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palestinian rights
Occupation and Genocide Anywhere Are a Threat to Democracy and Freedom Everywhere
Not only is taking a stand against the overwhelming devastation that has been unleashed on Palestinians a duty, but also an obligation for people desiring peace and liberation for all.
May 20, 2026
Earlier this year a number of participants announced their withdrawal from Australia’s Adelaide Festival’s "Writer’s Week" following the disinviting of Australian-Palestinian author, Randa Abdel-Fattah. The event was subsequently cancelled.
This made me think of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese’s words—“The occupation of Palestine must be understood as part of a broader project of domination. This is not merely about the physical borders of historical Palestine. It is a systematic assertion of permanent supremacy that knows no border…”—delivered in her Nelson Mandela Lecture.
Indeed, the impact of the ongoing genocide and occupation not only echo far beyond Palestine, because of our shared humanity, but also because of the impact it is having on freedoms across the globe. The censorship of Abdel-Fattah is yet another example of this, and it is not only happening in Australia. Even in South Africa, a country that charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), artists are facing attempts to constrain their work.
The global wave of solidarity with Palestine has been used by some governments as a pretext to diminish freedoms by attacking the right to protest and political participation. While some did this by using laws that were already in place, others enacted ambiguous or unduly expansive legislation criminalizing Palestine solidarity and weaponizing the battle against antisemitism.
Protecting the freedom to advocate for Palestine is essential to protecting the right to protest, a fundamental tenet of democracy.
For instance in the US, Project Esther was released by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank also responsible for the odious Project 2025. The strategy’s recommendations have made their way into the policy of the Trump administration. This includes suing, firing, deporting, and defaming activists, organizations, and institutions by effectively claiming that involvement in advocacy for Palestine is material support of "a terrorist support network.” And also clamping down on college and university campuses where “more than 3,100 people have been arrested or detained.”
The United Kingdom, on the other hand, used counterterrorism legislation to ban Palestine Action. This despite an intelligence assessment report undermining the government’s claims by finding that most of the groups’ activities are “not terrorism” and the ban risked wrongfully criminalizing people. While the ban has been found to be unlawful, since put into effect in July 2025 terrorism arrests have increased by 660%, with the majority of these linked to it.
Across Europe Palestine solidarity was particularly targeted, like in Germany where the homes of pro-Palestinian activists have been raided and support for Israel has become a prerequisite for citizenship.
The effects of these actions will not be limited to Palestine advocacy and puts all movements at risk by diminishing freedoms that enable organizing across issues. So protecting the freedom to advocate for Palestine is essential to protecting the right to protest, a fundamental tenet of democracy.
Research by investigative journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory, Andrew Loewenstein, identified over 120 countries that have bought weapons or some form of repressive technology from Israel, all principally tested on Palestinians.
Israel provided military and strategic support to apartheid South Africa’s invasion of Angola, resulting in mass casualties; it is among the countries that armed perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide and Myanmar at a time it was found to be committing a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” against its Rohingya Muslim population.
In modern times Israel’s offerings have included drones, spyware, and surveillance tools. Like the Israeli-made spyware being used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an immigration agency that has been found to not only undertake abusive practices, but also violate its own policies.
For us in South Africa though, this is no surprise. The "homeland" of Bophuthatswana, where I was born and raised, was a product of the South African apartheid regime’s segregationist policies—which Israel took interest in—and stripped Black people of South African citizenship.
Like other homelands when it declared "independence" in 1977, it was shunned by the world. Despite its official stance, Israel was the only country to quietly recognize Bophuthatswana through informal connections and a quasi-diplomatic mission. A Jerusalem Post editorial in 1992 even referred to Bophuthatswana as "Africa’s Little Israel."
The backdrop of this relationship was the “clandestine alliance” between Israel and South Africa’s apartheid regime. Not only did the two countries collaborate on nuclear, but Israel would also become South Africa's largest weapons importer after the 1977 UN arms embargo and support the regime’s attempt to undermine sanctions.
It was a relationship of mutual admiration, an ideological alignment that in recent times is only matched by India’s admiration of Israel.
Apartheid had far-reaching consequences that extended beyond South Africa's borders. Along with unlawfully occupying Namibia, a colonial legacy embraced by the regime, it also launched hostilities in countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe. Similarly, Israel continues to conduct atrocities and aggression not only against the Palestinian people, but also in places like Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria. More recently, more than 300 people have been killed and scores injured following Israel's 10 minute assault in Lebanon—despite a two-week Middle East ceasefire, which Israel would afterwards claim did not include Lebanon. In the same way apartheid was deemed a threat to international peace and security, so too is the occupation and genocide in Palestine.
Not only is taking a stand against the overwhelming devastation that has been unleashed on Palestinians a duty, but also an obligation for people desiring peace and liberation for all. Because beyond the bombs, Israel has used international humanitarian law to try to justify the murder of civilians—a template being adopted by others like the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
Like the people of South Africa and oppressed people everywhere, the people of Palestine too will continue to make their rightful claim to freedom. And for the sake of humanity everywhere, people of conscience must continue to stand with them and keep the fire of freedom within reach.
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To Stop Failing in the Middle East, the US Must Consider the Needs of Arab People
US policies in the region are headed toward disaster—not only for the US and its stated goals, but also, and more importantly, for the people who live there.
May 18, 2026
One reason why US policy in the Middle East has been so problematic is because policymakers refuse to consider its impact on the needs of Arab people. With Israel, it’s a different story. Overattentiveness to Israeli concerns coupled with the lack of sensitivity to what Arabs think about our actions has led to deep fractures between Arabs and the US and within the Arab World.
Since 2000, we’ve conducted over 50 multination opinion polls on a variety of topics. We explored Arab attitudes toward other Arabs, the US, China, Russia, Iran, and Israel. We also examined attitudes toward conflicts in the region.
It’s been over two years since we’ve polled across the Arab World, but based on what we saw developing during our two and a half decades of work, it’s clear that US policies are headed toward disaster—not only for the US and its stated goals, but also, and more importantly, for the Arab people.
What follows are some observations based on the trend lines we have culled from our surveys:
- After 9/11, President George W. Bush famously claimed, “They hate us because they hate our values.” Our 2002 polling found the opposite: Arabs liked American people, products, education, and values, but strongly disliked US policies toward the Arab world—especially regarding Palestinians. As I said during a congressional hearing on my polling: “Arabs like us and our values—what they resent is that we don’t apply those values to them.”
Bush’s Iraq war and neglect of Palestinians further lowered US ratings. They rose with President Barack Obama’s promise of change but fell when he didn’t deliver on them. Attitudes further plummeted with President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel, anti-Muslim policies.
By late 2023, our last multination poll showed President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza generating even stronger negatives. To make matters worse, the complications created by President Trump’s US-Israel attacks on Iran, coupled with his assault on the very aspects of America that were respected worldwide—our universities, press freedom, and immigration policy—make it likely that Arabs are now finding it difficult to even like American values.
- Over the years, we have often polled on favorable and unfavorable attitudes toward China and the US. During this time, while opinions toward the US ebbed and flowed, attitudes toward China remained steady. By the end of 2023, for the first time, China’s ratings were competitive with those of the US in areas that had previously been the US’s strong suits—education and doing business. And in several Arab countries, China was seen as a more reliable partner than the US.
- Arab attitudes toward Iran have followed a consistent pattern. When Iran was perceived to be under attack for resisting the US and the West, it found a strong base of support among many Arabs. But when Iran directly meddled in Arab countries, opinion turned against it. And when its ally Hezbollah turned its weapons against its domestic Lebanese opponents and joined Iran in direct involvement in Syria’s civil war, majorities in most Arab countries turned against Iran.
Following this trajectory, one can reasonably assume that the US-Israel attacks on Iran coupled with Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Syria, and Israel’s boasts of becoming the regional power that was “defending Western civilization against barbarism,” won Iran some sympathy in Arab public opinion. The same might be true for the recent US-Israel attacks on Iran, except that instead of seeking Arab support, Iran deliberately attacked its Arab Gulf neighbors—the very countries that had been trying to restore relationships with the meddlesome Islamic Republic. This, no doubt, turned opinion among many in the Gulf against Iran. It is uncertain, however, how much intra-Arab friction this is causing in the rest of Arab world.
- Support for Palestinians has long been a central Arab concern. They showed little interest in making peace with Israel—even in those countries that had signed peace agreements with Israel. As Israeli repression of Palestinians intensified and the fractured and visionless Palestinian leadership failed to inspire, Arab opinion began to change. In late 2019, we asked Arabs if they felt it would be desirable to make peace with Israel, even if Israel didn’t accept the terms of the Arab Peace Initiative. When significant numbers said that it might be desirable, we asked why. The responses varied but many told us that it might help end the violence and give Arabs more leverage to convince Israel to grant Palestinian rights.
We repeated this question at the end of September 2023 and had completed about half of the questionnaires by October 7, the date of the Hamas attack. We interrupted the survey and only went back a few weeks later to complete it. The changes in the results were significant. Before October 7, responses were similar to the 2019 poll, but by the end of October, in reaction to the intensity of Israel’s assault on Gaza, attitudes shifted dramatically against any attempt to deal with Israel. Three years later, one can reasonably assume this hasn’t changed.
In 2024 and 2025, on three occasions, we polled in the Occupied Lands. Results were disturbing. Israeli policy had worked to discredit the Palestinian Authority, weakening its ability to govern. Opinion in the West Bank had turned against the PA, with respondents saying they preferred Hamas. In Gaza, we found that Hamas had fallen into deep disfavor, with a strong plurality of Gazans preferring the PA. In both the West Bank and Gaza there was little support for US, Israeli, or international governance. They preferred Palestinian unity.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to lay waste to Gaza and is running roughshod over the West Bank and East Jerusalem, further angering Palestinians and discrediting the PA. All the while Israel rejects any role for the PA in Gaza. As the situation further unravels, the US ignores Palestinians’ wishes and turns a blind eye to Israeli misdeeds.
- In Lebanon, when Hezbollah was seen as resisting Israel, it found favor among many Lebanese, especially since Israel frequently bombed Lebanon and occupied a swatch of its land from the late 1970s to 2000. However, when in 2008, Hezbollah turned its weapons against the state and in 2019 against the popular revolt, Lebanese opinion divided along sectarian lines. Our polling before 2023 showed that most Lebanese wanted Hezbollah disarmed or under the control of the Lebanese army. But Israel’s recent devastating assault on Lebanon; its bombing throughout the country; its forced expulsion of 1 million Lebanese from the south; its destruction of homes, farmlands, and entire villages; and explicit intention to annex a large portion of the country has no doubt restored some support for Hezbollah and exacerbated internal sectarian tensions, while turning more Lebanese against Israel and the US.
Seen in this light, US efforts to pressure the Lebanese government to forcibly disarm Hezbollah and make a peace agreement with Israel is dangerous for Lebanon’s stability.
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In each instance, it is America’s lack of attentiveness to Arab sensitivities and needs that contributes to making a bad situation even worse—further embittering Arabs toward the US, deepening fissures within the Arab World, while fostering every-expanding Israeli impunity.
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What Fuels My Revolutionary Optimism This Nakba Day
It's hard to think liberation is near when faced with so much death and destruction. But it's even harder to ignore the cracks in the facade of the US and Israeli machine.
May 15, 2026
As a Palestinian born in the 21st century, I am the generational product of Nakba survivors and the trauma that came with it. As distant as it may seem, I am only two generations removed from the 1948 Catastrophe of Palestine, where over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their land, and thousands were massacred. Zionist militias backed by the British Empire razed Palestinian villages, killing, raping, displacing, and imprisoning anyone they could find, all to establish the brand new settler colonial project of Israel. This single day in Palestinian history would stain the soil with blood spilled and trauma gained for decades to come.
Both sets of my grandparents are older than the state of Israel, each born a few years before the Nakba. May 14, 1948, was probably a rather normal day in my grandparents' childhood. They would have been inside their homes with their families, or playing outside like any other day. The next day, everything changed. On May 15, Zionist militias stormed their hometowns, slaughtered their neighbors, and destroyed entire villages. My grandparents' childhoods were stripped away, and their entire lives uprooted.
After the Nakba, everything changed. The people of Palestine now live under the occupation of racists who despise and dehumanize them. These foreigners decided what rights they could and couldn't have in their own homelands, and the threat of violence was always present. My great-grandfather was shot in the head by a settler. The Palestinian education system was dramatically defunded, leading my mother's parents to leave for Europe for university. When they tried to come back home after the 1967 Naksa, foreign soldiers somehow had the authority to bar them from ever entering again. They had to move to Jordan and start a new life. They were only two hours away from their families, but they didn't know if they'd ever be allowed to make the short trip back. My grandmother has only been to Palestine once since then, and my grandfather twice.
My other set of grandparents remained on the land, but now had to live a life of heavy restriction and limited movement. It's hard for me to imagine what it was like to witness the plundering of our homeland by foreign invaders, but I can never truly understand the magnitude of seeing the gradual colonization that seemed to only get worse throughout the decades. I will never forget when my grandfather, who was a bus driver back in the day, told me that he was once able to drive to Beirut or Baghdad, and then return home on the same day. Now, such an idea is unfathomable.
In 1948, a time when news traveled slowly, Israel and the West believed they had conquered a territory forever. In 2026, that "forever" territory is still fighting back against years of occupation and genocide.
Ever since I was old enough to comprehend things, I knew Palestine was my homeland and that it was being hurt by something called Israel. Israel was the reason my mom was born in Jordan instead of Palestine, the driving force that led my parents to move to the US for better education and work. It is the thing that separates me from the rest of my extended family, preventing me from knowing them wholly and truly. Israel is why I only see my grandparents every few years, why I have to watch my younger cousins grow up through a phone screen. As a Palestinian who grew up in the States, I was immersed in Western culture and disconnected from my own, and Israel is the reason.
This was my norm, the reality I was born into. After a while, the daily reminders of being disenfranchised, the cruelty of it all, become something you just get used to. You begin to get settled with the unsettling feeling that this may be the fortune of a Palestinian in this world: a life of displacement and diaspora, with the occasional travesty, like the previous bombing campaigns of Gaza in 2008, 2012, and 2014. This process of desensitization is imprinted in my generational DNA; I was practically born already accustomed to the injustice of being Palestinian.
The brutal truth was that the Nakba never ended. We all instinctively knew this, but especially after the Oslo Accords' normalization efforts, a sense of false comfort plagued the Palestinian community for the two decades following its signing. The reality before October 2023 was the occasional protest and the occasional outrage, only to be quelled by half-hearted statements of sympathetic apathy by politicians. I became involved in student organizing for Palestine in 2021, and although we were constantly working, the landscape back then was much quieter and smaller.
Then, two and a half years ago, the current stage of genocide in Gaza began. I don't think I will ever experience life the way it happened that fall. I had gone to sleep on October 6, when everything was relatively "normal," then I woke up for my morning shift at 4:30 am to my phone practically blowing up with notifications. I remember going to my barista job with headphones in the whole time, watching Al Jazeera while I made coffee for people who had no idea what had just shifted in the world.
In the wake of October 7, the protests became consistent, the outrage became something so eternal that you felt like it could consume you and burn you to ash. What was once a few hundred people in the streets became thousands, and in some places, millions would turn out.
It was the beginning of a period of exhaustion, having something so important to organize for every single day, to the point that my studies didn't even matter anymore. It was tough, but what was happening to those in Gaza was far worse, and it became a matter of expending everything you have for those who have nothing. Millions felt the same all over the world, and this sparked the mass-education and mobilization of the Palestine solidarity movement we see today.
Since October 2023, the images out of Gaza resembling the Nakba have flooded our timelines. After nearly three years of the most inhumane, dehumanizing, genocidal campaign by the US and Israel, one might assume that a sense of hopelessness would take hold, as it did after the 1948 Nakba. But I see this moment as the catalyst for the exact opposite to happen.
Israel believes it can continue what it has always done. It can embark on an outright genocide with the intent of wiping Palestinians off the map, then agree to multiple ceasefires only to break every single one of them. After all, you cannot cease a genocide while the genocidal entity still operates with impunity. The difference this time around is that people around the world actually know what's going on. Israel, along with its benefactor, the US, has backed itself into a corner I doubt it will ever escape from.
And that's the fuel to my revolutionary optimism. Sometimes, it's hard to think liberation is near when faced with so much death and destruction. But it's even harder to ignore the cracks in the facade of the US and Israeli machine. They were both built on false foundations that were already rotten and cracked, and nothing built on the crushed livelihoods of millions will ever persevere. People are seeing the rot come up to the surface, and they are utterly disgusted with the state of our world that has perpetuated genocide, all held together by an ultra-wealthy ruling class, agonizing capitalism, and white supremacy.
When Israel was once known as the democracy of the Middle East, it's now the stain, the villain that has rained chaos, death, and destruction all over the region. When getting American Israel Pubic Affairs Committee money once meant you were a strong candidate, now it's a sure death sentence in local American elections. When American institutions like the American Medical Association once deemed it acceptable to stay silent on Palestine, they are now condemned for it. When our media and news outlets operated as tools of Israeli propaganda, they are now seen as tools of war and oppression. It is our work and dedication as activists that have changed the perception of all these things that were once deemed normal.
In 1948, a time when news traveled slowly, Israel and the West believed they had conquered a territory forever. In 2026, that "forever" territory is still fighting back against years of occupation and genocide. That's the difference: The struggle for Palestine was built on the sacrifice of our martyrs and revolutionaries, on principle, and on love for our land and people. It is a beautiful, rich foundation that can withstand whatever force attempts to tear it down.
Most of my family remains on the land, or near it in Jordan. I see this as a consistent win against the oppressor every day. As long as we keep our homes, livelihoods, and stories, the Palestinian identity will never die, and my family is fighting that battle every day. If desensitization has an imprint on my DNA, so does resilience and the steadfast faith that Palestine will be liberated soon.
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