Dear friends— Some wonderful news! The Norwegian committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize has announced that this year’s prize goes to the deeply experienced (and fearless) South African jurist Navi Pillay. Read their citation of the great value of her work, here. Back in 2003, I had the honor of interviewing Judge Pillay in Arusha, Tanzania, where as Presiding Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) she established two key new norms in the jurisprudence around genocide and war crimes, concerning rape and media incitement as tools of genocide. She was a thoughtful, incisive, and deeply well-informed presence. Judge Pillay’s life work draws a clear line from her support for the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa, where she served on Nelson Mandela’s legal team, to the pioneering role she played last year when, as chair of the UN Human Rights Council’s “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” she oversaw all the meticulous work needed to produce a legal analysis of Israel’s conduct in Gaza (PDF here.) That analysis of the facts and the relevant law concluded unequivocally that,
The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s prize to Judge Pillay sends some powerful messages worldwide. It centers the urgent issue of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the need to end it. It is a (discreet) slap in the face to Pres. Trump, who has made no secret of his longstanding desire to win the prize himself. And it indicates that the Norwegian political elite that is responsible for the composition and work of the Nobel Committee is eager to distance itself from the ties to Israel (and to Jeffrey Epstein) that so many of the elite’s members have long hewed to, the extent of which were shockingly revealed in the recent releases of Epstein’s emails. For his part, Trump reacted to the news from Norway by announcing punishing new sanctions against judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC,) a group that had included Judge Pillay, 2003-2008. It’s good to note that (like Russia, China, and numerous other states) the U.S. has never actually been a member of the ICC. But by issuing unilateral “sanctions” against the court Trump can cripple the ability of the targeted judges and of the court itself to maintain websites, to conduct routine financial transactions, and so on. As we know, this is just the latest in a long series of decisions Pres. Trump has taken that seek to undermine international law and long-established international institutions. Nearly all these decisions, like this one, have been taken on the clear grounds of defending Israel from being held to any effective form of international accountability. Here’s what else I’ll be covering (as succinctly as possible) in today’s Just World Ed newsletter:
New PalCast ep brings voices of Palestinian med ics on Gaza’s front-linesThe latest episode of our amazing PalCast project is titled “We Will Not Abandon Our Patients: Two Doctors in Gaza.” It brings to listeners the voices of Palestinian physicians Dr. Ahmed Alqady and Dr. Abdullah Almobayed. Speaking from Gaza with hosts Yousef and Tony, the two docs (who have not been paid since October 7, 2023) describe their work providing medical care to patients at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis and also in a small medical tent in Mawasi. Dr. Abdullah Almobayed (l.) and Dr. Ahmed Alqady (r.) In the ep, the doctors described the scale of the medical needs they faced each day. Their little tent received at least 70 patients daily, while many more sought treatment at the hospital. They have been treating severe malnutrition, gastroenteritis, scabies and other contagious diseases, conditions gravely worsened by displacement, poor living conditions and limited access to clean water. The shortage of medicines and medical supplies had made their work even more difficult, with their patients sometimes dying while waiting for essential medication that could not enter Gaza. Both docs talked about the stress of witnessing the deaths and suffering of patients, colleagues, and neighbors. They spoke about the targeting of medical workers, including a colleague who was killed while taking part in a rescue mission. Despite these risks, they remained committed to their patients and described helping their people as both a priority and an honor. With winter approaching, they were also preparing their makeshift tent for heavy rain and seeking support for medicines and other supplies. Drs. Alqady andAlmobayed called on people around the world to keep Gaza in their thoughts and to continue pressuring governments to stop the genocide. Listen to this full episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and share it with others to help keep attention on the realities faced by patients and medical workers in Gaza. Useful resources on the “meaning” of October 7, from Rami Khouri, myself, and “Mujamma Haraket”With this past week seeing the third anniversary of the Hamas-led breakout from Gaza that Hamas leaders had named “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, several commentators— myself included— shared analyses of the impact of that operation and its gruesome, long-drawn-out aftermath. I’ll take a quick look at these three:
Here they are: Rami Khoury on “Seven things that have been exposed since October 7, 2023”On October 7, our esteemed colleague Rami Khoury appeared in this informative 26-minute discussion on TRT World. He also, as usual, helpfully shared his talking points for that appearance, here. Here’s his lede there:
The first of these seven things was this:
I also found his #5 notable:
My essay on “Gaza genocide at 3”I published this on my personal Stack on October 6. The full title was “Gaza genocide at 3: Israeli-U.S. cruelty and the smart, deep resistance to it are changing the world.” And my lede was this:
Obviously, I hope you go read the whole thing! Post your comments, and share it with your friends and networks! I just want to add a quick additional note about the image I used there: I have seen several different photos of that mass-funeral event and also of (I think) a separate one. Back in the late 1970s, I worked as a foreign correspondent in Beirut, covering some of the worst atrocities committed during the civil war in Lebanon. Here’s what these images from Gaza say to me:
Mujamma Haraket on how Hamas had hidden its preps for the operation in plain sightI know there’s been a lot of commentary in Western media in recent weeks about the degree to which Israeli PM Netanyahu “knew in advance about” or “must have known in advance about” Hamas’s plans to launch their big breakout from Gaza. (Much of that commentary seems to have had the clear purpose of discrediting Netanyahu in the lead-up to the Israeli general election due on October 27.) On October 7, Electronic Intifada published an excellently sourced, wide-ranging piece in which the Palestinian analyst known as “Mujamma Haraket” systematically took down much of that speculation. “Such discussions,” he wrote,
The campaign to shun top foreign policy officials from the Biden era heats up, informed by A.S. Ahmed’s powerful new bookSmart U.S. journo Akbar Shahid Ahmed recently released his first book, Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza. It is a searing, in-depth account, based on “interviews with more than 150 officials and other involved,” of how the top foreign-policy officials of the Biden era dealt with the grotesque, almost immediately genocidal actions that Washington’s most-favored aid recipient Israel took in post-October 7 era. As we know, a handful of very ethical officials from that era started to resign from their positions. But the vast majority chose not to. Ahmed has clearly talked at length with individuals from all along that spectrum, and this book, published by W.W. Norton, is the result. As of now, I have had time only to dip into the book, to check on the high quality of its documentation and indexing, and so on. Here is his conclusion: Concurrently with the release of Ahmed’a important , detailed record, a coalition of U.S. activist organizations has recently launched an important campaign titled DropTheGenocide20. Here are the members of the coalition: The campaign’s web-site contains a lot of well-researched info about the 20 former Biden administration officials whom they seek to have the democratic Party shun, going forward. Check it out! The key action the campaign urges people to take, at this point, is to sign this pledge: Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed thus far. I have. I very warmly invite you to, too! Key news items from the UKThe diplomatic spat between London and Tel Aviv continues. After the new-ish UK government announced a plan to ban goods and services sourced from Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank, the Israeli government demanded that the U.K. close its long-usedconsulate in occupied East Jerusalem. This week, the two sides speedily agreed to re-name the consulate a “Mission” while reducing the number of diplomats posted there by around 50%. Meanwhile, there have been conflicting accounts of whether, and to what extent, London may have been cutting back on the very extensive cooperation with Israel in the military and intel fields it has engaged in throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza thus far. Middle East Eye recently carried this account of the somewhat confused state of play on this. It included these points:
Also in the past week, the powerful Palestinian-rights leader susan abulhawa finally won her long battle to have the prestigious Oxford Union Debating Society restore the full version of the contribution she made to a November 2024 debate on the motion, “This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” Read more on her battle to have the edited portions of her speech restored, here. And of course, do go and watch the whole of her 20-minute address that day, which you can now see on the OUDS’s Youtube channel, here. A fight for free speech in the U.S.… And we have many, continuing struggles here in the U.S. too, to protect people’s rights to voice open criticisms of Israeli and U.S. policies. One of these struggles is that of the outlet BreakThrough News to resist subpoenas issued against its journalists Zoe Alexandra, Rania Khalek, and Amanda Yee. Read more about this attempt to harass BTN and these journalists, here. They also have a petition that they (and I) urge people to sign. It’s here. So that’s it for now. October is, obviously, shaping up to be another busy month in world affairs, what with the election in Israel— which actually I don’t think is going to change much at all, in terms of the suffering that any potential election victor is likely to inflict on Israel’s neighbors— and the run-up to the November 3 mid-terms here in the U.S. Oil-industry and other analysts say that despite all Trump’s claims, there is unlikely to be any change in the all-important rate of inflation here for oil, diesel, or other basic goods. For that and many other reasons, Republican candidates seem to be trailing in the polls in many states. At the global level, Israel, Washington (and also Jeffrey Epstein’s friends in Saudi Arabia’s palaces) are evidently capable of visiting terrible, continuing harm on the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen. And yet, those long-threatened peoples have retained their capacity to resist those colonial punishments, and to some extent at least, to start to fight back. We are no longer in the 19th century. Thank God. As Indi Samarajiva has recently noted, the current era is, intriguingly, one of the “democratization” of military capabilities… Before I sign off, though, here is my customary request for your support: Please, please, give what you can! For more than ten years now, Just World Ed has been a constant voice for Palestinian rights, for an end to the era of the West’s bullying global hegemony, and for the construction of a just and peaceful world order. Your continuing support will let us keep our groundbreaking programs going! You stay well— ~ Helena You're currently a free subscriber to Just World Ed's substack. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. © 2026 Just World Educational Foundation |