leitner

 The newly published  Palgrave Handbook of Racial Injustice and Resistance is not a fringe publication. Palgrave handbooks are used as sources in university courses. They carry institutional weight. They signal what the academy considers serious scholarship.

So it matters what they say and how they say it.

The first substantive chapter, immediately following the introduction, is by Ronit Lentin, retired professor at Trinity College Dublin. Most academic biographies in the book start off with "he is a professor of..." or "she is a senior lecturer at..." But Lentin's biography starts with "Ronit Lentin is a Jewish anti-Zionist woman." 

The title of this chapter is "Genocide Is Not a Metaphor: Reflections on Gaza and the Denial of the Crime of Genocide." 

That title tells you something. The first words of the article, after several quotes from Palestinians accusing Israel of genocide, are even more telling:  

The Zionist entity responded to the October 7 2023 act of resistance by the Gaza-based Islamic Resistance Movement—Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, Hamas—by launching a massive air bombardment of the besieged Gaza enclave, followed by a ground offensive. 

If a massive pogrom of murders, burning families, rapes and kidnapping is referred to as an "act of resistance" we can see that we are not going to be reading anything remotely resembling objectivity.  

We can see that Lentin refers to Israel as "the Zionist entity." That alone should be disqualifying for a serious academic press. But within the article we see a far more egregious misuse of both language and a twisting of academic standards. 

Lentin does not refer to the Israel Defense Forces. She refers throughout to the "IGF" — the "Israeli Genocidal Forces." She uses this term deliberately and consistently, embedding the legal conclusion inside the noun so she never has to prove it again. Genocide is no longer a charge to be established — it is an identity, built into the name. Just as in the paper's title, Every subsequent sentence that uses "IGF" inherits that verdict without argument.

In an activist pamphlet, this would be polemical but at least honest about what it is. In a Palgrave academic handbook, it is a pre-verdict dressed as terminology — a rhetorical move that forecloses the analysis it pretends to conduct.

Ask yourself whether Lentin would accept "Palestinian Jihadist Forces" or "Hamas Exterminationist Movement" as neutral academic terminology in a scholarly volume. She cannot even acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization — that label, she writes, is merely how 'white Jewish supremacy' frames it — and insists the October 7 attack must be understood as resistance to colonialism (p. 30).

Lentin argues that Zionism is "essentially a race-making ideology and practice" rooted in "European Jewish racial supremacy." This is her axiom, stated in the opening pages and never subsequently argued — only applied. From that premise, everything follows with logical inevitability: Gaza is racialized violence, Israeli military operations are genocidal by definition, and anyone who questions the genocide framing is participating in racial ideology.

Conspiracy theories and closed systems look exactly like this. It is internally coherent and completely unfalsifiable. Counter-evidence does not challenge the framework — it confirms it, as proof of how deep the denial runs.

Lentin is at least partially aware of this exposure. She writes that the chapter "does not deal with the legal implications" of genocide. Rather than modesty, this is insulation. By relocating the debate from international law — where genocide has a specific legal threshold requiring demonstrated intent — to race theory and colonial discourse, she moves onto terrain where legal standards of proof do not apply. Then she uses the word "genocide" as a legal and literal term throughout, even quoting approvingly from scholars who call Gaza "more than genocide." The chapter title insists genocide is not a metaphor, but she has quietly removed the framework that would make it anything other than one.

The author deliberately obscures what happened on October 7 - kidnapping women and children, slaughtering families, cold blooded murders of young people at a dance festival. Since facts upset the coherence of her arguments, she ignores them. Although when it comes to rape, she has a lot to say.

The rape allegations, Lentin argues, function not as evidence of atrocity but as a "racial boundary maintenance" mechanism — a tool for dehumanizing Palestinians and constructing Jewish women as symbols of national purity requiring protection. She cites Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada twice: once for the claim that the rape accusations rest on "emotional manipulation, outlandish claims, distortion, and an appeal to racist notions," and once for the claim that prosecutors found no October 7 rape victims. She cites the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs report only to immediately undercut it, and cites a Guardian piece noting no victims were identified by name.

What she does not cite is the Pramila Patten report.

Patten is the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Her March 2024 report — document A/78/773 — found "clear and convincing information" that sexual violence occurred on October 7, including rape and gang rape, and concluded there were "reasonable grounds to believe" these acts were "widespread and systematic." It is the authoritative UN document specifically addressing October 7 sexual violence, and it does not appear anywhere in Lentin's references.

Similarly, the first Israeli hostage to directly admit being sexually abused also went public in March 2024. Lentin does not want to admit it - so she ignores it. 

Compare this to her treatment of Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, whose reports Lentin cites approvingly and repeatedly as evidence of genocide. Albanese, it should be noted, is not a lawyer. Her mandate is advocacy, not adjudication. But Lentin treats her warnings as institutional validation while ignoring the findings of the UN's own investigator on sexual violence.

The pattern is precise: the UN is authoritative when it supports the genocide framing and irrelevant when it documents Hamas sexual violence. The Patten report was published a full year before she wrote this piece. . It was widely covered. Lentin cites sources from 2024 and 2025 throughout. She chose not to engage with it because its findings complicated her argument that rape discourse is a Zionist racial instrument.

Individual bad papers exist in every field. What matters here is the editorial decision to open a Palgrave handbook's substantive content with this chapter. It tells readers how the editors believe the Israeli-Arab conflict should be categorized — not merely as a political dispute, a territorial conflict, or even a humanitarian crisis, but as the paradigmatic example of racial injustice. Before a word of any other chapter is read, the framework has been established: Israel is a white supremacist racial state, Gaza is a genocide, and skepticism is denial.

University syllabi will cite this volume. Graduate students will footnote it. It will be used to establish what "the scholarly consensus" holds.

Lentin is a sophisticated scholar who knows how to insulate an argument. She disclaims legal analysis while making legal accusations. She frames rape evidence as racial discourse. She cites the UN selectively. She builds a system where every objection is pre-categorized as ideological.

But the IGF rename gives it away. So does the missing Patten report. So does citing a partisan blog twice on sexual violence while ignoring the UN's own investigator on the same subject.

Lentin's framework has one final, self-sealing feature worth naming explicitly. Once genocide is established as axiomatic, the focus shifts to its denial — and denial itself becomes the crime. Her chapter title is not just "Genocide Is Not a Metaphor" but "Reflections on Gaza and the Denial of the Crime of Genocide." The denial is the subject, not the genocide itself.

This is elegant, in a troubling way. No one disputes that Israeli officials, journalists, and supporters dispute the genocide charge. That denial is real and documented. So Lentin has constructed a framework where the one thing no one can argue against — that Israelis deny committing genocide — becomes proof of their ideology. The denial confirms the racial logic. The more vigorously you reject the charge, the deeper your complicity.

There are no facts that Lentin can accept that  would disprove her thesis. And that is evidence that her entire well-footnoted article is structurally identical to antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Academic freedom means the right to publish arguments. It does not obligate the rest of us to pretend that selective citation, unfalsifiable frameworks, and pre-verdict terminology constitute scholarship. Palgrave/Macmillan apparently disagrees.

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On February 10, Mahmoud Abbas published the draft of a new Palestinian constitution for public comment. The document was produced by a committee he appointed in August 2025, drafted over seven months with French assistance, and presented to Emmanuel Macron in Paris last November. It is being hailed as a step toward democracy and statehood.

I read all 162 articles. What I found should alarm not just Israelis, but Europeans, Christians, and anyone who believes in the possibility of Middle East peace.

Beneath a surface layer of democratic provisions — separation of powers, free elections, human rights protections — the constitution contains an interlocking architecture of provisions that, taken together, constitutionalize permanent conflict with Israel, criminalize coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, create binding obligations that cascade through international law to nearly every country on earth, and make themselves virtually impossible to repeal.

This is not a constitution for a state that wants peace. It is a legal machine for permanent war — and Europe helped build it.

It Claims All of Israel

The constitution never defines the borders of "Palestine. "There is no reference to the 1967 lines. There is no mention of the West Bank and Gaza as the state's territory. There is no acknowledgment that any other sovereign entity exists on any part of the land.

This is a deliberate regression. The Arafat-era 2003 draft constitution explicitly defined the territory as "an indivisible unit within its borders on the eve of June 4, 1967." The 2026 draft dropped that language entirely.

Instead, the constitution anchors itself to the PLO National Covenant — which claims all of Mandatory Palestine — by stating that the PLO "continues to perform its national responsibilities according to the National Covenant." Article 25 declares the constitution and the 1988 Declaration of Independence to be "a single indivisible unit." Article 12 commits to "the unity of the land." Article 40 references "the territory of the homeland" without any geographic limitation.

The word "occupation" appears throughout the text but is never qualified — never "the occupation of the West Bank," never "the occupation since 1967." It is always just "the occupation." And the preamble characterizes it as a "colonial settlement occupation" — language that frames Israel's very existence, not just its post-1967 presence, as illegitimate.

Israel is never mentioned by name. It is simply "the occupation." Which means that this document agrees with Hamas that all of Israel is "occupied land."

It Constitutionalizes "Genocide" as Fact

The preamble asserts as foundational fact — not allegation, not claim, but constitutional premise — that "genocide continue in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank."

Article 24 then creates a constitutional duty to "pursue the perpetrators of these crimes before the judiciary." Article 69 establishes that genocide and crimes against humanity "are not subject to a statute of limitations and may not be pardoned." And Article 156 prohibits amending fundamental rights provisions — making this entire framework permanent.

Think about what this means. If genocide is constitutionally occurring across all of Gaza and the West Bank, then every Palestinian in those territories is a victim of genocide. The state has a permanent obligation to prosecute the perpetrators — meaning Israel — forever. No future government can stop it. No pardon is possible. No statute of limitations applies.

A Palestinian leader who agreed to drop genocide prosecution as part of a peace deal would be violating his own constitution.

It Makes Peace Illegal

Any peace agreement requires defined borders — the constitution has none. It requires mutual recognition — the constitution doesn't acknowledge Israel exists. It requires compromise on refugees — the constitution makes the right of return unamendable under Article 156. It requires ending criminal claims — the constitution mandates perpetual genocide prosecution. It requires accepting the other side's legitimacy — the constitution frames Israel as a criminal entity.

Article 82 explicitly prohibits treaties that violate the constitution. A Palestinian Constitutional Court faithfully applying this document would be obligated to strike down any peace treaty with Israel.

This is not an unintended consequence. It is the point. The constitution converts the political positions that Palestinian leaders have always held — non-negotiable right of return, rejection of Israel's legitimacy, claims to all of the land — and hardens them into unamendable supreme law. What was once a negotiating stance is now a constitutional straitjacket that binds all future governments.

Every Israeli Is a Target - and Europe/Canada/Australia Are The Enforcers

Israel has universal conscription. Virtually every Jewish Israeli adult is an IDF veteran. The constitution mandates prosecution of genocide perpetrators with no statute of limitations. Connect the dots: every Israeli who ever served in the IDF — as a combat soldier, a medic, a cook, a clerk, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, and probably even desk jobs in Israel — is a presumptive war criminal under this framework.

This isn't limited to Palestinian courts. Palestine has been a member of the International Criminal Court since 2015. The constitution's mandate to pursue perpetrators "before the judiciary" encompasses every available legal forum. The ICC has already demonstrated its willingness to issue warrants against Israeli leaders.

But now it applies to hundreds of thousands of Israelis.

The constitution creates a permanent obligation to file cases. The ICC processes them. And under Article 86 of the Rome Statute, every member state — virtually all of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan — is legally obligated to cooperate with ICC warrants, including executing arrests.

An Israeli backpacker in Paris. A tech executive in London. A professor in Brussels. A grandmother in Toronto. If they ever served in the IDF, they are all subject to arrest by countries that are treaty-bound to enforce warrants generated by a constitutional machine that can never be switched off. And there are plenty of Israel haters who have already shown that they want to create lists of Israelis in their countries for exactly this reason, to charge them with "genocide."

The practical burden on Rome Statute member states would be immense. Each ICC warrant must be entered into border control databases — Interpol, the EU's Schengen Information System, and national immigration systems. Each arrest requires a domestic judicial surrender proceeding, with the detained person entitled to legal representation, a hearing, and the right to appeal. Each case demands the involvement of ministries of justice, prosecutors, courts, police, and diplomatic channels. These systems are designed to handle a few cases at a time. A constitutionally-mandated campaign generating thousands of warrant requests against citizens of a single country would overwhelm the administrative, judicial, and diplomatic infrastructure of every cooperating state. European, Canadian, and Australian governments would face a choice: allow their legal systems to be consumed by an endless stream of cases they never anticipated, or refuse to comply with their own treaty obligations — exposing themselves to legal challenges from Palestinian authorities and human rights organizations for non-compliance. 

The constitution's drafters have engineered a system in which the cost of compliance is paralysis and the cost of non-compliance is legal liability. The world has to pay the price. 

The countries that recognized Palestine and helped draft this constitution would be legally obligated to enforce the consequences of what they built. 

It Criminalizes Coexistence

The implications extend to every form of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. Any Israeli on Palestinian territory — which, under this constitution, means any territory — is a presumptive genocide perpetrator on Palestinian soil. This means:

Israelis driving through the West Bank to reach Jordan could be arrested in transit. Israeli tourists visiting Bethlehem or Jericho would be subject to detention. Israeli academics visiting Palestinian universities, Israeli doctors volunteering at Palestinian clinics, Israeli businesspeople meeting Palestinian partners — all of them are IDF veterans on the soil of a state constitutionally mandated to prosecute them.

The grassroots peace organizations that bring Israelis and Palestinians together — Seeds of Peace, the Parents Circle, Kids4Peace — become constitutionally untenable. An Israeli mother at a joint dialogue is a citizen of the genocide state. A Palestinian mother who meets her is normalizing relations with her people's genocide perpetrator.

And the Palestinians who participate in these programs? They face their own constitutional jeopardy. If Israel is constitutionally a genocidal colonial entity, then cooperating with Israelis can be characterized as normalizing genocide. Article 69 punishes "conspiracy against the unity and integrity of the territory of the State of Palestine." Article 18 frames defense of the homeland as "a sacred duty." Palestinian academics collaborating with Israeli colleagues, Palestinian doctors training in Israeli hospitals, Palestinian workers employed by Israeli businesses, Palestinian peace activists who believe in coexistence — all of them risk being cast as traitors to a constitutional order that demands rejection of everything Israeli.

The constitution doesn't just prevent peace between governments. It criminalizes peace between people.

It Erases Judaism and Downgrades Christianity

The 2003 Basic Law, currently in force, protects "all other heavenly religions" — a phrase that implicitly includes Judaism. The Arafat-era 2003 draft constitution explicitly guaranteed "sanctity and respect" to "Christianity and all other monotheistic religions" and protected religious worship sites for "followers of all monotheistic religions."

The 2026 draft strips all of this away. Article 4 mentions only Christianity — and downgrades it from "sanctity and respect" to the vague formulation that it "has its status" and its followers' "rights are respected." Judaism is not mentioned once in the entire document, not even as a "heavenly religion."

Which means that the Palestinian constitution would allow dismantling every synagogue and Jewish holy place in Jerusalem and elsewhere. 

Article 3 protects only "Islamic and Christian sanctities" in Jerusalem. Jewish sanctities — the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives — receive no mention and no protection. The same applies to Jewish holy sites throughout the claimed territory: the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. Under this constitution, Israeli administration of any of these sites is an illegal alteration of the land's "character and historical identity" (Article 3). Jewish worship there takes place under the authority of an entity the constitution identifies as a genocidal occupier. And any Jews who want to visit these sites are subject to arrest and prosecution as participating in genocide.

Islamic Sharia is established as "a primary source for legislation." Christians will live under a legal system whose primary source is the religious law of another faith, with only the vague assurance that their "rights are respected." This is a big step backwards from previous Palestinian documents.

France — the country of laïcité — helped draft a constitution more Islamic supremacist than anything Arafat proposed.

The PLO and the State: Sovereignty Without Accountability

The Palestinian Authority has always been subordinate to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PA handles day-to-day governance — education, health, policing, tax collection — but political decisions are made by the PLO Executive Committee, an unelected, self-perpetuating body. Mahmoud Abbas holds both positions simultaneously, as PLO Chairman and PA President, which obscures the fact that these are separate institutions with the PLO firmly on top.

The new constitution does not change this hierarchy. It formalizes it.

The constitution creates an elaborate democratic architecture: a directly elected president limited to two five-year terms, a prime minister and cabinet accountable to parliament, a House of Representatives as the sole legislative authority, an independent judiciary, and a Constitutional Court with binding authority over constitutional interpretation. Chapters III through VII read like the framework of a serious parliamentary democracy. It all sounds impressive, and it seems to be dazzling the Europeans who want to see a modern Palestinian state.

But above all of it sits the PLO, untouched. 

Article 11 declares that the establishment of the state "does not diminish" the PLO's status. The preamble specifies that the PLO retains supremacy "until the achievement of full national independence and the realization of inalienable rights, primarily the right of return" and that it "continues to perform its national responsibilities according to the National Covenant." 

Which means that the PLO makes all the important decisions until Israel is destroyed, since Israel will never allow the "right of return."

The constitution defines in meticulous detail who controls the state. It never defines who controls the PLO. The PLO operates under its own charter, which the state has no authority to amend. The relationship is one-directional: the constitution protects the PLO from the state, but nothing protects the state from the PLO.

The constitution also erases the legal framework that has governed Israeli-Palestinian relations for three decades. Oslo is never mentioned and the agreements that the PLO and PA made over the past 30 years are not formalized.  The letters of mutual recognition are never referenced. Israel is never named. This is a deliberate regression: the 2003 Basic Law explicitly referenced "the interim self-governing arrangements resulting from the Israeli-Palestinian agreement." The new constitution replaces that foundation entirely, grounding itself instead in the 1988 Declaration of Independence and the PLO National Covenant — documents that predate and are incompatible with mutual recognition.

Nor does the constitution renounce armed resistance. Article 154 prohibits military formations outside the state's security forces, but Article 18 declares defense of the homeland and "the safety of its land" a "sacred duty," and the preamble celebrates "the continuous Palestinian struggle that has never ceased" against "colonial settlement occupation." More fundamentally, because the PLO operates under its own charter rather than under the constitution, the state's restrictions on armed groups do not bind the PLO or its constituent factions. Fatah's longstanding position that armed resistance remains legitimate is a PLO matter, not a state matter, and nothing in this constitution touches it.

In fact, Mahmoud Abbas told Macron in the  November 2025 press conference  that "we want a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law, transparency, justice, pluralism and the rotation of power." The constitution never mentions demilitarization. 

The result is a structure in which Palestinians can vote for a president and a parliament, but the body that holds ultimate political authority — the body that determines the national position on borders, refugees, Jerusalem, and relations with Israel — answers to no electorate, is governed by a document that rejects Israel's existence, has erased all prior commitments to peace, and retains the right to pursue armed struggle.

This is all a direct result of recognizing "Palestine" - and the French directly helped

Here is the timeline that European capitals do not want to discuss.

In June 2025, Abbas wrote to Macron promising reforms — condemning October 7, pledging to reform textbooks to remove hate speech, committing to demilitarize, accepting elections. Macron, satisfied, announced in July that France would recognize Palestine in September. Other European nations followed.

On August 18 — three and a half weeks after Macron's announcement, with recognition locked in — Abbas issued the decree establishing the constitution drafting committee.

In September, France, the UK, Canada, Australia, Belgium, and others formally recognized Palestine at the UN General Assembly, launching the "Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution."

In November, Macron hosted Abbas in Paris, announced a joint French-Palestinian committee to help finalize the constitution, and pledged €100 million in aid. Abbas told Macron he wanted "a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law."

In February 2026, the constitution was published. It mandates perpetual legal warfare against Israel, claims all the land, defines Israel as a criminal entity, erases Judaism, downgrades Christianity, and makes peace unconstitutional.

Abbas told Europe exactly what it wanted to hear. Then he drafted the opposite.

Every state that recognized "Palestine" used the reasoning that somehow this would advance a peaceful two state solution that everyone knows is the only way forward. Mahmoud Abbas smiled at them, promised reforms, and spat in their faces with a constitution that cannot ever allow peace or even co-existence with Israel. 

Why This Cannot Be Fixed

The constitution is designed to be self-protecting. Article 156 prohibits amendment of fundamental rights provisions — which is exactly where the most problematic provisions are embedded. The right of return, the genocide prosecution mandate, and the criminal law framework all sit within the protected zone.

A Constitutional Court with binding authority (Article 143) enforces these provisions against all state institutions. Even a peace-seeking government with moderate judges would find that honest jurisprudence requires striking down peace measures that conflict with unamendable text.

The PLO National Covenant is incorporated by reference, and the preamble is declared inseparable from the constitution. The genocide premise — once embedded as constitutional fact — poisons every possible avenue of coexistence: you cannot negotiate, trade, share infrastructure, cooperate, or even talk with your genocide perpetrator.

The drafters didn't accidentally create these interlocking traps. They engineered them.

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Conclusion: A Constitution for Destruction, Not Construction

The 2026 draft constitution answers a question that has defined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades: does the Palestinian leadership want to build a state, or destroy one?

The drafting of a constitution is the moment when a national movement reveals its true purpose. It is the moment you define the territory you intend to govern, establish relations with your neighbors, create legal frameworks for economic development and foreign investment, and build institutions designed to deliver services to your citizens. A constitution is a declaration to the world: we are ready to govern.

The 2026 constitution does none of this.

It defines no territory to govern. It establishes no framework for relations with the only neighbor its economy depends on. It creates no legal basis for the thousands of commercial relationships that already exist between Palestinian and Israeli businesses. It provides no mechanism for diplomatic recognition of the state next door — or any acknowledgment that the state next door exists.

Instead, every major structural choice in the document points outward — toward Israel, toward the ICC, toward international legal warfare — rather than inward, toward the actual work of building and running a country. It constitutionalizes victimhood rather than sovereignty. It creates obligations to pursue enemies rather than serve citizens. It builds legal machinery for prosecution, not for governance. The democratic architecture is real, but it is a shell around a weapon, not a government.

The PLO superstructure is the clearest tell. When a liberation movement achieves statehood, it absorbs itself into the state's institutions. The ANC became South Africa's governing party within a constitutional framework. SWAPO became Namibia's government. The state replaced the movement. This constitution does the opposite: it permanently elevates the liberation movement above the state, operating under its own unreformed charter, answerable to no electorate, and constitutionally immune from the state's authority. That is the choice you make when the struggle is not a phase you are transitioning out of but the permanent purpose of the enterprise.

This is not a constitution for a state. It is a constitution against a state — the one next door.

Abbas told Macron he wanted "a democratic, unarmed state committed to the rule of law." What he produced is a legal architecture for permanent war, designed to be irreversible, built with European money and diplomatic support, and aimed not at governing Palestinians but at dismantling Israel through the international legal system.

This draft constitution proves, as clearly as possible, that the Palestinians never wanted to build a state, but to destroy one. 

Every government that recognized the "State of Palestine" in the hope it would bring peace should be outraged at how they have been manipulated and lied to. And they should make it clear to Mahmoud Abbas that their recognition was conditional - and since the Palestinians have spit on those conditions, the recognitions are null and void. 

The full text of the Draft Constitution of the State of Palestine (February 2026), in unofficial English translation, is available at: https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/2026-02/2026.02%20-%20Draft%20constitution%20%28English%29.pdf

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 When UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese gave a speech at the Al Jazeera Forum recently, clips were circulated indicating she called Israel the "common enemy" of humanity.

She and her defenders then said that in context, she was talking about a "system", not about Israel.

So let's look at what she actually and her clarification, and using only her words and their logic, we can see exactly what she meant without any hand-waving. 

 Here is the entire speech and transcript:

We have been spending the last two years looking at the planning and making of a genocide. And the genocide is not over. The genocide as the intentional destruction of a group as such is clearly unveiled. Now it's been in the air for a long time and now it's a full display.  It's been difficult to report the genocide. Al Jazeera knows better than anyone else in the media realm, because of all the losses, it does suffer as a media company.

But no other people knows it better than the Palestinian themselves.  The Palestinians have continued to narrate the deluge of conscience that fell upon them relentlessly.

And this is a challenge, the fact that instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed [it],  giving it political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support, this is a challenge. The fact that most of the media in the Western world has been amplifying the pro-apartheid, the genocidal narrative is a challenge.  And at the same time, here also lays the opportunity.

 Because if international law has been stabbed in the heart, it's also true that never before the global community has seen the challenges that we all face.  We would not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms and weapons. We now see that we, as a humanity, have a common enemy.

 And freedoms, the respect of fundamental freedoms, is the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom. But we need to stand up. We need to do the right thing, all of us in our individual sphere,  being us lawyers, journalists, educators, students, ordinary citizens.

At home, we all have a role to play.  And this role is changing our habits. From what we choose to buy, to consume, to read, to how we stand in front of power, we need to be able to speak up.

We need to have the strength to look at each other and see our brothers and sisters, and see allies in them.  And in this respect, I think the Al Jazeera has a bigger challenge than others, because it is to stay true through its core values, through to the mission that has made it known around the world its ability to produce true facts and march toward justice with them in their hands.  

I do believe that Palestine will be free. I do believe that we will all be free, because too much human rights conscience is rooted in today's world after 80 years of preaching and teaching human rights.  But we need to, we need to act. And the time is now. So, for a 26th of full commitment toward accountability and justice.

Francesca Albanese tried to clarify her “common enemy of humanity” remark by saying she wasn’t talking about Israel itself. She meant “the system that enabled the genocide in Palestine – the financial capital that funds it, the algorithms that obscure it, and the weapons that enable it.”

But that clarification does not soften anything. It actually demonizes Israel more. 

Her whole speech is built on one claim: Israel is committing genocide. Everything else in the speech hangs off that. The “arming,” the “political shelter,” the “media amplification,” the “international law stabbed in the heart” – all of it is presented as support for Israel’s alleged crime.  

So when she says the system that enables this is the “enemy of humanity,” she is not downgrading Israel’s role. She is building a hierarchy:

• Israel is the actor committing the alleged genocide.

• The system that enables Israel is the enemy of humanity.

• And anyone who will not join the indictment is implicated as part of that system.

The word “system” does not detract from the claim that Israel is uniquely evil. It is the opposite. It turns Israel into the paradigm of evil and then expands the blast radius outward to include everyone who refuses to treat Israel that way.

In short, if the system that allows Israel to exist is an enemy of humanity, all the more so is Israel itself. Calling the enablers “the enemy of humanity” does not make Israel less of an enemy. It makes Israel, logically, the central enemy of humanity — and it enlarges the category of "enemies of humanity" to include anyone who doesn’t treat Israel as a pariah - Americans, British, French, even her own Italian government. 

So reading her own words - and her explanation - does not make her less of an antisemite. It proves it. 

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The Shelved Report That Exposes HRW's Antisemitism

 Two senior Human Rights Watch staff members, Omar Shakir and Milena Ansari, resigned last month over the organization's decision to shelve a report concluding that Israel's refusal to allow Palestinian "refugees" and their descendants to "return" constitutes a crime against humanity. The New York Times and other outlets are framing this as a story about HRW's internal politics and the courage of principled researchers.

They're missing the real story: the report's underlying logic reveals how accusations against Israel consistently rely on assuming Jewish evil from the outset—and that assumption is itself antisemitic.

While the report hasn't been published, the NYT article provides enough detail to reconstruct HRW's likely legal argument. The dispute centers on "whether there is a solid legal basis for the sweeping determination that denying the right of return to a particular location causes a level of suffering that rises to a crime against humanity."

Under the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity require proof that acts were committed "as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack." 

Here are the crimes against humanity listed in the Rome Statute:

(a) Murder;
(b) Extermination;
(c) Enslavement;
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
(f) Torture;
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender
 (j) Apartheid;

How on Earth can a nation's immigration policy be put in the same category as these crimes? How can it be considered an "attack" at all, which is the very definition of a crime against humanity? 

It cannot - but the HRW report almost certainly relies on an additional item listed in the Rome Statute:

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

Notice what's embedded both in that formulation as well as in the general definition of crimes against humanity: intentionality. 

Let's be explicit about what HRW's theory requires: Israel's immigration policy must be intentionally designed to cause great suffering to Palestinians. No nation on Earth allows anyone to become a citizen without fitting some criteria, and Israel's is no more onerous than that of most other countries. As a Jewish state, it favors Jews - but millions of people became citizens of European states without even being residents because of their ethnic ties. Germany's Spätaussiedler program, Hungary's citizenship-by-descent law, and Ireland's generous policies for those with Irish grandparents are all considered legitimate expressions of national identity. 

Only when Israel does that same is it considered an active act of aggression against another group of people specifically to cause suffering. HRW is arguing that Israel's immigration policy - denying entry to descendants of people who left in 1948, most of whom have never lived in Israel - belongs in the company of extermination and mass rape.. That standard immigration controls exercised by every state somehow constitute "intentionally causing great suffering" comparable to murder, torture, and enslavement.

We aren't even getting into the discussion of Israel's security needs that prompted the policy not to allow Arabs who fled in 1948, hoping for a quick defeat of Israel, to return. Nor about how the UN resolution that is misread to give a "right" to return also specifies that the people must be willing to live in peace, a requirement that was never met. 

The Arab world has been clear from the start that their insistence on "return" is a means to destroy Israel. Muhammad Salah al-Din Bey, Foreign Minister of Egypt, said in 1949, "It is well-known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters of the Homeland… they mean the liquidation of the State of Israel."

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was equally explicit. In 1961 he stated that Arab demands meant "the destruction of the State of Israel." Even more directly, Nasser declared: "If the refugees return to Israel – Israel will cease to exist." Arab leaders weren't hiding their intent - the "right of return" was always a demographic weapon to eliminate the Jewish state

HRW is not advocating human rights for Palestinian Arabs. It is demanding the destruction of Israel.

The  assumption of malicious intent when Israel is doing what every other nation does is not limited to this report.   It's the common thread running through every major accusation against Israel:

"Genocide": Amnesty International's recent report claims Israel commits genocide in Gaza. But genocide requires "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." If Israel's intent is to destroy Hamas then the entire argument falls apart - but Amnesty embedded the result claiming intent for genocide into the assumption. The accusation assumes the worst possible motive while ignoring the obvious alternative: self-defense against a terrorist organization that openly seeks Israel's destruction.

"Apartheid": Multiple NGO reports claim Israel practices apartheid. But apartheid requires intent "to maintain [a] regime of systematic oppression and domination." Israel's laws enshrining equality for its Arab citizens demolishes the "intent" requirement. As I've documented, Amnesty invented its own definition of apartheid to reach this conclusion.

"Illegal settlements": The portrayal of Israeli communities in the West Bank assumes they exist to "steal land" or "oppress Palestinians"—not for security, not because Jews have historical and legal claims to the territory, not because successive Arab rejections of peace offers left the status unresolved.

In every case, the methodology is identical:

1. Assume Israeli Jews act from uniquely malicious motives
2. Ignore obvious alternative explanations (security, self-defense, standard state practice)
3. Use that assumption of evil intent to "prove" the predetermined conclusion
4. Create legal standards that apply only when you've assumed malicious intent from the start

In this case, it is crystal clear that the HRW report was written with the conclusion first, and the legal justification shoe-horned in afterwards. (Which is similar to Amnesty's report which was referred to internally as the "genocide" report while it was being written.) 

This isn't just bias. It's a modern variant of an ancient libel.

The classical blood libel assumed Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes. The modern version assumes Jews design state policies specifically to maximize gentile suffering. The structure is identical: attribute uniquely evil motivations to Jews, dismiss obvious innocent explanations, use the assumption to "prove" extraordinary Jewish wickedness.

When you assume a Jewish state operates from fundamentally different and malicious motives than other states, you're not applying universal standards. You're applying a Jewish exception. And when that exception consistently assumes the worst possible intent while ignoring obvious alternatives, it reveals the prejudice driving the analysis.

The antisemitism becomes even clearer when you examine how Arab states treat the exact same Palestinian population.

Israel's immigration policies have been in place since 1948. There is no active oppression in not allowing Arabs to "return" to a state that almost none of them have ever lived. 

But Arab nations that have hosted Palestinian Arabs since 1948 have refused to give them citizenship for over 75 years. And this is a deliberate policy - the Arab League says that Arabs can become citizens of other Arab countries except for Palestinians.

Under HRW's own logic - that denying people citizenship causes 'great suffering' - this active, ongoing discrimination against actual residents would far more clearly constitute a crime against humanity than Israel's standard immigration policy. History has shown that Palestinians want to become citizens of Arab countries if they could, and the rare times that brief windows opened to allow some of them to be naturalized they enthusiastically took advantage of that. The 1951 Refugee Convention says, "The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees" and every Arab state has flouted that. (Even Jordan, which naturalized the West Bank Palestinians in 1951, has not done the same for Gazans who went to Jordan after the Six Day War; they are still living in camps without access to state services.) 

Don't hold your breath for HRW to accuse Lebanon, which doesn't even allow Palestinians to purchase land and forces them to live in overcrowded camps, of "crimes against humanity." But if HRW wasn't institutionally antisemitic and truly believed that keeping Palestinians stateless is a crime, that is exactly what they would do. 

Even Kenneth Roth, HRW's executive director from 1993 to 2022, called this "a novel legal theory that was unsupported by the facts and law." When Kenneth Roth - whose anti-Israel bias has been extensively documented - can't defend your reasoning, you've revealed the prejudice underlying it.

Interestingly, HRW and Amnesty claimed that the "right to return" is a legal requirement over 20 years ago, using a different argument. It was based on a purposeful misreading of  the Nottebohm ICJ case. They quote-mined an ICJ decision about citizenship disputes to mean the opposite of what it says - because they started with the conclusion that Israel must be violating international law and worked backwards, just as they have done countless times since. Elevating the argument to the even more absurd "crime against humanity" shows far more about HRW than about Israel. 

The report was led by Omar Shakir, HRW's Israel-Palestine director for nearly a decade. Shakir has a documented history of opposing Israel's existence dating to his college years. HRW hired him knowing this - they wanted someone who would assume the worst about Israel.

And that's precisely what this report represents: start with the assumption that Israeli Jews are uniquely evil, construct a legal theory that only works if you maintain that assumption, apply it only to Israel while exempting states engaged in far worse conduct.

The report may be shelved, but the effort to write it reveals the antisemitism embedded in HRW's institutional approach: assume Jewish malice, ignore alternative explanations, use that assumption to prove predetermined conclusions, and call it "human rights research."

When your entire analytical framework depends on assuming Jews act from uniquely evil motives, you're not doing legal analysis. You're perpetuating an ancient prejudice in modern legal language.

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