Sometimes you feel out of place, but being in the middle is not a loss. It’s the point from where you can see two worlds, while others see only one. I feel I’m a crescent that doesn’t need to become sun to shine. 

These were the words of Tamara Al Zool, the 23 years old who goes by her art name TÄRA. She has reached millions of Italians through the mainstream TV-program Le Iene in May with a monologue on identity that soon became viral on social media. 

A week later, her debut EP “Zefiro” went out on a date that could not be more important for her: May 15, the day of the Nakba, a day and a history she has always known from her parents and grandparents who lived it. Today, touring Italy and Europe with concerts and events, she is taking on the Italian music scene with a style that, according to Rolling Stone MENA, “Italy has no category for”. 

To learn more about her artistic journey, UntoldMag sat with TÄRA for an exclusive interview. 

 

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Born in Italy to Palestinian parents, TÄRA is making waves with her own genre. She calls it Arab&B, a new type of R&B where she mixes Arabic, English, Italian (and at times also French) in such a natural way that one would not imagine that at one point in her life, she had challenges in feeling her identity.  It would not seem so either when, two years ago, at her very first appearance on TV for the music program X Factor Italia, she made it very clear why she was there: “I came to X-factor to represent, to be a voice”, she said, wearing a keffiyeh as she performed Ariana Grande’s song 7 Rings with some parts reinterpreted in Arabic. 

Palestine – and all that comes with it, from the ongoing genocide to resistance and memory –, the Arabic speaking world, and the Mediterranean as a whole are constant themes in her songs, through which the listener can soon appreciate that TÄRA makes music with universal messages. Like in “Diaspora”, which draws a line between the Palestinians expelled from their land and the Southern Italians who leave their homes behind out of necessity. 

In the “Petra” music video, shot in Tunis, within 3 minutes the music takes the listener through a romantic journey from Maghreb to Mashreq. Not to mention her rendition of Ya Helwa Ciao, her Arabic rendition of Bella Ciao, the song adopted by the Italian Resistance calling for freedom and an end to fascism, so popular among Palestinians (and generally among minorities fighting for their rights). 

Stefano Nanni: Identity is a recurrent topic in your songs. But who is TÄRA before and after becoming the artist, and has that helped in affirming your own identity?

TÄRA: The beauty of all that I’m living is that before, during and after, it’s always me. I can definitely say that my public persona is not a ‘character’ but genuinely who I am, expressing my values without fear. 

It has not always been easy to belong to different worlds at the same time, but I learned with time that being in the middle is an additional perspective rather than a deficiency. And I think I grew in awareness and courage to translate my innate self into art. Being able to represent all these middle lands is certainly not an easy task, but it’s like my whole world is made of many different points of view. 

For example, in the song “Petra” we chose Tunisia as a destination because it perfectly encompasses my multifaceted world, highlighting the beautiful similarities among seemingly different cultures and transcending societal divisions.

SN: Still on identity, in the very powerful music video “Beauty standards”, you seem to affirm something also about the type of aesthetic you want to embrace. 

T: With this EP I am going through a whole journey, including certain beauty standards because it is a theme that I have personally experienced, having felt ‘not beautiful enough’ according to certain norms imposed by society. 

I am sure many other girls have experienced and continue to experience this type of ‘discomfort’ – that’s what I call it. With that video I wanted to represent, through a short monologue, how the beauty you have today, even if it may not conform to mainstream models represented by the media, actually carries history and tradition. 

It is important to acknowledge and remember that the people before you have fought to make you be here, so you have to bring these unique features, with pride, not shame.

SN: Do you feel somehow that your music is able to represent people who often had no one to identify with? And can it contribute to more unity?

T: Let’s say that my goal is precisely to represent those often unrepresented: The too many Italians with foreign roots caught in the middle like me. If in my own small way, my music succeeded in attracting even two or three persons who feel I am doing something positive for them, then I am very happy and I hope it will go even better. 

I don’t want to sound too utopian, but it would be nice to get to a point where we don’t even have to make all these divisions among all of us anymore, and then be able to live in unity simply as human beings. I have a strong desire for my music to foster unity among all people, dreaming a world without such divisions, where cultural beauty is celebrated by all humans. I hope that my art will play a role in all this.

SN: How are you handling success? Did your direct relations with fans change by becoming so popular? 

T: When it comes to my relationship with fans I think it is even improving, as I continue to live the direct connection with them through social media, receiving immense support and love. I think it is a very beautiful way of living this experience. 

At the same time, it is obvious that social media can be a double-edged sword, as the toxicity of certain users brings also a lot of negativity. Sometimes it’s hard to confront that, especially hate speech and comments about Palestine, but I am learning to use indifference as a more effective strategy, because in the end, those who want to hate stick to anything in front of them.

Generally, about success, I think I’m living a fairly quiet relationship with it, actually. I see it as a means, I have the privilege to access a wide audience, to share the messages I want to transmit, especially about Palestine and the genocide we’re still suffering. So why not do it? Indeed, in certain places like on mainstream TV there seem to be certain rules about not talking about certain topics, but I am approaching them, as much as possible, with my naturalness and my identity, without hiding anything. 

SN: On the power to use popularity to take a stance, recently in Italy there were some controversies about the words of Francesco De Gregori, a very popular singer, who said that he “feels embarrassed when an artist takes a political position”. What do you think of that?

T: I have honestly not read what he said, and I don’t want to decontextualize his words, but my opinion is a totally different one: I want my art to give a voice to the voiceless and to minorities. 

As an artist, I believe I have the power and responsibility to educate younger generations and empower those who might otherwise feel silenced. I don’t want to live in a world where somebody grows up fearing that exposing themself is something that leads them to something negative. I don’t want that, I want something different.

The post Giving Italy a Sound It Has No Category For: An Interview with Palestinian-Italian Singer TÄRA appeared first on Untold.

Known otherwise as the Flamingo Revolution, the massive civic participation has articulated five non-negotiable demands, starting with the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama together with his entire cabinet. The consistency, the novelty in the forms of political articulation, and the ever-growing scale have drawn worldwide attention and coverage in major international media.

The information that Kushner and Trump are behind the interventions in these protected areas, coupled with the deprivation of the local population’s right to common property, reeks of patterns of settler colonialism fused with venture capitalism: the privatisation of land and resources by outside capital, backed by political power, at the expense of those who have long depended on them. 

Criticism of the Albanian government for subordinating itself to a colonial order in order to gain international legitimacy while intensifying oppressive local practices is mounting steadily and has surfaced repeatedly throughout this protest. The protest has drawn together thousands of citizens, activists and environmental organizations, local communities, activists from human rights groups, as well as pro-Palestinian activists and collectives in Albania. 

“I left the barbed wire in occupied Palestine, and I found it in Zvërnec. A week ago, I left the executioners in occupied Palestine and found them in Zvërnec. Edi Rama is not the Prime Minister of Albania, he is Israel’s governor in Albania… That the fence will be removed, there is no doubt. That the project will be cancelled, there is no doubt. What we demand is resignation!”

These were the words by Baki Goxhaj at the 1st of June protest against the ecocidal project in Pishë Poro-Nartë, delivered no more than two weeks after he returned from the Global Sumud Flotilla mission towards Gaza. 

Baki touched the hearts of Albanian-speaking communities everywhere when he participated in the mission in May this year. Israeli military forces intercepted his vessel and detained him for three and a half days. Shaken by the violence he experienced and witnessed against his companions, he affirmed publicly that they have been subjected to ‘extreme violence’ and ‘torture practices’. 

Baki has followed the Palestinian cause for over 15 years. However, the fact that all of Albania’s political, intellectual and cultural elites, who are tied to Rama’s power, have aligned themselves with Israel and condemned Palestinian resistance following the events of 7 October 2023 marked a turning point in his political engagement in the public sphere. 

As an activist of the Palestina e Lirë (Free Palestine Collective), he has been involved in a number of initiatives since 2023. These include drafting the petition ‘Not in My Name’, which was signed by over 6,500 people in opposition to Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama being awarded the presidential medal of honour by Israeli President Isaac Herzog in 2024. He has also filed a criminal complaint against Chief Rabbi Joel Kaplan for participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity. 

Locally, he has been working alongside his partner Eriselda Balliu in the coastal city of Vlorë. He has also created the ‘themulsimvote‘ platform to help Muslim voters make more informed decisions in primary elections (2025) and vote against parties that support genocide.

Connected Struggles

Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians has mobilized many cities across Europe, including Southeastern Europe. Nevertheless, with the exception of Slovenia, almost no official statements condemning this genocide were made from governments of this region. 

Dissent and solidarity in Albania, Kosovo and Albanian diaspora, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia,  Croatia, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and Bulgaria came from citizen protesters, activists, collectives, and religious communities. Political articulations were expressed through protests, marches, student encampments and actions in support of the BDS movement and the Global Sumud Flotilla. Demands included a ceasefire, an immediate halt to the genocide, accountability for genocidal acts, the arrest of Netanyahu, sanctions, the termination of economic agreements with Israel and boycotts of artistic, cultural and sporting organisations. 

There was also a call for an end to double standards in relation to both Ukraine and Palestine and for respect for international law. In Albania, the government’s strong alignment with Israel, which occurred alongside the ongoing genocide in Gaza, provoked revolt and waves of anger and indignation among Albanian citizens. Despite political challenges, this created fertile ground for the Palestine solidarity movement in Albania. 

The Rama government’s alignment with Israel has prompted many activists to engage in more intense solidarity with Palestine. Dorela Binjaku, a feminist activist and member of the same collective explains, “As long as it is our own government doing this, we cannot remain silent because silence is complicity.” 

Some of the activists we spoke with are also involved in other causes, including anti-colonial movements. The wealthy Western states contribute disproportionately to displacement and migration, that is in turn managed through increasingly exclusionary border regimes, through the exploitation of nature and the global commons as well as military interventions and conflicts. 

Fioralba Duma, co-founder of the Free Palestine Collective, has a long history of working with migrant rights in Italy and Albania, and with marginalized social groups without political rights. It was through her work on the Palestine cause that Fioralba came to understand decolonisation more deeply, and how this critical lens could be applied to the political and social dynamics in Albania. 

This implies an in-depth understanding of history from a Palestinian perspective, and a critical love for one’s country that affirms positions locally and globally which support humanism and international law, while condemning the Albanian government’s complicity in the genocide. As Duma explains, referring to Serbia’s war against Kosovo (1999) and the genocide of muslim Albanians in Çamëria (1944-45): 

“Free Palestine’s approach is this: we are Albanians, we have lived through genocide, and we understand what it means. It’s not a special status that we hold; but we lived it, and that means we understand it and we don’t want anyone else to ever experience it either. Today it’s the Palestinians; tomorrow it could be an entirely different people.”

A Solidarity Ecology

The Palestine solidarity movement that emerged in Albania after 7 October 2023 is notably heterogeneous, comprising individuals and groups with sometimes opposing political stances. The Palestinian cause has focused on articulating an end to the genocide, boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning the Israeli State, holding the Albanian government accountable for its recent collaborative stance, terminating all agreements with Israel, and recognising Palestine’s right to self-determination. 

These demands have created conditions in which diverse groups have been able to overcome deep ideological, political and religious differences, and even direct opposition, to unite in protest against the genocide unfolding in Palestine. As a solidarity ecology, Palestine has brought together queer and LGBT+ activists, feminists, progressive leftists, Muslims, Christians, conservatives, patriots, nationalists and even conspiracy theorists. 

Despite mutual distrust and suspicions about the potential instrumentalisation of the cause, these groups have engaged in lengthy negotiations to unify their voices. In the words of Duma, “Palestine has helped us cross these borders”. As emerges from interviews with other activists, Palestine is the issue that pushes everyone to transcend their own specific, radical positions, which may differ sharply from one another. 

They emphasise that now is the time to focus more than ever on Palestine, on solidarity and on mutual cooperation, and they do not hesitate to affirm that this inclusive process has made them more open and given them a broader sense of solidarity towards those who do not think as they do. “It is Palestine that unites us,” Duma says. 

In a context marked by fragmentation and significant challenges to political organisation, stemming from social, political, historical, economic and international factors, the Palestinian cause has sparked hope that differences can be overcome, both within organisations in the country and across regional Balkan organising. 

Since October 2023, pro-Palestinian protests in Albania have been among the most sustained in terms of duration, mobilisation of resources, and social media attention, even if they have not always been massive in scale. As Duma affirms, engagement with Palestine has democratised activist spaces, with the call for liberation serving as a unifying symbol of solidarity. 

Another activist, part of the group Shalqi për Paqe (Watermelon for Peace), who was initially involved in pro-Palestinian internationalist movements outside Albania, emphasises the importance of building bridges as a metaphor for cooperation between different people, highlighting the need to care for others despite their differences: “If we are going to create a bridge, people have to meet in the middle. If we are going to build a bridge, it has to be a safe one for everyone to be on that bridge.”

From interviews with activists describing the nuances of engagement within their respective groups, the concept of comradeship emerges as a common political horizon. This political bond helps to overcome specificities and political particularities in order to engage in emancipatory, egalitarian political struggle. As one activist explains, “We can be comrades; we don’t need to be friends.” Some activists place a stronger emphasis on intersectionality, while others focus more on local and situated decolonial practices built on the concept of patriotism.

Creative Disruptions

From November 2023 to June 2026, pro-Palestinian organizations in Albania have organised, co-organised and participated in numerous nationwide protests, primarily in the capital city of Tirana. Alongside these mobilisations, activists have established social media platforms aimed at disseminating information, mobilising supporters, networking and circulating announcements related to local and international actions and initiatives. 

Pro-Palestinian activists, including grassroots groups such as Palestina e Lirë, Shalqi për Paqe, Liri Palestinës, the Balkan Solidarity Network and other activist and online groups, have launched national campaigns to boycott socio-cultural activities organised by the Israeli Embassy in Albania and to sustain boycotts of Israeli products. These campaigns are in line with the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Since its inception, the pro-Palestine movement in Albania has involved public demonstrations in streets, buildings, historical monuments and peripheral neighbourhoods. The ‘Palestina e Lirë’ collective operates horizontally in an effort to be as inclusive as possible, maintaining a state of readiness for swift and unexpected actions in physical public spaces and online. 

Fioralba refers to these actions as ‘disruptive actions’. According to her, the difficulty of organising while a genocidal war is unfolding and across social networks lies in the frequent emergence of misunderstandings, and the impossibility of sitting down to talk properly, meeting in assemblies and strengthening relationships around shared values. 

Actions are often organised through social media, with people who don’t know each other personally coming to an agreement. These actions have an impromptu character, which sometimes puts the action at risk until the last moment. However, this mode of organising emerged from urgency, and activists have transformed these precarious conditions into strengths, giving their actions an element of surprise while minimising the risk of sabotage or infiltration by the authorities.

Some of these actions include: unfurling a large Palestinian flag in Tirana in opposition to the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken; protests against the visit of President Isaac Herzog to Tirana; and a banner near the National Museum reading ‘Ukraine 2 years: 30,457; Palestine: 144 days, 30,000″, which highlights perceived double standards in responses to war and Russian aggression. Other actions include graffiti condemning the IDF’s genocidal acts, expressions of support for imprisoned activists in the UK, solidarity with the Freedom Flotillas‘ humanitarian actions, and broader calls for Palestine’s liberation.

The Albanian government’s, and in particular Prime Minister Edi Rama’s support for the Israeli state has been widely exposed, criticised and challenged by writers, scholars and activists. As an alternative to campaigns calling for ‘non-action’, such as the boycott of the International Israeli Cultural Week in Albania, activists from various collectives have developed platforms for collective cultural and artistic creation in response and in opposition to Rama’s ‘cultural diplomacy’. 

In June 2024 and 2025, these grassroots groups established and curated the Month of Palestinian Culture in Albania. Activities included poetry readings, meetings with activists engaged in the Palestinian cause across the Balkan region, marches and protests, film screenings, discussions with Palestinian authors and activists, feminist readings, Palestinian culinary evenings and “Queers for Palestine” cinematic events. 

These activities were hosted across multiple social centres and alternative spaces in Tirana, Vlorë, Elbasan and Kamëz, in collaboration with independent, activist- and community-run venues such as Kur’ajo Press (Bulevard Art Space), Tek Bunkeri, Smart Centre and Drejtësi Sociale. Some of these activities extended beyond Albania through cooperation with activist centres in Kosovo, including the ‘Sekhmet’ Centre and the Feminist Collective, among others.

In addition to these engagements activists consistently sought to raise awareness of the Palestinian cause alongside other issues. For instance, they incorporated calls for Palestine into the ‘Flamingo Revolution’ protests, LGBT+ protests and 8 March feminist protests of the last three years. Activities such as marathons and football tournaments were explicitly organised in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, raising its profile through symbolic gestures, active participation, and coordinated dissemination on social media platforms. 

Furthermore, these collectives issued calls of solidarity with Iran, Lebanon, Sudan and others, such as the Albanian student movement in North Macedonia. Through anarcho-feminist activism, Binjaku emphasises:

“Colonialism is not only territorial, it is patriarchal, it is racial, it is class-based. The freedom of Palestine is freedom against all these forms of violence. You cannot support a liberation that ignores violence against queers, against women, against the poor. There can be no true liberation without the liberation of everyone. It is not only a war for territory; it is a social and bodily war, an assault that affects us all, an assault against existence, against truth, against life.”

A notable innovation in grassroots organising has been the interconnection of the Balkan region around the Palestinian cause. As activists explain, one of the first meetings leading to the creation of Balkan Solidarity Network took place online, through the event “Connecting Struggles: A Palestinian Perspective”, held as part of Palestine Cultural Month, and organised by Palestina e Lirë, Shalqi për Paqe, and Boulevard Art and Media Institute (Kur’ajo Press). After this encounter, a physical meeting was organized in Ljubljana in 2024. The Network was established as a platform that mediates and strengthens connections between anti-colonial, feminist, queer, and anti-imperialist struggles across the Balkans and beyond. 

This period was accompanied by the question of whether groups in the region, historically on opposing sides, would be able to come together. This marks the transition from local organising in individual cities in Albania, to national organising across Albania, to pan-Albanian organising, encompassing all Albanian-speaking spaces beyond official borders, and finally to regional organising, spanning the countries of the Balkans and Southeastern Europe, and extending further internationally.

If It’s Small and Insignificant, Why Police It?

In an interview with Middle East Eye, Yoel Kaplan – the Israeli chief rabbi who has been present in Albania since 2012 – dismissed the Palestine solidarity protests in the country as “tiny and irrelevant”, likening them to “bad publicity is still good publicity”. He added that he has the backing of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and that, consequently, the protests will have no real effect. 

In September 2025, activist Baki Goxhaj submitted a complaint to SPAK (the Special Anti-Corruption and Organised Crime Structure), accusing the aforementioned Chief Rabbi Yoel Kaplan with six offences, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kaplan has publicly and proudly acknowledged that he participated in combat as an IDF soldier alongside his son. 

Three months later, in December 2025, the Anti-Terrorism Directorate of the State Police filed a criminal complaint against Goxhaj for “inciting hatred and discord” – an offence carrying a prison sentence of two to ten years. Listed as ‘evidence’ in the complaint, were Goxhaj’s social media posts criticising the Zionist views of Albanian MPs, journalists and intellectuals. 

All of the posts cited as incriminating acts dated from after September – the same period in which Goxhaj had filed his complaint against the chief rabbi. Ultimately, the case was dismissed due to a lack of evidence. 

In an article titled “Anti-terrorism terrorizes Muslims”, Goxhaj summarised the entire history of his persecution and dismantled every argument put forward in the State Police directorate’s complaint. He concluded that “the violence of Rama’s Zionist system will only deepen against Muslim believers, especially those who speak out”.

The Albanian state’s serious investment in intimidation as evidenced by the level of attention given to it, sits in direct contradiction with the assumption that Palestine solidarity mobilisations are ‘irrelevant’. 

Consider, for example, how the police cordon surrounding every protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people has prevented protesting communities from marching freely through the capital or in front of the prime ministerial building. This alone speaks volumes about the state’s criminalising and surveilling atmosphere. 

Far from the ‘calm’ that Chief Rabbi Kaplan suggests, the state appears deeply unsettled. In January 2026, two protests were held in response to Edi Rama’s official visit to Israel – widely regarded by the Albanian public as the “shameful visit” due to its normalisation of genocide – during which Eriselda Balliu, a protester, educator and activist, had her posters torn by a plainclothes police officer. She was then forcibly removed from the area near the prime ministerial building and detained alongside fellow protester Enes Jashari. After spending several hours at the police station, they were released.

From the very beginning of its organising, the Palestine solidarity movement in Albania has been accompanied by these small acts of repression and policing. In June 2024, a protest organised by the Free Palestine Collective was surrounded by what appeared as an excessive number of police officers alongside two rapid response vans and the anti-explosive unit (Forcat Renea). 

In July 2025, the police cordoned off Skanderbeg Square, preventing hundreds of protesters from marching towards the Prime Minister’s Office. The same thing happened a month later on 16 August 2025, when protesters were again denied the right to march freely. The September 2025 gathering, though notified in accordance with legal requirements, was blocked outright by police forces. 

Activists have noted that, in the overwhelming majority of protests, the police have intervened using subtle tactics aimed at stopping or demotivating protesters, such as changing the time or day of the protest, changing the location, blocking marches, postponing dates, using disproportionate force and making outright arrests. Despite these attempts, the state seems more intimidated than intimidating. 

Against Genocide, Across Borders

Activist groups across Southeastern Europe have articulated what scholar Francesco Trupia has called “spontaneous and transnational postulates of solidarity” in line with global pro-Palestinian anti-colonial movements of the Global South. These groups are motivated by emotional and historical experiences tied to post-colonial, post-socialist, and post-genocidal processes, as well as by different premises and current contexts. 

Historically marginalised, these groups are nevertheless grounded in specific local realities in relation to Palestine. Operating under difficult social and organisational conditions, ranging from state-controlled media censorship to ongoing intimidation and criminalisation attempts, these movements have been careful to avoid any accusation of antisemitism in their anti-Zionist statements about Gaza and Palestine, as seen through the lens of feminist, urban, environmental, intersectional, and anti-colonialist activism.

Pro-Palestinian mobilisation in Albania has not broadly rearticulated any socialist legacy rooted in the history of friendly relations between the Albanian state and Palestine during the socialist regime, but has instead mobilised a new political language which links a systemic critique of the Albanian government’s neoliberal practices with collective traumas of war and genocide in Kosovo and Albania. It also reclaims Holocaust memory and the Albanian protection of Jews, insisting on them as reasons not to tolerate genocide and crimes against humanity. 

At the same time, it appeals to society on moral and legal grounds. Palestine has served as a prism through which the personal traumas of post-genocidal generations in the Balkans have been viewed and rearticulated – collective histories of expulsion, war, segregation and occupation. 

For nearly three years, Palestine has been at the centre of historical analogies used to mobilise against genocide, regardless of ideological differences. After many months, mass protests in Albania have also embraced the Palestinian cause, challenging the colonial practices of Israel and the United States which affect even the most marginalised communities worldwide. 

The post Citizens Against the State: How Albania Answered Its Government’s Embrace of Israel appeared first on Untold.

That silence has enveloped south Lebanon, and it is becoming yet another moral failure of an era defined by live streamed genocides, the death of international law, and pride in war crimes.

What is happening in south Lebanon is not, by any serious measure, a proportionate military campaign. It is the systematic hollowing out of a people from their ancestral land, and an eradication of life from that land itself.

To date, Israeli attacks on Lebanon since October 2023 have killed more than 7,000 people and injured more than 24,000, according to conservative numbers by the Lebanese Health Ministry, with the majority civilians. More than one million people – a fifth of the population – are displaced, while medical workers, journalists, and civilian infrastructure have been systematically targeted.

This mass displacement is not a byproduct of the war. It is its stated objective. Israeli officials explicitly stated in late March 2026 that they were demolishing south Lebanon houses and villages “in accordance with the model as Gaza,” and that 600,000 displaced people would not be allowed to return “until the safety of Israel’s northern residents is guaranteed.”

Despite a ceasefire agreed in November 2024, over 15,000 Israeli violations were recorded by UNIFIL, with Amnesty International documenting near-daily Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon throughout the 15 months period, until March 2, 2026, when Israel formally resumed full-scale war.

A Civilizational Wound

South Lebanon is not simply territory. It is among the most layered, historically dense regions in West Asia. The villages of Jabal Amel carry centuries of Islamic scholarship, poetry, and legal tradition. This is a land that has outlasted empires. Tyre (Sour) is one of the oldest continuously populated cities on earth, an ancient Phoenician port that gave the world its purple dye and the alphabet’s early spread. It has been sacked, rebuilt, and survived Alexander the Great, the Crusaders, and every empire that passed through. On October 23, 2024, Israeli airstrikes destroyed large swathes of the city, with one strike landing 50 metres from the ancient ruins, today the city is under evacuation orders by the Israeli army. 

Then there is Nabatieh,  the beating heart of Jabal Amel, and another city under evacuation orders. Its name is tied to the Nabataean traders who moved between Sidon and Damascus. For centuries it has connected the mountains to the coast, the inland villages to the sea, a crossroads where the whole of the south converged. 

At its centre, the Monday Market stretches back 500 years, a weekly ritual that survived Ottoman rule, civil war, and years of Israeli occupation. By late 2024, roughly 85 percent of the city’s buildings had been damaged or destroyed, along with some 300 businesses. Israel did not stop at the ceasefire, what remained was struck again when fighting resumed. A UNDP assessment found that “58 percent of agricultural assets in the Nabatieh district had been destroyed”, the highest proportion anywhere in the south. 

Nabatieh, like other towns and villages in the South, has been destroyed before, in 1978, in 1982, and in 2006. People rebuilt each time. 

What Israeli airstrikes and ground incursions are doing to this landscape is beyond the mass murder of people. It is destroying a world, systematically flattening architecture that predates the state of Israel itself, obliterating millennial olive groves and family homes, forcing the flight of entire communities whose roots run deeper than most nations. When heritage sites, mosques, and village squares are reduced to powder, something is lost that no reconstruction can return.

This is ethnic cleansing: the forced displacement of a population from its ancestral land through systematic terror.

Killing the Land Itself

But Israel’s war on Lebanon does not stop at human communities. It extends into the soil, the forests, the water, the animals, and the very biological substrate of the south. This is not collateral damage. It is a deliberate strategy, and it is documented.

During the 2024 Israeli war, Lebanon lost around 1,910 hectares of prime farmland, 47,000 olive trees, and roughly 1,200 hectares of oak forests, some of the last remaining native woodland in the region. Among the casualties was Harj al-Raheb, the Monk Forest, on the southern edge of Ayta ash-Shaab, a 16-hectare woodland of ecological and cultural richness that had endured for centuries. Satellite images now show white craters where green canopy once stood, alongside extensive bulldozing that stripped the terrain bare. Fire and phosphorus erased in months what has lived there for millennia.

The weapon of choice for much of this destruction is white phosphorus, a chemical substance that ignites on contact with oxygen, burns at up to 800 degrees Celsius, and releases thick toxic smoke. Human Rights Watch verified its use in at least 17 municipalities across south Lebanon. In at least five of those, the munitions were used in populated areas, landing on the roofs of residential buildings. The stated rationale is to burn down fields for visibility. Trees, in other words, are a threat. Forests must be destroyed. Nature itself is the enemy, just as the US military had done in Vietnam using napalm to burn life during their murderous imperial campaign against the country’s national liberation movement. 

More than 918 hectares were hit in 191 documented white phosphorus attacks from October 2023 until the 2024 ceasefire alone, according to data collected by Lebanese researcher Ahmad Baydoun and the environmental group Green Southerners. The long-term consequences remain unknown, but easy to predict. 

Even though Israel shelled Lebanon with white phosphorus repeatedly between 1982 and 2006 in its various wars of aggression, there have been no local studies on its long-term environmental impact, due to lack of resources, political inaction, or the difficulty in accessing samples. The poison persists in the soil; but the science to measure it has been mostly unused.

Then, as if to ensure that whatever survived the bombs and fire could not sustain life, came the herbicides. In early February 2026, Israeli planes sprayed toxic chemical substances across Lebanon’s southern border, covering approximately 8.5 square kilometres of agricultural land, forests, and livestock grazing areas with glyphosate at concentrations up to 50 times higher than standard agricultural use. Lebanon’s agriculture and environmental ministries found glyphosate levels 20 to 30 times above average in soil samples from the affected area. Glyphosate is banned in Lebanon and classified by the World Health Organization as potentially carcinogenic to humans.

The targeted area contained ancient oak, terebinth, and laurel forests that provide habitat for wildlife, alongside olive groves that produce oil and soap, tobacco plantations, and grazing land. As environmental researcher Hisham Younes, founder and president of Lebanese environmental group Green Southerners, puts it: “This spraying does not take place over an intact ecosystem or healthy soil. It occurs over land already severely stressed and degraded by the intensive use of white phosphorus, incendiary munitions, and the accumulation of heavy-metal residues from sustained bombardment.” 

The glyphosate is not the beginning of the destruction. It is the finishing blow, applied to a landscape already burned, bombed, and poisoned, ensuring that even if people are allowed to return, there is nothing left to return to. That life will no longer be possible, for humans, plants, and animals alike.

Lebanon’s agriculture minister described the spraying as “consistent with known practices along the border, where such substances are used to create vegetation-free zones, effectively resulting in systematic desertification.” Lebanon’s government-backed environmental report has gone further, formally accusing Israel of ecocide and documenting damage to forests, agricultural lands, marine ecosystems, water resources, and atmospheric quality, concluding that the scale and intentionality of the destruction “constitute what must be recognized as an act of ecocide.”

Israel’s war, as is the case with previous colonial wars across the world, is one on the land as a living system, on the biological heritage of a civilization, on the ecosystems that sustain human and non-human life alike, waged with chemical weapons, incendiary munitions, and bulldozers, in full view of the world.

The US War Machine

The south of Lebanon is home to communities that have lived in this region for over a thousand years. Entire villages have been evacuated by force and erased. Families have been killed in their homes, in their cars, on roads marked for civilian evacuation.

This is not incidental. Striking the predominantly Shia population of south Lebanon, and Lebanon in general is the goal. When a religious community becomes a military target in the eyes of the aggressor, and in the narratives of much of the regional and international media, we have crossed into the now too common space of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

None of this happens in a vacuum. The bombs falling on Lebanese villages are, in a direct and documented sense, US bombs. The aircraft delivering them are US aircraft. The intelligence enabling the targeting has, by multiple credible accounts, has US fingerprints.

The United States has not merely failed to restrain Israel, it has actively armed, funded, and provided diplomatic cover for a campaign that has drawn condemnation from human rights organizations, UN officials, and international legal bodies, both in Palestine and in Lebanon. Each time a resolution calling for accountability has come before international bodies, the US position has been to obstruct, or sanction international judges, rapporteurs, and any organization that dares speak the truth.

This makes the United States not a neutral broker or a concerned ally urging restraint, but a co-belligerent (together with various other Western and Arab countries). When cluster munitions, bunker-busting bombs, and incendiary weapons are supplied to a military deploying them in densely populated civilian areas and ecologically sensitive forests, the supplier shares responsibility for what follows, including the genocide, ethnic cleansing, and ecocide.

One Unhinged Logic

It is impossible to understand Lebanon in isolation from Gaza. What we are witnessing is a single operational and ideological logic playing out across two theaters. In Gaza, the world has watched the near-total destruction of a civilian population with hospitals bombed, aid blocked, famine used as a weapon, with mounting horror and mounting futility. The patterns have become undeniable: this is not warfare constrained by the laws of armed conflict. It is warfare that has discarded those laws entirely and proudly.

Lebanon is the expansion of that logic northward. The same targeting of civilian, medical, and vital infrastructure. The same displacement of hundreds of thousands. The same deliberate erasure of agricultural and ecological life. The same impunity. Having encountered no meaningful international consequences in Gaza, the methods were exported. Why wouldn’t they be? The world demonstrated, repeatedly, that there would be no price.

This is what unchecked military power looks like when it is also diplomatically shielded: it grows, and it finds new applications for the same tools, from bombs to bulldozers to crop-killing herbicides.

The Silence of States and People

What is most disorienting and perhaps most dangerous about this moment is not just the actions of Israel and the United States. It is the silence of everyone else.

For Gaza, Arab states have issued statements of concern that function as moral performance without consequence while they maintained trade and security cooperation as the genocide was ongoing. For Lebanon, it was mostly silence. Most Arab governments offered barely even the performance.

European governments, with a handful of exceptions, oscillated between performative concern and active complicity over Gaza, and extended that into near-total silence on Lebanon. 

Solidarity movements outside the region have fractured along political, sectarian, and national lines. The Shia identity of the majority of the victims has meant limited solidarity in the sectarian environment plaguing the Arab world. Hezbollah’s violent role in Syria has complicated it further. But these are not explanations. Across the globe, Palestine solidarity networks have been almost entirely absent in opposing the ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon. Very few, if any, have mobilized.

Apparently this is not an important story, not compared to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. International media has been comfortable looking away while an entire civilian ecosystem is chemically sterilized and an ancient people are expelled from their land.

The principle that civilians deserve protection from collective punishment does not carry an asterisk that reads “unless their politics or sectarian identity are disagreeable.” 

Beyond Lebanon.

We are watching, in real time, the collapse of the international legal order – with all its deficiencies – that was constructed after 1945 precisely to prevent this kind of impunity. The Geneva Conventions, the Responsibility to Protect, the International Criminal Court, these institutions exist because the world looked at the ruins of the Second World War and said: never again, and we will build structures to ensure it. Those structures are not being eroded. They are being actively demolished, with US and Western diplomatic tools serving as the wrecking ball.

If a nuclear-armed, Western-backed state can conduct what legal scholars describe as ethnic cleansing and genocide, with full documentation, in real time, broadcast on every platform, and face no meaningful consequences, then the message is clear: the rules do not apply to the powerful. They never did, perhaps. But the pretense that they did was itself a form of protection, however limited, for the vulnerable. That pretense is gone now.

For Lebanon specifically, the consequences may be generational. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from the south creates demographic and psychological wounds that will shape Lebanese politics for decades. A country already broken by corruption, economic collapse, and sectarian divisions is being further hollowed out. The question is not only whether south Lebanon can be liberated and rebuilt, but whether the Lebanese state, such as it is, can survive another existential blow.

What is being asked of the world is not complicated. It requires the application of consistent principles: that civilians may not be collectively punished, that ancient communities may not be erased from their land, that the laws of war apply to all parties equally, and that silence in the face of documented atrocity is itself a moral choice.

The south of Lebanon is burning. Its people are scattered and left alone to face a ruthless war machine. Its forests are ash. Its soil is poisoned.

The world knows. And the world, for the most part, has decided to look away.

History will not be kind to this moment. The question is whether we wait for history’s verdict, or whether some of us, states, institutions, ordinary people with a voice, choose to act before there is nothing left to save.

The post Bombed, Poisoned, and Ignored: Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of South Lebanon appeared first on Untold.

Since 2013, Albania has been governed by the Socialist Party under Rama, who secured a fourth consecutive term in 2025. His leadership has been marked by strong executive power and centralized decision-making. At the same time, civil society groups and international organizations have raised concerns about democratic standards, including pressure on independent media and political influence over state institutions. According to Transparency International, Albania continues to struggle with corruption, ranking 91st globally in 2025 and relatively low compared to other European countries.

Against the tide

More than two years have passed since the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza began. This first live-streamed genocide has sparked widespread popular support for Gaza, particularly in Western European countries. While academic, cultural, and tourist engagements with Israel are increasingly viewed as ethically and morally corrupt, the Albanian government has pursued the opposite trajectory. Instead of distancing itself from Israel, Albania has deepened its ties. 

Albania is cultivating closer political and economic relations, signing new bilateral agreements, and aligning itself with Israeli interests across a wide spectrum, including defense, cybersecurity, culture, and finance. Under the leadership of Prime Minister Edi Rama, now in his fourth consecutive term, this trajectory appears undeterred and indifferent to both the immense civilian suffering in Gaza and the growing pro-Palestinian sentiment within Albania.

Against the backdrop of the International Court of Justice’s assessment that a plausible case for genocide exists in Gaza, many governments have grown increasingly cautious about the optics and ethics of (openly) deepening ties with Israel. Some have recalled ambassadors, suspended arms exports, or quietly shelved bilateral agreements. Others, such as Ireland, Norway, Spain, Canada, UK, Australia and France issued formal recognitions for the state of Palestine. 

Albania has charted a strikingly different course. Not only has it continued to expand cooperation with Israel across multiple domains, but it has done so openly and without hesitation. Moreover, it has treated these partnerships as achievements to be celebrated rather than associations with a state apparatus suspected on charges of genocide with its most senior leader warranted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. 

To understand Albania’s current relations with Israel and Palestine, it is helpful to consider the long history of Albanian foreign policy. As a small, economically weak country, Albania has often aligned itself with more powerful states to protect its interests.

Making sense of an unusually close relationship 

Albania gained independence in 1912 after five centuries of Ottoman rule. From 1925 to 1939, the country was ruled by President, later King, Zog. During this time, the country became an unexpected refuge for Jews. This period has even been described as “a golden era” for Jews in Albania. Beginning in 1933, Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany and Austria began arriving, many using Albania as a temporary stop on their way to the United States or Latin America. 

The Albanian Embassy in Berlin continued to issue visas until late 1938, and King Zog personally supported efforts to protect Jewish refugees. As a result, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Jews passed through Albania before 1939.

The situation changed when Italy invaded Albania in 1939. Emigration became difficult, leaving many Jews unable to leave the country. They remained relatively safe under Italian rule until 1943, when Nazi Germany took control. Even then, Albanian authorities refused the Germans’ demands for lists of Jews. Many Jews were sheltered by officials and ordinary citizens alike. 

Albania was the only European country that had more Jews after World War II than before it. After the war, about half of the Jewish population—around 300 people—left for Israel or other countries. The rest were not permitted to leave and remained in Albania until the communist regime collapsed in 1991. 

When Albania stood with Palestine

In 1949, Albania officially recognized Israel, partly because it agreed with the Soviet view that Israel could weaken British influence in West Asia. However, this did not lead to full diplomatic relations. From 1955 to 1967, Albania ignored Israel’s repeated attempts to establish diplomatic relations, though it maintained contact with the Israeli Communist Party (MAKI). 

Following events such as the Suez Crisis in 1956 and the Six-Day War in 1967, Albania adopted an anti-Israel stance. The country’s leaders portrayed Israel as a tool of imperialist Western powers, particularly the United States.

At the same time, Albania’s communist leader, Enver Hoxha, aligned the country with the Palestinian cause, viewing it as part of a broader anti-imperialist struggle. Albanian leaders viewed Palestine as resisting what they saw as an “imperialist proxy” in Israel. In turn, the PLO’s alliance with Albania was based on anti-colonial and anti-imperialist politics. 

Relations between Albania and Palestinian groups began in 1967 and were influenced in part by shared ties with China. Albania eventually recognized Fatah, partly because of its international profile and its critical stance toward both the United States and the Soviet Union.

However, relations became strained after the 1972 Munich Olympic attack, which Albania condemned as detrimental to the Palestinian cause. As Fatah developed closer ties with the Soviet Union, Albania became suspicious of the Soviet influence within the Palestinian movement. Although the PLO continued to seek closer ties, including opening an office in Tirana, Albania remained cautious. 

In the early 1980s, relations depended largely on Albania’s broader West Asia strategy and the PLO’s relationship with the Soviet Union. Following Hoxha’s death in 1985, his successor, Ramiz Alia, introduced a more flexible foreign policy, enabling closer international engagement. During this period, a PLO embassy was finally established in Tirana.

A wall fallen, a map redrawn

A few years later, following the collapse of communism, Albania shifted its focus toward the West and established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1991. That same year, most of the remaining Jewish population moved to Israel. 

Under the new Democratic Party government, Albania initially reduced its ties with the PLO. However, after joining the Organization of the Islamic Conference, now known as the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation, in 1994, Albania renewed relations with Arab countries. In 1996, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat visited Albania, even as it continued to strengthen its relationship with Israel. In 1998, Albania opened its embassy in Tel Aviv.

Today, Albania recognizes the Palestinian Authority and supports a two-state solution. However, in 2011, Prime Minister Sali Berisha opposed Palestine’s bid for full UN membership, arguing that a negotiated agreement with Israel was preferable.

During his visit to Israel that same year, Berisha emphasized the historical connections between Albanians and Jews, and voiced his concerns about regional security, especially regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Israel opened its embassy in Tirana in 2012.

Deals, drones, and abstentions

Over the past two years, Albania and Israel have signed numerous agreements, covering sectors such as agriculture, education, energy, culture, tourism, defense, and drone technology. Trade between the two countries has also grown quickly. According to Albania’s Institute of Statistics, Israeli exports to Albania increased by over 150% between May 2023 and May 2024.

Israeli investment in Albania is expanding, especially in finance. In early 2025, reports indicated that investors associated with Israel’s One Zero Digital Bank were considering entering the Albanian banking market. Later that year, JET Bank, the country’s first fully digital bank, was established and is owned by British-Israeli businessman Idan Avishai. Other figures of Israeli origin in its leadership include Oliver Hemmer and Rami Solomon.

Meanwhile, Albania has come under scrutiny from human rights researchers. Reports tracking global fuel shipments to Israel during the war in Gaza list Albania as one of 11 countries supplying fuel. These exports are officially presented as commercial, not military. 

However, critics point out that fuel is essential for military operations, including for vehicles and aircraft. According to international humanitarian and criminal law, states and private actors are expected to ensure that their activities do not directly or indirectly contribute, to serious human rights violations, including genocide.

There has also been an increase in military cooperation between Albania and Israel. In late 2025, Albania signed a multimillion-euro arms deal with Israeli defense companies, including Elbit Systems. The agreement includes artillery systems, mortars, and tactical drones, as well as plans to develop domestic production in partnership with KAYO, Albania’s state-owned company. 

Since June 2023, the two countries have officially cooperated in cybersecurity and training, building on the assistance Israel offered Albania following the Iranian cyberattack in July 2022, which targeted Albanian government digital services and websites. 

On 12 May 2026 the Albania-Israel Summit was held in Tirana, for ‘strengthening cooperation in innovation, technology and cybersecurity’ and brought together 40 Israeli companies. Also in May 2026, Elbit registered its Albanian branch with the National Business Center, which will carry out the same activity as in Israel. Earlier in 2025, Elbit and KAYO agreed to reopen the Albanian aviation academy to train military and civilian pilots. 

Political ties have deepened as well. In November 2025, Albania established an “Israel Allies Caucus” in its parliament as part of an international network linked to the Israel Allies Foundation. The group is co-chaired by representatives from both major parties, reflecting broad political support for closer relations with Israel. Israeli sources described the initiative as an example of “faith-based diplomacy,” citing Albania’s history of protecting Jews during World War II as the basis for this relationship.

Between 2022 and 2023, Albania served as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. During this period, Albania’s position on Gaza received significant attention. In October and December of 2023, the UN General Assembly voted on resolutions calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Albania abstained from voting on both resolutions. 

This pattern continued into 2024 and 2025. Albania abstained from several key votes, including those on ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, advancing Palestine’s status at the UN, and a French-Saudi initiative outlining a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

The price of belonging

Albania’s growing alignment with Israel is part of a broader foreign policy pattern. Since the fall of communism in 1991, Albania has positioned itself as a close ally of Western powers. The country has sought NATO membership, achieved in 2009, as well as European Union integration and strong ties with the United States. Closer relations with Israel fit within this strategy. Some analysts argue that strengthening ties with Israel is also a way of strengthening connections with Washington.

This approach was further illustrated in February 2026 when Albania joined four other countries in committing troops to an international security force for Gaza. The initiative is part of a new organization, the “Board of Peace,” which is backed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The organization focuses on post-war governance in Gaza. Its charter was signed at the World Economic Forum in Davos and was later tied to the UN Security Council Resolution 2803 as part of the Gaza Plan. However, its structure has raised questions. Trump holds a lifetime leadership role with veto power, and permanent membership requires a $1 billion contribution. Critics argue that this “pay-to-play” model is unusual for a peace initiative and reflects U.S. political and economic interests.

Prime Minister Rama’s policies highlight a long-standing feature of Albanian foreign policy: close alignment with powerful Western states, sometimes at the expense of independent decision-making or consistent application of international law. High-profile economic deals reinforce concerns about this approach. For example, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, is leading a $1.4 billion luxury resort project on Sazan Island. Approved with limited public debate, the project aims to transform a former military base into a high-end tourism destination, according to reporting by The New York Times. Critics argue that such projects, coupled with Albania’s pro-Israel stance as a predominantly Muslim country, serve to whitewash and boost Israel’s international image while obscuring its domestic governance issues.

Rewarded for loyalty

In September 2024, Israeli President Isaac Herzog became the first Israeli head of state to visit Albania. He was warmly welcomed by Prime Minister Edi Rama and senior officials. The visit marked a clear step forward in strengthening ties between the two countries. Some analysts argue that such visits also serve Israel’s broader goal of achieving international legitimacy, particularly in regions like Southeast Europe. According to Rexhepi “[t]he Israeli president is travelling to Europe’s peripheries to exert legitimacy, showcasing at home that their leaders can still travel abroad.” Others note that engaging with a Muslim-majority country like Albania helps Israel project a more favorable image in the wider Muslim world.

Albania’s diplomatic positioning at the UN has coincided with closer political ties to Israel. In April 2025, Prime Minister Edi Rama received Israel’s Presidential Medal of Honor. He was praised for his “moral clarity” and steadfast support of Israel during what President Isaac Herzog called “our darkest hour.” This was a reference to the October 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing war. Rama has repeatedly condemned Hamas in public statements, at times comparing the group to the Nazis, and arguing that peace is not possible while Hamas remains active.

Cooperation has also expanded at the ministerial level. In October 2025, Albania’s foreign minister visited Israel, and both countries signed agreements to strengthen cooperation in diplomacy and culture. These agreements include training opportunities for young Albanian diplomats. The visit received significant publicity on social and mainstream media platforms, including stops at Holocaust memorial sites and locations associated with the October 2023 attacks. However, critics point out the absence of public statements addressing the high number of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel.

On the road to Brussels

For countries like Albania, whose EU membership bid remains contingent on goodwill from Brussels and Washington, endorsing, or at minimum not challenging Israeli actions serves as a form of political currency. Albania’s economic, political, and diplomatic moves point to a wider foreign policy strategy characterized by coloniality by proxy. 

This is most clearly manifested through Albania’s absurd participation in the deeply problematic “Board of Peace,” which reflects its willingness to engage in frameworks shaped by larger powers. It also reflects a deeper, often implicit expectation embedded in the architecture of European integration: that aspiring members on the periphery must demonstrate their worthiness through institutional reforms, economic benchmarks, and geopolitical alignment with core Western powers. 

Scholars such as Piro Rexhepi argue that countries in the Balkans, shaped by a history of external imperial domination — from the Ottoman Empire to European colonial interventions — often seek security and recognition by aligning with dominant powers and navigating contemporary global hierarchies. For countries on the political fringes of the “core West,” access to the Western-backed liberal order is also conditioned by silence, oblivion, or, at worst, complicity in the genocide in Gaza. 

In this context, Albania is not merely an eager partner of Israel. It is also performing the role that Western geopolitical expectations have prescribed for it. In this role, Palestinian suffering is not treated as a moral emergency demanding a response. Rather, it is treated as an inconvenient variable to be managed, minimized, and ultimately ignored on the road to Brussels.

The post Coloniality by proxy: Albania’s road to Brussels runs through Tel Aviv appeared first on Untold.

Calypse is us, and at the same time she speaks to us: the conscience of a generation condemned to resist and survive.

The comic has been created by the UntoldMag collective together with artist Francesca Cogni.

Episode 3: “Prove you Are Human”

The post Abu Calypse, Episode 3: “Prove you Are Human” appeared first on Untold.

Enable, Rinse and Repeat

Just as they did last year, EU Foreign Affairs Ministers considered the suspension of the Association Agreement with Israel for its flagrant violations of human rights. And just like last year, Spain, Ireland and Slovenia pointed out that the Agreement should be suspended for evident violations of human rights. And just like last year, there was no majority for any concrete action.

Most governments and major media outlets shrugged the whole thing off as just another vote. After all, until there is a clear majority if not unanimity among EU governments, how could the Union act? 

Meanwhile, the media and political debate lost themselves in discussions of complex EU voting procedures or reading tea leaves of possible shifts in key European governments.

This, however, misses the point. Whether such a majority exists or not has nothing to do with the legal obligations of the EU and its member states. These obligations require the EU to act.

Breaking its Own Rules

The European Union is under two major kinds of legal constraints: internal and international.

Internally, the EU’s legal commitment to human rights is hard-wired into all aspects of policy and action by the Lisbon Treaty. This ‘constitution’ says the Union is founded upon “democracy, human rights and fundamental values” and that these must be upheld in every dimension of the EU’s policies and practices. 

In fact, precisely for this ‘hard-wiring’, some argue that Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria means that the Association Agreement never ought to have been signed at all.

In addition, Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement says all links are subject to “respect for human rights”. The evidence of Israel’s massive and systematic violations of human rights internally, internationally and of course in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is so well-known and so overwhelmingly vast that it cannot be summarised here. 

Save to say that it has been necessary to invent new terms for what is being done in Palestine (and elsewhere like in Lebanon and Iran): domicide, urbicide, medicide, scholasticide, ecocide, econocide, unchilding, and journocide killing the most journalists worldwide in each of the last three years running – a combined total greater than all journalists killed in the U.S. Civil War, both World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars (including Cambodia and Laos conflicts), the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 Afghanistan war. Not to mention the use of ‘double tap’ or ‘triple tap’ attacks in all these cases: targeting civilians/non-combatants, protected categories (medics, journalists), aggravated by perfidy.

All this is an incontrovertible matter of public record. Even an internal review by the EU’s own External Action Service found Israel had violated international law in Gaza.

For those violations alone, the Agreement ought to have been suspended years ago.

There is no room for interpretation: by the EU’s own internal rules, it should already have suspended the Agreement if not cut relations with Israel entirely.

Breaching International Law

The European Union’s obligations under international law are if anything even stronger.

Take the duty to prevent genocide as an example.

The Genocide Convention establishes a duty to use “all means reasonably available” to prevent genocide. This obligation was confirmed in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice, which also accepted that Palestinians’ right to be protected from genocide ‘may’ be being violated.

As its largest commercial partner, the EU patently has the leverage to act. The European Union and Israel are linked by defence and security contracts and collaborations, and through academic and commercial research relations. The EU has the obligation not to continue any such ties which in any way support those violations.

The same goes for individual states. Two of Israel’s top three arms suppliers are key EU Member States: Germany and Italy. Like any other government, both have a duty not to sell weapons used in the devastation of Gaza, in the colonization and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and in the unprecedented destruction of South Lebanon.

Hiding Behind Procedures

Yet the European Commission and many Member States in the Council fail to act. Year after year, they hide behind voting regulations to avoid acting on those obligations.

How?

Human rights assessments ought to be routine, but in practice must be requested by Member States which then need to obtain that such reviews be tabled for a vote by the Foreign Affairs Council. As in 2025, reports are usually not tabled on the basis that there is no perceived consensus for suspending the Agreement, or a ‘qualified majority’ to suspend portions of it or agree on sanctions. So, in practice, breaches of Article 2 are never openly discussed or voted on.

For the EU’s rhetorical commitment to human rights to be taken seriously, the assessments of, and votes on, human rights should be transparent, routine and compulsory.

Instead, for decades, the EU has avoided saying how it defines “human rights conditions” or specifying how these should be measured and assessed. It has failed to make reviews regular or transparent. It has made sure that whether those reviews come to a vote or are even tabled is not automatic but is at the Council’s discretion.

It is impossible not to conclude that the self-proclaimed paladin of human rights and fundamental values never intended to take its human rights commitments seriously.

Rules Unfit for Purpose

The fact that there are too few member states willing to vote for suspending the agreement with Israel is entirely irrelevant.

What these votes mean is simply that a majority of EU governments are happy to continue to break their own rules and international law.

The obligation to prevent genocide or crimes against humanity doesn’t suddenly disappear, it cannot be dismissed or deferred just because the EU’s internal procedures are unfit for purpose. If the EU’s procedures result in illegal outcomes, those rules must be changed. They certainly don’t absolve EU leaders of their legal responsibilities.

What is astonishing is not only that the EU is failing to uphold international law or its own principles, it is also damaging itself geopolitically.

The EU’s reputation as a ‘normative actor’ – its influence from promoting universal human rights and democracy – lies in tatters. Its self-proclaimed role as paladin of the rule of law has been reduced to little more than a bitter irony.

European representatives failed to condemn the evident violation of the UN Charter when the US and Israel attacked Iran or when Israel invaded Lebanon just as they failed to support the cases brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Ignoring international law in this way helps undermine the international institutions of the ‘United Nations system’.

Consigning Europe to Irrelevance

Europe has nothing to show for all this damage. It is not even sacrificing principle for power. It is weakening and isolating itself.

For the last few decades, European governments have lost political and strategic autonomy by increasingly aligning themselves with the US. The failure to set clear political distance from the US and to use what leverage Europe has, only worsens this isolation and irrelevance. Europe is taken for granted in Washington and is diplomatically irrelevant for China, Russia or Iran, which might have found a respected but relatively independent  interlocutor useful to facilitate diplomacy. 

One example of this is the EU’s striking absence from any negotiations over the conflicts in the Persian Gulf and the East Mediterranean.

Instead, by ignoring the rule of law on Israel while increasing sanctions on Iran and Russia, barely hours before the Iran/US ceasefire deadline, the EU added instability to an already exceptionally volatile and dangerous moment in world history.

In other words, by disregarding its self-proclaimed values, international law and its own self-interest, the EU is consigning Europe to global irrelevance.

The post Hiding Behind Procedure: How the EU Attempts to Sidestep Obligations on Israel – and Why They Fail appeared first on Untold.

Through free-form writing and illustration, the contributors reflect on what divestment can mean for academics of color within knowledge-producing institutions across the Global North. Grounded in the urgency of documenting the present moment and its reverberations in academia, the series reveals how the dehumanization of the “other” has always been structural and systemic.

This story is by Watfa Najdi, with illustrations by Pascale Ghazaly. 

What does it mean to think beyond extractivism in times of war?

I was invited to speak at an event. At the time, I was feeling vulnerable and constantly worried about the situation in Lebanon, and I rarely felt like leaving the house. 

However, it was an important event, so I said yes.

That night, as I was sitting on the stage speaking, a strike hit al-Nuweiri neighborhood in Beirut. Among the martyrs, there was a family with the same last name as mine: Najdi. I didn’t know, and I kept talking about the importance of moving beyond the North/South paradigm that casts certain populations as perpetual beneficiaries or aid recipients in need of Western expertise… I remember saying something about care, holding space, and listening to voices from the majority world. I didn’t look at my phone until the panel ended.

When I finally did, I saw several messages about the strike, the victims, the names.

“Israeli air strikes on central Beirut have killed 22 people and wounded at least 117, Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health said… The strikes appear to have hit densely populated residential areas as flames and smoke rose from two residential blocks.” (Al Jazeera, October 2024)

For a few minutes, everything inside me froze until my dad finally answered his phone and said they were okay. I then texted a friend who lived close to the targeted area. She replied briefly that they were still trying to process what happened, but they were okay.

After that, I put on a smile and said I needed to leave early. So, while everyone went upstairs to continue the conversation, I slipped out and rushed back home. That day I realized that academic conversations feel impossibly small during war, and the world you come from suddenly becomes too heavy to carry into these spaces but also too real to just put on hold.

Excerpt from Megaphone’s X account posted the following day (October 11, 2024):

“Hussein (51) and Lara (40), along with their twins Bassam and Zakaria (15) and Fatima Najdi (4), were laid to rest on Friday in their hometown Srifa, as well as their grandmother Inaam Saqlawi, her brother, and his wife. The death toll from the Noueiri massacre has now reached 22 martyrs, with over 117 others injured.”

How are you doing? How’s your family?

A professor asked me how I was doing. Over the past months, I’ve learned not to answer those questions fully. Most people ask because (I assume) it would be impolite not to, and what they expect is a short confirmation that your family back home is “doing okay,” even while surviving a war. So, I usually say exactly that: “they’re okay” then I smile and nod.

But this time there was something in his tone that made me believe he actually wanted to know more about what’s happening. So, I let myself say a little more. “It’s terrible,” I said. “Last night I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up following the news… watching which buildings were being bombed…”

I was tired and angry, so the words kept coming. “They hit a building close to my neighborhood in Beirut. It’s just…”

I don’t remember what I said after that, only the moment he gently cut in: “Can you walk with me? I need to grab my coffee from inside.”

I froze for a second but then nodded and walked beside him towards the class. It took me a minute to put a smile back on… I stood there as he grabbed his cup and checked something on his desk.

He then turned back to me and said, “…you were telling me about the situation in Beirut?”

I felt ridiculous sharing, even if for a few seconds, something very personal to me with someone who preferred to listen to a conversation about war while sipping coffee. I smiled again and said, “oh, that was it. The situation is difficult. Hopefully it will end soon.”

He smiled back, warmly. I don’t think he was pretending. But this is probably as far as he could go. Not because of lack of empathy, but because news about war, suffering and pain from the other side of the world can only be acknowledged briefly, never long enough to interrupt the rhythm of (academic) life.

The post Diaries of an Academic of Color: On the Limits of Academic Spaces, and Life in Two Places appeared first on Untold.

For the better part of the past two years, we have read study over study detailing the manifold forms of violence inflicted on the population of this tiny strip of land – maybe to compensate for the screaming silence on or relativization of these horrors by so many colleagues and institutions. 

Yet most of these readings only reiterate to what we already know. We know the casualty counts, the satellite images, the story of Hind Rajab. We all know them and what they are symptoms of. At least, those of us who want to know. 

There is an exhaustion that is not only emotional but epistemic: the sense that Gaza’s archive of horrors has become so heavy, so routinised, that it no longer clarifies anything. It merely accumulates. And in that accumulation, the place and its people risk dissolving into function – into a screen for moral and political performances and a symbol for the erosion of rights-based global order that, let’s be honest, never truly served those now paying its highest price.

Abdalhadi Alijla’s Fearful in Gaza does not accept this economy. It does not offer Gaza as piecemeal material for a political lesson. It refuses the familiar rhetorical contract in which the reader is permitted to feel only if the text supplies the requisite volume of shock, and in which the writer is expected to translate lived reality into the idiom of an international audience. 

I finished Fearful in Gaza with the distinct feeling one sometimes has after reading a work that is neither “extraordinary” nor “representative”, and yet more unsettling than either category. In fact, the book stays with me to date precisely because it does not contain something shocking in the way the world expects writing on Gaza to shock. Instead, it trusts in being taken seriously in its own, very quiet way. 

Alijla insists, with remarkable discipline, in the irreducible seriousness of the ordinary. He writes about growing up in Gaza with an honesty that is strikingly frank and unsparing. “Ungeschönt” (unvarnished?) we say in Germany, where we seem to have a precise word for everything but for the brutal Israel occupation and the genocidal violence deployed in Gaza. 

Contrasting with the semantic acrobatics of German officials or media in trying to avoid certain terminologies, Fearful in Gaza comes with a sobering clarity. In fact, its language is almost plain and precisely for that reason it is deeply affecting. Everyday routines, small pleasures, and moments of intimacy and care are described with the same clarity and in the same breath as moments of shame, humiliation, and the slow sedimentation of fear into the biographies of every protagonist of the book. 

But most importantly they are presented without moral staging for a specific audience. Unlike so many recent publications, Gaza appears here not as a metaphor or a case study, but as a real place of home, with all the contradictions that implies.

Two Voices, One Childhood, No Setting

Formally, the book is written in two voices: “The Son” and “The Mother.” While the son, Ayk, carries the main line, his mother interrupts, mirrors, adds weight, and often presses down on the same memory from another angle. What results from this structure is a family memoir that does not seek harmony but remains fragmentary dissonant. 

The son’s narrative registers the world through the eyes of a child and without full comprehension, the mother’s narrative registers the same world as a horizon of responsibility and vigilance. However, the mother’s interventions do not function as explanatory commentary. Alijla does a great job portraying the mother as an authority in her own right, with her exhaustion, anger, tenderness, and practical intelligence. Through her testimony, he makes visible the labor of keeping a child alive in Gaza, without ever romanticizing or lionizing this task.

Violence enters into this relationship of mother and son not as a spectacular event that can be easily morally consumed, but as a persistent atmospheric condition that reorganizes the child’s and the mother’s cognitive and emotional architectures. 

As a pressure that seeps into the logic of childhood and quietly deforms it. There is the children’s fascination with military jeeps, and their instinct to domesticate them by giving them animal names, as if naming could tame the terror. The gesture is, on the surface, playful, a small act of imagination. But it is also a way how a child makes fear manageable by giving it a known shape. 

Effectively it is also a technique of survival in a context of constant uncertainty: In one moment, school is school. In the next, it is no longer just school – when the teacher distributes pieces of onion because its smell helps against tear gas or when children are marched across the schoolyard at gunpoint and with their hands up. 

This scene that illustrates the carceral nature of a child’s life under occupation is described without theatrical punctuation, which is precisely why it becomes difficult to forget. One feels, reading it, the thinness of the wall that is supposed to separate childhood from coercion and harm, and how quickly that wall is pierced. In another passage, the mother describes waking her son at the first sound of military engines, because she is afraid his heart could stop during a nightly raid. 

There are passages that are even more difficult because they do not offer interpretive scaffolding. A scene of sexual violence against children is observed through the eyes of a six-year-old who cannot yet name what he sees but carries the fear from this incident for years, as if the body understood something that language could not yet organize. The description does not force emotion, though. Alijla refrains from converting the scene into a moral exhibit. He merely describes, and the description itself is what unsettles.

Home, Not Symbol

The comparison to other recent books produced under conditions of war and siege is unavoidable, not because they are the same, but because they share an ethic of focusing on the ordinary. That is what makes Fearful in Gaza feel closer, in spirit, to books like Tijan Sila’s Radio Sarajevo or Tony Doherty’s This Man’s Wee Boy than to much of what is marketed as “Middle East” conflict literature. 

This kinship that has less to do with geography than with scale. Sila’s Sarajevo is not presented as a grand theatre for questions of belonging amid ethnic conflict. It is a toilet where the family sleeps, crude jokes, and the brittle bonds of boyhood. Likewise, Doherty’s Derry at the onset of civil war in Northern Ireland is made intelligible by being rendered small and specific through the joys and tribulations of childhood and a son’s fragmentary recollections of his father, shot dead on Bloody Sunday. 

Alijla does something similar, but with his own temperature. Through his recollections of everyday kitchen situations, quarrels over schoolwork, neighbourhood routes, and the stubborn persistence of habits even when these habits become risky, he gives the domestic and the routine a dignity that public talk about Gaza rarely allows. That matters because so much writing and commentary in Europe and North America treats Gaza as a symbol first and as a lived world second. 

Since 7 October 2023, this symbolic reflex has only intensified. Gaza is increasingly made to carry debates that are, in practice, not about Gaza at all, and more about the moral self-positioning of distant audiences: about legitimacy, about the right vocabulary, about whose grief is permissible and what forms of violence are justifiable. 

In Germany, where public debate has largely concentrated on a self-referential struggle over the country’s historic responsibility, this dynamic has been particularly stark, with the effect that Palestinians appear, at best, as a footnote to someone else’s ethical drama. In this climate, Gaza functions like a floating signifier, a symbolic container filled with meaning ascriptions that harden moral frontiers, prevent empathy, and criminalise solidarity, policing what can be said and who is cast as decent or dangerous. 

Alijla’s refusal to write Gaza as allegory matters here. By returning again and again to the small things, to the mother’s vigilance, to the child’s strategies of coping, to routines disrupted and reassembled, Fearful in Gaza withdraws Gaza from the role of rhetorical object and gives it back its status as a place where people live, remember, disagree, and endure. 

Gaza is presented as home in the literal sense, that is, a place where your life happens, where you learn tenderness and cruelty in the same day, where you absorb contradictions because you have no choice. In the end, this is how the book becomes political: It trusts the reader to feel the humanness of its protagonists without being pushed to do so. 

This is, for me, the central reminder the book carries: Sometimes the most powerful political writing is precisely that which simply tells what it is like, without the implicit bargain that the reader will only pay attention if suffering is presented at maximum volume.

Exile as Aftersound

The frame of the book is also a story of later, of what comes after the spectacle. Towards the end of the book, Alijla describes his cumbersome relocation Sweden, where he lives and writes today. From this exile, he was forced to witness from afar Israel’s destruction of the very home he remembers so affectionately and the death of the people who populate his memories: Of the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, located East of the so-called “Yellow Line” drawn by Israel straight across the Gaza Strip, where nothing but rubble remains. Abdalhadi’s mother, whose voice structures the book and anchors many of its most intimate passages, was killed in an Israeli drone strike in May 2025. 

Against this backdrop, Fearful in Gaza has become something it never meant to be: A record of places and voices that have been violently disappeared. The book’s closing movement thus performs a subtle shift. What started as memory becomes preservation. In this sense, the memoir holds a powerful truth. Namely that neither geographical nor temporal distance, neither occupation nor physical destruction can erase what we hold dear. They only alter the modalities. 

Sleeplessness, sensory echoes, the sea as an unexpected trigger may puncture the author’s everyday life in exile. But these punctuations are not just reverberations of trauma. They testify to the continued presence of a world that did not end simply because the narrator left it. In Fearful in Gaza, the mother’s voice offers the vocabulary of Ghourba, longing and estrangement, and with that the sense that “after” is not a clean temporal category but a different kind of living with the same thing.

When I closed the book, I did not feel better informed. Nor did I feel morally validated in my political position. Instead, there was a quieter recognition, bordering on embarrassment, of how often we mistake information for understanding. And so the introductory question returns, but changed slightly in tone: Why do I still read books like this?

Because every now and then a book refuses the roles assigned to it and, by doing so, leaves an even deeper mark.

The post Gaza, Not a Metaphor: Childhood, Memory, and the Refusal of Spectacle appeared first on Untold.

Through free-form writing and illustration, the contributors reflect on what divestment can mean for academics of color within knowledge-producing institutions across the Global North. Grounded in the urgency of documenting the present moment and its reverberations in academia, the series reveals how the dehumanization of the “other” has always been structural and systemic.

This story is by Myriam Dalal, with illustrations by Pascale Ghazaly. 

Having a conscience is making everything much harder.

As if we needed one more layer of complication to add to our “survival of the fittest” battle as Arab academics in the west.

Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, and the war on Palestine, Lebanon, bits of Syria and bits of Yemen in October of 2023-which coincided with my appointment as a research associate at a university in Europe- my work plan started incorporating multi-level scrutiny measures:

For the places I’m invited to speak at, the funding that I seek for my activities and projects, the people I collaborate with, the researchers I interact with, the university where I work, and our center’s preexisting/ongoing/future collaborations, as well as the research projects conducted here, the way the university communicates about its international collaborations, etc.

And when you’re already in a space where your very being is attacked every single day, from the moment you open your door in the morning till the moment you go back to bed at night, this means you’re adding to your already achy shoulders a new reason to shrug.

You say it’s the mattress that got you this back and shoulder pain, but you know deep inside that it’s Orientalism, you just don’t know how to explain it to the white physician.

Being an Arab woman of color comes with all its “shades of anger” as the amazing Rafeef Ziadeh would say. The orientalist machine starts from the very state administration to the individual level that seeks to discredit you, belittle you, and fetishize you or in its most positive manifestation, save you…

The post Diaries of an Academic of Color: All Shades of Anger – Notes from an Arab Woman in European Academia appeared first on Untold.

This was not merely a rhetorical flourish. It signaled the final abandonment of a diplomatic convention that had guided Indian prime ministers for decades: the practice of visiting both Israel and Palestine on the same trip. Every previous prime minister who traveled to Tel Aviv also made the journey to Ramallah, a tangible demonstration of India’s commitment to a two-state solution. Modi broke that tradition. His lone visit to Israel, without any stop in Palestine, cast serious doubt on whether New Delhi still supports the creation of a Palestinian state.

The implications of this shift have grown only starker since the war on Iran began. While the Indian government has issued tepid calls for restraint, it has offered condemnation neither for the killing of Iranian leaders nor of the unfolding catastrophe in Iran. This silence is particularly striking given the deep ties between the two countries. Iran, a fellow BRICS member, remains one of India’s largest trading partners and has offered crucial diplomatic support on Kashmir in international forums—standing with India against Pakistan when it mattered. Indian investment in Iran grew substantially throughout the 2010s, including the development of a strategic port that promised significant benefits for both economies.

Despite its deep investments in the relationship with Iran over decades, India’s unequivocal positioning with Israel and the United States in this war signals a meta-shift in its foreign policy—one increasingly guided by the BJP’s Hindu nationalist worldview. To understand the magnitude of this shift, we must first understand what Indian foreign policy was, and where it came from.

Idealist Foreign Policy

India’s foreign policy was shaped by the crucible of anticolonial struggle, and its contours were drawn long before independence was actually achieved. The first stirrings came as early as 1927, at the League Against Imperialism and Colonial Oppression in Brussels, where Indian leaders and activists played a pivotal role. 

During the Second World War, even as Indian leaders intensified their campaign against British rule, they never wavered in their commitment against antisemitism and fascism. When the Spanish Civil War erupted, Indian volunteers traveled thousands of miles to fight for the Republicans. Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become India’s first prime minister, raised funds in Britain and India to support the Republican war effort. 

At the very moment when Modi’s ideological predecessors were delivering speeches in the streets of Bombay cheering the persecution of Jews in Europe, Nehru was facilitating the arrival of Jewish refugees in India from Europe.

This idealism—forged in anti-imperial struggle and tempered by a commitment to human dignity—shaped independent India’s foreign policy from its inception. In the postwar world, divided between two hostile camps, India joined with other newly independent states in refusing to choose sides. The Bandung Conference of 1955 and the Belgrade Conference of 1961 gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which became the most powerful foreign policy doctrine in the decolonized world. India was not merely a participant but a principal architect, both of the movement itself and of its implementation.

Anticolonial Principles

Crucially, NAM was never the “pragmatic neutrality” its critics caricatured it as. It was an idealistic stance that firmly advocated for peace, nuclear disarmament, and decolonization. This was not abstract rhetoric but lived policy. India headed the international committee that brokered a ceasefire in the Korean War. It opposed the Israeli-French-British attack on Egypt over the nationalization of the Suez Canal. It condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary. It stood against the Vietnam War. It played a mediating role in the Congo crisis. It refused all diplomatic recognition to apartheid South Africa.

The finest hour of Indian foreign policy, however, arrived in 1971. When civil war erupted in Pakistan following East Pakistan’s declaration of independence, India—then one of the poorest countries in the world—sheltered ten million refugees for nearly nine months. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi traveled across the globe, pleading for international attention to the crisis and the unfolding genocide in East Pakistan. When diplomacy failed and the threat of US intervention on behalf of its Pakistani ally loomed, the Indian army intervened alongside the Bangladeshi liberation forces. In a swift thirteen-day war, they broke the Pakistani military’s grip, and the new nation of Bangladesh was born.

But the truly remarkable feat was not the military victory—it was what came after. India withdrew its forces and left Bangladesh to its people and its chosen leaders. It made no attempt to occupy or annex its neighbor. At a moment when it could have pursued expansionist ambitions, it chose restraint. This was foreign policy as an anticolonial principle in action.

Sympathy for Palestine

India’s approach toward Israel-Palestine was not an exception to this foreign policy outlook—it was its logical extension. The anticolonial tradition expressed itself naturally in sympathy for Palestine. Mahatma Gandhi himself drew a direct colonial analogy, declaring that Palestine belonged to the Arabs just as England belonged to the English—recognizing the national sovereignty of Palestinians over their land. Nehru, the committed antifascist who understood intimately the agony of European Jewry after the Holocaust, nevertheless refused to see the occupation of Palestine as a just solution to that crisis. His sympathy for Jewish victims did not translate into support for Palestinian dispossession.

This principled stance found concrete expression at the United Nations in 1947, when India voted against the partition of Palestine—defying both the United States and the Soviet Union in the process. The vote was not merely a foreign policy calculation but a reflection of the ideological position the anticolonial leadership had staked out during the independence struggle: a principled opposition to the division of lands and peoples on the basis of religion. India opposed partition in Palestine for the same reasons it had opposed the partition of its own subcontinent.

India formally recognized Israel in 1950, but this diplomatic gesture did not signal an abandonment of its commitment to the Palestinian people. Nehru visited Gaza in 1960, over Israeli objections and despite security threats. In 1974, India became the first non-Arab state to formally recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization. Full diplomatic relations followed in 1980, and when the PLO declared independence in 1988, India extended immediate recognition. Yasser Arafat was a frequent visitor to New Delhi, received with state honors at a time when the West still designated him a terrorist.

The Unipolar World

The 1990s brought two simultaneous transformations that would strain this tradition. First, India finally opened its markets to the global economy, abandoning the democratic-socialist framework that had guided economic policy since 1947. The repercussions for foreign policy were immediate: idealism gradually gave way to the logic of economic pragmatism. Second, the fall of the Soviet Union rendered the Non-Aligned Movement seemingly obsolete in a unipolar world. 

These twin shifts found their clearest expression in the warming of India-US relations. After decades of Cold War distance, Washington began courting New Delhi as a trusted regional partner, supplanting Pakistan, which had served as the US outpost since the 1950s. China’s rise as an economic and military power only accelerated this realignment.

The Israel-Palestine issue could not remain insulated from these pressures. In 1992, India established full diplomatic relations with Israel—a step it had resisted for four decades. The Oslo Accords, which followed shortly after, seemed to vindicate this shift: the PLO itself had now agreed to a two-state solution, the very framework India had endorsed for a while. But India’s understanding of what two states might mean differed markedly from the West’s. 

Where the United States and its allies deployed the two-state formula as a mechanism to contain Palestinian aspirations—creating an appearance of movement toward justice while facilitating continued Israeli expansion in the West Bank—India continued to view it as a genuine compromise in the service of peace. This is why, even after Oslo, even after establishing relations with Israel, India remained firmly aligned with Palestine until quite recently. While the West bankrolled occupation and looked away as Gaza was bombarded, New Delhi maintained its traditional stance until 2014.

Blueprint of Ethno-Democracy

In 2014, India elected its first majority BJP government with a sweeping mandate. For the first time, a prime minister had both the ideological conviction and the political capital to fundamentally reshape Indian foreign policy according to Hindu nationalist priorities. Since the late 1980s, Hindu nationalist forces began gaining larger mass support, a trend that ultimately culminated in the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992. The rise of Hindu nationalism coincided with the neoliberalization of the Indian economy, initiated by the Indian National Congress. Inequality in Indian society increased manifold following the opening of the market, which, as in other parts of the world, fueled right-wing politics. In 2014, after a brief stint in power from 1999 to 2004 as part of a coalition with regional centrist parties, the BJP returned to power—this time with a clear majority on its own and a clear agenda to transform the political discourse and social fabric of India.

The BJP’s affinity for Israel can be understood through two interlocking factors. The first is ethnonationalism. The BJP’s longstanding project is the transformation of India into a Hindu state—a nation in which religious identity determines belonging, and minorities are rendered permanently subordinate. 

In this project, Israel serves as both inspiration and model. What the BJP admires is the architecture of what has been called an “ethno-democracy“: a state that formally guarantees the supremacy of one religious group while tolerating the presence of others only on condition of their political marginalization. Israel grants Jewish citizens superior status within a self-defined Jewish republic; the BJP wants the same for India’s Hindu majority, with Muslims relegated to second-class citizenship.

The blueprint for this vision is already visible. The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019 offered a path to citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from neighboring countries—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians—but pointedly excluded Muslims. The message was unmistakable: in the BJP’s India, religious persecution renders Muslims uniquely ineligible for refuge. 

More recently, the government has begun replicating elements of the Israeli settler-colonial model in Kashmir. By stripping the region of its limited autonomy and its constitutional protections, New Delhi has opened the door for Indians from outside Kashmir to settle there, acquire property, and permanently alter the region’s demographic composition. The objective, pursued systematically, is demographic transformation through internal colonization.

Empire of Islamophobia

The second factor is Islamophobia. It is no coincidence that the perceived enemies of the Israeli state and of the BJP’s India are the same: Muslims. By aligning itself overwhelmingly with Israel, the BJP sends a message to India’s own Muslim population—whose historic solidarity with the Palestinian cause is well known—about where they belong in the new Hindu nationalist order. 

The Palestinian struggle for independence, which the Indian state once supported and celebrated, is now routinely designated as terrorism. This rhetorical move aligns India with Israel’s self-perception as a victim of “Muslim terror”, creating a shared narrative of existential threat. The two states, in this telling, are not aggressors but survivors, not occupiers but the occupied.

This empire of Islamophobia extends well beyond Tel Aviv and New Delhi. It is a global network of ethnonationalist movements and governments. Modi’s bonhomie with Donald Trump and Netanyahu is not, as it is sometimes described, a pragmatic accommodation to the realities of a unipolar world. It is a deliberate ideological choice—an expression of solidarity among right-wing movements that share a common enemy and a common vision of who must be punished in the name of national renewal.

But this shared vision is not merely rhetorical. It is material and operational. Israel has become one of India’s largest suppliers of defense technology, with bilateral military trade reaching into the billions. The Indian government has allegedly deployed Israeli spyware—most notoriously the Pegasus system—to surveil political opponents, journalists, and activists, weaponizing technology supplied by Tel Aviv against domestic dissent. 

And while much of the world has grown hazardous for Israeli soldiers facing prosecution for war crimes committed in Gaza, India has remained a safe haven. Approximately 80,000 Israelis travel to India annually; a significant proportion are active-duty or former IDF soldiers, confident that they will face neither legal consequences nor public accountability on Indian soil.

A New Trinity

Today, Indian foreign policy has traded its foundational principles—anticolonialism, peace, Third World solidarity, justice—for a new trinity: ethnonationalism, Islamophobia, and opportunism. The consequences of this transformation are now visible for all to see. India has failed to take a meaningful moral or political position on any major international crisis in recent years. 

When Russia invaded Ukraine, India did not use its historic relationship with Moscow to press for peace. Instead, it enabled its capitalist duopoly of businessmen Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani to profit handsomely from buying discounted Russian oil and reselling it to European markets—effectively bankrolling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine while claiming neutrality. 

When Israel launched its assault on Gaza, eventually recognized by international jurists as a plausible case of genocide, India offered neither resistance nor even condemnation. When civil war erupted in Sudan, New Delhi’s deepening complicity with UAE elites—major players in the conflict—precluded any meaningful stance. 

When the US effectively kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, India remained silent. And now, as the United States and Israel pursue an unjustified and illegal war on Iran, the BJP-led government has offered passive support while its rank and file actively cheers the destruction on streets and social media.

For a time, it seemed the BJP could sustain this foreign policy misadventurism without consequence. The Iran war has shattered that illusion. The war has created an unprecedented energy crisis, sending oil and gas prices soaring and dealing a severe blow to an already fragile economy. The material costs of aligning with Washington and Tel Aviv against Tehran are arriving ahead of schedule.

But the deeper cost is strategic and moral. India’s foreign minister and his aides repeatedly pitched the country’s approach as a “decolonial foreign policy“—a cynical appropriation of the language of liberation to dress up what is, in practice, pure opportunism. The gap between rhetoric and reality could not be wider. India, which led the Third World in the 20th century, which spoke for anticolonial struggles everywhere, now stands virtually alone on the world stage. It has no genuine allies, no reliable friends or neighbors, no principled partners. It has only the mercy of Trump, the indulgence of Putin, and the embrace of Netanyahu. 

This is not non-alignment. This is not pragmatism. This is the foreign policy of a right-wing movement that has made its peace with empire, ethnic supremacy, the punishment of Muslims everywhere—and in doing so, has left India isolated, diminished, and morally unrecognizable.

The post From Bandung to Bibi: How Modi’s India Abandoned Non-Alignment for Ethnonationalism appeared first on Untold.