Dear friends--
Back on April 2, Pres. Trump caused chaos in the international economy by slapping a long roster of crazily high tariffs on all the world's other countries. This week, he unleashed chaos in international governance by successfully subordinating the whole of the United Nations to his own personal ends in Gaza... while he also proposed settling the Ukraine war largely on Russia's terms-- provided that Russia pay $100 billion to the United States (or to him personally?) for the privilege.
Meantime, he continued upping the volume on his saber-rattling against Venezuela. (And he also hosted a demonstratively friendly meeting with incoming NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani, who talked unabashedly in the Oval Office about the need to end U.S. support for "the Israeli genocide in Gaza" while Trump continued looking on, apparently fondly. Fascinating.)
How to make sense of all of this?
![]() On Gaza-- and also on Ukraine/Russia-- the University of Chicago's Prof. John Mearsheimer is an excellent place to start. On Gaza, if by chance you're not one of the thousands of people who've viewed the hour-long conversation I had with him Tuesday about the UNSC's vote of the day before, then I urge you to do so.
You can find a quick digest of that conversation, and links to the audio and text versions of it, at this post on the JWE blog. And by the way, we've also uploaded the whole of the UN's official, English-language version of UNSC resolution 2803 along with its (also official) 20-point Annex, to our website for your convenience. You can access it here.
In our convo, Mearsheimer and I shared our dismay that all of the UNSC's 15 members had allowed the Washington's Gaza resolution to pass. Indeed, all the Council's non-permanent members along with France, the U.K., and the U.S. voted affirmatively for it. Russia and China were the two standouts, but both of them chose not to use their veto to block it.
![]() A little later, our friend Amb. Chas Freeman sent me his quick take on the reasoning he thought was probably informing China's choice. You can read his-- as always, super-smart-- conjectures here. (The reasoning of Algeria and the three other Muslim-majority states currently on the Security Council seems much harder to fathom.)
One thing Freeman, Mearsheimer, and I, along with just about all the informed observers who've been looking at the resolution agree on is that it is probably unimplementable, since in its present form it is highly unlikely that any third nations will contribute troops to the "International Stabilization Force" that it envisions. Hamas and all the other Resistance factions in Gaza have squarely opposed the resolution as it stands.
Hence, really, all that this resolution achieves is that it drags the name, the effectiveness, and the credibility of the United Nations as a whole further into the mud of Trump-inspired global chaos.
![]() By the way, our Just World Ed board member Rami G. Khouri has been all over global media recently with his smart critiques of the SC resolution. E.g., on TRT, on Aljazeera, and here on Canadian Radio.
... Another don't-miss analyst this week has been the veteran (and resigned-on-principle) UN human rights official Craig Mokhiber. The analysis of the resolution that he published midweek on Mondoweiss provides an essential primer on Resolution 2803's many shortcomings.
Then, in his appearance Thursday on the EI Livestream Mokhiber made the crucial observation that Resn. 2803 gives Pres. Trump the sole authority, via his position as head of the grotesquely mis-named “Board of Peace”, to do anything he wants regarding the administration of Gaza.
Mokhiber’s comment was: “It’s not even colonial, it’s King Leopold-esque” -- a reference to the fact that during the grossly genocidal period of “Belgian” rule over the Congo, 1885-1908, that whole vast territory was being administered as the personal property of Belgium’s King Leopold II.
So now, our president wants to be King Donopold I?
Some quick thoughts on Trump's impact, more broadly...
The guy is so deeply mercurial, so deeply corrupt, so deeply self-centered and uninterested in either facts, evidence, or the sensitivities of other people-- except on the crucial matter of whether they respond to him with due deference and adulation-- that it is quite impossible to reach any firm judgment about what he might do next, and therefor what the effects of those actions might be. What can be concluded already, based on the record of his earlier four years in office and now the ten months he has served of his second term, is that he seems to actively relish his role as disrupter-in-chief... whether of the domestic political and constitutional balance, of the global economy, or of the global political/strategic balance and the norms associated with that.
So he is probably quite happy to see the venerable, 80-year edifice known as the United Nations crumble into near-oblivion as its remnants get sucked ever further into the vortex of Trumpian chaos. All those of us-- and I count myself as one-- who until recently thought naively that this lumbering old beast of the UN could probably carry on operating with some degree of effectiveness for another few decades have been given a rude wake-up call.
Over the past couple of days I tried to organize my thoughts on this matter, and I penned this (slightly rambling) essay on Globalities, under the title, "As the UN crumbles, what?" In it I briefly reviewed, among other things, the instructive story of the demise of UN's precursor organization, the League of Nations-- which was followed/accompanied, as we should note, by the outbreak of World War 2.
The League of Nations had these features in common with the UN:
- It was founded on the inspiration of a U.S.president, at a time when the U.S. military had just made a decisively successful intervention in a global conflict.
- After its founding, the powers-that-be in Washington then progressively turned away from maintaining the viability of the body and the integrity of its norms. (Okay, for the League, that disinterest actually manifested from the very beginning: after Pres. Woodrow Wilson inspired its founding, he then unable to persuade the U.S. Senate to ever join it. For the UN, Washington's disinterest was much slower to manifest. But it has mounted over the course of many decades. It certainly did not start with Trump.)
So, the demise of the League of Nations was accompanied by the extreme rise in global tensions that led to WW2. How can we be sure that the demise of the UN will not lead to WW3?
On this point, I am somewhat sanguine, since even if the UN's erosion continues there remain many other institutions in the international field that may well prevent such a cataclysm. (Also, as we all know in 2025, any significant global conflict, if allowed to rage unchecked, could all too easily lead to the obliteration of the entire human species and much of our natural environment. So that has to also be a factor.)
Today, there are numerous other, non-UN international institutions and networks, of which I identified only a handful in my Globalities essay. The whole world is tied together in so many more ways, and in much speedier and more impactful ways, than it was in 1939. This is a function of global trade, global communications, and global technology...
Indeed, right now, there are two key global gatherings underway from which Pres. Trump has decided to completely abstain: the COP-30 summit in Brazil, and the G-20 summit in South Africa. Though the U.S. absence likely detracts in important ways from the "success" of those two gatherings-- depending how that is measured-- still, by all reports, some meaningful deliberations have been held, and some very worthwhile plans drafted. So maybe not having an ever-needy U.S. delegation present and acting as a spoiler has not been all bad?
I'm hoping to write more-- and consult with experts more-- on these weighty issues in the weeks ahead. (And if you read the essay at Globalities, I'd much welcome any reactions you want to share in the Comments box there.)
... On the specific issues of Trump's other current international preoccupations I'll just note that (a) I am deeply opposed to all the saber-rattling and threats of escalation he's engaging in against Venezuela-- as are, according to all the polling, a strong majority of other Americans; and (b) while I have some criticisms of aspects of Trump's 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, over all, I think that some such plan as this is long overdue, and the main points in his plan seem to me to be basically realistic and sound.
![]() Indeed, I am still really proud that back in April 2022 Just World Ed was one of the pioneer bodies in the Western discourse space that was actively calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine. At that point, we were still calling for, effectively, a cessation of the fighting to be followed by a (possibly lengthy) period of armistice during which the many thorny issues over which the war was being fought could hopefully be resolved through peaceful means.
Pres. Trump's Peace Plan is much bolder. It calls for speedy conclusion of a final peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia on the basis of specified Ukrainian territorial concessions and specified steps to ensure Ukraine's continuing independence, geopolitical neutrality, and economic viability. Finlandization, if you will-- which worked pretty well for Finland for several decades. Not the worst situation in the world... and certainly, much much better than the continuation of the still ghastly carnage in Ukraine.
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The Israeli-U.S. genocide in Gaza continues
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As our dear colleague Prof. Richard Falk noted during the convo I had with him three weeks ago, with the start of the U.S.-brokered "ceasefire" in Gaza on October 10, the Israeli-U.S. genocide in Gaza did not end. It shifted from being an "intensified" genocide to being an "incremental" one. That seems a very apt description.
Since Oct. 1, Israel has carried out its (U.S.-backed) killings of Palestinians in two key ways:
- Through a continuation of actual military strikes. On November 11, Aljazeera reported, citing Gaza's government media office, that Israel had violated the ceasefire "at least 393 times." It had "shot at civilians 113 times, raided residential areas beyond the 'yellow line' 17 times, bombed and shelled Gaza 174 times, and demolished people’s properties on 85 occasions... Israel had also detained 35 Palestinians from Gaza over the past month." On November 19, Aljazeera reported that Israel had killed a further 28 Palestinians, and wounded 77, in military attacks on that day.
- Through continued, debilitating restrictions on the delivery of vital aid. Some of the best reporting on the dire circumstances in which Gazan families are forced to live has been coming from the (as it happens, non-UN) Save the Children organization. On November 18, SCF reported that, "Children in Gaza are sleeping on the bare ground with no shelter, in flimsy shorts and t-shirts that are sodden with sewage water after their tents flooded in a weekend of heavy rains, putting them at risk of disease... Hundreds of tents and makeshift shelters were flooded on Friday, affecting more than 13,000 households, according to the UN, as Gaza’s harsh winter conditions begin." Read also the details in this recent UNRWA report.
New Palcast episode from rain-drenched Gaza
![]() Be sure to listen to the latest episode of the PalCast, in which the guest is translator Maryam Elwaheidy who joined the co-hosts Dr. Yousef Aljamal and Tony Groves from Gaza City. This episode has the heart-breaking title, "If I Start to grieve, I May Never Stop."
(If you click on the link for this episode at either Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, at the beginning you'll hear the voice of Irish TD-- parliamentarian-- Richard Boyd Barrett, talking about some of his long leadership in Palestinian rights activism.)
For her part, Maryam updated listeners on the latest situation on the ground after the heavy fall of rain which flooded the tents of displaced Palestinians. The group also discussed how the world was pretending that the so-called ceasefire means everyopne can now forget about Gaza and what Israel has done there over the last two plus years...
Be sure to listen to the convo with Maryam and to share it with your friends and networks!
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Big congrats to Yousef Aljamal, OR Books, and the late Dr. Refaat Alareer on their Palestine Book Award!
![]() In 2024, our friend and colleague Dr. Yousef Aljamal did amazing work on a broad range of projects, including our PalCast and several projects for the American Friends Service Committee... He also worked really hard to pull together a powerful anthology of the key writings of our dear, late friend Dr. Refaat Alareer, who was assassinated by Israel in December 2023. The anthology was published by OR Books last December under the iconic title "If I Must Die". Ten days ago, at the Palestine Book Awards festival in London, the organizers presented Yousef (and by extension, his publisher) with the "Creative Award" for 2025!
Of course, we can only, with deep aches in our hearts, wish that Refaat himself were still alive to receive this recognition, and also to be continuing his groundbreaking work of both finding ever-new ways to express his own hopes and his anguish over the state of his beloved Palestinian people, and working with care and love to support the work of up and coming generations of Gaza-Palestinian writers...
But still, a hearty congratulation to Yousef and to all the team at OR Books!
Some future planning for Just World Ed
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We have now produced five episodes of our big current project, the "Gaza & the World" podcast series, and we hope that you and your friends and networks have found this project informative and worth continuing. Remember, too, that we've been putting the multimedia archives of all these episodes onto this very valuable Online Learning Hub, which can be a lasting-- and still further growing-- educational resource.
But I have a big international trip coming up. I am soon traveling to Malaysia, where I'll be taking part in the big International Day of Palestine gathering on November 29, and after that, to Istanbul. We will therefore be taking a hiatus from our regular weekly-episode schedule for "Gaza & the World", while doing some planning for how we want to take it forward from mid-December on.
While I'm in those two countries, I'm also hoping to pursue a couple of other Just World Ed-related initiatives. So stay tuned...
I realize, too, that this habit that we we call "Giving Tuesday" here in the United States is also coming up! For many U.S.-based nonprofits, this is a big day for End-of-Year fundraising; and this year, GT is coming up December 2. So whether or not you've already started planning your End-of-Year donations, my colleagues on the board and I would all be very grateful if you could put Just World Educational onto your list, and dig as deep as you can!
We are small, which lets us stay feisty and agile. And all the contributions that other board members and I, and our distinguished guests, make to our programming, are contributed pro-bono. But Just World Ed still has numerous monthly bills to meet, and we are deeply appreciative of all of you who help us meet them.
At both Donorbox and PayPal, you can easily sign up for for a monthly giving plan. Or, do one-time giving. Or, if you want to send a check, you'll find the address by clicking on the "Give" button, below.
Our big thanks and appreciation for all of you who've donated recently! It means a lot to us-- and it keeps our programs going.
You stay well and stay safe in these truly, Trumpishly, tempestuous times. And Happy Thanksgiving.
~ Helena
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And P.S. don't forget this great book from Just World Ed, if you haven't read it yet:
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