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“This is how you know The Riots violence in Iran are Mossad and CIA Sponsored” – Mark Taliano
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The Interrogation of Richard Falk: When Speaking Truth Becomes a “National Security Threat”/By Rima Najjar
Original Link Here: The Interrogation of Richard Falk: When Speaking Truth Becomes a “National Security Threat” – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization
Global Research, November 17, 2025Author’s Note: I wrote this essay to show what really happened when Richard Falk and Hilal Elver were detained at the Canadian border — and to explore what it reveals about power, accountability, and the fight to speak truth to authority.
Introduction: Two Scholars Detained, A Truth Confronted
Richard Falk has spent the better part of a century inside the world’s most serious rooms: the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the international legal tribunals where the language of war, occupation, and human rights is hammered into shape.
At 95, he carries his papers in neat folders and moves with the slow care of a man who has spent a lifetime thinking rather than rushing. His partner, Hilal Elver — a distinguished scholar and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food — is no more threatening than he is.
Yet when they stepped off their flight at Toronto Pearson Airport, on their way to Ottawa to speak about Gaza, they were taken aside, escorted down a narrow hallway, and placed in a brightly lit secondary inspection room.
The border agents told them they had been detained because they posed a “national security threat to Canada.”
Even as the Tribunal they were heading to in Ottawa gathered evidence and testimony, the state sought to preempt its impact at the very border. What followed was an interrogation of Falk and Elver that revealed a troubling conflation of Canada’s national security with ideological alignment to Israel.
The questions came one after another, circling obsessively around the same forbidden center:
“What exactly will you be saying about Israel in Ottawa?”
“Why did your UN reports criticize Israeli military actions?”
“Have you been in contact with Palestinian organizations?”
“What is your position on the war in Gaza?”
“Who invited you to this Tribunal, and why?”
The line of questioning was so singularly focused on defending Israeli policy that it betrayed a fundamental confusion of national interests. The agents wanted nothing about Canada — not a single question about contraband, immigration status, visas, residency, or criminal history.
Everything was about Israel.
Halfway through the four-hour ordeal, the absurdity sharpened into recognition: nothing Falk or Elver had ever written posed any threat to Canada. But everything they had documented about Israeli conduct — settlement expansion, blockade, collective punishment, starvation — posed a threat to Israel’s political security, and therefore, in the logic that now governs Canadian institutions, to Canada itself.
In that moment, the interrogation ceased to be absurd.
It became coherent — chillingly so.
Canada had collapsed the boundary between its own national security and Israel’s political narrative — the border itself enforcing it.
This transformation did not happen overnight. It is the product of a political logic constructed over decades.
How Political Loyalty Becomes a Matter of National Security
First, criticism of Israel has been steadily recast as a security issue, rather than a political disagreement. Organizations such as CIJA, B’nai Brith, and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center — which explicitly identify as Jewish and advocate for the preservation of Israel as an apartheid Jewish state — have spent years briefing Canadian politicians, police, and security agencies with the claim that Palestinian solidarity, criticism of Israeli occupation, or support for boycotts constitutes “extremism” or “potential radicalization.”
These same zionist organizations have shaped Canadian security discourse in ways that conflate Palestinian advocacy with extremism.
Second, Canadian governments have elevated support for Israel from a diplomatic position to a pillar of national identity. Israel is framed as a frontline state in the “war on terror,” a democratic ally in a dangerous world. Once foreign policy is securitized (treated as a national security matter), ordinary political disagreements — like criticizing Israeli policies — are portrayed as destabilizing or threatening to Canada itself, even when they clearly pose no real risk.
Third, Canadian institutions increasingly outsource their concept of “risk” to these advocacy groups. They monitor their cues, amplify their alarms, and follow their frame.
This posture is rooted in a complex blend of geopolitical alignment, domestic political calculations, and a shared settler-colonial history that makes Canada’s political establishment uniquely sensitive to challenges of Israel’s legitimacy.
We have seen this pattern before. The same choreography that silenced a local activist in Vancouver was now being deployed at the national border against a former UN official. The system, it seems, operates the same way whether the target is a grassroots organizer or an international jurist.
Charlotte Kates: A Domestic Parallel
When Vancouver activist Charlotte Kates praised Palestinian resistance at a rally in 2024, nothing happened immediately. Police did not arrest her, prosecutors did not open a file.
But within hours, B’nai Brith had clipped her speech, declared it a threat, and demanded action. CIJA echoed the alarm. Only then did the Vancouver Police launch a hate-crime investigation, followed by bail conditions barring Kates from attending any rallies at all — a remarkable prior restraint in a country that claims to champion free expression.
The sequence was unmistakable:
- these Jewish lobby groups declare a threat
- political pressure mounts
- security apparatus activates
This is the same choreography that surrounded Falk for over a decade. When he served as UN Special Rapporteur, his reports documenting Israeli violations sparked coordinated denunciations from the same advocacy networks. They repeatedly urged the Canadian government to isolate him, discredit him, or keep him out entirely.
So when Falk arrived in Canada to speak at a Tribunal these groups had already condemned, the border system reacted exactly as it had been trained: it treated him, not as an elderly scholar with a folder of notes, but as an ideological hazard.
The Tribunal: What It Sought, What It Found, Why It Matters
The Ottawa Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility — the event Falk and Elver were traveling to — was a hybrid people’s tribunal, legal inquiry, and moral intervention. Held at the University of Ottawa’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre, it brought together over fifty witnesses: survivors from Gaza, Palestinian legal scholars, Indigenous leaders, international jurists, and Canadian lawyers working on arms exports and sanctions obligations.
The Tribunal stands squarely in the lineage of historic people’s tribunals, translating past lessons into direct scrutiny of Canada’s policies. Its task was explicit: to examine how Canada enables the destruction of Gaza.
Survivors described starvation, displacement, and the annihilation of communities. Experts traced Canadian-made components in Israeli drones and jets. Lawyers detailed Canada’s obligations under the Genocide Convention and its failures to meet them. Indigenous speakers drew parallels between Canada’s own settler-colonial foundations and Israel’s occupation.
Falk articulated the legal framework of third-state responsibility — the duty of one country not to assist in genocide in another. Elver presented evidence of starvation used as a weapon, a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
The Tribunal’s final judgment is still forthcoming. But the record it has produced is already significant: a structured, public, internationally connected archive of Canadian complicity.
And it raises the question that haunts every people’s tribunal:
Do these efforts matter? Or are they symbolic gestures swallowed by the indifference of power?
History answers decisively.
The Legacy of People’s Tribunals
People’s tribunals have long served as moral vanguards ahead of official recognition.
The Russell Tribunal on Vietnam reframed U.S. actions as war crimes — long before mainstream institutions dared to.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine declared Israeli apartheid in 2011 — ten years before Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International adopted the same framework.
The Tokyo Women’s Tribunal established sexual slavery as a crime against humanity, shaping UN reports and national reparations debates.
The International Monsanto Tribunal influenced the UN’s consideration of ecocide.
The World Tribunal on Iraq created a powerful, lasting historical record that shaped global public opinion.
These tribunals lacked formal authority. But they changed the language, categories, and evidence base through which justice would later be pursued. The Ottawa Tribunal is cut from that lineage.
The Impact of This Tribunal
The Tribunal produced:
- survivor testimony that cannot be erased,
- legal analysis that will echo in courtrooms and UN submissions,
- a public record of Canadian complicity,
- and an international conversation amplified — ironically — by the state’s attempt to suppress it.
Most Canadians would never have heard of the Tribunal without Falk and Elver’s detention. What the border tried to silence became national news. Their detention provoked a chorus of condemnation that echoed the Tribunal’s own purpose: Canadian Senator Yuen Pau Woo called it “appalling,” Azeezah Kanji called it “outrageous,” and British sociologist Martin Shaw described it as “an extraordinary development in the global repression of the Palestinian cause.” Falk himself identified the core motive: a system designed to “punish those who endeavor to tell the truth.”
The Tribunal cannot stop the bombs over Gaza, but it can stop the silence that makes them possible. It lays the groundwork for future accountability, shifts the moral terrain beneath political actors who rely on public ignorance, and ensures that when the history of Gaza is written, Canada’s role will not be omitted.
But truth does not end with tribunals. What can the average person do in the face of such entrenched power? Not everything — but not nothing. They can refuse the silence that the security-state narrative depends on. They can circulate tribunal testimony, challenge the framing of Palestinian advocacy as extremism, and create spaces — in classrooms, unions, community centers, faith circles, and media — where Canada’s role can no longer hide behind rhetoric. They can support legal efforts pursuing accountability and organizations that monitor the expanding reach of border and security agencies.
They cannot force the state to reveal its operations — but they can make secrecy costly. Falk himself could not prevent his detention, but public outrage ensured the attempt at silencing became a public confession. This is the leverage ordinary people retain: the ability to expose the system’s logic and make complicity visible.
The border could detain Falk, but not his message. It could hold two scholars for hours, but it could not hold back the truth they carried. And it cannot halt the reckoning that emerges when testimony, law, and collective conscience refuse to be dismissed as a “security threat.”
Conclusion: The Real Threat
What happened to Richard Falk and Hilal Elver in that small border room was not a bureaucratic accident. It was a political act. It revealed a system in which dissent about Israel is treated as a security threat, where Palestinian advocacy is pathologized, and where scrutiny of Canada’s own responsibilities is met with hostility.
But the threat they posed was never to Canada.
It was to complacency.
To hypocrisy.
To the comfort of not knowing.
To the political immunity that protects powerful states from accountability.
In the end, the greatest threat to power is not two distinguished scholars. It is the truth they carry — and the courage of those willing to hear it. The border could hold them for hours, but it could not contain the reckoning their testimony will demand — or the truth that ordinary people can no longer ignore.
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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher, and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. Visit the author’s blog.
She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from the author
Global Research is a reader-funded media. We do not accept any funding from corporations or governments. Help us stay afloat. Click the image below to make a one-time or recurring donation.
The original source of this article is Global ResearchCopyright © Rima Najjar, Global Research, 2025 -
Inverting Reality: The Optics of Trump’s “Peace” Plan. A Powerful Message From Palestine/By Rima Najjar
Restoration is not symbolic. It is material, legal, and historical. Justice is the return of what Israel, the colonizer and occupier, took.
Original Link Here: Inverting Reality: The Optics of Trump’s “Peace” Plan. A Powerful Message From Palestine – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization
Global Research, October 15, 2025Introduction: Fractured Optics and the Need for Clarity
The ceasefire and prisoner exchange have burst onto our screens in a confusing array of images and clashing narrative frames, with commentators interpreting events differently depending on their geographic and political vantage points.
This essay analyzes the visual and rhetorical strategies surrounding the October 2025 prisoner exchange between Palestinian resistance factions and Israel, Donald Trump’s speech to the Israeli Knesset, and the summit in Sharm al-Shaikh. It exposes how optics are weaponized to invert reality — casting colonizers as peacemakers and resistance as terror — while suppressing Palestinian suffering, agency, and return. Through detailed critique of terminology, media choreography, and civilizational framing, the essay argues that these narratives enable impunity, obscure structural violence, and foreclose justice. It calls for dismantling not through counter-spectacle, but through restoration of what rightfully belongs to Palestinians.Optics as Strategy: What Is Shown and What Is Suppressed
In politics, optics are not incidental — they are strategic. They shape public perception, frame moral legitimacy, and obscure the mechanisms of power. The October 2025 prisoner exchange between Palestinian resistance factions and the Israeli state, followed by the public ovations for Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset and by Sharm al Sheikh’s summit posturing, offers a case study in how optics are deployed to convey “resolution” while concealing its reality as a threshold that names impunity, reframes resistance, and cracks the silence.
Terminology as Inversion: Hostages vs. Prisoners
The very terminology used to describe the exchange of captives on October 13 is itself an inversion of reality. Media and political leaders consistently refer to Israelis held in Gaza as “hostages,” while Palestinians released from Israeli jails are labeled “prisoners.” This framing creates a false moral distinction: one side is imagined as innocent civilians unjustly seized, while the other is cast as convicted criminals whose detention is presumed legitimate. In fact, both groups are people deprived of their liberty within the context of a violent conflict and an entrenched system of domination.
It is crucial to note that many of those described as “hostages” were not neutral civilians but members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) or otherwise engaged in military operations that form part of Israel’s ongoing aggression against Palestinians. This distinction matters not only for understanding the nature of the exchange, but for interrogating the broader structure of complicity within what is often described as Israel’s “democracy.”
In Israel, military service is compulsory for Jewish citizens, with most serving in the IDF at age 18. This means that the majority of Israeli Jews are not merely passive observers of state violence — they are direct participants in its enforcement. Whether stationed at checkpoints, operating surveillance systems, or engaging in combat operations, conscripts are embedded in the machinery of occupation. Their service is not neutral; it is structurally tied to the containment, displacement, and erasure of Palestinians.
Complicity extends beyond the battlefield. In a system where governments are elected and policies are publicly debated, voting becomes a mechanism of endorsement. Successive Israeli governments — whether led by Netanyahu or his political rivals — have upheld Zionist frameworks that prioritize Jewish sovereignty over Palestinian rights. These governments have expanded settlements, maintained the blockade on Gaza, and legislated apartheid-like conditions through laws such as the Nation-State Law of 2018. The electorate’s consistent support for such policies reflects a societal consensus that accepts, and often demands, Palestinian dispossession as the price of national security and identity.
This is not to say that every Israeli Jew is ideologically aligned with these policies. There are dissenters, activists, and organizations that challenge the status quo. But structurally, the system is designed to absorb dissent without altering its foundational logic. The result is a democracy that functions for one population while systematically disenfranchising another. Palestinians under occupation cannot vote in the elections that determine their fate. Their lives are shaped by a government they did not choose, enforced by soldiers they did not summon, and narrated by media they cannot access.
To understand the prisoner exchange, then, is to understand that the captives described as “hostages” are often agents of a system that imprisons, surveils, and kills. Their capture is not an aberration — it is a consequence. And the society that mourns them while ignoring the suffering of those they helped subjugate is not innocent. It is implicated.
Their capture occurred in the context of armed confrontation, not random abduction. On the other side, many of the Palestinians released were minors, political detainees, or individuals held under “administrative detention” without charge or trial — conditions that international human rights organizations have long condemned as violations of international law.
When we strip away the rhetorical asymmetry, what occurred was not “hostages for prisoners” but an exchange of prisoners. Both sides were holding captives, and both agreed to release them under coercive circumstances. Calling only one side’s captives “hostages” hides the deep imbalance of power and normalizes Israel’s carceral system — a vast network of confinement and control that goes beyond prisons to include surveillance, restriction, and domination. It recasts colonial violence as routine governance, erasing the reality of systemic oppression.
By narrating the exchange as unilateral victory, the discourse erases the fact that Israel, as the occupying power, maintains tens of thousands of Palestinians in its prisons and detention centers, while Palestinians in Gaza held a far smaller number of Israelis, many of them combatants, in response to ongoing siege and military assault.
In this way, the terminology itself — “hostages” versus “prisoners” — functions as a discursive weapon. It obscures the reality of mass incarceration and subjugation under occupation, while elevating Israeli captives as the sole moral reference point. The effect is to mask asymmetry as parity, and then to narrate the outcome as if it were Israel’s earned triumph rather than a reciprocal exchange forced by the balance of coercion.
The Architecture of Incarceration
Since 1967, Israel has arrested over one million Palestinians — an average of 47 per day for nearly six decades. Yet the prison population rarely exceeds 6,000 at any given time, revealing a system not built for containment, but for circulation: a revolving door of trauma, fragmentation, and control. As of May 2025, over 10,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons, with only 1,455 sentenced. The rest — over 6,700 — languished in legal limbo: awaiting trial or held under administrative detention without charge.
Suppressing the Optics of Survival: Israeli Captives and Media Control
Unlike previous exchanges — most notably the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal — Netanyahu’s government actively restricted how the released Israeli captives were received. Officials limited media coverage, discouraged public gatherings, and instructed families to avoid spectacle. While the government cited medical and psychological concerns as justification, the timing and contrast reveal a deeper motive: to suppress the impact of the visual evidence that Israeli captives had survived Palestinian captivity.
This restraint stands in stark contrast to the optics emerging from Gaza just before the release. On October 13, Al Qassam Brigades released a video clip showing one of the Israeli captives standing beside a masked fighter, calmly communicating with his family via mobile phone. The footage, filmed from behind the family as they held the device, captured the captive’s face on screen alongside the Al Qassam member — composed, unrestrained, and clearly under the group’s protection. The message was unmistakable: Al Qassam was in control, not only of the captive’s safety but of the narrative. The scene conveyed discipline, operational coherence, and a level of restraint that directly contradicted the dominant portrayal of Palestinian fighters as indiscriminately violent.
To show survival in this way would be to admit that Palestinian factions exercised care, that they distinguished between combat and cruelty, and that they upheld a code of conduct even under siege. It would also mean acknowledging the astonishing resilience and military craftsmanship required to keep captives alive amid relentless bombardment, infrastructural collapse, and siege conditions. These images reveal the moral contradiction of a state that calls its actions self-defense while stripping away the humanity of those it cages, bombs, and surrounds.
By suppressing these optics, the Israeli government preserved a narrative architecture in which Palestinian resistance is always terror, and Israeli suffering is always sanctified. Survival, in this context, is not just a biological fact — it is a political threat.
Erasure of Palestinian Return
In contrast to the tightly choreographed reception of Israeli captives, the return of Palestinian prisoners — many held for decades under administrative detention — was met with minimal coverage in Israeli media. Their names, faces, and stories were largely omitted. No televised reunions, no interviews, no national reflection. This erasure is consistent with Israel’s broader carceral strategy , which seeks not only to imprison but to decontextualize and dehumanize. The optics of Palestinian return are suppressed because they challenge the framing of prisoners as threats rather than political subjects.
Yet the numbers and scenes defy invisibility. On October 13, Israel released 1,968 Palestinians under the ceasefire agreement, including 96 political prisoners and over 1,700 detainees taken from Gaza and the West Bank during the war. Among those released were:
- Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a youth activist from Jerusalem detained without trial since 2021.
- Alaa al-Din al-Husseini, a community organizer from Khan Younis held under administrative detention for over seven years.
- Samira Abu Jaber, one of the few women released, imprisoned since 2018 for organizing protests in Nablus.
- Yousef al-Khatib, a former student leader from Birzeit University, held since 2020 for alleged incitement on social media.
In Beitunia, West Bank, and Khan Younis, Gaza, thousands gathered to welcome them. Crowds erupted in cheers as buses arrived, many waving flags and flashing V-for-victory signs. In Beitunia, released prisoners were wrapped in keffiyehs — symbols of resistance and pride — and lifted onto shoulders. In Khan Younis, buses parked outside Nasser Hospital became sites of reunion, with families pressing against windows to glimpse those inside. One viral clip showed a released prisoner dancing outside the hospital, surrounded by cheering relatives.
Palestinian media documented these moments with clarity and reverence. Footage showed prisoners embracing relatives, stepping off buses with tears and raised fists, and being welcomed by crowds that had waited for hours. In Ramallah, families held photos of loved ones and chanted their names. These scenes conveyed not just joy, but endurance — proof that even amid siege and fragmentation, memory and solidarity persist.
And yet, these optics rarely penetrate international coverage. Western outlets focused on the release of Israeli captives, often relegating Palestinian return to a footnote. The imbalance is not accidental. It reflects a media architecture that privileges Israeli grief and suppresses Palestinian resilience. To show the return of prisoners is to acknowledge their humanity, their suffering, and their political significance. It is to admit that the carceral system is not neutral, but ideological. And that admission remains too inconvenient for the dominant narrative.
The Knesset Ovation: Applause for Delay
The most jarring optic came when Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu received standing ovations for “ending the war” during Trump’s speech to the Israeli Knesset on October 13, 2025. The chamber erupted as Trump declared, “This is not only the end of a war, this is the end of an age of terror and death and the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God.”Trump’s declaration at the Knesset — framing the Gaza ceasefire as the “end of an age of terror” and the “beginning of the age of faith” — relies on theological and civilizational binaries that obscure the material asymmetries of the conflict. By invoking “God” and “hope” while omitting any reckoning with genocide, occupation, displacement, or Palestinian suffering, the speech performs closure without accountability.
Netanyahu, flanked by coalition members and opposition figures alike, was praised as “one of the great wartime presidents” and urged to be pardoned for corruption charges.
Netanyahu, Trump at the White House (right)
The image and words conveyed resolution, leadership, and closure to Israelis. But they concealed the chronology: that the war could have ended in 2023, when the same exchange terms — release of Israeli captives in Gaza in return for Palestinian prisoners and detainees — were first proposed by resistance factions. That the Israeli government refused to negotiate, prolonging the war for two years. That the applause was not for peace, but for delayed concession.
By October 13, 2025, the cost of delay was staggering. Over 36,000 Palestinians had been killed, tens of thousands displaced, and Gaza’s infrastructure reduced to rubble. The final exchange involved 20 surviving Israeli captives and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including 250 held on “security” charges and 1,700 detained without trial. Yet the Knesset audience applauded as if the outcome were a triumph of diplomacy rather than a coerced resolution to a war that could have ended before it began.
The ovation reframed tactical retreat as strategic brilliance. It hallowed Israeli grief while omitting Palestinian suffering. It celebrated the return of Israeli captives — “to the glorious embrace of their families,” as Trump put it — while ignoring the fact that their survival was made possible by the very factions excluded from the summit and vilified in the speech. The applause did not mark the end of war. It marked the successful rebranding of delay, devastation, and asymmetry as statesmanship.
Trump’s Knesset Speech: Inversion as Doctrine
If the Knesset ovation was the theatrical apex of civilizational self-congratulation, Trump’s speech functioned as its doctrinal codification.
The address sanctified Israeli grief, with Trump describing so-called “hostages” coming home to the “glorious embrace of their families” and the burial of others in “this sacred soil for all of time.”
In this framing, Israel’s pain is positioned as morally redemptive, while Palestinians appear, at most, as a logistical backdrop to the exchange. Palestinian suffering that precedes and exceeds the exchange of prisoners is not denied outright; it is reclassified as logistical detail, stripped of ethical weight and political urgency.
Trump’s call for President Herzog to pardon Prime Minister Netanyahu refers to Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, which includes charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery. Specifically, Netanyahu and his wife Sara are accused of accepting over $260,000 worth of luxury gifts, including cigars, champagne, and jewelry, from wealthy businessmen in exchange for political favors and regulatory benefits.
By dismissing these allegations as trivial — “Who cares about cigars and champagne?” — Trump reframes corruption as inconsequential in the context of wartime leadership. His comment implies that Netanyahu’s role in the war and the prisoner exchange overshadows the need for legal accountability, suggesting that wartime valor should absolve peacetime misconduct.
This rhetorical indulgence stands in stark contrast to Trump’s remarks about the Palestinian Authority, which he described as “corrupt, broken, and incapable of peace” during his Knesset address. The juxtaposition is telling: Netanyahu’s corruption is forgiven as patriotic excess, while the PA’s dysfunction is weaponized to delegitimize Palestinian governance altogether. One is excused, the other condemned.
Trump reframes reciprocity as generosity. In his speech, he presents the exchange of hostages and prisoners — negotiated under coercion and shaped by deep asymmetry — as a benevolent act by Israel. He ignores the fact that both sides held captives and both made concessions. Instead, he casts Israel’s participation as moral magnanimity, erasing the reality of mutual leverage and structural imbalance.
By doing so, Trump turns a forced compromise into a triumph of virtue, Western civilizational virtue, softening the truth of mass incarceration, siege, and demographic control. His rhetoric transforms domination into goodwill, and in doing so, conceals the violence that made the exchange necessary in the first place.
Trump’s address does not merely mislabel resistance as terror; It reshapes how resistance is morally understood — turning struggle into threat, and justice into disorder. By treating the outcome as a moral victory, it normalizes Israel’s systems of control — borders, permits, prisons, surveillance — as ordinary governance rather than colonial instruments.
Finally, Trump’s implicit “build on your win” logic signals continuity. It is not a call for closure but for entrenchment. Leverage the moment, the speech suggests, to harden territorial, legal, and political gains. The exchange becomes a springboard — not for reconciliation or parity — but for further consolidation. Any pathway to equality is subordinated to the imperative of securing the dominant position. In this schema, peace is not mutual recognition — it is the pacification of the colonized.
Sharm al-Sheikh: The Summit as Spectacle and Strategic Erasure
The Sharm al-Sheikh summit on October 13, 2025 was carefully choreographed to project closure and control. Co-chaired by Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and attended by leaders from 27 countries, the event was staged as a moment of unity and triumph. The stage design, seating arrangements, and ceremonial gestures reinforced the image of Western and regional powers delivering peace to a grateful region.
Trump stood at the center, flanked by allies, receiving Egypt’s highest honorand declaring the ceasefire “a sacred day” and “the answer to the prayers of millions.” His speech described the moment as “a new beginning for an entire, beautiful Middle East,” casting the outcome not as a compromise shaped by resistance and mediation, but as a historic achievement led by those who had shaped — and prolonged — the war.
Trump’s speech presented the ceasefire as a moral victory led by Western and regional powers. He used phrases like “sacred day” and “answer to the prayers of millions” to portray the outcome as a moment of divine and civilizational achievement. This framing gave credit to the states that brokered the deal while ignoring the role of Palestinian resistance and the conditions that forced the exchange. It reinforced the authority of those who shaped the war’s trajectory and excluded those most affected by it.
Trump deliberately failed to recognize the role of Hamas, which led the negotiations and held the majority of Israeli captives, or the involvement of other factions such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
We saw them arrive. The negotiators — Hamas officials, flanked by Egyptian intermediaries — entered Cairo under tight security, carrying the weight of a war they did not start but were forced to end. Their presence was real, documented, and deliberate. Yet at Sharm al-Sheikh, they were nowhere. Not named, not acknowledged, not invited.
The very actors who preserved life under siege, who forced the exchange, who negotiated under bombardment — were erased from the summit’s choreography. Their absence signaled that survival under siege, strategic negotiation, and political coherence remain inadmissible in the dominant frame.
Instead, Trump praised Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey for their mediation, cast Israel as resilient and restrained, and urged further regional normalization through the Abraham Accords. His language was sweeping — “a new beginning,” “a tremendous day for the world” — but the omissions were sharper than the declarations.
The attending states played supporting roles in this choreography. Egypt and Qatar, while instrumental in brokering the ceasefire, were framed as facilitators of Trump’s vision, not as advocates for Palestinian sovereignty. Turkey’s presence signaled pragmatic alignment, not ideological solidarity. Gulf states used the summit to reaffirm their commitment to regional stability, signaling that economic reconstruction and diplomatic normalization would proceed without confronting Israeli impunity. Their participation endorsed a post-war order in which containment replaces liberation, and visibility substitutes for accountability.
Netanyahu’s absence was not incidental — it was strategic. Facing domestic backlash and ongoing corruption trials, his non-attendance allowed Trump to speak on Israel’s behalf without the burden of political baggage.
Ignoring Netanyahu’s indictment as a war criminal by the ICC, the summit enabled a cleaner narrative: Israel as dignified, wounded, and magnanimous, rather than embattled, divided, and culpable. By omitting Netanyahu, the summit avoided the optics of scandal, dissent, and butchery, allowing Trump to universalize Israeli interests without friction.
In sum, Sharm al-Sheikh was not a site of reconciliation — it was a mechanism of narrative consolidation. It allowed Trump to sanctify his role, regional states to signal alignment, Israel to retain moral authority, and Palestinian resistance to be erased. The summit did not end Israel’s rapaciousness — it rebranded its architecture.
Beyond Optics: The Day After for Palestine; for Israel
Together, these optics form more than a media spectacle — they constitute a narrative infrastructure. They determine who is seen, who is heard, and who is erased. They allow states to claim moral high ground while suppressing inconvenient truths.
For Palestine, the day after as planned by the US and Israel is a continuation of siege, displacement, and juridical erasure. The framing of Trump’s speech forecloses the possibility of redress by rendering Palestinian suffering as either incidental or deserved. It strips resistance of its political logic, recasting it instead as a symptom of dysfunction or deviance. The colonized are not just silenced — they are re-scripted as threats to peace, obstacles to progress, and relics of a past that must be overcome.
For Israel, the day after is a moment of consolidation beyond optics. Trump’s speech does not merely celebrate a tactical exchange — it elevates Israel’s trajectory into a sacred civilizational narrative. It licenses further entrenchment: territorial expansion, juridical impunity, and the normalization of apartheid governance. Rather than hiding power, the optics put it to work. They convert narrative into structural power, enabling Israel to operate without accountability while presenting itself as victim, savior, and civilizational model.
Palestinians will continue to demand the return of what history confirms is theirs. This is not a struggle for visibility — the world has already shown up, with millions marching in solidarity. It is a fight for land, dignity, political agency, and the right to tell their own story. It refuses to be boxed into dominant narratives or erased by deceptive rhetoric.
Restoration is not symbolic. It is material, legal, and historical. Justice, here, is not a performance — it is the return of what Israel, the colonizer and occupier, took.
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Click the share button below to email/forward this article. Follow us on Instagram and X and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost Global Research articles with proper attribution.
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher, and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. Visit the author’s blog.
She is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from the author
Global Research is a reader-funded media. We do not accept any funding from corporations or governments. Help us stay afloat. Click the image below to make a one-time or recurring donation.
The original source of this article is Global ResearchCopyright © Rima Najjar, Global Research, 2025 -
Zionist Soldier Testifies that October 7th was a False Flag Operation
ADAM on X: “An Israeli soldier testifies UNDER OATH that October 7th was a FALSE FLAG, and that he was ordered to STAND DOWN from 5:20am to 9am the day of the attack. You could face up to 5 years in prison for sharing this video in Israel. https://t.co/XQMN4ucYvu” / X
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???????? Israel-Hamas War – An Update
Zionist Soldier Testifies that October 7th was a False Flag Operation – Mark Taliano
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Zionist Crimes Against Syria/ By Saheli C and Dr. Marwa Osman
You may have heard about clashes between Druze and Bedouin people in Sweida, Syria. At least 99 people were killed and more than 200 were injured in the clashes. In the middle of this, the Zionist entity has struck military installations in Sweida.This is a ploy by the Zionist entity to steal the land.Here is what the iconic Lebanese journalist Dr. Marwa Osman has to say about it:“I’ll be damned if the Takfiri terrorist attack on Syria’s Sweida by Julani’s gangs isn’t part of a fully coordinated plot with Zionist Israel, cornering the governorate into a manufactured existential crisis, pushing its people toward a so-called plea for “protection” from the very entity plotting their downfall.Make no mistake: this is not chaos, it’s choreography.Julani isn’t a rogue warlord, he’s Netanyahu’s proxy, learning the craft of war crimes from the master himself and obeying every command from the orange-tinted throne in Washington.Occupation by design, betrayal by proxy. Sweida is not a pawn. Don’t let them sell it off.But I fear it is too late.”All this occurs amid the Jolani gang’s announcement of a “normalisation timeline” with the Zionist entity. The terrorists who rule Syria now will give away the occupied Golan Heights to the Zionist entity as a “guarantee” of normalisation.This is who the “Assad must go” crowd supported.Now that our people are being killed and a nation is being disappeared, it is total silence from them.READ MORE:Via Eva Bartlett/ TelegramBasira Press:
Jolani’s sectarian massacres serve the Zionist Oded Yinon planIn the latest round of unhinged Wahabbi terrorists attacking minority groups in Syria, the Druze of Sweida find themselves in the crosshairs following the coastal massacres of Alawites.However, the leadership who calls the shots are not entirely unhinged as the sectarian footsoldiers they send to commit the crimes. Given that normalization between Jolani and the illegitimate Zionist entity is all but official — and the entire “revolution” in Syria being a Zionist/NATO-orchestrated regime change plot from day one to achieve this normalization — everything Jolani does actually serves the Zionist and American strategy of “ordo ab chao” (order out of chaos, a Masonic motto).This Zionist formula for Balkanization of Syria according to the Oded Yinon plan (https://ifamericansknew.org/history/zionistplan.html) is simple:
1. Install “former” ISIS commanders into power in Syria, give them suits and ties to “rebrand” their bloodsoaked image2. Have this new government led by merciless Wahabbi terrorists commit sectarian massacres at the behest of the Zionists who brought them to power in the first place3. The Zionist regime then pretends to cry crocodile tears for various minority groups which they pretend to have affinity for, such as the Druze (due to some — not all — Druze leaders being pro-Zionist).4. The Zionists use this as an excuse to occupy larger parts of Syrian land under the guise of protecting the Druze.A proven case of the Zionist regime controlling both sides of the war: they control Jolani and the takfiri terrorists while also controlling the percentage of pro-Zionist Druze leaders who issue statements for the “israelis” to come and save them. There are some honorable Druze leaders who oppose the Zionist regime and issue statements noting that these massacres serve a suspicious Zionist agenda, but the Zionist regime puts the statements of pro-Zionist Druze leaders as a sort of colonial charter and permission to occupy more parts of Syria.The tragic massacres of Druze in Sweida that are surfacing on social media are not just planned in Damascus by Jolani and his “former” ISIS thugs, but planned in “Tel Aviv” and Washington, D.C. too. -
UN expert: 60+ companies support ‘Israel’s’ settlements, Gaza genocide
A UN expert names more than 60 companies, including arms and tech giants, for supporting “Israel’s” settlement expansion and war on Gaza.
Original Link Here: UN expert: 60+ companies support ‘Israel’s’ settlements, Gaza genocide | Al Mayadeen English
A United Nations expert has accused more than 60 companies, including major arms manufacturers and global technology firms, of contributing to “Israel’s” settlement expansion and “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.
The report was compiled by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Albanese based her findings on over 200 submissions from states, human rights organizations, academic institutions, and companies.
Published on Monday, the report urges companies to cease all dealings with “Israel” and calls for legal accountability for executives involved in alleged violations of international law.
“While life in Gaza is being obliterated and the West Bank is under escalating assault, this report shows why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many,” Albanese wrote in the 27-page document, accusing corporate actors of being “financially bound to Israel’s apartheid and militarism.”
“Israel’s” mission in Geneva dismissed the report as “legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of her office.”
Read more: Stop the genocide or witness end of life in Gaza: UN experts warn
Arms and tech giants accused of enabling Israeli war crimes
The companies named in the report span several sectors, including military, construction, and technology. Although the report does not always specify whether each firm is linked to settlement activity or military actions in Gaza, it emphasizes that their contributions play a role in enabling alleged war crimes.
Among the arms manufacturers listed are Lockheed Martin and Leonardo, whose weapons are reported to have been used in Gaza. Caterpillar and Hyundai are accused of supplying heavy machinery that contributed to property destruction in the Palestinian territories.
Tech companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are described as “central to Israel’s surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction.”
Alphabet has previously defended its $1.2 billion cloud contract with the Israeli government, asserting it does not support military or intelligence operations.
Palantir Technologies was also named for supplying artificial intelligence tools to the Israeli military, though the report does not specify their exact use.
Report to be presented to UN Human Rights Council
The report expands on a previous UN database of firms involved in settlement activity, last updated in June 2023, and introduces new corporate actors allegedly tied to the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza.
The findings will be presented to the 47-member UN Human Rights Council on Thursday. While the Council does not hold binding legal power, its investigations have, at times, contributed to international prosecutions.
Earlier this year, both “Israel” and the United States disengaged from the Council, accusing it of systematic bias against “Israel”.
Read more: Gaza aid turned into tool of war: UN expert
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On the Criminality of the Western Political Class
What Can an Iranian learn from Syria?
Iranians must understand (and many no doubt do) that the Western political class has been criminalized.
Just as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) (1) is a corrupt agency which enabled the downfall of Syria and the installation of an al Qaeda junta, so too is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) corrupt.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf correctly assessed on June 23, that “the world clearly saw that the IAEA has failed to uphold its commitments and has turned into a political instrument.” (2)
Furthermore, sources indicate close cooperation between the IAEA and Israel which allowed or enabled Israel to assassinate Iranian scientists. (3)
Instead of being a neutral arbitrator, the IAEC has facilitated the Zionist Israel’s war crimes against Iran.
Saheil C.’s conclusion that “the IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria.” (4) is very prescient.
Giving credibility to these and other Western-corrupted agencies fabricates unreasonable doubt in the minds of Western masses and enables Supreme International Crimes such as Israel’s recent bombing of Iran based on fake pretexts.
Iran has not been making nuclear weapons, unlike its accusers in Israel and Washington who have nuclear weapons. As with the genocide in Gaza, Empire’s and its Israeli proxy’s accusations are its confessions. See this:
Transcript:
LeaAnn Duncan
June 14 at 12:43 PM ·
WikiLeaks: US intelligence assessed just weeks ago that #Iran is not building a nuclear weapon
“The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.
The IC is monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.” – Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, 25 March 2025Then there is the question of opposition. In Syria, Washington and allies installed an al Qaeda junta. In Syria, Washington and allies pretended that the opposition was moderate when in fact they were supporting al Qaeda and ISIS all along. Al Qaeda and ISIS were the “opposition”. Iran needs to be aware of these deceptions.
The ”New Syria” has been committing genocide (5) against Alawites, and now Christians are once again being targeted.
The West does not want democracy or freedom in Iran. It wants a puppet government just like its al Qaeda puppet in Syria.
Washington wants Iran’s oil (6) and resources and its subservience in its drive for geopolitical hegemony, and full spectrum control. Remember Wesley Clark: 7 countries in 5 years. Iran is on the list.
Washington’s world conquest,(7) its permanent warfare and its pre-planned Supreme International crimes are consistent with the label Fourth Reich. It acts like a global dictator imposing its supremacist will beneath waves of war propaganda.
The Third Reich ended badly, but the supremacist ideology which disregards and corrupts international law, which has criminalized the Western political class, which wages permanent warfare based on war propaganda, lives on.
Notes:
(1) “Tulsi Gabbard on OPCW Corruption. ” marktanliano.net website, 26 March, 2021. (Tulsi Gabbard on OPCW Corruption. – Mark Taliano) Accessed 24 June, 2025.
(2) Saheil C. ” IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria./ By Saheil C -” marktanliano.net website. 24 June, 2025 (“IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria.”/ By Saheil C – Mark Taliano) Accessed 24 June, 2025.
(3) Press TV, “Secret documents seized by Iran expose IAEA chief’s close cooperation with Israel” 12 June, 2025. (Secret documents seized by Iran expose IAEA chief’s close cooperation with Israel) Accessed 24 June, 2025.
(4) Saheil C. ” IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria./ By Saheil C -” marktanliano.net website. 24 June, 2025 (“IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria.”/ By Saheil C – Mark Taliano) Accessed 24 June, 2025.
(5) Mark Taliano,”Well-Documented Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in Syria.” Global Research, 14 April, 2025. (Well-Documented Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide in Syria – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 24 June, 2025.
(6) Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, ” Video: U.S. and Western Allies Behind the Genocide. Israel’s Role in the U.S.-NATO War Against Iran (1953-2024)Video on the Criminalization of Politics” Substack (Video: U.S. and Western Allies Behind the Genocide. Israel’s Role in the U.S.-NATO War Against Iran (1953-2024) ) Accessed 24 June, 2025.
7. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky,”Video: War and Globalization, America’s Roadmap of Conquest, Blueprint for Global Domination: Michel Chossudovsky” Global Research, 14 June, 2025. (Video: War and Globalization, America’s Roadmap of Conquest, Blueprint for Global Domination: Michel Chossudovsky – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 24 June, 2025.
READ MORE:
Washington Subverts ICC – by Mark Taliano
(1) America’s “Humanitarian Wars” against Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Palestine
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“IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria.”/ By Saheil C
Iran to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) due to ‘politicised conduct’ of the UN organisationIranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on June 23, “Iran has no plans for non-peaceful activities. But the world clearly saw that the IAEA has failed to uphold its commitments and has turned into a political instrument.”Ghalibaf emphasised that cooperation with the IAEA would remain suspended unless Tehran receives “tangible guarantees” of the agency’s neutrality.The announcement comes amid heightened tensions following Zionist entity’s ongoing unprovoked attacks on Iran and recent US airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan.Iran has also filed a complaint against the Director General of IAEA, Rafael Grossi, before the UN Security Council, voicing deep concern over Grossi’s grave dereliction of duty and his failure to fulfill his legal responsibilities under the agency’s statute.Fiiling the complaint, Amir Saeed Iravan, Iran’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said that the public remarks made by Grossi on the eve of the start of the Israeli war against the Islamic Republic of Iran constitute a glaring violation of the principle of neutrality required in his position.Grossi had remarked that “nuclear sites must never be attacked,” yet pointedly refrained from condemning the Israeli aggression on Iran’s nuclear facilities, an omission that Tehran views as tacit complicity.Meanwhile, Grossi urged compliance from Iran, the victim, and not the aggressors, Zionist entity and the US. He called on Iran to clarify the whereabouts of enriched uranium allegedly relocated from key nuclear facilities prior to the recent US and Israeli strikes.“There is a need to notify the Agency of any movement of nuclear materials from safeguarded facilities to other locations in Iran,” Grossi said. “Establishing facts on the ground is essential to any agreement, and that can only be achieved through IAEA inspections.”He urged Iran to return to the negotiating table and emphasised that IAEA inspectors, the “guardians of the Non-Proliferation Treaty” (NPT), must be granted access to the affected nuclear sites. Grossi specifically cited the need to verify the status of Iran’s stockpile of 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%, which he said remains a “central concern”.Grossi has a very strange idea of ‘central concern’, because in his position, his central concern should be ensuring the safety and integrity of nuclear facilities worldwide. However, it is not to be expected of him or the IAEA, given that the body had passed on to the Zionist entity critical information about the Iranian nuclear programme.On June 10, Iranian media released news of leaks through which the Iranian authorities obtained documents on the Zionist entity’s nuclear programme. What is worse, some of those documents revealed direct cooperation between Tel Aviv and the IAEA against Iran.The documents prove that “Iran’s official and confidential letters to the IAEA – containing sensitive information – were channelled to the espionage agencies of the Zionist regime through covert conduits,” a report published by the Fars news agency on June 10 noted.The report also noted that several top Iranian nuclear scientists ended up getting assassinated by the Zionist regime due to their names being disclosed by the IAEA.IAEA is doing in Iran what OPCW (Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons) did in Syria.READ MORE:
