The destruction of Palestine is breaking the world

By Moustafa Bayoumi Sun 6 Jul 2025 09.00 EDT

The rules of the institutions that define our lives bend like reeds when it comes to Israel – so much that the whole global order is on the verge of collapse

Sereen Haddad is a bright young woman. At 20 years old, she just finished a four-year degree in psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in only three years, earning the highest honors along the way. Yet, despite her accomplishments, she still can’t graduate. Her diploma is being withheld by the university, “not because I didn’t complete the requirements”, she told me, “but because I stood up for Palestinian life”.

Haddad, who is Palestinian American, had been raising awareness on her campus about the Palestinian fight for freedom as part of her university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The struggle is also personal for her. With roots in Gaza, she has lost more than 200 members of her extended family to Israel’s war.

She was part of a group of VCU students and supporters who attempted to set up an encampment in April 2024. The university called in the police that same night. Protesters were pepper-sprayed and brutalized, and 13 were arrested. Haddad was not charged, but she was taken to the hospital “because of the head trauma that I endured”, she told me. “I was bleeding. I was bruised. Cuts everywhere. The police slammed me down on the concrete, like, six different times.”

But last year’s attempted encampment wasn’t even the reason Haddad’s degree is being withheld. This year’s peaceful memorial of it was. And how that scenario played out, with the university and campus police constantly changing the rules, illustrates something worrisome far beyond the leafy confines of an American campus.

Israel’s war in Gaza is chipping away at so much of what we – in the United States but also internationally – had agreed upon as acceptable, from the rules governing our freedom of speech to the very laws of armed conflict. It seems no exaggeration to say that the foundation of the international order of the last 77 years is threatened by this change in the obligations governing our legal and political responsibilities to each other.

We are ignoring the collapse of the international system that has defined our lives for generations at our own collective peril

This collapse began with the liberal world’s lack of resolve to rein in Israel’s war in Gaza. It escalated when no one lifted a finger to stop hospitals being bombed. It expanded when mass starvation became a weapon of war. And it is peaking at a time when total war is no longer viewed as a human abhorrence but is instead the deliberate policy of the state of Israel.

The implications of this collapse are profound for international, regional and even domestic politics. Political dissent is repressed, political language is policed, and traditionally liberal societies are increasingly militarized against their own citizens.

Many of us disregard how much has shifted in the last 20 months. But we are ignoring the collapse of the international system that has defined our lives for generations at our own collective peril.

On 29 April 2025, a group of VCU students met on a campus lawn to remember the forcible dismantling of an encampment briefly erected on the same space the year prior. The gathering was not a protest. It was more akin to a picnic, with some students using banners from past demonstrations as blankets. Others brought actual blankets. Students sat on the grass and studied for their finals, tinkered with their laptops, and played cards or chess. A handful of the 40-odd students sported keffiyehs.

It turned out the blankets were a problem.

Almost two hours into their picnic, a university administrator confronted the students over a social media post that had advertised the gathering. (“Come be in community with one another to commemorate 1 Year since VCU’s brutal response to the G4Z4 Solidarity Encampment. Bring picnic blankets, homework/finals, art supplies, snacks, music, games,” a local Palestinian solidarity group had posted.) Because of this post, the university considered the picnic an “organized event”, and since the students hadn’t registered the event, it was deemed a violation of the rules.

The rules at VCU had been changing because of protests for Gaza since February 2024.

The administrator told the students they could relocate to the campus free-speech zone, an area that had been established in August 2024 because of the protests of that year. “An amphitheater next to four dumpsters” is how Haddad described the area to me.

When students expose the violence of Israel’s occupation and genocide, institutions [...] become fearful

Sereen Haddad

Read the article here.

Sereen Haddad. Photograph: Olivia Cunningham

Gaza: Doctors under Attack. Watch the film here...

‘Say You Are Hamas’ – Haunting Testimony From Inside Israeli Prison in Our New Film

The documentary ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ is available to watch now – with exclusive interviews from detained Palestinian medics, plus an Israeli whistleblower, recounting torture and abuse.

Zeteo has released a harrowing new documentary originally commissioned by the BBC and meant to air in the UK this year. The British broadcaster repeatedly delayed airing the film and eventually claimed that releasing it would create “a perception of partiality.”

Zeteo takes the exact opposite view: to not release such an important and shocking film is what creates a “perception of partiality” – partiality towards Israel and its war crimes from one of the biggest mainstream media organizations in the world. We acquired the film because we are fed up of the pro-Israel bias that dominates the mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic and we believe this film needs to be seen.

‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack,’ made by Basement Films for the BBC, contains not only horrific and heartbreaking testimonies from Palestinian healthcare workers but also an exclusive interview with an Israeli doctor who, on condition of anonymity, details how the mistreatment of Palestinians was normalized at the notorious Sde Teiman prison.

I remember at least one case where a very painful procedure was being done, and the patient got no consent,” the doctor explains. “Things were not explained to him in his language, so he didn't know what was going on. I saw that happening, and I saw him screaming. And I saw no one stopping it. I think that was retribution, like that was a way to inflict pain.”

When asked about whether Israeli doctors were given any guidelines for treating prisoners, the Israeli doctor said, “The only guidelines that we see is about keeping ourselves anonymous, just because they wouldn't want their names coming out … they might be liable potentially of war crimes.”

One Palestinian paramedic, Walid Khalili, says he was detained, interrogated, and tortured at Sde Teiman, “hung up” in diapers, his hands “bound all the time,” with his interrogators repeatedly telling him: “Say that you are Hamas.”

‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ is a comprehensive investigation into Israel’s systematic targeting of Gaza’s healthcare system, including all 36 of its main hospitals, multiple times, and the killing of its doctors, nurses, and paramedics, in violation of international law. It is by no means an easy watch, but as the Guardian’s 5-star review of the film says…

Forget what got it stopped at the BBC. It is here now and, regardless of how that happened, we owe it to the subjects to not look away.

NOTE: Given this film depicts, in great detail, the genocide in Gaza, it contains scenes and descriptions of graphic violence.

Paid subscribers can watch the full film, above. And we thank our paid subscribers for their immense support in helping us take on, and fund, major projects like this.

Free subscribers can watch a preview. If you believe in what we’re doing and want to support this and future content, consider becoming a paid subscriber today. Your small or large contribution goes a long way in helping us continue our work.

If you would like to donate to Zeteo, to help fund further documentaries and investigations such as ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ and ‘Who Killed Shireen?’, you can do so here.

Israeli military used 500lb bomb in strike on Gaza cafe, fragments reveal | Israel-Gaza war

Israeli military used 500lb bomb in strike on Gaza cafe, fragments reveal

Exclusive: Experts say use of heavy munition in Monday’s strike that killed dozens may constitute a war crime hi did you leave

Jason Burke in Jerusalem

Wed 2 Jul 2025

The Israeli military used a 500lb (230kg) bomb – a powerful and indiscriminate weapon that generates a massive blast wave and scatters shrapnel over a wide area – when it attacked a target in a crowded beachfront cafe in Gaza on Monday, evidence seen by the Guardian has revealed.

Experts in international law said the use of such a munition despite the known presence of many unprotected civilians, including children, women and elderly people, was almost certainly unlawful and may constitute a war crime.

Fragments of the weapon from the ruins of al-Baqa cafe photographed by the Guardian have been identified by ordnance.

Read the article here.

Ordnance experts identified the fragments as parts of an MK-82 general purpose bomb. Photograph: Enas Tantesh/The Guardian

What to the Arab-American and the Child of Immigrants Is the Fourth of July?

As we walked toward the park for the fireworks display, my 5-year-old held my hand excitedly. “I want to see the fireworks up close,” she said. We’ve only watched neighborhood displays through our window, in previous years. She helped me pull her younger sister in the wagon behind us.

When the first fireworks lit up the sky, both children covered their ears. “It’s too loud!” They cried, looking up at the sky in awe. “How do they shoot them up there? I want to see,” said my older child, quickening her pace. But my heart paused.

For me, it is hard to separate the explosions lighting our night sky from over 600 days of explosions, also funded by our tax dollars, setting alight universities, hospitals, tents, and children in Gaza. The daily atrocities, which include illegally blocking food and humanitarian aid and then “deliberately” shooting at unarmed Palestinian civilians waiting for aid at U.S.-funded distribution sites, have all but faded from our newspapers.

No child should have to look up at the sky in fear that the bombs bursting in air will flatten their home, school, or hospital, or separate them from their loved ones.

Read the article here.