Originally published on Global Voices

Destruction in Gaza. Photo by Jaber Jehad Badwan on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

By Masum Mahbub

A ceasefire was finally signed. Humanitarian organizations are scaling up operations to reach families facing famine after nearly two years of relentless bombardment and blockade, and the world is turning its attention to rebuilding.

But the destruction of Gaza is not only a humanitarian tragedy. It has unleashed one of the most severe environmental disasters of the 21st century. Two years of nonstop bombardment have flattened neighborhoods, poisoned the soil, and contaminated the water and air. As the world moves to rebuild, we must understand that the challenge ahead is not simply humanitarian or political.

As the head of an organization that has worked for decades at the nexus of humanitarian emergency response and climate change, I have witnessed how environmental degradation can cripple a community. However, what we are seeing in Gaza is something else entirely. It is not simply the collateral damage of war; it is the deliberate, systematic destruction of an entire environment.

This is ecocide, waged as a weapon to make the land uninhabitable and render any future for a self-sufficient Palestinian society impossible.

Systematic destruction

Over the last decade, Palestinians in Gaza were making remarkable strides in climate resilience despite a suffocating blockade. Gaza had developed one of the highest densities of rooftop solar panels in the world, a grassroots solution to a manufactured energy crisis. They were implementing plans to manage scarce water and adapt to a warming climate. These efforts were a testament to their perseverance, but Israel’s military campaign has systematically erased this progress.

These are not random acts of war. The annihilation of nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land, the razing of ancient olive groves, the obliteration of water pipelines, and the destruction of all five wastewater treatment plants are calculated blows against the very foundations of life.

When Israeli forces pump seawater into underground tunnels, they risk the permanent saline poisoning of Gaza's only significant aquifer, the primary source of drinking water for over two million people. When bombs target rooftop solar arrays, they sever a lifeline of independent electricity for homes and hospitals.

Monumental carbon event

The environmental toll extends far beyond Gaza’s borders, creating a carbon “boot print” with global consequences. In the first 60 days alone, the conflict generated an estimated 281,000 metric tons of CO₂, more than the annual carbon footprint of over 20 of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations combined.

Over 99 percent of these emissions are attributable to Israel’s aerial and ground operations. And the climate cost will continue long after the last bomb falls.

The reconstruction of Gaza is projected to be a monumental carbon event. Rebuilding the estimated 100,000 destroyed buildings could release an additional 30 million metric tons of CO₂, on par with the annual emissions of a country like New Zealand.

The unfolding famine in Gaza is a direct consequence of this environmental warfare. Starvation is not a byproduct of the conflict; it is a tool. When you destroy farms, annihilate 70 percent of the fishing fleet, and contaminate water sources with 130,000 cubic meters of raw sewage daily, you create famine. When you litter the landscape with 37 million tons of toxic rubble and unexploded ordnance, you make the land itself a threat to its inhabitants. The air is thick with pulverized concrete, asbestos, and heavy metals. With tens of thousands of bodies decomposing under the rubble, pathogens will continue to leach into the soil and groundwater for years.

How to make Gaza liveable again?

The cost of rebuilding Gaza is therefore unlike anything we have ever faced. It goes far beyond bricks and mortar. How do you decontaminate an entire aquifer? How do you restore topsoil that has been systematically bulldozed and poisoned with white phosphorus? How do you clear millions of tons of debris laced with carcinogens?

Making Gaza livable again will require a global effort on an unprecedented scale, one focused not just on infrastructure but on deep ecological restoration.

Rebuilding Gaza will test not only our compassion but our collective conscience. The ceasefire may have silenced the bombs, but it has not ended the damage to the land, the water, or the atmosphere we all share. What happens next will show whether the world has learned anything from this catastrophe.

We can rebuild walls and roads, or we can rebuild responsibly by healing Gaza’s environment and holding accountable those responsible for this ecocide and genocide.

Originally published on Global Voices

Palestine solidarity demonstration, London, May 15, 2021. Photo by Socialist Appeal on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

Produced in collaboration with the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, this collective article asks people across different struggles why Palestine concerns them — revealing a common thread of solidarity against statelessness, oppression, and colonial violence.

Areej al-Shammiry, Global Movement Against Statelessness

My first ever march was for Palestine during the Second Intifada. I was in grade four [around 10 years old] in Kuwait, chanting with hundreds of students in the schoolyard: 

“بالروح، بالدم، نفديك يا فلسطين” 

[“With our souls and blood, we sacrifice for you, O Palestine”] 

At the time, I didn’t fully grasp what was happening, but I remember the image of 12-year-old Mohammad Al-Durrah, murdered on live television, and watching Palestinians resisting Israeli tanks with stones. I understood one thing: Palestine was occupied, and Israel was the occupier. And this fact alone was enough to know where I stood. As a child, I was powerless, of course, but chanting together in the schoolyard was our only way to express solidarity. 

My political consciousness of Palestine grew alongside my awareness of my own statelessness. While not identical, our struggles share conditions of dispossession, marginalization, erasure, and denial of rights. Coming from a region that has been colonized, divided, and plagued with proxy wars to uphold US global hegemony, I know well the colonial roots of our struggles. 

Palestinians embody one of the world’s longest and largest cases of statelessness. Yet, Palestine has often been sidelined in statelessness discussions. Perhaps because it reveals the limits of international refugee and human rights regimes, which focus on citizenship acquisition rather than collective rights or self-determination. Palestine shows that statelessness is not a legal anomaly but tied to colonial violence, militarized borders, and global complicity.

As we witness what is almost two years of a livestreamed Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, in what marks an ongoing Nakba that led to their forced displacement and statelessness, Palestine has exposed the most extreme forms of state violence to facilitate settler colonialism, genocide and ethnic cleansing, which deprives Palestinians of their right to self-determination, nationhood, and right of return. Talking about Palestinian statelessness demands naming the structural violence of settler colonialism, forced displacement, and genocide. 

Palestinian resistance to this structural violence has sparked global solidarities: with Indigenous peoples confronting settler colonialism, with Black liberation struggles, and various struggles across West Asia and North Africa and the rest of the world. Movements like the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) show how collective action can transcend borders when governments fail to hold Israel to account, or worse, are complicit. 

Palestine thus stands both as a stark example of global injustice and an inspiration for resistance. For marginalized and stateless communities, the Palestinian struggle teaches us many lessons: to assert political agency beyond victimhood; to build solidarities as survival; and to speak truth to power despite repression. For those working on statelessness, it is also a call to reflect on our failures and commit to doing things differently. We must take these lessons seriously if we are to shape a future where this violence has no place.

Sihle Nxumalo, South African activist

The impact of the ongoing violence, destruction and systemic discrimination of the people of Palestine will have long-term consequences that will affect multiple generations in the future. South African apartheid “ended” in 1994, but the effects, trauma and its legacy still linger on today, including the continued discrimination against South Africa’s Indigenous population by white settlers. 

We can draw stark similarities between old South African apartheid policies and Israel’s discriminatory practices against Palestinians. Israel has created a brutal apartheid state in which Palestinian rights are systematically removed in favour of illegal settlers: physical segregation policies, forced displacement, and illegal seizures of lands echo the treatment of Black people in South Africa. 

The effects of these practices are still visible today, with many Black people still living in congested communities in tin shacks. White people in South Africa, who only make up about 10 percent of the population, still own around 70 percent of the land to this day, over 30 years after “democracy.” South Africa is known as having the most unequal society in the world, with severe economic inequalities persisting in the country. 

The legacy of apartheid still impacts the Black population of today with high unemployment rates, limited resources, unequal opportunities and bad living conditions.  The next generations of Palestinians will, unfortunately, have to inherit an intergenerational burden of widespread trauma and destruction, which will weigh heavily on their physical and emotional well-being. 

To end apartheid in South Africa, it took a mass internal uprising and massive support and condemnation from the international community. This pressure forced the South African government to rethink its policies and come to the negotiation table to pave the way for a free and democratic country for all its citizens. 

The global response to the discrimination and genocide in Palestine is grossly inadequate. The same support and global solidarity that South Africa received are desperately needed to pressure world powers to do something tangible, including but certainly not limited to legitimate economic sanctions and immediate cessation of arms sales to Israel. 

It is evident from the case of South Africa that ending violence and discrimination is only the first step in a long, winding road to true freedom. 

Free Palestine.

Aleksandra Semeriak Gavrilenok, former non-citizen of Latvia

Growing up stateless, as a non-citizen of Latvia, I learned early what it means when rights exist only on paper, only for those considered eligible, only for those belonging by ethnicity and not by birth. As I grew older, I learned that this exclusion was not accidental, that it is deliberately established and maintained by unjust power dynamics and by state actors who feel entitled to ignore the rule of law. 

Statelessness strips people of the sense of belonging, of social and political power, of access to justice and even of the recognition of their existence. But as a human being, I have the right to exist. That is why Palestine concerns me.

Here in Spain, I also witness the struggle of the Saharawi community. For decades, the Saharawi have been forcibly displaced and denied their right to nationality and self-determination. In both Palestine and Western Sahara, statelessness is violently compounded by colonization and systemic dehumanization, revealing how ineffective and indifferent the international order has become. 

Yes, international mechanisms exist, but they have been rendered useless. Rather than enforceable actions to prevent human rights violations and hold oppressors accountable, UN resolutions have, unfortunately, become little more than letters of condolence. Yet as someone who still believes in the UN’s founding promise “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” I want to hold onto hope that justice will prevail. That is why Palestine concerns me.

Across Europe and the world, I have been fortunate to meet a very diverse and still united community of people with lived experience of statelessness. Their stories, both beautiful and painful, taught me more about the multiple layers of discrimination and intersectional struggles. I saw how stateless people, with little resources, still challenged and changed the system. That confronted me with a truth: justice, recognition and equal rights will not come from institutions alone, but from solidarity among all of us. As a formerly stateless person, I stand in solidarity with those impacted by statelessness. That is why Palestine concerns me.

So, I’ve been asked why Palestine concerns me, but why does it not concern you?

Fawzi Abdul Fayaz, Rohingya activist

Palestine concerns me deeply because its people’s struggle resonates profoundly with my own community, the Rohingya. Both Palestinians and Rohingya have endured decades of systematic persecution, dispossession, and displacement. We are bound together not only by our shared experience of exile but also by the ongoing erasure of our identities through state violence and atrocity crimes. Palestine is not just “their” struggle; it is also a mirror of our own. Indeed, Arakan — the homeland of the Rohingya — is often described as the “Palestine of the East” because of the striking similarities in our people’s tragedies of forced displacement and genocide.

The Rohingya are often described as “the most persecuted people in the world.” Stripped of citizenship by Myanmar’s 1982 law, denied basic rights, and subjected to waves of military campaigns, we have faced ongoing genocide. The atrocities of 2017 — mass killings, systematic sexual violence, and the burning of hundreds of villages — forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. Today, most Rohingya children are born in exile, in overcrowded refugee camps such as Cox’s Bazar, without ever setting foot in our ancestral land of Arakan. And yet, as with Palestinians, our bond with our homeland remains unbroken.

To be born and raised in exile is to inherit both loss and resilience. Our parents and elders pass down stories of our villages, our language, and our traditions, ensuring that our identity survives attempts at erasure. This intergenerational memory is more than nostalgia; it is resistance. Just as Palestinians preserve their keys, songs, and oral histories, Rohingya preserve our culture and name as an act of defiance against genocide.

This enduring connection to homeland shapes identity, memory, and resistance. It reminds us that displacement does not end belonging — it strengthens it. To be Rohingya or Palestinian in exile is to embody the refusal to be forgotten, to carry both the pain of dispossession and the unyielding hope of justice and return.

Abdul Kalam Azad, activist scholar working with the Miya community in Assam, India

Palestine concerns me as a human being. Human beings are naturally wired to feel empathy when they see the livestreamed genocide of their fellow human beings for nearly two years. 

It is not just me; I am sure millions across the world see the situation in Palestine as a source of unending horror. I often feel that the majority of the world shares the same helplessness while watching the bullying attitude of colonial and imperial powers.

As an activist scholar working with the Miya community in Assam, India, the situation in Palestine has influenced how I think and work today. I once had faith in the world order; with international law and global governance in place, I believed that another genocide would never be possible.

I genuinely thought that injustices committed against marginalized people, including members of my own community, could be stopped if their stories were told to the world, if our friends and allies organized, and formed a global opinion, it would help us convince our national government to uphold the constitution religiously and protect the rights of our fellow citizens. The current situation in Palestine has shattered that hope. 

Today, members of my community are subjected to both structural and physical violence. Millions of us have been rendered stateless through discriminatory laws, policies, and practices. Hundreds of thousands of our homes have been demolished; many people are languishing in detention camps or being forcibly deported to foreign countries at gunpoint. Every aspect of our lives — livelihood, food, shelter, mobility, religion, and culture — is under constant control and surveillance. Forget about forming a global opinion — hardly anyone is even allowed to speak about these injustices. 

By sharing this, I am not attempting to draw parallels with the suffering of our Palestinian sisters and brothers. What I am trying to highlight is the collapse of the world order, the further erosion of the moral compass of colonial and imperial powers, and the resultant hopelessness, which are contributing to perpetual injustice across the globe. 

That is why stopping the genocide now is not just for the freedom of Palestinians but also to keep faith in the struggle to fight against injustice.  

Concluding remarks: Lubnah Shomali, Palestinian human rights activist and advocacy unit manager at BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

The Israeli colonial-apartheid regime has perpetrated almost two years of genocide in the Gaza Strip while fully disclosing its intentions and plans to erase the remaining Palestinian people in historic Palestine. 

And yet, states are not only failing to act but are complicit in genocide, displacement, colonization and apartheid. The Palestinian struggle for liberation has exposed this complicity, inaction, failure and sabotage of the international legal order.

What the Palestinian people have been facing and experiencing is not new nor exclusive, as the words above indicate. The reality is that colonial policies and practices are imposed in many other parts of the world, including the manipulation of the international legal order to serve the political and economic agendas of Western colonial states.

This is why the Palestinian struggle for liberation extends beyond the Palestinian people and our national homeland of historic Palestine, resonating among many oppressed peoples and groups around the world whose rights and freedoms have been denied and violated to further colonial agendas.

The Palestinian struggle for liberation reaffirms what has been historically proven and currently known: that the struggles for liberation, basic human rights, freedoms and justice require more than empty promises and condemnations, unfulfilled resolutions and symbolic gestures. 

Our struggles for liberation require that states fulfil their obligations to protect the unprotected, impose comprehensive sanctions against perpetrators of international crimes to hold them accountable and uphold the international legal order.

We also know that states will not willingly do so, especially if such actions are detrimental to their colonial agendas. Therefore, it becomes the duty of the oppressed peoples to resist, and our allies to provide solidarity. Together, through the escalation of direct actions that disrupt the colonial status quo, we will all be liberated.

Originally published on Global Voices

Demonstration in Frankfurt, Germany against the genocide in Gaza, with demonstrators carrying a banner with the words, ‘Stop the criminalisation of Palestinian resistance and solidarity.’ Photo by conceptphoto.info on Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

By Dalia Ismail

In the last few months, a noticeable shift has emerged across Europe as several governments signal a willingness to pressure Israel by moving toward the recognition of a Palestinian state. 

France announced it would formalize recognition at the UN General Assembly, which sparked similar calls by other European countries. In Germany, Israel’s strongest ally in Europe, a senior lawmaker in Friedrich Merz’s coalition has even proposed potential sanctions on Israel, including suspending arms exports. 

While these moves have yet to translate into concrete policy changes, they reflect a growing need among progressive EU leaders to distance themselves from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has become the focal point of international blame. By isolating him as the sole architect of the genocide, the EU avoids confronting its own structural complicity — through arms sales, economic ties, and political protection — that have long enabled Israel’s actions so far.

The focus on Netanyahu’s personal responsibility allows these countries to re-write the narrative on the genocide as a matter of leadership failure, rather than reckon with the broader system of support that has enabled the genocide in Gaza to happen. 

This narrative shift is further reinforced by the promotion of internal Israeli dissent, which functions to delineate the current atrocities as an exception within Israeli politics, thereby preserving the state’s international legitimacy and obscuring the structural continuity of its policies toward Palestinians.

The strategic use of internal Israeli critics

Mainstream EU and US media have granted significant space to Israeli political and military figures such as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Democrats party leader Yair Golan, presenting them as ethical alternatives to Netanyahu. 

Recently, Olmert and Golan have openly criticized Netanyahu for his crimes in Gaza. Golan called the government’s actions “fuel for antisemitism and hatred of Israel” and accused it of “killing babies as a hobby.” Olmert, too, has condemned Netanyahu’s leadership by saying explicitly, “Israel is committing war crimes.” 

Yet both Olmert and Golan played central roles during past Israeli massacres in Gaza — 2008–09 (“Operation Cast Lead”) and 2014 (“Operation Protective Edge”) — that were, and still are, the subjects of war crimes investigations by the Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and documented in reports by Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR), Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and many other Palestinian and international organizations. 

Their status as moral counterweights serves to frame the current atrocities as a deviation, downplaying the continuity of Israeli military policy and the crimes committed by former Israeli prime ministers and military generals. 

Their opposition may also serve a strategic function. By distancing themselves, they could be attempting to mitigate potential legal liability under international investigations. It can be viewed as part of a broader legal strategy to demonstrate non-involvement or lack of intent in the past military aggressions. 

Moral recalibration through familiar narratives

By amplifying dissenting voices — especially those of Olmert and Golan — EU institutions and mainstream media contribute to a process of moral recalibration that serves their audiences across their countries. These figures are presented as evidence of a robust internal debate, thereby reinforcing the image of Israel as a functioning democracy capable of self-criticism and self-correction, and suggesting that crimes against Palestinians began only on October 7, 2023, under the Netanyahu administration — not before. 

This framing enables European publics to interpret the ongoing genocide not as the product of a systemic colonial structure, but as a temporary exception. In this narrative, the genocide is portrayed as something new, erasing what Professor Ilan Pappé has described as an “incremental genocide” carried out since at least 1948.

Epistemic inequality and the marginalization of Palestinian voices

Simultaneously, Palestinian voices — journalists, academics, survivors, lawyers, and human rights defenders — remain marginalized in European discourse. 

Despite the ongoing genocide and the increased visibility of Palestinian voices through social media, what Palestinian literary critic Edward Said argued in his 1984 essay “Permission to Narrate” still holds true: Israeli voices are still perceived as more accurate and authoritative when it comes to criticizing Israel and exposing its crimes against the  Palestinians.

Journalists Romana Rubeo and Ramzy Baroud reported an emblematic example of this phenomenon in The Palestine Chronicle: when iconic Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by Israel in the Jenin refugee camp, her colleague Ali al-Samoudi, who witnessed the killing and was wounded in the same attack, publicly described from his hospital bed what had happened: that there were no armed clashes nearby, that both journalists were wearing clearly marked press vests, and that the shots came directly from Israeli soldiers — not from any crossfire with Palestinian resistance fighters.

Despite being the closest eyewitness, his account was dismissed. Israeli officials denied responsibility, and much of the European and US media followed suit. But later, investigations by international organizations — and a reluctant Israeli admission — confirmed that al-Samoudi’s version of events was accurate.

Giving more visibility and credibility to an Israeli dissident than to a Palestinian who reports the very same event reinforces a persistent racialized hierarchy of credibility. This not only marginalizes Palestinian voices but also weakens accountability: if the suffering of Palestinians is only taken seriously when filtered through Israeli voices, then justice is delayed or denied altogether. 

As a result, Israel is rarely held to account in any meaningful way because the victims themselves are not considered credible enough to trigger real consequences.

Rewriting facts to contain guilt

Delegating responsibility for the horrors committed in Palestine solely to Netanyahu and a few others functions as a psychological defense mechanism. By isolating blame to a limited group, European societies can distance themselves from their own complicity and preserve a self-image of moral integrity.

After World War II, Germany’s denazification process focused mainly on prosecuting prominent Nazi officials. Philosopher Karl Jaspers, in The Question of German Guilt, argued that this selective attribution of guilt allowed Germans to reconstruct their national identity without confronting the broader political and moral culpability shared by institutions and ordinary citizens. 

Jaspers distinguished between four types of guilt: criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical. While criminal guilt is punishable by law, political guilt implicates the collective responsibility of a society; moral guilt refers to personal ethical failings, and metaphysical guilt involves a deeper existential failure to oppose injustice.

By limiting guilt to criminal liability, Jaspers warned that societies risk avoiding ethical reckoning and thereby enabling a form of collective denial.

Europe’s current response to the genocide of Palestinians reflects this same pattern. Public outrage is directed at Netanyahu, but the longstanding political, economic, and institutional support for Israeli policies remains unexamined. Palestinians are marginalized, and false narratives, such as those surrounding October 7, 2023, keep being used to deflect attention and responsibility. This selective blaming externalizes guilt and protects European societies from confronting their own roles.

Originally published on Global Voices

Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif murdered by Israel. Screenshot from video ‘Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif killed in Israeli attack in Gaza City’ uploaded to YouTube by Al Jazeera English. Fair use.

By Samanth Subramanian

This article was originally published as an edition of Samanth Subramanian’s newsletter on Substack on August 11, 2025. An edited version is published here with permission.

It’s impossible to be a journalist and remain unaffected by Israel’s continued murder of journalists — part of its campaign to kill as many Palestinians in Gaza as it possibly can. On August 10, Anas Al Sharif — whose reporting I’ve followed sporadically through translations on social media since October 7, 2023, and who won Amnesty’s Human Rights Defender award last year — was killed along with three other Al Jazeera journalists and two freelance journalists. They were staying in a tent for journalists pitched opposite the Al-Shifa hospital. It was a targeted assassination: Israel has admitted as much, claiming, as pathetically as ever, that its latest victim was a member of Hamas.

It’s impossible to remain unaffected, I said earlier — but some journalists are managing that just fine. Here’s the BBC unquestioningly parroting Israel’s claim. And here’s Reuters, doing the same:

Reuters has since changed the text of its story. This screenshot, of the article’s second paragraph, was one of several captured by diligent Twitter users, and it begins as if Reuters knew for a fact that Al Sharif was the head of a Hamas cell. Note that the initial part of the sentence doesn’t appear in quotes, which, when dealing with such utterly specious material, is unforgivable. In fact, the words “Al Sharif was the head of a Hamas cell” come almost verbatim from an IDF tweet; to take them out of quotes is journalistic malpractice.

It’s also unforgivable for journalists not to call out a lie when they’re fed one. None of the West’s leading publications have summoned up even an ounce of skepticism at Israel’s relentless campaign to paint all the journalists it kills as members of Hamas, even though, by now, more media workers have been killed in Gaza than in both World Wars combined. This data is not from Hamas; it’s from the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University. In the US.

Screenshot of the website Costs of War by the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Fair use.

Part of the reason the BBC, the New York Times, and other outlets haven’t howled in protest at these murders is because they can get off on a technicality. They aren’t allowed into Gaza to report, so they aren’t able “to independently verify” whether these slain journalists were indeed members of Hamas. (This is, of course, why Israel doesn’t allow reporters into Gaza.) But the truth also is that the color line is alive and well in Western journalism — in all these outlets that otherwise self-righteously shout about the First Amendment, freedom of the press, and the importance of the fifth estate.

In the wake of the Holocaust and the founding of Israel, the West brought into its white fold a group of people it didn’t formerly consider white at all: Jews. (In this book, the American rabbi Michael Lerner says that Jews have, in the past, been “the primary ‘Other,’ have been socially and legally discriminated against, have been the subject of racism and genocide, and in those terms Jews are not white.” To which the Black academic Cornel West argues that Jews have since attained “white-skin privilege.” Some of these historical dynamics I’ve absorbed from conversations with friends and colleagues, not least the redoubtable Pankaj Mishra.)

The conflict between Israel and Palestine should be framed more often as a conflict between (newly deemed) white people and (always and forever) brown people. When that is the framing, it’s simpler to see why the West falls behind Israel uncritically every single time, even when Israel is flouting the principles that the West preens about all the time. Like media freedom.

Just as the slaughter of brown and Black people doesn’t matter very much to Western governments, so too the targeted killing of brown and Black journalists doesn’t matter very much to Western publications.

In any case, to most editors in London and New York, these journalists are only ever good enough to stay in their lanes and cover their own backyards — and or to be shrunk to the status of a “fixer” when there’s a foreign correspondent available to parachute in.

In death, a brown journalist will find Western champions only if they work for a Western publication or if their death can be leveraged for political point-scoring. Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post writer sliced up by Saudi Arabia in its embassy in Istanbul in 2018, fulfilled both criteria. Anas al-Sharif, a brown man reporting in Arabic for an Arabic outlet during an assault by Israel, fulfilled neither.

Originally published on Global Voices

Screenshot of video shared by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), showing the destruction of the seed bank. Fair use.

On July 31, 2025, Israeli forces bulldozed the seed‑multiplication unit of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC's) seed bank in Hebron. Built from the ground up beginning in 2010, the unit had served as the only seed bank in the West Bank, safeguarding over 70 varieties of indigenous heirloom seeds, many of which no longer exist elsewhere in Palestine, according to Fouad Abu Saif, UAWC's director general.

According to a press release by the UAWC, the devastation was swift and unannounced, with bulldozers and heavy machinery reducing into ruins the tools, propagation materials, and infrastructure essential to food sovereignty, constituting “a direct blow to Palestinian efforts to preserve local biodiversity and ensure food sovereignty.”  

A video showing what happened was shared on Facebook: 

With this act, not just a facility, but a living archive of Palestinian agricultural memory and cultural heritage — the result of generations of seed saving and ecological knowledge — was destroyed.

Erasure through agriculture

Seed banks are not neutral repositories: they carry the DNA of memory and of resistance. Vivien Sansour’s Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, based in the diaspora, intentionally framed seed saving as political resistance — a means to preserve not just biodiversity but heritage in the face of erasure. She described seeds as a “map to say: Look, this is who we are, this is who we were, and this is who we’ve been.”

Within occupied Palestine, seed saving is inseparable from resistance. Israeli policies have dismantled farmland, restricted access to fields, uprooted olive groves, and bombarded Gaza’s Baladi seed bank in Al‑Qarara — demolishing its store of native wheat, spinach, and barley, and displacing farming families, who have tried to rebuild from scratch.

800,000 Olive Trees Uprooted, 33 Central Parks. Infographic by Visualizing Palestine. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The latest attack on the Hebron seed facility reinforces that pattern: eradicating the ecological and generational links between Palestinians and their land.

The targeting of seed systems is part of a broader strategy of cultural genocide, ecocide, and epistemicide — erasing not just people but modes of knowing, growing, and being. UN and nonprofit investigators have characterized damage to archives, mosques, universities, and farmland in Gaza as acts of systematic cultural destruction and a crime of extermination, and part of an ongoing genocide that has been found plausible by the ICJ. 

Seeds as targets of genocide

This is not a standalone incident. The destruction of food sovereignty has precedent in colonial and genocidal contexts: In the US colonial expansion, Native American agricultural systems and buffalo populations were systematically destroyed to force dependence and starvation. In her book, “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States,” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes that:

In an effort to create Indigenous economic dependency and compliance in land transfers, the US policy directed the army to destroy the basic economic base of the Plains Nations—the buffalo. The buffalo were killed to near extinction, tens of millions dead within a few decades and only a few hundred left by the 1880s.

More recently, with the 2003 Iraq invasion, the country’s national seed bank in Abu Ghraib was destroyed by US bombing and then looted “which led to the loss of Iraq's thousand-year-old seed varieties.” A year later, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued Order 81 — amending state seed law to prohibit farmers from saving or replanting seeds, enforce corporate patents, and import Western hybrid and GMO seeds. By 2005, Iraq could produce only 4 percent of its own seed supply, locking farmers into corporate dependence and dismantling millennia of Mesopotamian seed sovereignty.

A group of Iraqi scientists salvaged whatever seeds they could and drove them to safety across the border to Syria’s International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) seed bank in Aleppo, one of the oldest in the region. But a few years later, the Syrian seed bank, carrying over 150,000 seed accessions and deeply tied to local agricultural knowledge — declined in function as the civil war intensified in the country after 2011. Staff were compelled to evacuate and ship approximately 80 percent of the collection to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault as well as to Lebanon and Morocco.

Seeds, sovereignty, and the politics of erasure

Heirloom seeds capture biological diversity, memory, adaptation, and ancestral stories. They are built by communities over centuries to thrive in particular climates — and they are reservoirs of resilience. Destroying them, therefore, is not collateral: it’s a strategic method of biological warfare — denying communities the capacity to survive and to define their own future.

International civil society echoed that condemnation. La Via Campesina condemned the assault  as did Friends of the Earth International. The Irish Green Party described the demolition as “the final piece of the genocide jigsaw,” urging war crimes investigations at the ICJ.

International law recognizes destruction of cultural heritage and civilian infrastructure essential to survival as potential war crimes. Under the Rome Statute, such acts — if widespread and systematic — can qualify as crimes against humanity or genocide. Yet few governments or institutions have responded forcefully to the seed‑bank’s destruction or any other war crimes committed by Israel. 

The intentional razing of the Hebron seed‑multiplication unit is another strike in a broader campaign to erase Palestinians’ capacity to sustain memory, culture, and life. By targeting seeds, Israel isn’t merely destroying food systems, it is severing the ties between generations, lands, stories, and identity.

Originally published on Global Voices

Protesters gather at Piraeus port to block a shipment believed to be destined for Israel for military purposes. Photo by Sotiria Georgiadou. Used with permission.

Despite the lingering summer heat in Athens, Greek protesters gathered at the port of Piraeus on the night of July 16th to block the loading of military cargo suspected to be bound for Israel, part of a growing wave of similar demonstrations. The protest focused on the “Ever Golden” cargo ship, which activists believed was carrying steel intended for Israeli military use. Organized by Greek trade unions, leftist groups, anarchists, and communist collectives, the protest reflected the mounting public anger over what many see as Greece’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

In a powerful act of solidarity, protesters attempted to delay port operations, seeking to prevent material support for violence and to raise awareness about Greece's role in the conflict. Protesters filled the piers with Palestinian flags, keffiyehs, and T-shirts bearing the slogan “Free Palestine,” chanting, among other slogans, “No cooperation with Israel – no port for genocide.”

A Greek user, likely affiliated with the group featured in the video, expresses solidarity with the protestors at Piraeus:

NOW at the port of Piraeus

The dockworkers assure you, they do not stain their hands with the blood of the people

We will not become accomplices in the genocide! #παλαιστίνη #FreePalestine https://t.co/Xh0JZK4KWe

— Red Andreou (@RedAndreou) July 16, 2025

At the demonstration, a wide coalition of Greek citizens rallied against what they viewed as unacceptable support for Israel’s actions against Gaza. Activists surrounded the port, lit flares, chanted slogans of solidarity with Palestine, and demanded that Greece end its involvement in facilitating military exports.

Τhe dockworkers union (ENEDEP) at Piraeus Container Terminal, owned by the Greek state and operated by Piraeus Port Authority (PPA), majority owned by China COSCO Shipping, played a key role in organizing the protest. In a public statement, the union announced that it would not allow the five containers, suspected of containing military-grade steel, to be unloaded while the ship remained docked. According to Union President Markos Bekris, the cargo was believed to be headed to Israel. He warned that if the shipment continued, the union would be prepared to escalate the protests.

Markos Bekris addresses protesters gathered at the port of Piraeus. Photo by Sotiria Georgiadou. Used with permission.

The Greek public's growing anti-war stance

At the protest, they held banners condemning both the Greek and Israeli governments. Organizers framed their actions not only as anti-Zionist, but also as a rejection of Greece’s growing role as a logistical enabler of foreign wars.

The message from protesters was clear: the Greek people do not want to be complicit in what is widely seen as genocide in Gaza. Demonstrators condemned the New Democracy government, led by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, for facilitating military exports to Israel and for maintaining close relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as reports of indiscriminate bombings of civilians in Gaza increase.

The Mitsotakis-Netanyahu coalition

Many activists pointed to the deepening ties between Greece and Israel as a source of frustration and outrage. While Prime Minister Mitsotakis publicly described Israeli actions in Gaza as “unjustifiable” back in May, his government has continued to ramp up military and strategic cooperation with the Israeli state.

According to reports, Greece has significantly increased its purchase of Israeli military technology, including drone systems, missile defence equipment, and cyber surveillance tools. Joint military exercises between the two countries have also become more frequent, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, where energy exploration and regional tensions have made such alliances increasingly strategic.

These developments go beyond pragmatic diplomacy and instead signal ideological alignment. In the eyes of protesters, Mitsotakis is not simply cooperating with Netanyahu but actively supporting him.

Beyond the issue of direct military support, Greece’s silence on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has become a major point of public discontent. The New Democracy government has not offered substantial humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, opened safe channels for Palestinian refugees, or applied significant diplomatic pressure on Israel to halt its offensive.

While most of the European Union's foreign ministers supported a Dutch proposal to review the bloc’s ties with Israel over its actions in Gaza, Greece and Cyprus did not join the initiative. Greece also did not co-sign a joint statement, endorsed by 22 other countries, condemning Israel for creating famine conditions in Gaza.

Activists view this as a blatant disregard for human, and specifically Palestinian, life. While Gaza faces mass displacement, infrastructure destruction, forced starvation, and what numerous observers, including UN officials, have called genocide, the Greek government has remained unmoved.

This indifference, many argue, mirrors the government’s broader policies targeting vulnerable populations. Just weeks before the July protests, the Greek government announced it would suspend the processing of asylum applications from North Africa, citing a recent increase in arrivals on southern Greek Aegean Sea islands.

This decision fits into a broader anti-migrant stance that has characterized the New Democracy administration: fortified borders, the criminalization of migration, and systematic pushbacks. One could argue that the government’s treatment of displaced people parallels its neglect of Palestinians, both seen as disposable populations in service of geopolitical interests.

Militarism, empire logic, and local resistance

For many demonstrators, opposition to military shipments is part of a larger political stance. The Piraeus protest was not only about Gaza; it was a rejection of imperialist agendas and Greece’s alignment with NATO, the EU, and Israel.

The location of the protest is also symbolically significant. COSCO’s privatized container terminal, largely owned by Chinese state interests, underscores growing discontent with foreign control over Greek infrastructure. In this sense, the protest represents a multi-dimensional struggle: economic, geopolitical, and ethical.

As of July 20, the “Ever Golden” remained docked at Piraeus. ENEDEP continued to uphold its position of non-cooperation. While symbolic, this act of resistance is also practical and strategic. By targeting the logistics of military conflict, including ports and freight terminals, Greek protesters are adopting classic yet effective methods of direct action.

Their call to action serves as a reminder that resistance is not only expressed through marches but also through organized disruption and solidarity.

Originally published on Global Voices

Image courtesy of Untoldmag.org.

This interview was first published by UntoldMag on June 22, 2025. An edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. 

Amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza, biometric surveillance and drones have become central tools in modern warfare. Khalil Dewan is a legal scholar and investigator. He is a Nomos Scholar at SOAS University of London. Dewan has spent over 15 years researching the global war on terror and its transformation through AI, drone technology, and legal manipulation. In this interview, he discusses how targeted killings have evolved, the implications for international law, and what Gaza reveals about the future of warfare.

Walid El Houri (WH): You’ve spent more than a decade researching drone warfare and surveillance. How did you begin working in this field?

Khalil Dewan (KD): I’ve been researching the global war on terror and drone strikes for the better part of 15 years. I’ve covered the US, UK, France, and other drone programs, and one of the things that’s become clear is how these Western powers are using drone warfare for several strategic purposes. Most notably, they enable easier killing through what I call the individualisation of warfare, a new form of conflict where states no longer just target non-state armed groups or enemy states, but individuals themselves, based on conduct or perceived threat.

WH: Can you explain what you mean by “individualisation of warfare”?

KD: It’s about going after people rather than traditional military targets. Drones can fly and hover over remote parts of the world and strike individuals with very little legal accountability. This kind of targeting has dominated the past two decades of the global war on terror. And now, with AI-enabled targeting systems, things are becoming even more problematic.

WH: How is AI being used in targeted killings, especially in places like Gaza?

KD: In the case of Israel, for example, we’ve seen the use of AI-enabled targeting systems through drones. These systems are designed to process metadata and help identify targets who can be struck and where they may be located, especially in complex urban environments like Gaza. But that’s highly problematic, especially when used by states like Israel or the United States, which already operate under an enabling posture, meaning they are already inclined to strike, with or without clear legal justification.

WH: What are the legal implications of this AI-driven kill chain?

KD: It complicates everything. We’re no longer just asking whether a killing was lawful. Now we’re dealing with algorithmic bias baked into AI systems. Biases that are designed and implemented by states. In an armed conflict, relying on such technology raises serious legal and ethical concerns. Who designed the system? What biases are embedded? Who’s accountable when the wrong person is killed?

WH: We saw the use of biometric scans during evacuations in Gaza. What are the implications of such surveillance in a humanitarian context?

KD: It’s deeply troubling. When Israel opened what it called an evacuation corridor in Gaza, Palestinians were held between two large structures and forced to have their faces scanned before being allowed to move. This was done amid ongoing shelling and airstrikes, and it shows how biometric data extraction is being used as a precondition for survival. Palestinians are already among the most heavily surveilled communities in the world, and now biometric submission is being weaponized during a humanitarian crisis.

WH: Does this practice align with international law?

KD: It certainly raises major concerns. International law is being manipulated, particularly by Western states, to justify targeted killings both inside and outside of armed conflict. They rely on legal arguments about imminent threats, self-defense, and the use of force, but in reality, they are pushing the boundaries of lawfare. Forcing biometric scans during a crisis, for example, fits within a broader strategy of control and dehumanization, not humanitarian protection.

WH: What role do private actors play in this new landscape of warfare?

KD: Private actors are increasingly involved, whether through data processing, AI development, or logistical support. This privatisation of warfare makes it even harder to assign accountability. You have a blurred line between state and corporate responsibility, and international law isn’t adequately equipped to handle that yet.

WH: How do you see the future of AI and autonomy shaping the battlefield?

KD: What we are witnessing in Gaza is the future of warfare, a convergence of AI, autonomy, targeted killings, and legal manipulation. States are racing to stay competitive in this space. The Global South is developing its own drone and AI capabilities and looking at the last 20 years, particularly at Israel’s actions in Gaza, and asking, “If they can get away with it, what should our position be?”

WH: What advice do you have for states in the Global South navigating this environment?

KD: My message is clear: comply with international law as faithfully as possible. Uphold ethical standards, chivalry, if you will, but also recognize the geopolitical reality. States must remain competitive in the lawmaking process. They shouldn’t be colonized by international law that’s weaponized by powerful actors, but they also shouldn’t abandon it. It’s about balancing ethics with survival, because if Gaza has taught us anything, it’s that survival is now a legal, political, and existential question.

Originally published on Global Voices

Screenshot of video ‘Collateral Murder’ released on April 5, 2010 and published by Wikileaks showing US troops killing Iraqi civilians in Baghdad. Fair use.

On October 18, 2024, a Telegram channel released a leak attributed to a US intelligence source. The documents — whose authenticity was not contested by intelligence sources — brought to light heavy preparations by Israel to strike Iran. Back then, Israel was expected to strike Iran in retaliation for Iran’s strike on Israel on October 1, which itself was a retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil in July 2024. While I won’t extend the timeline further back, it remains a constant that Israel is the perpetrator throughout.

In its pursuit of military dominance in the region, Israel is resolute in preventing Iran, or other countries, from advancing military capabilities. In order for Israel to persevere (as an idea and as a nation-state), it needs to force its neighbors into submission.

Only a couple of pages long, the leak was dutifully ignored by headlines. As a result, the story garnered no public attention, with only some articles decrying the press’s silence on the matter.

The leaked documents expose US efforts to determine the shape of Israel’s military preparations against Iran through various indicators, mainly articulated through analysis of satellite imagery as well as signals intelligence. There’s a lot to speculate from the contents of these leaks — while the US spoils Israel with unconditional military support, it perhaps also acts as its helicopter parent.

The leaks revealed Israeli forces had undertaken significant military preparations, ranging from air-to-surface ballistic missile exercises to covert long-range drone surveillance operations over Iran and the broader region. Notably, the documents disclose for the first time the existence of the RA-01 stealth drone, which is capable of extended covert operations, surveillance and combat. This is a previously unknown asset in Israel’s arsenal. The leaks also detail the dispersal of missiles and aircraft across various bases, suggesting defense posturing.

The authors of the leaked document caution: “We cannot definitively predict the scale and scope of a strike on Iran, and such a strike can occur with no further GEOINT [Geographical Intelligence] warning,” further noting: “…we have not observed indications that Israel intends to use a nuclear weapon,” while referencing the Jericho II medium-range ballistic missile among the nuclear-capable arsenal.

Mainstream media outlets simply covered the fact that there was a leak (forgoing its contents) and eventually uncovered the identity of the alleged whistleblower.

Those who did cover the story overlooked key points. First, even if it green-lights and actively funds its killing apparatus, the US practices surveillance on Israel (and vice versa; or in Ted Cruz’s words: “Friends and allies spy on each other”). Second, the US relies on Israel for some of its intelligence on Israel (it bears repeating). The documents also included an admission from the US: by ascertaining that Israel did not intend to use a nuclear weapon, it admitted that Israel possesses nuclear weapons in its arsenal. In fact, the leak left us with more questions than answers: why was Israel running multiple covert UAV operations over Iran (and the wider region)? Why did the Israeli air force place concealment screens over six F-15Is aircraft shelters? And why did the leak deem it possible that Israel was practicing air-to-air refueling and combat search and rescue operations “with a large number of aircrafts”?

Israel did eventually strike Iran on October 26, 2024. The leak allegedly delayed the attack, as per Israeli officials, an attack that targeted multiple locations across Iran with air-to-surface missiles shot from possibly over 100 aircraft in an operation it dubbed Operation Days of Repentance. But did the leaks accurately forecast Israel’s October 2024 strikes, or were they indicative of broader strategic preparations?

The alleged CIA leaker, Asif Rahman, was sentenced to three years in prison on June 11, 2025 (37 months to be exact). On June 13, just two days later, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, practically declaring war on Iran. At the time of writing, Israel’s strikes on Iran have killed over 639 people, the majority of whom are civilians, against the backdrop of US President Donald Trump ordering the people of Tehran to evacuate the capital. The US has effectively joined this war following its strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites on the morning of June 22. And today, we are left to ponder whether diligent reporting on the details of this leak would have changed the course of today's events, and how we understand and interpret them.

Many attributed the decision not to publish these leaks to the chilling effect as a result of Julian Assange pleading guilty to the Espionage Act (read: pleading guilty to practicing journalism), which allowed for his release from Belmarsh prison and return home to Australia in July 2024. While the chilling effect on national security topics was almost immediate, we must also recognize that this problem predates Assange’s release: leaks are often viewed, by both press and public, as subject rather than source. In other words, the limelight tends to focus on the act of leaking and the whistleblower, and less so on the substance of the leak itself.

Rahman’s alleged leak and what it perhaps tried to do closely resembles another one, only 20 years earlier. In 2003, Katharine Gun was working as a linguist and translator for the GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence and cybersecurity agency, when she and her colleagues received an email from the US’s National Security Agency (NSA). The email sought the British intelligence agency’s assistance in surveilling the UN offices of six nations that could potentially swing their vote at the Security Council in favor of the US and UK’s invasion of Iraq.

This, too, was a short leak, comprising just one email. This one, like the one from October 2024, came just before a significant escalation, or a declaration of war.

Gun chose to leak the email to The Observer, which kept postponing its publication because of its earlier pro-Blair-Bush stance. Although they eventually published it, it was too late: the US-British axis had already made up its mind in total confidence of its impunity. The US invaded Iraq because it claimed that the then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” and because the US wanted to “free the Iraqi people.”

The leak sought to reveal to the public how the West was attempting to manufacture consent for war, to legitimize the ensuing bloodshed. Now, over 20 years later, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, a nation turned on its head and indefinitely fractured, we are left to wonder: would thorough and early reporting on the contents of the leak have prevented this?

Because leaks do play, for the most part, a preventative role: they are here to inform us of an impending danger, and compel immediate action. But journalists have grown timid.

Even leaks that come in response to an event, during or after a war, hold a preventative element: they represent a plea not to repeat the same cycles of killing, to unseat those in power who keep churning the wheels of death and destruction. Often they’re from military personnel serving within an army, coming to the realization that they must be doing something terribly wrong; that killing that many people — indiscriminately — is probably, definitely, indefensible. That there is never a justification for occupation. That this should not happen in the future, ever again.

Excerpt from Daniel Hale’s handwritten letter to US District Judge Liam O'Grady

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. That is what Chelsea Manning leaked, and that was what she was put behind bars for.

“Once you come to realize that the coordinates in these records represent real places, that the dates are our recent history and that the numbers represent actual human lives — with all of the love, hope, dreams, hate, fear and nightmares with which we all live — then you cannot help but be reminded just how important it is for us to understand and, hopefully, prevent such tragedies in the future.” wrote Manning in a 2015 op-ed in The Guardian.

Yet, nothing was prevented, as was proven by Daniel Hale’s drone leaks a few years later. We learned through Hale how drone warfare normalized mass killing, how assigning a soldier to operate a killer drone from thousands of miles away increases the psychological distance between killer and “target,” and how this distance translates into soldiers detaching from the sin of killing.

We learn through these leaks who truly holds the weapons of mass destruction.

In a nod to the downing of military planes, Hale named his cat Leila, after Leila Khaled, the Palestinian revolutionary known as the first woman to have hijacked an airplane.

Palestine, where nothing was prevented, and nothing is being prevented.

Nothing is being prevented because Jeffrey Goldberg saw himself out of that Signal group chat. Because the headline read “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans” rather than “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Its War Crimes.”

Nothing was prevented because on April 17, 2025, less than a month after the Signal leaks, US Forces struck Ras Al Isa Port in Yemen, killing at least 84 civilians, a strike that rights watchdogs are calling to be investigated as a war crime. Because on April 28, just 11 days later, a US airstrike hit a detention center for African migrants in Yemen, killing 68 people of different African nationalities.

These leaks should have shocked public conscience; they should have compelled those funding the killing (either directly or indirectly) to reckon with their moral injuries. These leaks are insisting that people are treated as the subject and not mere cannon fodder. To name who is being killed, and who is doing the killing, to discern between oppressor and oppressed, colonized and colonizer, is what should center private and public conversations.

​​I happen to come from a region that is permanently on the receiving end of US bombs. I also happen to work in this space that is often dubbed as the “intersection of rights and technology,” training journalists on how to protect sources, and sources on how to leak securely. Today, I struggle to form a convincing argument as to why I work in this space or what keeps me in it. What use is it for sources to leak securely if journalists refuse to publish on time or at all? What good does it do when the average reaction to the Signalgate story was humor and gloating over the “rival” administration, or the fact that it was dubbed Signalgate to begin with?

I do know what first motivated me to join this space; in my childlike imagination, I believed that if I were to be part of groups that are building the most resilient (tangible or intangible) infrastructure against surveillance — used by the most daring of whistleblowers — then I could be part of something that is working towards abolishing the systems crushing our livelihoods. Naively, in my latest cover letter, I wrote that encryption “equips us with essential infrastructure to combat global injustice and corruption.”

But I grew up fast; disillusionment beat me to the finish line. We pat ourselves on the back and tell each other we’re doing a good job, but everyone in this field is collectively missing the point, and thus collectively enabling harm.

Originally published on Global Voices

Rescue teams inspect a destroyed building in Tehran after Israeli strikes on June 13, 2025. Screenshot from video uploaded to Instagram by user @alishtayeh1. Fair use.

When you're on the brink of death, when only a few seconds separate you from survival or annihilation, it no longer matters whether the person in front of you is a friend or foe, guilty or innocent, a strong man or a frail teenage girl. In that moment, the only thing that matters is survival.

In “Nothing and So Be It,” Oriana Fallaci recounts, time and again, how soldiers across various frontlines confessed to a shameful yet deeply human feeling: a wave of relief and even joy when a comrade was killed instead of them. “When the bullet hit my friend and not me,” one soldier said, “I was happy. Shamefully, I was truly happy he died and I lived.”

Fallaci herself describes a similar moment: flying in a military helicopter above villagers under fire, whispering a desperate prayer to survive, even if it meant others had to die.

This, precisely, is where we now stand.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escalates direct military attacks on Iranian soil under the pretext of halting Iran’s nuclear program, radar sites in Germi, Tabriz, and Subashi in Hamadan have been hit. The attacks have claimed the lives of several air defense and air force officers, as well as many civilians and civilian infrastructure. These attacks reportedly used internal Mossad assets to devastating effect, bolstered by deep infiltration of Iran’s intelligence apparatus and modeled after Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia.

Drones, micro-drones, and man-portable “Spike” missiles killed over 20 senior Iranian military commanders. The intelligence penetrated so deeply that it pinpointed the exact locations of these commanders’ residences, meeting rooms, and even sleeping quarters months before the strikes. The post-operation discovery of trucks carrying micro-drones only underscores the terrifying extent of Mossad’s reach into Iran’s security systems.

Only the beginning

Iran’s nuclear and military sites have come under intensified attack. Though Iran reportedly maintains around 5,000 air defense positions and nearly a hundred underground facilities, key sites such as Khondab (Arak), Fordow, and Natanz have been targeted. The Israelis obliterated Natanz’s surface-level facility and inflicted significant damage on Isfahan.

Over the weekend, Israeli strikes extended to fuel refineries and energy infrastructure, threatening to push Iran into an energy crisis. Attacks on refineries in Tehran, Bandar Abbas, and even Abadan suggest a broader plan: not merely targeting military capacity, but delivering direct pain to the civilian population. Netanyahu’s goal appears to have shifted from destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to breaking the country’s backbone through sustained bombardment and psychological warfare. We have seen this strategy before — in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.

But Iran is not Syria. Israel now aims to create the preconditions for civil conflict within Iran, a country of 90 million people marked by deep ethnic, religious, and political divisions. Armed opposition groups in Kurdistan and Baluchestan, millions of Afghan refugees, and the looming threat of ISIS-Khorasan have exposed Iran’s internal vulnerabilities to dangerous levels. The central government, instead of tackling inequality and dissent, has heavily relied on repression.

In response, Iran launched retaliatory drone and missile attacks targeting parts of Israel, despite the latter’s advanced defense systems and regional coordination. However, the vicious cycle continues unabated. Israel now appears to be drawing the United States into the conflict, though such escalation still legally requires Congressional approval. However, Netanyahu’s ultimate objective might extend beyond simply stopping nuclear enrichment. It may well be to reduce Iran to rubble.

Let’s be clear: airstrikes alone cannot eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. But by pushing Iran toward social collapse and internal unrest, a regime change from within becomes more plausible. At the same time, the Iranian state seems unwilling — or unable — to manage the political fallout. Society is split: some mourn fallen Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, others celebrate. Rather than healing this division, the government persists in repression, arrests, and silencing dissent. Despite shocking evidence of Mossad infiltration, Tehran has failed to reassess its security structure. Political prisoners remain behind bars. Streets remain policed, especially against women. There is no sign of reconciliation in sight.

Ironically, many Iranians, despite their grievances with the regime, oppose foreign military intervention. There was a fleeting sense of unity in the face of invasion. But this fragile cohesion cannot endure amid continued governmental mismanagement and authoritarianism. That very fracture is what Israel may exploit in its next move: turning external pressure into internal implosion — firepower and deprivation to enforce a silent regime change.

Perhaps some of Iran’s younger generation, unfamiliar with the horrors of war and bombardment, initially viewed Netanyahu as an external counterweight to their oppressive state. But as airstrikes level homes and kill children, it becomes increasingly clear that an occupying army does not deliver peace or democracy.

The deaths of children in Tehran, regardless of their parents’ ideology, reveal a painful truth: occupation doesn’t distinguish between governments and people. The Islamic Republic is tyrannical, yes, but Netanyahu is even more ruthless. Some try to portray him as a friend of the Iranian people. That narrative is false. We’ve seen it in Lebanon. In Iraq. In Gaza. This is a lie presented as “humanitarian bombing.”

This war, sparked by Tehran’s miscalculations and Netanyahu’s ambition, risks turning into a war among the people. And that would be a tragedy for every Iranian, whether Turk, Kurd, Persian, Lor, Arab, or Baluch. All of them, long oppressed, must understand: real change will not come from above or abroad. It must come from within.

It comes when governments realize that the people no longer stand behind them, and must turn back to them. Peace begins not with the West, but with justice at home. Israel not only struck nuclear facilities but, once again following its established doctrine, deliberately targeted children.

Despite its refusal to release footage of attacks on strategic military locations, Israel broadcast images of buildings struck by Iranian missiles, portraying itself as the victim. The narrative was clear: obscure military aggression, highlight civilian damage, and secure sympathy. But let’s be honest, while I do not recognize any legitimacy in the government in Tehran, I certainly don’t accept legitimacy from Israel to dictate my future.

We, people like me, can and must shape our destiny ourselves, not by the hands of a war criminal. Israel’s war on Iran is not about prevention. It’s about crippling Iran’s infrastructure, fracturing its society, and pushing the country toward internal implosion.

Originally published on Global Voices

Screenshot from a video uploaded to YouTube by Al Jazeera Arabic showing the Al Soumoud Convoy. Fair use

As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza intensifies — driven by what United Nations experts have characterized as a man‑made famine caused by Israel’s blockade — solidarity movements across North Africa have attempted to deliver aid and raise awareness. Egypt, which shares a sealed border with Gaza, has been widely criticized for curbing popular support, enforcing strict border controls, and repressing activists seeking to challenge the siege.

No place for solidarity

The North African Al Soumoud convoy, composed of activists, lawyers, medical professionals, and civil society members, set off from Tunisia on June 9, aiming for Gaza via Libya and Egypt’s Rafah crossing. With about 1,500 participants, the convoy embodies a wider effort to break the Israeli‑led blockade and protest the famine’s devastating impact on Gaza’s two  million residents.

Egyptian authorities, however, have enforced stringent rules. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement requiring any foreign delegation to obtain prior approval and permits via embassies or the Foreign Ministry, warning that “no requests … will be considered outside the framework specified by the regulatory provisions.” The message was clear: without express permission, the convoy cannot approach the Rafah border.

Despite growing international attention, Egypt reportedly denied entry to international activists and detained or deported those trying to reach Gaza. Although local media have not detailed individual cases, the blanket policy has been pointedly described by rights organizations.

A June 2025 report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) documented the crackdown targeting Palestine solidarity, reporting ongoing arrests, which included over 150 supporters, three of whom were under 18 when arrested. According to the report, since the beginning of the Israeli war on Gaza in October 2023, and the ongoing genocide against Palestinians there, Egyptian security forces have arrested 186 people, distributed across 16 Supreme State Security cases, all accused of “terrorism,” for attempting to peacefully express their support for Palestinians in Gaza.

Online justifications and backlash

Alongside state repression, Egypt’s pro-government social media ecosystem has played a significant role in framing solidarity with Gaza as a national security threat. Influential regime-aligned commentators and accounts circulated narratives suggesting that convoys like the North African mission were a cover for foreign interference or efforts to destabilize Egypt’s internal order. Some even claimed these actions were conspiracies meant to “embarrass” Egypt internationally.

These justifications triggered widespread backlash online, especially from Egyptian and Arab civil society actors. This digital tug-of-war reflects deeper tensions within Egyptian society: between a regime obsessed with control and a public increasingly frustrated with its complicity in regional injustices. 

Critics argue that Cairo is complicit in the humanitarian crisis. Thousands of trucks remain stranded at Rafah despite a dire shortage of essentials. Furthermore, an investigation traced a profiteering network tied to regime‑connected figures, purportedly charging Palestinians exorbitant fees — thousands of USD — to exit Gaza.

A siege in international waters

In a parallel effort to break the blockade, a boat named “Madleen” carrying 12 international activists was intercepted by Israeli naval forces on June 4, in international waters as it sailed toward Gaza. The activists were forcibly kidnapped, detained, and taken to Israeli prisons, a move widely condemned by international legal experts and human rights advocates as a violation of maritime and humanitarian law.

Among the detainees were high-profile figures such as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament. The boat was part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s ongoing attempts to challenge Israel’s siege through civil disobedience at sea.

The interception and imprisonment of elected officials and human rights defenders drew widespread criticism, yet no significant diplomatic consequences have followed, emblematic of the international community’s inaction and double standards regarding Israel’s violations of international law.

This lack of enforcement has only deepened what many describe as Israel’s “pariah” status in global civil society. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that the situation in Gaza presents a “plausible case of genocide,” obliging states to act to prevent further atrocities.

Repression in the name of security

Egypt’s broader pattern of crackdowns is well‑documented. High‑profile detainees like Alaa  Abd El‑Fattah, held beyond his sentence and denied consular access, highlight the regime’s intolerance for dissent. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly denounced Egypt’s measures as part of a wave of repression targeting activists, journalists, researchers, and lawyers.

Egypt’s actions — border closures, arrests, deportations, profiteering, and denial of solidarity efforts — highlight a clear policy of containment. Under the pretext of national security and diplomatic stability, the regime is actively preventing humanitarian engagements and criminalizing solidarity, a stance that has sparked domestic dissent and international condemnation.

The suppression of Palestine solidarity serves dual aims for Cairo: it aligns with the government’s tight internal control and supports its diplomatic posture as a cautious regional mediator whose stability is considered essential by Western partners.

As the North African convoy makes its way to the Libyan-Egyptian borders on its way to the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, and activists face barriers both on land and sea, Egypt’s strategy continues to attract scrutiny. Activists, aid organizations, and legal experts are urging accountability, not just of Israel’s blockade, but of regional enablers like Egypt.

Originally published on Global Voices

In 2023, after the Hamas attacks and the war, Brazilian citizens were repatriated from Gaza. Photo: Paulo Pinto/Agência Brasil, used with permission

At a press conference on June 3, 2025, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was asked by a journalist to comment on a statement by the Israeli Embassy in the country, which claimed the nationalist Palestinian group Hamas lies about the current situation in Gaza ‘‘to feed antisemitism around the world.” The statement was released after Lula called what is happening in the region a genocide.

Answering the question, he reinforced this position:

Vem dizer que é antissemitismo? Precisa parar com esse vitimismo e saber o seguinte: o que está acontecendo na Faixa de Gaza é um genocídio. É a morte de mulheres e crianças que não estão participando de guerra. É a decisão de um governo que nem o povo judeu quer. Não dá para, como ser humano, não é nem como presidente do Brasil, mas como ser humano, aceitar isso como se fosse uma guerra normal.

They come and say it is antisemitism? They need to stop playing the victim and know the following: what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. It’s the death of women and children who are not part of the war. It’s a government’s decision that not even the Jewish people want. I cannot, as a human being, not even as Brazil’s president, but as a human being, accept it as a normal war.

Lula’s criticism over the war in Gaza, following Hamas’ attacks of October 7, 2023, is not new. Alongside Chile’s Gabriel Boric, he has been an outspoken critic of the actions taken by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government since the early days of the conflict, a position that is not unanimous among their neighbors in the Southern Cone and that helps to brew narratives of political polarization in the region.

For instance, Lula’s predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, a close ally of Netanyahu when he was in office, was invited to visit Israel in 2024, a few days after Lula was declared ‘‘persona non grata” for his criticism. Under investigation for attempting a coup d’état, however, Bolsonaro’s passport is currently being retained by the authorities.

Check out how the region’s countries are positioned on the war in Gaza:

Brazil

In 2010, during Lula's second term as president, Brazil recognized the Palestinian state with the borders established up to 1967. It became one of the first Latin American countries to do so. While criticizing what happens in Gaza now, saying ‘‘It is not a war, but an army killing women and children,” he kept standing for a two-state solution.

The government also approached the matter officially, on June 1, when it published a statement against the creation of 22 new settlements on the West Bank, announced by Israel a few days before:

O Brasil repudia as recorrentes medidas unilaterais tomadas pelo governo israelense, que, ao imporem situação equivalente a anexação do território palestino ocupado, comprometem a implementação da solução de dois Estados.

Reafirma, ainda, seu histórico compromisso com um Estado da Palestina independente e viável, convivendo em paz e segurança ao lado de Israel, nas fronteiras de 1967, incluindo a Cisjordânia e a Faixa de Gaza, com capital em Jerusalém Oriental.

Brazil repudiates the recurring one-sided measures taken by the Israeli government, which, by imposing a situation equivalent to the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories, compromises the implementation of a two-state solution.

Brazil also reaffirms its historical commitment to an independent and viable Palestinian State, living in peace and safety alongside Israel, within the 1967 borders, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, having Eastern Jerusalem as its capital.

The organization Conib (Brazil’s Israelite Confederation) stated that the president was once again attacking Jewish people and risking their safety.

Chile

President Gabriel Boric, like Lula, has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s war on Gaza. On June 1, during his annual address, he also classified the Israeli government as ‘‘genocidal” and said he would send a bill to the Legislature to ban any imports from Israeli-occupied territories: 

Considerando la permanente violación del derecho internacional por parte de Israel, mediante asentamientos ilegales en territorio palestino, y el reciente anuncio de expansión de esta política, he decidido que es de toda justicia patrocinar y poner urgencia al proyecto de ley que prohíbe la importación de productos producidos en territorios ilegalmente ocupados.

Considering the ongoing violation of international law by Israel's government, regarding illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory, and their recent announcement about expanding this policy, I've decided that is fair to sponsor, and ask urgently, for a bill forbidding the import of products from illegally occupied territories.

Boric also said he demanded that his defence minister draw up a plan so they can stop depending on Israeli industry in other sectors.

As Reuters reports, the Chilean president recently ‘‘recalled military personnel from Chile’s embassy in the country and summoned the ambassador for questioning.”

Uruguay

On May 15, 2025, hundreds of people marched in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, commemorating the anniversary of the Nakba — a date that marks the violent displacement of Palestinians from their land. Besides calling for an end to the war, protesters demanded that President Yamandú Orsi’s new government cease its relations with Israel, reports newspaper La Diaria.

A few days later, on May 19, the Defense Minister, Sandra Lazo, met with the Israeli ambassador, Michal Hershkovitz. The meeting was made public by the Israeli representative on social media, while Lazo said she decided not to take the protocol picture alongside Hershkovitz, knowing it could ‘‘hurt feelings.”

She also claimed to have reinforced that Uruguay recognized the Palestinian State’s independence since 2011, and does not agree with this ‘‘completely asymmetrical conflict.”

Orsi’s left-wing political coalition, Frente Amplio (FA, Broad Front), through its executive secretariat, issued a resolution on June 3, calling for support for actions defending the human rights of the Palestinian people. The document says:

Estas acciones comprenderán la movilización articulada con organizaciones sociales, culturales y de derechos humanos (…) y todas aquellas que de forma pacífica y organizada contribuyan a respaldar a nuestro gobierno nacional en la toma de medidas que aboguen por el fin de la masacre, el ingreso de ayuda humanitaria sin restricciones, el respeto de los Derechos Humanos.

These actions will encompass the articulated mobilization with social, cultural and human rights organizations (…) and all those that, in a pacific and organized way, contribute to support our national government in all their measures advocating for the end of the massacre, the entering of humanitarian aid without restriction, the respect for human rights.

The stand also drew criticism from the opposition, such as the Colorado party, which issued their own statement saying FA’s stance could promote hate and the demonization of Israel and the Jewish people. The Blanco party, also in opposition, stated that Israel had a right to self-defense, while calling for respect for humanitarian principles to prevent harming people not involved in the conflict.

Orsi himself said on June 5 that the statement came from a political force, ‘‘and that the government is something else.” He also told journalists that the people in Gaza need more than announcements, and he plans to send them powder, milk and rice, among other products.

Argentina

Javier Milei, the ultra libertarian Argentine president, is the most vocal supporter of Israel in the region. The NY Times called him ‘‘a Catholic president who consults with a rabbi,” pointing out that his devotion to the Jewish faith influences his national politics. Last July, Milei’s cabinet issued an official statement declaring Hamas an ‘‘international terrorist organization”:

El Presidente Javier Milei tiene el compromiso inquebrantable de reconocer a los terroristas por lo que son. Es la primera vez que existe voluntad política de hacerlo.

President Javier Milei has the unbreakable commitment to acknowledge terrorists for what they are. This is the first time that there is a political willingness to do it so.

The support for Israel recently granted Milei the Genesis award, the ‘‘Jewish Nobel Prize,” which is worth 1 million US dollars.

As reported by AP news, the organizers of the award explained their decision as an appreciation of ‘‘Milei for reversing Argentina’s long history of anti-Israel votes at the United Nations, designating the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups as terrorist organizations and reopening investigations into the bombings of Jewish and Israeli targets in Argentina in the 1990s.” 

Last year, in an interview with Ben Shapiro on his YouTube channel, Milei said:

Es muy importante entender el vínculo de la libertad con Israel. Es fundamental porque es un pueblo que además ha logrado la conjunción entre lo espiritual y lo material. Y esa armonía espiritual y material genera progreso.

It’s important to understand the freedom bond with Israel. It’s fundamental, because it’s a people that has achieved the conjunction between the spiritual and the material. And this spiritual and material harmony generates progress.

Paraguay

Last December, the country re-opened its embassy in Jerusalem, acknowledging the city as Israel’s capital, and was the first country to do so since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. According to AP news, the move by President Santiago Peña, who attended the embassy reopening in person, was ‘‘a rare diplomatic victory’’ for Israel.

As reported by Reuters, Peña didn’t mention the war in Gaza on that occasion, but declared: ‘‘This step symbolizes our commitment to shared values and the strengthening of the ties that build a future of peace, development and mutual understanding.”

Previously, the Paraguayan embassy had been located in Tel Aviv, and went through back-and-forth changes since 2018, amid shifts in government, as also reported by the news agency.

This May, the Israeli foreign relations minister, Gideon Sa’ar, called the gesture ‘‘friendship in the harshest moment’’ for his country.

Originally published on Global Voices

A screenshot from video “Aid trucks arrive at Egypt-Gaza border as ceasefire comes into effect” showing aid trucks at the Egypt–Gaza border. Video uploaded to YouTube by the Associated Press. Fair use.

A new controversial US-backed initiative, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has emerged to control the flow of aid into Gaza, sparking concerns that it may serve as a tool to further entrench the Israeli occupation.

This development follows over 70 days of a severe siege that has pushed the territory into catastrophic conditions, with Oxfam’s food security coordinator in Gaza stating that people are starving to death.

The GHF is being presented as a secure and efficient alternative to traditional aid pipelines managed by the UN and other NGOs, which have faced systematic attacks and efforts to dismantle them by Israel. Staffed by US military veterans, former officials, and corporate financiers, the GHF aims to deliver aid to 1.2 million Palestinians through privately secured distribution hubs, with plans to expand to over 2 million.

A closer look at the foundation's presentation documents, however, indicates a different agenda. A statement warning that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic — as part of a military strategy” was released by the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which is comprised of a cluster of organizations, each working within a defined area of expertise, including local authorities, NGOs, and UN agencies.

Additionally, the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory has made its position clear, stating that it will not participate in any plan that violates the universal humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.

Armored aid hubs and biometric control

The GHF scheme proposes the establishment of four fortified aid hubs within Gaza, each designed to serve approximately 300,000 people and operating under the supervision of private security contractors.

According to the plan, aid convoys will pass through tightly controlled and closely monitored corridors to deliver prepackaged meals, water, and supplies to designated “Secure Distribution Sites.” At these hubs, hundreds of thousands of Gazans will queue to collect aid under the watch of armed guards.

The US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has stated that Israeli troops’ only involvement would be to secure the perimeter of these distribution sites, while private contractors would be responsible for the safety of workers getting into the distribution centers and for the distribution of the food itself. However, the GHF document itself indicates that all movements will be coordinated with the Israeli army and the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit “for access and deconfliction.” 

Despite the GHF's assertions in their presented document that aid distribution within the hubs will have “no eligibility requirements” and be “based solely on need,” it has been reported that access to these hubs will require aid recipients to go through biometric screening and facial recognition technology vetting by Israeli soldiers to determine who can pass.

Further reports indicate that Israel's broader plan will only permit 60 aid trucks per day into Gaza, a drastic reduction from the 600 trucks that entered each day during a brief ceasefire earlier this year. OCHA's Jens Laerke said that the proposals from Israel “do not meet the minimum bar for principled humanitarian support.”

A foreign architecture

The GHF is led entirely by US and international actors, including several US military and diplomatic officials, with no Palestinian involvement in the leadership or oversight of the project, essentially stripping all local authorities and civil society of any agency.

Formally registered recently in Geneva, the GHF was incorporated with a Swiss lawyer, a US-based legal consultant, and an Armenian financier on its board — none of whom seem to have publicly available experience or any background in humanitarian work. 

Logistics, security, and humanitarian principles

The GHF claims its model is designed to be independent, auditable, and free from interference by armed actors or governments. The group’s proposal emphasizes strict commitment to the four pillars of humanitarian work — humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence — as being at the core of the foundation’s operations, stating that their only allegiance is to “those suffering and in need, regardless of their identity or circumstance.”

Supplies will move through “secure humanitarian corridors” using armored vehicles, with perimeter security provided by professionals who previously secured the Netzarim Corridor during the brief ceasefire that took place in January of this year. 

The three private security firms that are known to have previously operated in the Netzarim Corridor are UG Solutions, Safe Reach Solutions, and Sentinel Foundation. Jameson Gonolvini is a managing partner of UG Solutions and the cofounder of Sentinel Foundation. He is also a former US Army Special Operations officer. Glenn Devitt is Sentinel’s other founder. He also served in the US Army, but as a military intelligence officer, deploying in both Iraq and Afghanistan. As for Safe Reach Solutions, the company was founded by Philip Reilly, another retired US intelligence officer who served in numerous positions for the CIA, including as the agency’s senior paramilitary officer in Afghanistan.

The proposal states that each secure distribution site may become a staging area for further NGO activity, with the GHF to consider exploring “the possibility of offering safe lodging, showers, restrooms, and operating spaces” for aid organizations that choose to co-locate near them. In the long term, they envision “trusted community leaders” being trained to operate within these systems.

Control and exclusion

Despite describing itself as “neutral,” the GHF’s structure establishes a parallel logistics regime in Gaza. All aid routed through its system must pass through Israeli-approved corridors — Ashdod or Kerem Shalom — and adhere to GHF’s internal tracking, security, and audit protocols. This system bypasses UNRWA, Palestinian NGOs, and long-established aid networks that previously served Gaza’s population.

The GHF's proposal includes a cost breakdown of USD 1.31 per meal: USD 0.58 for procurement and USD 0.67 for logistics, armored transport, security, and administration.

In terms of financing and oversight, the GHF is embedded within elite Western financial infrastructure. It banks with Truist and JP Morgan Chase, plus a Swiss affiliate backed by Goldman Sachs. Deloitte is also mentioned in the discussion for auditing purposes.

A shadow governance project?

The GHF insists it is solely focused on saving lives and presents itself as a pragmatic solution amid a collapsed aid system. However, its structure — staffed by US officials, guarded by private US Army-affiliated contractors, coordinated with the Israeli military, and funded through Western financial networks — represents a total shift in who controls aid to Gaza.

There is no oversight by any local or UN authorities. The aid it distributes flows through systems designed by and for foreign actors — under siege, under surveillance, and under occupation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently described the objective of intensified operations in Gaza as the occupation of the territory and the establishment of a sustained presence. In this context, the GHF’s aid hubs and security apparatus risk becoming not emergency infrastructure, but the scaffolding of a long-term foreign presence dressed in humanitarian language.

Originally published on Global Voices

Image via rawpixel. Public domain.

As Israel's war on Gaza intensified in 2024, so too did the digital repression of Palestinian voices. A new report from Sada Social, a Palestinian digital rights organization, paints a troubling picture of how mainstream social media platforms — from Instagram to TikTok — are complicit in silencing Palestinian narratives.

The Digital Rights Index 2024, released in April, documents over 25,000 violations against Palestinian digital content across major platforms. These violations include content takedowns, shadow banning, account suspensions, and other forms of algorithmic suppression. The surge in censorship has coincided with a time that Palestinians are facing what the ICJ has called a ‘plausible’ case of genocide — precisely when digital expression is most needed to document the war crimes being committed by Israel on the ground.

Platforms of suppression

Sada Social’s data shows that content moderation disproportionately affects Palestinian users. The majority of violations occurred on Instagram (31 percent), TikTok (27 percent), Facebook (24 percent), and X (12 percent), with YouTube, SoundCloud, and others making up the rest.

Sada Social documented repeated cases in which Palestinian posts were removed or accounts restricted, particularly those sharing footage from Gaza, mourning martyrs, or expressing political solidarity. In some cases, users were locked out of their accounts entirely. The report highlights that such actions have a “profound impact” on freedom of expression, especially for users in war zones.

Journalists and media outlets targeted

Among the most alarming findings is that 29 percent of documented violations targeted journalists and media institutions, and 20 percent of those impacted were women journalists. Violations included post removals, visibility restrictions, and permanent bans — often without warning or transparent justification limiting public access to frontline information.

With international media often reliant on local coverage from Gaza, these violations not only silence Palestinian journalists but also restrict global understanding of events on the ground.

According to the report: 

Censorship wasn't limited to images of massacres but also extended to content related to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, even if it lacked any political or memorial content. The censorship also included images of protests carrying anti-occupation slogans like “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” which hindered the work of media organizations and violated the core principles of press freedom, which are based on reporting events without interference or biased censorship.

Incitement goes unchecked

While Palestinian content is frequently censored, the report highlights the unchecked spread of hate speech and incitement against Palestinians, particularly by Israeli accounts. Sada Social recorded over 87,000 instances of digital incitement in 2024, with many posted by Israeli officials.

The bulk of this incitement was found on Telegram (41 percent) and X (35 percent), with Meta platforms making up 15 percent. 

The monitored content included direct calls for the killing of Palestinians, forced displacement, and dehumanizing language including “explicit calls for genocide.” Much of it came from Israeli public figures, soldiers, or influencers. 

The report emphasized the systematic nature of this incitement as “a reflection of the Israeli government's official policies aimed at gaining political and military advantages by promoting hate speech and misleading global public opinion.” 

Sada Social documented 51 new anti-Palestinian narratives, “used to justify Israeli aggression in Gaza, the West Bank, and against Palestine supporters and international relief organizations.”

The double standard of social media platforms has led to accusations that social media companies are enabling state violence through selective enforcement of their own policies.

Survey: A silenced majority

As part of its research, Sada Social conducted a public opinion survey targeting Palestinian users both inside and outside of the occupied territories. The results reinforce the report’s findings: a majority of users report experiencing censorship, especially when posting about Gaza. A large majority of respondents experiences restrictions on Facebook (68.4 percent) and Instagram (65.8 percent), with TikTok (36.2 percent) and X (14.5 percent) following behind.

The topics most likely to trigger censorship included posts about Palestinian martyrs (86.8 percent), Israeli military aggression (60.5 percent), general expressions of solidarity with Palestine (53.3 percent), Palestinian resistance factions (51.3 percent), prisoners and detainees (45.4 percent), and boycott campaigns (32.9 percent).

Global implications

These numbers confirm what many Palestinians have long claimed: that social media platforms systematically restrict Palestinian political expression, even when that expression documents human rights violations or calls for nonviolent resistance.

The survey also found that a significant number of users outside of Palestine experienced content suppression as well — showing that the digital repression of Palestinian content is not confined to specific geographies.

The report urged international civil society organizations to pressure tech firms and policy-makers, emphasizing that digital rights are an extension of human rights — especially during war and occupation.

The Sada Social Digital Rights Index serves as a vital reminder that online platforms are not neutral. In the context of colonial violence and asymmetric warfare, algorithms, reporting mechanisms, and moderation practices become part of the conflict itself.

For Palestinians, social media has become both a lifeline and a battleground, a space to mourn, to resist, and to be seen. But as the report shows, even these spaces are shrinking under the weight of digital repression.

Originally published on Global Voices

The front of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship shows severe structural damage after the reported drone attack. Image via Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0.

In the early hours of May 2, 2025, the humanitarian aid ship the Conscience, operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was struck by drones in international waters near Malta. The attack caused significant damage, ignited a fire, and disabled the ship, which was traveling from Tunisia to Gaza to deliver essential supplies and protest Israel's siege. 

The group shared a statement on social media:

BREAKING: At 00:23 Maltese time, a #FreedomFlotilla ship was subjected to a drone attack. The front of the vessel was targeted twice, resulting in a fire and a breach in the hull. The ship is currently located in international waters near #Malta. An #SOS distress signal was sent. pic.twitter.com/J6oEQafuOb

— Freedom Flotilla Coalition (@GazaFFlotilla) May 2, 2025

The vessel, registered under the Palau flag, was en route to deliver food and medical supplies and bring 30 global peace activists including climate activist Greta Thunberg to Gaza. 

“This is just another example of how international law and human rights are being disregarded. This is an act of terrorism to attack a humanitarian mission like that,” Thunberg said on social media. The freedom flotilla also accused the Maltese authorities of blocking the volunteers from reaching the ship and preventing it from docking for repairs and treating four injured individuals.

“We are currently watching a live streamed genocide in Gaza, where 2 million people are being deliberately starved,” Thunberg added.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Freedom Flotilla Coalition (@gazafreedomflotilla)

Malta denied the accusations, stating the ship's crew refused to allow official inspection and assistance. Prime Minister Robert Abela said Malta is willing to facilitate repairs once the cargo is verified as solely humanitarian, stressing national security concerns.

Not the first time

The incident echoes previous Israeli attacks on Gaza-bound aid ships, including a fatal 2010 event when Israeli commandos intercepted the Mavi Marmara, killing nine people onboard and injuring many others, including one who later succumbed to his wounds. 

The ship was part of a flotilla transporting humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. “It was a big story, more than 600 humanitarian activists, politicians, and doctors from 40 different nations had put together this fleet to deliver things like baby incubators and medicine to the people of Gaza,” one of the survivors recalls. 

The United Nations Fact-Finding Mission to investigate the attack found that six of the people who were killed were summarily executed. Autopsies revealed that five were shot in the head from distances between two and 15 cm. 

The attack on the Conscience was largely met with international and Arab silence. While Turkey condemned the incident, citing that its nationals were on board, and pledged to seek accountability, many other nations remained silent, including the European Union, despite the attack taking place on the borders of its international waters. 

Systematic starvation

As the Conscience was attacked, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsened reaching what the UN secretary general described as “appalling and apocalyptic.” UNICEF warned of starvation, reporting that “more than 9,000 children have been admitted for treatment of acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year.”

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that “dozens of deaths have been reported from malnutrition or lack of medical care. The latest is a four-month-old infant, Jenan Saleh al-Skafi, who died of severe malnutrition at Al-Rantisi Hospital in western Gaza City.”

The organization called on states parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfil their obligation under Common Article 1 and “and act urgently to halt the genocide occurring in Gaza.”

By May 2, the Israeli blockade had led to the deaths of at least 57 Palestinians due to starvation, as thousands of trucks carrying vital supplies piled up at the border with Egypt. 

The attack on the Conscience, the continuous starvation, and the subsequent international silence and inaction underscore the growing accusations of failure of the international community to uphold international law and stop what has been described as “the worst campaign of systematic starvation in modern history.” 

Originally published on Global Voices

Illustration by Jafar Safatli for UntoldMag. Used with permission

This post by Donatella Della Ratta was first published by UntoldMag on August 14, 2024. This edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement. 

“Decolonizing AI” has become a mantra echoed across various institutions, from academia to cultural venues worldwide. As AI boosterism is shaping global public debates with excessive praise or absolute terror, concerns have emerged emphasizing its tendency to reproduce colonial dynamics of exploitation and extraction. 

However, while the inner mechanism through which a new form of digital colonialism is reactivated by data-powered technologies has been largely unveiled and denounced, the strategies for counteracting it remain less clear. 

Ameera Kawash, a Palestinian–Iraqi–American artist and researcher whose interdisciplinary projects powerfully situate her artistic practice within critical AI studies, is challenging the discriminatory and repressive tech sector. 

Untold Mag (UM): What does decolonizing AI really mean and how can we implement it as a practice?

Ameera Kawash (AK): Decolonizing AI is a multilayered endeavor, requiring a reaction against the philosophy of “universal computing” — an approach that is broad, universalistic, and often overrides the local. We must counteract this with varied and localized approaches, focusing on labor, ecological impact, bodies and embodiment, feminist frameworks of consent, and the inherent violence of the digital divide.

This holistic thinking should connect the military use of AI-powered technologies with their seemingly innocent, everyday applications in apps and platforms. By exploring and unveiling the inner bond between these uses, we can understand how the normalization of day-to-day AI applications sometimes legitimizes more extreme and military employment of these technologies.

There are normalized paths and routine ways to violence embedded in the very infrastructure of AI, such as the way prompts (the written instructions or queries we give AI tools) are rendered into actual imagery. This process can contribute to dehumanizing people, making them legitimate targets by rendering them invisible. 

Take Palestine as an example: when I experimented with simple prompts like “Palestinian child in a city” or “Palestinian woman walking”, the AI-generated imagery often depicted scenarios that normalize violence against Palestinians. The child is shown running from a collapsing building, with utter urban devastation in the background. Destruction is ubiquitous, yet the perpetrator of this violence, Israel, is never visually held accountable.

These AI-generated images contribute to shaping a default narrative where, without context or reason, Palestinians are portrayed as living in perpetual devastation. This kind of imagery perpetuates a biased and harmful narrative, further entrenching the normalization of violence against them as a result of more dehumanization.

What I call the “futuricide” of the Palestinian people stems from a complex interplay between how data is trained — by scraping the internet on a large scale and absorbing all the existing stereotypical representations circulating on the web — and then generalizing this data, making it sort of “universal.” As AI generates patterns and models, it crystallizes categories.

The Palestinian city resulting from my prompts risks becoming “the” Palestinian city — a quintessential, solidified entity where suffering is turned into a purely visual item that gets infinitely commodified through generative AI in all its forms and aspects. These traumatic aftereffects occur without a visible perpetrator, resulting in an occupation without an occupier. It mirrors a horror film: pure devastation without cause or reason, just senseless violence and trauma.

UM: If we were to dismantle the colonial foundations embedded in the creation and default structure of AI as conceived today, where should we start?

AK: I believe we should start from very small, local instances. For example, I am working to involve real-world cultural institutions in the creation of datasets, thereby developing highly curated and customized models to train AI without scraping the internet. This approach helps resist the exploitation that typically underpins the making and training of these technologies, which is also where most biases are introduced. 

Decolonizing AI means eliminating this exploitative aspect and turning towards more curated, artisanal labor and practices of care.

Of course, this approach is not scalable, and perhaps that is part of the problem. Conceiving the digital as quintessentially scalable makes it colonial, commercial, and commodified by default. It might be that decolonizing AI, as a project, is inherently unworkable — machine learning, in its current structure and conception, offers little room to decolonial practices.

However, by collaborating with real-world institutions such as universities and cultural centers to create training datasets, we can address at least one layer of the problem: data collection. There are many layers involved in making AI work, all of which should be considered when attempting to ‘decolonize’ it. 

Starting with data collection is a meaningful first step, but we need to acknowledge that a comprehensive approach will require addressing each layer of the process. For example, even if the information is collected fairly, curated meticulously, and consent is given, the training model might be exploitative in itself. The act of turning data into labels and categories and universalizing them is inherently problematic and very much part of the colonial legacy. It can perpetuate biases and reinforce harmful structures, regardless of the fairness of the initial data collection.

For me, it would be useful to think about AI within the framework of critical archival practices. Data is a precious resource from the past upon which future knowledge is built. Understanding AI as an extension of archival practice allows us to critically assess how we collect, categorize, and utilize data, ensuring that we approach it with the same care, consent, and contextual awareness that we would with any other archival material. There is always a selection criteria and an organizing principle driven by choice.

To create a decolonial or anti-colonial archive, we must adopt feminist perspectives and include other forms of knowledge beyond the traditional, language-based ones. As an artist, this is integral to my daily practice — I engage with non-traditional forms of knowing and learning that are embodied and ephemeral, thus less likely to be datafied and commodified. And yet, if we were to truly decolonize AI, would it remain the same object, or would it be something entirely different?

The AI-generated “All Eyes on Rafah” image that went viral on Instagram in May 2024. Image from Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

UM: What about the role of generative AI in spreading awareness about the genocide in Gaza? Why did the “All Eyes on Rafah” synthetic picture go viral, while so many evidence-based images offering proof of the massacre have faded from public attention?

AK: Many elements contributed to the virality of this AI-generated image. Firstly, the readable text embedded within the image allowed it to bypass contemporary platform censorship, facilitating exponential sharing. Secondly, people likely perceived it as a “safe” image — it is sanitized and free from explicit violence, making it more palatable for widespread dissemination. 

The visuals inhabit a safe space, which is the space of AI, not Palestine. Removing the specific context creates a comfortable distance for viewers. From a Palestinian perspective, this is highly problematic as it contributes to the colonial process of dehumanizing and erasing the local population. Palestinians are redacted from the image, as if their lived experiences are not credible or do not count at all.

The messaging is also problematic: “All Eyes on Rafah” — what does it really mean? It doesn’t suggest actions or call personal agency into question. It doesn’t urge you to protest, contact your MP, or demand sanctions on Israel. It doesn’t push you to do anything concrete; it’s very passive. The whole world is looking, witnessing genocide in real-time, which might be a more sophisticated form of clicktivism. Doing the absolute minimum — just sharing an image — gives a false sense of having contributed, of having “done something.”

Of course, the positive aspect is that 50 million people have shared it across platforms. However, Palestinians do not want to go viral and be invisible at the same time. We need virality to work for us, to bring an end to the violence.

What would happen if these AI-powered technologies were used to affirm Palestinian futures instead of contributing to their annihilation? This question guides my practice. Technology is integral to the discourse on the future, and we Palestinians need to be part of the future. We must be involved in shaping it, not cut out from it.