The UK Rebukes the UN and Bows to the Israeli Embassy over “Terrorism” Arrests of Journalists

By Craig Murray

May 28, 2025

Source: Craig Murray

Photo from Alisdare Hickson (Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

There is a stunning contrast between the access given by the UK to the Israeli Embassy to influence prosecutions of anti-Genocide journalists and protestors, and the repudiation by the UK of United Nations querying such prosecutions. The UK has rebuked the UN for “outside interference”.

I cannot state enough how unusual it is for the UK to give direct access to the Israeli Embassy to the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, in order for the Israeli government to influence the prosecution of UK citizens. This is not about extradition, in which case there may be treaty arrangements for direct contact between prosecutors. It is just not normal nor right for an Embassy to be involved with domestic prosecutions in this way.

This is one of a series of heavily redacted emails seen by the Guardian, Middle East Eye and lawyers for Palestine Action. They show the Israeli government being granted direct influence with UK police and prosecutors, to urge the prosecution of UK citizens protesting in the UK, against a genocide for which Israel stands accused at the International Court of Justice, with her leaders indicted before the International Criminal Court.

There is no British precedent for this situation and it is very much against international practice, although comparators may be found in influencing prosecution decisions in Vichy France or the Eastern European communist bloc by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union – though there were instances of pushback even there. By contrast the UK system is openly influenced by the Israelis.

There is no reticence from the UK government in forwarding Israel influence. Although all released correspondence has been heavily redacted, it is plain that individual cases have been discussed with the Israelis, including those of Palestine Action.

The United Nations has written to the UK on the subject of its treatment both of pro-Palestinian protestors and journalists and the abuse of anti-terrorism legislation. It is almost certain that some of the same cases the UN cites are those the Israeli Embassy has been involved in. The contrast between the UK’s treatment of the Israelis and of the United Nations could scarcely be different. The Israelis are invited in, while the Starmer regime has repudiated the United Nations.

This is stunning hypocrisy. It is characterised as being in the interest of those being persecuted by the UK and Israel, to prevent “interference from international organisations” such as the United Nations. This is beyond the pen of Orwell or Kafka. You can imagine the authors sniggering as they wrote it.

But the truth is the exact opposite of the UK government line. Unlike the Israeli Embassy, the United Nations really does have a right to interfere. The Special Procedures mechanisms by which the United Nations approached the UK are a well-established part of international law, and the UK is a party to them. These are instituted by the Human Rights Council, and it has always been the position of the UK that all nations are subject to them.

In addition the UK is since 1971 a full party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is monitored by the Human Rights Committee and to the provisions of which the UN Special Rapporteurs specifically referred in querying the UK’s actions in this matter.

So the Israel Embassy has no right to interfere, and the United Nations has a direct right to interfere; yet the UK has encouraged the illegitimate while repudiating the legitimate. This is a classic example of the way that Zionism has fundamentally poisoned public institutions in the UK, and also of the profound Zionist capture of New Labour.

Yesterday’s revelation that David Lammy has lied to parliament and the country about suspending trade talks with Israel, while UK “trade envoy” Lord Austin is actually there, should be no surprise.

The hypocrisy does not even end there. The UK has been the most vociferous of countries in weaponising the UN Special Procedures against its own designated enemies, such as Russia and China. For the UK now to repudiate these UN investigations as “interference” is precisely to adopt the position of those states it has long argued against.

I have no doubt that this has been duly noted by any dictatorship the UK may seek to criticise in future.

You will recall that I am among a number of journalists about whose detention under the Terrorism Act and the seizure of whose electronic equipment, and thus correspondence, the United Nations interrogate the UK. You can read the UK government reply in full here.

ukgovtreply

Since the UN wrote, there have been further high-profile arrests of journalists, including Sarah Wilkinson and Asa Winstanley. The basic UK response is that the UN should not interfere, but one point of detail the UK states is particularly worth noting. Detentions and confiscations such as mine under the Terrorism Act specifically do not require the police to have any “reasonable grounds of suspicion”.

What kind of state makes a point of empowering its police to act unreasonably?

But read this further from the UK government reply:

I was detained and my electronics seized under Section 7. That means the UK government is claiming that I was “concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism”. Just digest that for a moment.

I might say that nothing in my questioning – which was roughly equally split between the subjects of Wikileaks and Palestine – related in any way to the potential commission of any acts of terrorism. Is the government really pretending that, in travelling home from an Assange campaign meeting in Iceland, they truly suspected I was preparing to commit terrorism? This is ludicrous.

It has often been noticed that despite Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley, Richard Medhurst, Johanna Ross, John Laughland, Vanessa Beeley, Kit Klarenberg, Ernest Moret, Richard Barnard, Tony Greenstein and Natalie Strecker all being swept up under the Terrorism Act in a campaign against journalists this last two years, there has never been a single mention in UK mainstream media of the UK’s arrest of journalists under the Terrorism Act.

Even following the United Nations intervention to question the UK on the arrest of journalists the UK did not mention it. Even the UK’s tiny number of licensed anti-genocide voices in the mainstream media, such as Owen Jones, have never mentioned it.

Yesterday Asa Winstanley won an important legal victory at the Old Bailey where a senior judge ruled that the police raid on his home and seizure of his equipment was unlawful. That is an important and rare legal victory, and I am tempted to attribute it partly to the turning of the tide of Establishment opinion against sacrificing all principles of law to the interests of Israel.

You may perhaps not be surprised to learn that this victory, too, has not been covered by the mainstream media. This conspiracy of silence over extreme abuse of police power against journalists is deeply troubling.

Stephen Miller’s Argument for Suspending Habeas Corpus Is Legal Garbage

By Marjorie Cohn

May 13, 2025
Source: Truthout

Image by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons 2.0

If White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is to be believed, Team Trump is poised to drive another stake through the heart of the Constitution. On May 9, Miller told reporters that the administration is considering whether to suspend the right to habeas corpus – known as “The Great Writ” – in immigration cases. Suspending habeas corpus, which allows individuals to challenge the legality of their detention in court, would be unconstitutional.

The Suspension Clause, located in Article I, Section 9, Clause 2 of the Constitution, says: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

In light of the several recent losses the administration has suffered in immigration cases, Miller said it is now pondering the suspension of habeas corpus. He declared:

Well, the Constitution is clear. And that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion. So … that’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law known as the Immigration Nationality Act which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases. So Congress actually passed what’s called jurisdiction stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.

As Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck points out, “To casually suggest that habeas might be suspended because courts have ruled against the executive branch in a handful of immigration cases is to turn the Suspension Clause entirely on its head.”

Moreover, Miller’s alarming declaration contains several legal and factual errors.
Only Congress, Not the President, Has the Power to Suspend Habeas Corpus

Contrary to Miller’s assertion, only Congress — not the president — can suspend habeas corpus, and only in rare circumstances. “Although [the Suspension Clause] does not state that suspension must be effected by, or authorized by, a legislative act, it has been so understood, consistent with English practice and the Clause’s placement in Article I,” Antonin Scalia wrote in dissent in the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. (Article I of the Constitution lists the powers of Congress).

Amy Coney Barrett, a current member of the Supreme Court, agrees with Scalia. When she was a judge on the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, she and Neal K. Katyal, a professor at Georgetown Law Center, wrote for National Constitution Center: “The Clause does not specify which branch of government has the authority to suspend the privilege of the writ, but most agree that only Congress can do it.” That is because the Suspension Clause is located in the section of the Constitution that details the powers of Congress, and habeas corpus has only been suspended four times since the Constitution was ratified in 1789.

President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, but Congress then enacted a statute allowing the suspension. In the other three instances, the president enacted the suspension only after first obtaining congressional authorization: in 11 South Carolina counties overrun by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction; in two provinces of the Philippines in 1905 to quash an Indigenous rebellion against colonial rule by the U.S.; and in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor was bombed.
There Is No “Invasion”

Miller is also wrong because there is no “invasion” currently occurring in the United States, despite several of Donald Trump’s January 20 executive orders declaring that there is an invasion of the southern U.S. border.

For example, in his order entitled “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion,” Trump declared, “I have determined that the current state of the southern border reveals that the Federal Government has failed in fulfilling this obligation to the States and hereby declare that an invasion is ongoing at the southern border, which requires the Federal Government to take measures to fulfill its obligation to the States.” He claimed that he was suspending what he described as “the physical entry of aliens involved in an invasion into the United States across the southern border until I determine that the invasion has concluded.”

Trump also signed an order titled “Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States.” It calls the situation at the southern border an “invasion” that includes “unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities.”

Rear Adm. James McPherson, former U.S. undersecretary of the Army, said on PBS “NewsHour” that “We don’t have a war going on at the southern border. We have a law enforcement crisis perhaps. But that’s not an invasion.”

Several federal courts have also rejected the idea that there is an ongoing invasion at the southern border.

In February 2024, a federal district court in Texas rejected the equating of immigration with an invasion, concluding that “surges in immigration do not constitute an ‘invasion’ within the meaning of the Constitution.”

During the first week of May, three federal judges rejected the Trump administration’s argument that the immigration situation constitutes an invasion.

U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., in South Texas, granted a petition for writ of habeas corpus on May 1 and rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to justify using the Alien Enemies Act by arguing that the U.S. was being invaded by a Venezuelan gang.

On May 6, U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney in Colorado called the Trump administration’s definition of invasion “unpersuasive” and rejected the government’s argument that the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was beyond judicial review.

Also on May 6, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in New York held that the Tren de Aragua gang (TdA) is not attacking the United States. “TdA may well be engaged in narcotics trafficking, but that is a criminal matter, not an invasion or predatory incursion,” he wrote, and halted deportations from most of New York City and nearby areas.

“[Hellerstein] joined several others in correctly recognizing the president cannot simply declare that there’s been an invasion and then invoke a wartime authority during peacetime to send individuals to a Gulag-type prison in El Salvador without even giving them due process,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said in a statement.

In addition, Miller failed to mention the second part of the test for “invasion” set forth in the Suspension Clause, namely, that the public safety may require suspension.
Immigration Decisions Are Entitled to Appellate Review

Finally, Miller is wrong because the Immigration and Nationality Act does not categorically strip appellate review (a legal examination of a lower court’s proceedings to determine if its ruling was made in error) from immigration cases. Although immigration matters generally start in immigration courts, appeals from those decisions are routinely heard by Article III (federal) courts.

In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court ruled that noncitizens held within the United States have the right to seek a writ of habeas corpus.

Several of the noncitizens that the Trump administration has been trying to deport – including Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk – filed habeas corpus petitions challenging their deportation.

“A suspension [of habeas corpus] is temporary, but the power it confers is extraordinary,” Barrett and Katyal wrote in their National Constitution Center article. “When a suspension is in effect, the president, typically acting through subordinates, can imprison people indefinitely without any judicial check.”

It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump will stop at nothing to impose his will – the commands of the Constitution notwithstanding. On May 4, Trump refused to say on “Meet the Press” that he was bound by the Due Process Clause of the Constitution.

For now, federal judges are serving as speed bumps in Trump’s cruel and illegal war on migrants. Trump has packed the Supreme Court with radical right-wingers who may well overturn some of those lower court rulings. But Trump has already defied the high court’s order that his administration facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. We can only hope that the “justices” on the high court maintain their reverence for the Constitution, even though the president does not.




Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense and she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

An Autopsy of Opaque Persecution in a Democracy

By Boaventura de Sousa Santos

May 7, 2025

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Since at least classical antiquity, the differences between dictatorship and democracy have been clear, unequivocal, and as evident as the difference between water and oil. In theory. In practice, the differences, especially today, are much more complex. Take the example of the persecution of forbidden/illegal ideas by those in power. In theory, in a democracy there are no forbidden/illegal ideas, except those that constitute crimes of defamation. In practice, things are more complex. Dictatorships are transparent in their persecution of those who profess forbidden/illegal ideas by those in power. Democracy is opaque. Transparent persecution consists, among other things, of the prohibition of political parties, the absence of fundamental rights and procedural guarantees, political dependence of the courts, an official list of prohibited/illegal ideas, and the punishment of those who profess them (censorship, crimes of opinion, political prisoners). Opaque persecution does not use – officially, at least – any of these instruments, which are constitutionally prohibited in a democratic state. The opacity lies in the fact that similar objectives can be achieved by means that appear to be completely different (and even contrary) to those used in transparent persecution.

The danger of opaque persecution is that it goes unnoticed by the majority of the population. If it is not democratically combated, it can easily turn into quasi-transparent persecution, i.e. tolerated or even promoted by the constitutionally democratic state itself, and accepted with indifference by the majority of the population. Beyond a certain level of tolerance or promotion of opaque persecution, it is legitimate to admit that, even without constitutional changes, the democratic political regime has changed and become a hybrid regime between democracy and dictatorship, a democracy with smatterings of dictatorship or a dictatorship with smatterings of democracy. Let’s take a look at the conditions for opaque persecution and some of the privileged mechanisms for carrying it out, some of immemorial origin, others very recent.

The conditions

The creation of an external threat. The modern idea of the nation-state is based on two fundamental pillars: sovereignty and citizenship. Both are principles of inclusion and exclusion. The principle of sovereignty validates the concept of external threat. Today, the external threat of choice in the European Union is Russia, while in the US it is China, Iran and North Korea. As in all pre-war periods, the idea of the external threat intensifies and becomes the central axis of the country’s policy. From this moment of polarization, questioning the policy of threat becomes an act of betrayal. Questioning becomes a dangerous act, by definition, and the one who formulates it is, by definition, dangerous. Dangerousness can justify the neutralization of those who question by informal, legal, a-legal or even illegal means, which basically mean the violation of constitutional guarantees.

The creation of the common internal enemy. The other pillar of the modern idea of the nation-state is citizenship. The idea of the nation-state contains a little-noticed trick: contrary to common belief, it wasn’t nations that built states, it was states that built nations. And nation-building has always depended on the interests of those who dominate the state. For this reason, many social groups who lived in the geopolitical space of the state were excluded from the nation: ethnic or religious minorities (sometimes majorities), slaves, women, immigrants. Citizenship has always been a principle of both inclusion and exclusion. The excluded have always been potentially internal enemies and their effective conversion has depended on the opportunism of whoever holds state power at the time. At the moment, in Europe and the US, the common internal enemy of choice is the immigrant, especially if they are Muslim. The common internal enemy is monitored, controlled and expelled according to the convenience of the moment. The legality or illegality with which all this is done depends on a multitude of factors.

The creation of the internal political enemy. These are individuals or groups/parties whose ideas are considered by the political powers to be so dangerous that they do not deserve to be protected by the guarantees of citizenship and the Constitution. After the Second World War, the US and its allies were very active in characterizing communist parties as internal political enemies, especially in the Americas and Western Europe. The cases of Greece, Germany (the berufsverbot, professional ban for “extremists”,1972) and Italy are particularly significant. We are currently witnessing an extremely worrying expansion of the concept of internal political enemy. The global far right, today led by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, is beginning to extend the concept of internal political enemy to all critical-thinking intellectuals and all left-wing parties. The internal political enemy either jeopardizes the interests (mainly economic) of the classes that dominate the state or is suspected of being in the service of an external enemy and thereby aggravating the external threat. Unlike what happens with political opponents, with internal political enemies there is no debate, they are rather silenced, summarily condemned, and declared dead.

The instruments of opaque persecution

The conditions mentioned above are some of the symptoms of broader changes in the global capitalist and colonialist (dis)order that I cannot analyze here. In general, they aggravate the incompatibility between liberal democracy and capitalist accumulation. In previous works, I have argued that in capitalist societies, liberal democracy is always an island of democracy in an archipelago of despotisms. I have characterized these despotisms as forms of societal fascism and concluded that contemporary societies are politically democratic and socially fascist. I think we are entering a different period in which societal fascism is transforming into a new kind of political fascism. Opaque persecution is one of the signs of this transformation. Let’s look at its main instruments.

The persecution is not explicitly political

Except in extreme cases, such as those currently taking place in Donald Trump’s USA, prohibited or illegal ideas never appear as an explicit reason for persecution. The persecution of the defenders of such ideas takes place for non-political reasons, for acts that gather great consensus in society, in terms of ethical or legal condemnation. The acts currently favored are sexual abuse, corruption and state security. The most sadly famous case of the last decades was that of Julian Assange, in which the accusations of sexual abuse (the invention of a sexual assault on two Swedish women) and an attack on state security (WikiLeaks) were combined.

 State security has always been the preferred reason for dictatorships to persecute their opponents. Its increasing use by democratic states is one of the clear signs of the degradation of democratic coexistence. The construction of the external threat and the internal political enemy is particularly used in periods of preparation for war. As for sexual abuse and corruption, they have always been condemnable in democratic societies and punishable under the law. Opaque persecution uses this to maximize the social stigmatization of the perpetrators of forbidden/illegal ideas. It uses two main mechanisms: invention, decontextualization or disproportionate dramatization of the “facts”; and selective repression. The universe of sex offenders and the corrupt has a certain political color that is rarely noticed and, when it is, is treated as pure coincidence.

The two offenses of choice have historical and political economy reasons. The fight against sexual abuse has always been on the agenda of democrats who consider patriarchy to be one of the main modern dominations, alongside capitalism and colonialism. The feminist movements have given a new visibility to sexual abuse and a new intensity to its condemnation. However, neoliberalism has infiltrated these movements with a neo-puritan ideology and used them to make the class struggle invisible and to divide the groups fighting against social injustice. Capitalism was no longer the main enemy, but heterosexual men. Obviously, this infiltration has been partial and only affects part of the great movement for the liberation of women and sexual orientations. This is what is now known as neoliberal feminism, generally made up of phenotypically white, middle-class people.

As for corruption, its relationship with the political economy of neoliberalism is intimate because it was with neoliberalism that the promiscuity between the political and economic worlds intensified. Corruption is now normalized in all political activity and acts that are still considered corruption in some countries are legal in others. This is the case with the hidden and unlimited private financing of political parties, which is banned in European countries and permitted in the USA. Corruption is thus an activity that neoliberalism knows well and uses to keep those who are loyal to its interests in political power and to remove from power or prevent those who are hostile or less loyal to those interests from coming to power.

The persecution is conducted by “civil society” or by the “non-political” organs of the state – the courts.

Civil society is mobilized in multiple ways. The media and social networks are the privileged amplifiers of the “seriousness” of the acts and the persecution of their perpetrators. In their midst, persecution entrepreneurs emerge, often unaware of the service they are providing to the real mobilizers and their interests. They see themselves as heralds of a noble cause and this is a fundamental component of the opacity of persecution. The aim of the media war is to turn accusations into condemnations so that the objectives of neutralizing those who are opaquely persecuted are achieved before any initiative to defend themselves. The professional and personal damage becomes definitive and irreparable, even if the accusations are later proven to be false.

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) play a key role in opaque prosecution precisely because any superficial reading of their mission identifies the nobility, disinterest and universalism of their objectives. The defense of democracy and human rights serve as a veneer to legitimize their true aims. The NGOs most committed to opaque persecution are often financed internationally by interest centers linked to the defense of neoliberalism and the neutralization of its enemies.

The courts are the sovereign body considered non-political and defenders of constitutional guarantees, the rule of law, the regularity of the judicialprocedures, and the presumption of innocence. All this means that only real cases of sexual abuse, corruption or attacks on state security are punished, and that everyone is punished, not just a few. This is the theory, but the practice is quite different. We have been witnessing two worrying phenomena.

The first is the growing realization that the courts are much more dependent on public opinion than one might think. And they are especially so in cases where this opinion creates consensus that goes beyond the usual political divisions. This dependence, as well as contradicting the independence of the courts, undermines the effectiveness of procedural guarantees and, above all, the presumption of innocence. Under these conditions, the (sometimes anonymous) denunciation in the media and on social networks constitutes the conviction, and the action of the courts is no more than ratifying the conviction. This is only not the case when public opinion is divided before or during the intervention of the courts. Hence the interest of the vigilantes of opaque persecution in ensuring that such a split does not occur.

The second phenomenon is what is known as the judicialization of politics, the reverse of which is the politicization of justice. This involves the political class (or their political clients) using the courts to obtain political results. For example, the removal of an influential politician or the electoral defeat of a party considered to be the favorite, but hostile to the interests of those who have the power to mobilize the courts. Again, one of the characteristics of judicialization is its selectivity. It tends to operate most effectively when it comes to promoting politically conservative objectives. It should be noted that neoliberalism has invested heavily in the “training of magistrates” in many countries, notably with “specialization courses” or “study trips” at American universities and other US institutions. My research from the 1990s onwards indicated that public prosecutors were the prime target of this “training” policy. It was later extended to all magistrates.

Opaque persecution requires a complex equation between the dangerousness and illegality of ideas

Opaque persecution is based on the idea that certain ideas are dangerous because they significantly contradict the interests of those in political power and their allies and, for this reason, should be treated as illegal, even though in a democracy the concept of prohibited or illegal ideas has very precise limits, and, in principle, there are no dangerous ideas. Opaque persecution requires that these boundaries be crossed by indirect means of repression, liminal or a-legal, between legality and illegality, and by massive indoctrination and disinformation campaigns. An example of this is the concept of anti-Semitism, which today in the US (and to some extent in Europe) has been reframed to cover any criticism of the State of Israel, no matter how heinous the crimes against humanity committed by Israel against the martyred people of Palestine. The aim of disinformation is to legitimize repression by inverting the equation between the dangerousness and the illegality of ideas: while for those in power ideas are dangerous and should therefore be outlawed, public opinion is led to believe that ideas are illegal because they are dangerous.

The persecution is global

The opaque persecution is part of a global project to degrade coexistence and democratic institutions. The crisis of globalized neoliberal capitalist accumulation is evident today and manifests itself at various levels, far beyond protectionism, tariffs, and the division into rival blocs. It manifests itself in political polarization, in the growth of the extreme right among the frustrated, resentful, and hopeless working classes, in the politics of hatred, in the spectacle of the violation of the red lines of democratic coexistence in the public sphere, in the gradual replacement of secularism by politicized religion. The International of hate and conservative polarization uses the means that the US high-tech information and communication giants have at their disposal to silence or eliminate critical thinking, monitoring the communications and movements of social activists and critical thinkers, checking the alternative media, rummaging the privacy of the targets in order to trigger at the right moment the process of cancellation, silencing, in short, the civil death of the defenders of ideas considered prohibited or illegal, and even of the media outlets they used. The “blacklists” of ideas, authors and media outlets to be canceled are distributed internationally to the hegemonic media in different countries, to investigative police and even to NGOs that are willing to collaborate because they believe that such cancellation could further their supposedly progressive goals. This is the most opaque dimension of the persecution, because it is difficult to know who are the agents of a persecution which, although national, is quickly internationalized, who are its internal collaborators and how the disinformation is spread so quickly. Above all, it is difficult to know how people of good faith are mobilized for causes they think are noble without being aware of the real objectives behind them. As for the centers of international hatred and polarization, there is reason to believe that they are Donald Trump’s USA and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel.

From opaque persecution to transparent persecution

The distinction between opaque persecution and transparent persecution is not always as clear-cut as described here. There are liminal situations that create hybrid phenomena of opaque persecution and transparent persecution. This is the case, for example, when the defenders of illegal ideas are foreigners. Illegal ideas are then easily considered doubly illegal: illegal ideas from illegal people. Another mechanism of liminality is the declaration of states of emergency that suspend the constitutional guarantees of the persecuted. A third mechanism is the creation of illegal, gray zones, where the discretion of the agents is constitutive of the application of the law. Such zones are, for example, airports and immigration services.

Conclusion

Producing the civil death of the targets of opaque persecution and discrediting their ideas are the two mechanisms of cancellation. The ideas may continue to be published, but they no longer have any political influence, either by discrediting the authors or by marginalizing the media outlets in which they are published, if they are published at all.

The fundamental danger of opaque persecution lies in the fact that its opacity prevents it from being combated as political persecution, and therefore with recourse to democratic means of political confrontation. It is a perverse form of politicization that acts as depoliticization, subjecting its targets to the deepest isolation. Any public solidarity with this target can lead to the cancellation of the one who is sympathizing. Loneliness in a democracy has a much deeper stigma than loneliness in a dictatorship. But it is precisely this loneliness and the consequent impossibility of creating democratic opposition that favors the slide from democracy to dictatorship that characterizes our time.

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Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is the emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. His most recent book is Decolonizing the University: The Challenge of Deep Cognitive Justice.

FASCISTS OF A FEATHER ...

US and Hungary Stand Alone at ICJ in Favor of Israel’s Blockade on Gaza

By Marjorie Cohn

May 6, 2025

Source: Truthout





Since March 2, Israel has blocked all food, medicine, fuel, and other relief from entering the besieged Gaza Strip, home to 2.1 million Palestinian people. “Israel is starving, killing and displacing Palestinians while also targeting and blocking humanitarian organizations trying to save their lives,” Ammar Hijazi, Palestine’s ambassador to the Netherlands, told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) during last week’s five-day hearing. “Humanitarian aid is being used as a weapon of war.”

The ICJ convened the hearing at the request of the UN General Assembly to address the following question:

What are the obligations of Israel, as an occupying Power and as a member of the United Nations, in relation to the presence and activities of the United Nations, including its agencies and bodies, other international organizations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including to ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population as well as of basic services and humanitarian and development assistance, for the benefit of the Palestinian civilian population, and in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination?

Just days after the World Food Programme said it had run out of food in Gaza, the hearing commenced at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. Thirty-nine states, the United Nations and three other international organizations presented oral arguments. All states but two — the U.S. and Hungary — condemned Israel’s denial of humanitarian assistance to the starving people of Gaza. Although Israel refused to orally address the ICJ, it filed a written statement with the court. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Israel decided “not to take part in this circus” and called the ICJ hearings part of a “systematic persecution and delegitimisation of Israel.

Patricia Pérez Galeana, representing Mexico, quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s April 29 statement to the UN Security Council: “The humanitarian situation throughout the Gaza Strip has gone from bad, to worse, to beyond imagination.”

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, over 15,000 of them children. Thousands are missing under tons of rubble. Using the excuse of destroying Hamas, Israel has destroyed the life-sustaining infrastructure in Gaza, including shelter, hospitals, water treatment facilities, sanitation systems, farms, heat and power grids.

During the hearing, Saudi Arabia’s Mohamed Saud Alnasser said, “Israel’s hideous conduct, which piles illegality upon illegality, is well documented.” Zane Dangor, representative of South Africa, told the court, “The humanitarian aid system is facing total collapse. This collapse is by design.”

In June 2024, the UN Independent International Commission found, “Throughout the siege on Gaza, Israel has weaponized the withholding of life-sustaining necessities, specifically by cutting off supplies of water, food, electricity, fuel and other essential supplies, including humanitarian assistance.”

“Under the world’s watchful eye, Palestinians across the Occupied Palestinian Territory are being subjected to atrocity crimes, persecution, apartheid and genocide,” Dangor stated. “While we watch, the gaze of Palestinians is directed squarely at the international community, and this Court — whose advice is urgently being sought, for the protection of their most fundamental rights, including the right to life.”

While the current blockade on Gaza is unprecedented in scope and duration, Israel has maintained a siege by air, sea and land on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2007. A report by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released in 2021 stated that the Israeli blockade “has affected all social, economic and humanitarian sectors,” leading to mass poverty and unemployment, a deteriorating health sector, and energy and wastewater crises. “Most refugees are unable to secure their daily needs of food, water, electricity, health care and education,” the report stated.

Israel Falsely Claims It Has Facilitated Humanitarian Assistance

In its written submission, Israel maintained that its refusal to allow humanitarian assistance into Gaza is justified by defense and security concerns no matter how urgently that assistance is needed. Israel said the case was “outrageously brought against it for seeking lawfully to repel heinous attacks against its citizens and territory” and it “is part of an abusive and systematic campaign that regrettably weaponizes international law, and international legal institutions, with the aim of depriving Israel of fundamental rights accorded to all sovereign States, including the right to defend itself.”

Israel failed to mention that the ICJ unequivocally established in its 2004 advisory opinion “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” the non-applicability of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter in the situation between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. A state cannot invoke the right of self-defense to defend against an attack which originates inside a territory it occupies. Because Israel continues to occupy Gaza, it has relinquished its right to claim self-defense in response to Palestinian attacks.

Moreover, as Marko Rakovec argued for Slovenia, no claim to the right of self-defense can ever justify violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law, including the denial of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.

In addition, Israel falsely stated that “as before,” it “goes to great lengths to continue to allow and facilitate the provision of necessary humanitarian assistance and services in Gaza under very challenging circumstances.” Although Israel has blocked all humanitarian aid from Gaza since March 2, it began preventing food, water, electricity and gas from entering Gaza immediately after the October 7, 2023, attacks.

Israel argued that it “is committed to observing all the international legal obligations that are incumbent upon it, including those prescribed by the law of armed conflict and those reflected in the provisional measures indicated by the International Court of Justice.” But in spite of the ICJ’s orders in January, March and June of 2024 that it take immediate steps to allow unrestricted and unhindered aid to enter Gaza, Israel has shamelessly violated those commands.

Israel’s Legal Obligations as the Occupying Power

On July 19, 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel was illegally occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Even though Israel withdrew its military presence from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the ICJ affirmed that Israel continues to occupy Gaza because it exercises “effective control” over “the land, sea and air borders” and maintains “restrictions on movement of people and goods, collection of import and export taxes, and military control over the buffer zone.” The court also held that international law prohibits the acquisition of territory by threat or use of force and protects the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

During last week’s hearing, state after state reiterated Israel’s legal obligations by virtue of its status as an occupying power.

Israel has a legal duty to administer the territory for the benefit of the local population; to agree to and facilitate relief schemes; to facilitate the proper functioning of all institutions dedicated to the care and education of children; and to maintain the medical establishments and hospitals, including those set up by UN entities.

In addition, Israel must respect the decisions of the Palestinian people to receive basic goods and services from UN entities, including food, water, shelter, hygiene, medical supplies and clothing, in order to fully benefit from their right to self-determination. Israel has an obligation to assist those UN activities.

Israel’s Unilateral Ban on UNRWA Is Illegal

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is the agency that has provided food, education and health care to Palestinian refugees since 1949. “As a subsidiary organ of the United Nations established by the General Assembly, UNRWA is entitled to all rights and privileges accorded to UN organs by international law,” Ma Xinmin said on behalf of China. “In fulfilling its obligations toward UN organs in good faith, Israel shall safeguard and facilitate UNRWA’s humanitarian operations, protect the safety of the personnel and ensure its privileges and immunities.”

Nevertheless, in January, Israel banned UNRWA from operating in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and urged funders to stop financial support of the organization. The U.S. and several of its allies (which provided 60 percent of UNRWA’s funding) immediately suspended funds. All except the U.S. resumed funding UNRWA.

Since Israel is a member state of the United Nations, bound by the UN Charter, it may not deny any impartial humanitarian organization such as the UN the ability to administer relief schemes. Because it is the occupying power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel cannot unilaterally declare that a humanitarian organization is not impartial and deny its relief procedures. Humanitarian relief employees, medical personnel and UN personnel must be respected, protected and treated humanely and not subjected to intimidation or harassment. Attacks shall not be directed against them.

Ardi Imseis, speaking on behalf of Palestine, quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who said that “UNRWA is indispensable in delivering essential services to Palestinians” and “UNRWA is the backbone of the United Nations humanitarian relief operations” in Gaza. The secretary-general’s written statement to the court says:


Since October 2023, UNRWA has supported nearly 2.3 million affected individuals [in Gaza] with food, healthcare, and shelter. It has distributed food aid to around 1.9 million people and provided more than 60% of primary healthcare services in Gaza. Furthermore, UNRWA has sheltered hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons in more than 100 schools and continues to deliver psychosocial support and primary health consultations.

Imseis told the ICJ that Israel seeks to prevent UNRWA from fulfilling its mandate in order to further “the erasure of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and ultimately in the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through forcible transfer.” UNRWA, Imseis added, is the “last hope” of the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, to survive Israel’s genocide.

Israel alleged that 19 out of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff took part in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack. UNRWA fired nine staffers, concluding that they could have been involved, although the evidence was not authenticated or corroborated.

The UN secretary-general appointed Catherine Colonna, former foreign minister of France, to lead an independent review to assess whether UNRWA was doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and respond to allegations of serious neutrality breaches when they are made. The review concluded that Israel’s allegations were unsubstantiated and lacked credible evidence.

Sally Langrish argued to the ICJ that, “The United Kingdom considers that UNRWA is an ‘impartial humanitarian organization’ for the purposes of Article 59 of [the Fourth Geneva Convention]. In so far as impartiality is understood as meaning ‘neutrality,’ UNRWA also satisfies that requirement.” She quoted the Colonna report, which states that “since 2017 UNRWA has established and updated a significant number of policies, mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the obligation to uphold the principle of neutrality.”

Since Israel occupies Palestinian territory, it cannot exercise sovereignty or sovereign powers over it, Elinor Hammarskjöld, legal counsel of the United Nations, told the ICJ, quoting a prior ruling of the court. “The enactment of the ‘Law to Cease UNRWA Operations’ and of the ‘Law to Cease UNRWA Operations in the Territory of the State of Israel’ by the Knesset of Israel on 28 October 2024 appears to constitute an extension of sovereignty over — or exercise sovereign powers in — the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” she added.

In the past 19 months, Israeli forces have killed nearly 300 UNRWA workers, and detained and abused more than 50 UNRWA staff, including teachers, doctors and social workers.

Nuh Yilmaz, arguing on behalf of Turkey, called Israel’s unilateral decision to stop the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza “a form of collective punishment against all civilians in Gaza.” Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party, specifically forbids collective punishment. It says, “No protected person [civilian] may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. … Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.” Collective punishment is considered a war crime.

Israel has long had UNRWA in its sights. In 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “UNRWA is an organisation that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem and the narrative of the right-of-return, as it were, in order to eliminate the State of Israel” and it needed “to pass from the world.”

“UNRWA is much more than a relief agency,” Mohamed Helal argued on behalf of the League of Arab States. “UNRWA is the principal instrument by which the United Nations protects the right of return of Palestine refugees. It is not an exaggeration to argue that preserving the right of return is the agency’s raison d’être.” And, he added, “In addition to being a fundamental right of Palestine refugees, preserving the right of return is essential to protecting the right of self-determination.”

In an apparent attempt to circumvent UNRWA’s delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza and neutralize criticism, the U.S. and Israel are planning to establish an alternative delivery scheme. But the UN and all aid organizations operating in Gaza reject the U.S.-Israeli plan. It is thus unlikely that funders will finance it.

Only the U.S. and Hungary Support Israel’s Claims


In their testimonies at the ICJ hearing, both the U.S. and Hungary parroted Israel’s specious claims. Josh Simmons, a legal adviser at the U.S. State Department, admitted that Israel must provide aid to Gaza but said it does not have to work with UNRWA. Hungary argued that the ICJ should not render an advisory opinion as it “may directly contribute to the escalation of the conflict.”

It is no coincidence that it is the U.S. and Hungary that are attempting to shield Israel and its leaders from international accountability. In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They are charged with the war crimes of starvation as a form of warfare and intentional attacks on civilians. The warrants also charge them with the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. The charges stem from Israel’s denial of food, water, electricity and fuel, and specific medical supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza.

States parties to the Rome Statute, including Hungary, have a duty to cooperate with the court and facilitate the arrest of any ICC suspect who enters their territory. On April 3, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán hosted Netanyahu, blatantly refusing to fulfill Hungary’s legal obligation to arrest the Israeli prime minister and send him to The Hague. Although Orbán announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the statute on April 3, it does not take effect for one year.

The U.S. government has long enabled Israel in its commission of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has furnished Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance and provided it with diplomatic and political cover in the UN Security Council.

It is likely that the ICJ will issue its advisory opinion in a matter of months. Although its decision will not be legally binding, it will probably have a profound impact on international law, international assistance to Israel and global public opinion.

Meanwhile, the people of Gaza continue to endure unimaginable suffering. Maher Ghanem, who lives in the Gaza city of Deir al-Balah, told The New York Times, “What we’re going through in Gaza can’t be called life.”


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Marjorie Cohn
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense and she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

Palestine Beyond The Colonial Logic Of International Law

The colonization of Palestine is not an anomaly in the liberal global order but its most glaring indictment. It exposes the hypocrisy of an international system that decries colonialism while institutionalizing and legitimizing it.

By Mjriam Abu Samra, Sara Troian 

May 4, 2025

Source: Mondoweiss


Palestinians try to go about their daily lives amid the rubble of buildings or their makeshift tents during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on March 31, 2025. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)



The concept of exceptionalism is often invoked to explain “the Palestinian question” within the international system. Palestine is framed as an anomaly: an anachronistic settler-colonial project, enduring apartheid, occupation, and genocidal practices in a post-colonial world. Consequently, Israel’s violence, unlawful practices, and impunity are considered deviations within an international system otherwise grounded in shared values, impartial institutions, and a universal normative framework.

This narrative is dangerously misleading. It obscures the entrenchment of colonialism within the modern world order. Far from being an outlier, Palestine exposes the colonial foundations of international relations. Israel’s perpetration of colonialism is not an aberration in a fair and just world; it is instead the starkest manifestation of a global order designed and structured to uphold, protect, and legitimize (neo)colonial power dynamics.
The colonial architecture of international law

International law emerged to sanction the enslavement of millions of Africans, the colonial conquest of the so-called “New World,” and the subjugation of its Indigenous peoples economically, culturally, and politically. For over 500 years, it has orchestrated Europe’s history of exploitation and dispossession, serving to mediate competing imperial ambitions and legitimize territorial expansion. The works of Francisco De Vitoria and Hugo Grotius, considered the fathers of international law, exemplify this. Their conceptualization of “natural law” established a standard of civilization based on European lifestyles as the benchmark to advance territorial conquest and the oppression of non-Europeans. According to this standard, the so-called “civilized” had the right to conquer, while the “uncivilized” were to be enslaved, exploited, subjugated, and genocided. Any means of resistance of the “uncivilised” became synonymous with savagery and terrorism. The standard of civilization essentially consisted in the institutionalized power to colonize.

As international law evolved, it adapted to the features of new forms of colonialism. The global order that emerged from the ashes of World War II was still ruled by superpowers and their interests. However, it was presented as a fair and equal system under the facade of a universal legality guaranteed by super-partes institutions, steered by the United Nations.

The enshrinement of the Trust Territories system in the UN Charter and the Eurocentric epistemologies informing the codification of international treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Genocide Convention among others reveal this continuity. The old standard of civilization was “repackaged” and translated into new and more acceptable dichotomies such as democratic vs. undemocratic, developed vs. underdeveloped, and liberal vs. non-liberal. European ideals of democracy, development, and economic liberalism became the new justification for the control and exploitation of other regions and peoples. The UN Security Council’s veto system is the most ostentatious admission of the post-WWII system’s renewed commitment to the hegemony of superpowers.

The decolonization wave of the 1950s to the 1970s brought only nominal independence, as former colonies remained ensnared in new forms of domination. Political independence obfuscated the enduring economic subjugation exercised through financial institutions, unfair trade agreements, and multinational corporations extracting wealth, reinforced by IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs. Former President of Ghana and political theorist Kwame Nkrumah denounced this period as the transition from classical colonialism to neo-colonialism. This economic subordination has been legitimized by ideological narratives that have presented capitalist development as equating to universal human rights standards, concealing its exploitative agenda.

International law and institutions, in essence, heralded a symbolic emancipation, short of material liberation from colonialism.
The ‘right to armed struggle’: friend or foe?

The laws of war, particularly the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977, reflect this contradiction. The pretense of regulating anticolonial struggle under the same legal frameworks that govern conflicts between states reproduces and further entrenches an inherent power imbalance rather than mitigating it.

This approach, while ostensibly universal in its application, imposes a formal legal symmetry between colonizers and the colonized—between an occupying power and those resisting domination. These norms fail to account for the structural inequalities and power dynamics that define colonial relationships. By treating the resistance of the colonized as subject to the same legal constraints as state militaries, these legal frameworks obscure the material and historical conditions of oppression.

Furthermore, these legal norms often function to delegitimize and criminalize resistance while preserving the structural dominance of the colonizer. The principle of distinction, for example—intended to protect civilians—does not adequately consider how colonial regimes blur the lines between military and civilian targets, nor does it address the inherent violence of occupation itself. Similarly, the prohibition of certain methods of warfare disproportionately restricts those resisting colonial rule, limiting their means of self-defense while leaving intact the superior military capabilities of the colonizer.

This legal framework thus serves not as a neutral arbiter of justice, but as a mechanism that entrenches the very power dynamics it claims to regulate. By regulating the scope and actors of violence through a framework of false equivalence, these norms enable colonial powers to depict colonized peoples as incapable of adhering to key legal principles. In doing so, they render anti-colonial wars of liberation impossible within the parameters of international law.
International law’s war on Palestine

The question of Palestine epitomizes this hegemonic essence of international law. Zionist settler-colonial ideology emerged and continues to operate within the political and economic framework of Europe’s imperial history, embedded in the international order as such.

UN General Assembly Resolution 181 partitioned Palestine, legitimized land dispossession, and embedded settler colonialism within international law. Despite being legally flawed, as it exceeded the UN General Assembly’s authority and was non-binding, the resolution became the basis for the unquestionable legitimation of Israel and the colonial legacy of the international system. The modern history of Palestine thus reflects this dialectic between internationally legalized systems of domination and resistance to the colonial framework underpinning them.

The Oslo framework sustained this dichotomy, further entrenching Zionist settler-colonialism under the guise of “peace negotiations. It is a political move to crystallize settler-colonialism and pacify the Palestinian resistance, promoting the paradoxical ambition to achieve the legitimization of Zionism by acceptance of the colonized/Palestinians themselves. Through this strategy and the narrative of “pragmatic approach,” the international community presents settler-colonialism as a “just and fair solution” eradicating the rights and aspirations to liberation, justice, and return of the indigenous population. In this framework, colonial control and oppression are further entrenched through neoliberal economic and political dependence that normalizes violence and domination under the guise of state-building. It formalizes the colonial relationship creating a colluded class of colonized – the Palestinian Authority (PA )- and empowering it as an intermediary gatekeeper of colonial power. This ultimately reinforces Israel’s architecture of settler-colonial violence. Israel’s ongoing mass expulsion and destruction campaign in the northern West Bank–the largest since 1967– conducted jointly with the PA stands as a stark testament to this ongoing reality.

It is not by chance that Palestine’s statehood project is revived every time that the colonial power is challenged in its essence and the decolonial mobilization resurges highlighting the long-term limits and inconsistencies of the international system. The campaign for the recognition of the state of Palestine is the genealogical continuation of the partition of Palestine. The current moment attests to it: with a live-streamed genocide, the only strategy that is re-proposed at the international level is, paradoxically, the reference to “legitimate solutions” and “legal frameworks” that do not question the settler-colonial foundations of Palestinian dispossession, but take it as a fait accompli. This is a strategic trajectory masked as an effort to implement mechanisms of accountability and justice through the intervention of international institutions, which rather than being “super parties” are vectors of colonial hegemony.

Emblematic in this sense are the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant –which were initially requested also for Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, Mohammad Deif if they were not killed by the same colonial authority against which they were fighting before the warrants were ratified. While the world acclaimed this decision (that lacks enforcement) as historical, it was instrumental to flatten and normalize the asymmetric power relations between colonized and colonizer, putting anticolonial resistance leaders on the same dock as the state authorities ordering and implementing colonial massacres to eradicate and eliminate an entire people. This “bi-partisan” approach, and insistence on “objectivity” becomes the rule that subdues any attempt to denounce and revert unbalanced power relations.

The colonial foundations of international law have neutralised the colonised-coloniser relation and drowned it into a cycle of bothsidesism that always favors the more powerful colonizer, who not only holds the sword against the neck but also owns the power over the narrative.
Dismantling the master’s house

The colonization of Palestine is not an anomaly in this global order but its most glaring indictment. It exposes the hypocrisy of an international system that decries colonialism rhetorically while institutionalizing and legitimizing it practically. The frameworks of international law and governance, designed by and for the colonial powers, have always prioritized the preservation of power hierarchies under the guise of legality and justice. They reframe settler-colonialism as a legitimate underpinning of international relations.

Since October 7, 2023, the perceived universality of the international system has been fundamentally questioned, exposing its inherent contradictions. The evolving discourse and mechanisms of international law have revealed their limitations and the persistent alignment with colonial domination and its corollaries: racial privilege, systemic inequality, and capital accumulation. This moment calls for a critical reassessment of the conceptual and practical frameworks that underpin justice and liberation. Audre Lorde’s assertion that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change” underscores the necessity of reimagining these paradigms. The way forward requires a profound structural transformation, one that addresses and dismantles the entrenched systems of international law and governance that sustain oppression. In their place, alternative paradigms rooted in authentic equality, joint struggle, and decolonial justice must be cultivated. The Palestinian struggle for liberation exemplifies this broader challenge, compelling a confrontation with the colonial underpinnings of the global order and envisioning a world where justice transcends rhetoric to become an equitable and lived reality for all.

Mjriam Abu Samra
Mjriam Abu Samra is a Marie Curie Post-Doc Fellow at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Italy, and at the Department of Anthropology at UC Davis, USA. She has been the Coordinator and Senior Researcher at the Renaissance Strategic Center—ARDD in Amman, Jordan.