, you might mistake for a dignified sheikh or a holy man.

His statement was devoid of any emotion, like a routine uttering from a government employee, explaining to people that the power outage was due to a heat wave, or that the road closures were due to temporary maintenance work.

Have you ever wondered how decisions to commit genocide are made? And how countries became complicit in these?

My direct answer: Decisions to commit genocide are made when they are put on the agenda, when they are announced from golf courses or discussed at dinner tables. When children and women are killed by bombs, and hospitals and shelters are destroyed, a dapper bureaucrat takes the stage.

He starts his day with a jog around his house, has breakfast with his children, kisses his wife goodbye, asks her what she needs from the market, and instructs his children to behave.

This same bureaucrat takes center-stage to defend genocide, beautifying it, whilst sanitizing it linguistically, using flowery terms such as: “Precision strikes,” “human shields,” “collateral damage.”

He like other bureaucrats are creative in manipulating the vocabulary: Torture is transformed into “interrogation,” starvation into “economic pressure,” and ethnic cleansing into “security buffer zones” or “humanitarian cities.” Even death traps are remarketed under glamorous names, such as the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.”

Let’s return to the Minister of “Zionist Heritage,” who concludes his statement by saying: “Death is no longer enough. It must be painful, prolonged, and free from any international accountability.”

Even the most brutal of tyrants in history were careful to conceal their intentions when committing crimes. When the Qarmatians slaughtered pilgrims in Mecca in 317 AH, they claimed they were doing so to destroy idols. When the pilgrims committed the Euphrates Massacre against the people of Iraq, the pretext was “sedition.” Even when the United States committed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, it described it as “military engagement.”

But this time, and for the first time in history, this man comes out publicly and admits to committing genocide, while dressed in his finest suit and tie. It is the most brutal and horrific genocide in our modern history and under our eyes.

Perhaps, one day, criminals like him will be brought to justice and charged with war crimes. They will defend themselves coldly: “We were following orders,” or “it was just a business procedure,” without pain, without remorse, and without the slightest sense of guilt or responsibility.

This is exactly what Hannah Arendt described as the “banality of evil.”

This article by Ismail Al Sharif written in Arabic for the Addustour daily  was published from Arabic on the crossfirearabia.com website 

25 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org