There are moments in history when words lose their meaning. Not because dictionaries are rewritten, nor because language itself changes, but because political power empties words of the realities they once described. The word ceasefire has increasingly acquired this desolate quality when used by Israeli...

The Theatre of Punishment The treatment of the flotilla activists by Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was shocking only to those who continue to clothe colonial violence in the soft language of security. There is now a mountain of evidence before humanity: Gaza...

A few days ago, I had the honor of participating in an international webinar organized by SHAPE—Serving Humanity and Planet Earth. As its name suggests, this project is focused on safeguarding humanity and the planet, and its acronym carries a meaningful symbolism: shaping. The...

In January 2026, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published a grim update to its earlier work, titled Living Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps. This report documents the horrific conditions faced by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and...

These days, I find myself thinking of a character from the old Yugoslav partisan film Battle of Sutjeska. The film is dedicated to the heroic battle and Tito’s brilliant tactical maneuver to extricate the surrounded partisan units. However, that is not my subject here,...

On 19 January 2025, a ceasefire took effect to halt the Israeli bombing of Palestinians in Gaza. This ceasefire emerged from a mediation process by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States, which had been sealed in June 2024 with United Nations Security Council Resolution...

As a professor who has spent more than forty years studying questions of war and peace, international law and relations  —and above all, the human consequences of armed conflict— I once believed I knew what genocide was. ...

On 26 October, Caroline Willemen of Médecins Sans Frontières stated that Israel continues to use the need for humanitarian aid in Gaza as “means of pressure”. “The humanitarian situation in Gaza has not improved significantly”, she told the press, “as water and shelter shortages...

Slowly, a full picture of the devastation of Gaza by Israel is becoming clear. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) released a report around the time of the ceasefire that began to lay out the numbers: Israel’s bombardment of Gaza resulted in the...

The Israeli genocide of the Palestinians has persisted for two years —a “live-streamed genocide”, as Amnesty International called it in its April 2025 annual report. Thus far, Israel has murdered over 66,000 Palestinians —the overwhelming majority of whom are civilians; 20,000 of the dead are...