Category: BDS

REST IN PEACE, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

With the UN and the Norwegian Nobel Committee handing jurist Navi Pillay a megaphone on a platter, little wonder Hamas has welcomed her as its poster girl.

By Marika Sboros

(A shorter version of this article appeared in the Daily Friend on October 18, 2026.)

South African jurist Navanethem “Navi” Pillay was at a conference in Courtroom 600 at Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice on October 9 when the news broke that she had won the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.

Pillay (85) told journalists that the last thing she did before hearing the news was to “deliver the report on Gaza, naming what’s happening there as genocide”.

In the room where Nazi war criminals stood trial after World War II, a jurist declared the worst possible allegation against the Jewish state a guilty verdict. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has given it a seal of approval.

The timing was, by all accounts, coincidental. There was nothing coincidental in her choice of words, nor anything about peace.

Hamas has embraced her as its poster girl. Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim called Pillay’s prize a “message of hope.” Given the terror group’s explicitly genocidal charter against Israel, I don’t dare imagine what he actually hopes for.

Australian political cartoonist John Spooner was similarly cynical.

Pillay the Parot. John Spooner’s cartoon in an Australian newspaper captures Navi Pillay’s track record of a persistent bias against Israel much appreciated by Hamas that perpetrated the worst mass execution of civilian Jews since the Nazi Holocaust.

AN ‘IMPORTANT PART’….

Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes told reporters that Pillay’s “work on Gaza” was “an important part” of the committee’s reasoning. That work is her report as chair of a United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry, which in September 2025 concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

Frydnes told Agence France-Presse that his committee has taken no stand on genocide, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) must still rule on it. That’s disingenuous. A committee that makes a genocide finding a key reason for its most cherished prize doesn’t get to claim it says nothing about genocide.

Governments, legal experts and organisations have vigorously disputed the commission’s methodology, handling of genocidal intent and the impartiality of all three commissioners.

Even admirers of Pillay’s record find the report hard to defend. The report’s account of the war begins on October 7, 2023, the day, it says, that “Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza”. The report is silent on why.

Hamas’s massacre of around 1,200 people and the taking of 251 hostages on October 7, 2023, appear nowhere in that account. The first mention of Hamas surfaces 13 paragraphs later, as one of Israel’s “terror targets”.

For a finding that rests on inferring Israel’s intent, that is no small omission.

South African historian Peter Swanepoel, writing in the Daily Friend, concedes that the commission documented Hamas’s atrocities in an earlier report – but in a report assessing genocidal intent, he says, “such a selective opening chronology is difficult to defend.”

I’d call it indefensible.

Criticism of the prize comes not only from Israel’s supporters in South Africa. Financial journalist Tim Cohen, (who is not Jewish, despite his name) whose sympathies, he says, “have largely been with the Palestinians,” respects Pillay. Yet he too believes that the committee “made a mistake.”

Frydnes saw all the political landmines and handed Pillay the prize anyway.

WHERE’S THE COURAGE?

His committee has commended Pillay’s “exceptional courage.” She professed surprise. “Why would you need courage to speak the truth?” she asked. “You interpret the law, you look at all the facts, so it’s impartial decision-making.”

She was oblivious to the ironies drenching that statement.

The UN’s own Declaration on Fact-finding says that fact-finding should be “comprehensive, objective, impartial and timely.”

As a jurist and former judge of international tribunals, Pillay knows that.

In June 2020, she signed a petition by South Africa’s Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Coalition urging governments to “Sanction Apartheid Israel”. A year later, she was chairing a UN inquiry into the very state she had condemned.

When fellow commissioner Miloon Kothari complained in July 2022 that social media were controlled largely by the “Jewish lobby,” she brushed it off, insisting he’d been “deliberately misquoted.”

Pillay defends Antisemite. Following Miloon Kothari (above), a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s special commission into Israel and the Palestinian territories questioning in an interview “why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations,” and complaining that social media was controlled by “the Jewish lobby”,  Navi Pillay came to his defense saying he was “deliberately misquoted.” (Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images)

A month later, attorney Sara Gon, writing in the Daily Friend, set out Pillay’s long, unedifying record of demonising Israel, including accusations of deliberately murdering Palestinian children in conflict zones.

Gon called for Pillay’s removal as chair. Pillay stayed in the post. So much for her courage and impartiality.

CREDIT WHERE IT IS DUE

Pillay’s early record is commendable. She defended opponents of apartheid and won rights for Robben Island prisoners, Nelson Mandela among them, including to see lawyers.

As a judge at the UN’s Rwanda tribunal, she sat on the bench that delivered the first conviction for genocide by an international court, and helped establish that rape can be an act of genocide.

That alone means that she understands the legal meaning of genocide. How she could equate Rwanda with Israel’s military response to Hamas, whose charter is explicitly genocidal against Israel, is astonishing to many legal and military experts.

Pillay’s defenders like to claim there’s no evidence that Israel has not committed genocide in Gaza, even that the ICJ has already ruled Israel plausibly guilty of genocide in Gaza.

That’s simply false, as ICJ judge president at the time, Joan Donaghue, has publicly confirmed. It turns the law on its head. The burden of proof lies with accusers.

A jurist, of all people, knows that.

A jurist also knows that pictures of flattened buildings do not prove genocide. Mosul lay in ruins after the battle to drive out Islamic State in 2017. The US-led coalition faced accusations of war crimes, not genocide. Destruction is evidence of war.

So, why does the word genocide matter so much?

Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined it in 1944 to name what the Nazis were doing to Europe’s Jews. Turning it wrongly against the Jewish state casts descendants of the Nazis’ victims as the new Nazis.

That is Holocaust inversion of the worst order. It’s why so many Jews call the genocide claim a “blood libel”.

In Nuremberg, Pillay reminded world leaders of their “legal obligation to protect human rights and refrain from war.” Three weeks after Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023, she told Al Jazeera that Palestinians were “actually forced to resort to armed struggle.”

The obligation to refrain from war, through her lens, binds some more than others.

‘PEACE REQUIRES JUSTICE’

Alfred Nobel set the bar. His will reserved the prize for work towards “fraternity between nations”, disarmament and peace congresses. He knew that judges generally don’t make peace.

Negotiators, ceasefire brokers and reconcilers do.

In squeezing Pillay to fit Nobel’s will, the committee recasts international law as “peace conferences in their modern form.” Its claim that she “strengthens fraternity between nations” rests shakily on three words from Frydnes: “Peace requires justice.”

That presents a heavily contested philosophical contention as settled truth.

Scholars of international law and history have long warned that justice crusades can wreck the very order that keeps the peace. They pose the question the committee ducks. Whose justice?

Pillay’s own country chose truth and amnesty over prosecution to move beyond apartheid. Even the Nuremberg trials began only after Germany’s unconditional surrender.

Peace came first; victors decided later what justice looked like.

Whichever way Frydnes spins it, the Nobel Peace Prize to Pillay is a deliberate, significant propaganda coup for the anti-Israel lobby. Pillay cannot ply her pro-Palestinian trade in a vacuum. The UN and the Norwegian Nobel Committee have handed her a megaphone on a platter.

Former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky says Pillay’s award “appears to be the greatest possible legitimization of the now-established consensus about Israel’s war in Gaza.” He warns that “just because the entire world believes something does not make it true.”

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov posted on X that “maybe next year they will award the Chemistry prize to a Hamas bomb maker.”

MISSED OPORTUNITY

South Africans are entitled to celebrate their first female Nobel Peace laureate.

Equally, they’re entitled to ask why she is feted by terrorists who mass-raped women, children and some men, tortured and slaughtered children in front of parents, parents in front of children, burned families alive and took civilians, including children and babies, to Gaza as hostages on October 7.

Among the hostages was 84-year-old Ditza Heiman, held for 53 days, 48 in the attic of a UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teacher. At the UN Human Rights Council on September 15, her daughter, peace activist Neta Heiman Mina, asked:

“How could you place the education of Gaza’s next generation with someone involved in holding an elderly woman hostage?”

Exposing UNRWA. Addressing the 63rd session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on the conditions her mother Ditza Heiman endured after being abducted during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and being confined to the attic of a an UNRWA teacher, Neta Heiman Mina (above) appealed to the United Nations to reconsider its continued funding of UNRWA. (Photo: Courtesy)

The Nobel Committee missed a golden opportunity to show that people can hold the pain of innocent Palestinians and Israelis together, in their hands, hearts and heads.

That’s what real peacemakers do. And real peacemakers know who is and is not a terrorist.

Pillay does not fit that bill.

Her Nobel Prize, aimed at strengthening peace through international law, is already hardening battle lines against peace. It will likely make the world less peaceful and more dangerous for Jews.

As the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers put it, “It’s possible that the Nobel Committee will someday bestow its peace prize on a less worthy recipient than Navanethem ‘Navi’ Pillay, but we doubt it.”

“The last thing this prize will do is promote the cause of peace,” they say.

Amen to that, I say.



About the writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

Marika Sboros is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Follow Marika Sboros on:  @MarikaSboros
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Feature photo:  Courtroom 600 at Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice, where Nazi war-crimes trials were held. The backdrop to the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 award. (Photo: JensKunstfreund, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustration: Niklas Elmehed. Composite by Marika Sboros.)






While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

THE CHILDREN HAD NAMES

Israel’s failure in the information war

By Andrew Fox

On 26th February 2025, tens of thousands of Israelis lined the roads for the funeral procession of Shiri Bibas and her sons, Ariel and Kfir. Orange balloons, the colour of the boys’ hair, marked the route. Men dressed as Batman, Ariel’s favourite superhero, saluted as the coffins passed. Ariel had been four when he was abducted; Kfir was nine months old. Through family photographs and a desperate campaign to bring them home, strangers worldwide came to know these two little boys, who were brutally killed by Hamas in Gaza.

The Color Orange. The world could relate to the tragic unfolding horror of the Bibas family – the brutally kidnapped mother and her two kids – easily recognizable by their ginger hair.

Israel’s government should have understood why their story reached people who would never read an IDF briefing. The families had kept their children recognisable through months of arguing about a war in which they had no say. Doing so deserved sustained government support from the start. Leaving so much of it to people already enduring the unimaginable was a failure of both compassion and, if we are being brutally cold about it, strategy.

Psychologists call the tendency to respond more readily to a named person than to anonymous suffering the ‘identifiable victim effect’. In a 2007 study, Deborah Small, George Loewenstein and Paul Slovic compared an appeal about deprivation across Africa with one about Rokia, a seven-year-old girl in Mali. Among participants who received no prior explanation of the effect, those reading about Rokia donated an average of $2.83, compared with $1.17 from those given the statistics.

That said, for balance, later research has been less conclusive: a 2016 meta-analysis found a small average effect, and a subsequent replication using hypothetical donations failed to reproduce it. We cannot turn a charitable-giving experiment into a measure of how many people changed their minds about Gaza. It does, however, give us a useful starting point for understanding why an individual’s suffering can command attention that casualty figures struggle to hold.

There is much less uncertainty about Yahya Sinwar’s calculation. In June 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported on messages in which he treated Palestinian civilian deaths as an advantage in the war. Citing the losses suffered in other conflicts, he called them “necessary sacrifices”. More deaths meant more pressure on Israel. Sinwar believed he could outlast the Israeli offensive whilst the people of Gaza paid for it. The suffering itself needed no invention. In November 2023, footage of Khaled Nabhan kissing his dead granddaughter, Reem, travelled around the world. She was three. In CNN’s account, he remembered the game in which she pulled his beard, and he pulled her pigtails; he spoke about the fruit the children had wanted and the tangerines he had managed to find. Anyone with a child or grandchild could recognise the affection in those small exchanges, and something of the agony of losing them. This is the key to the information war: making the suffering of innocents feel personal to those observing the physical war from abroad.

The Young and the Dead. These are just some of the faces of the children violently impacted by Hamas’s attacks against Israel on October 7th. 2023.

The opportunity for Hamas arose when that grief provided the sole explanation for the war. The viewer saw a dead child and the consequences of an Israeli strike, with all context stripped away. The men who had launched the massacre on 7th October and who continued to hold hostages could disappear from the account. Whenever sympathy for Palestinians became pressure on Israel to stop fighting, without equivalent pressure on Hamas to release their captives and surrender power, their strategy benefited. Foreign audiences did not have to like Hamas for this to work.

They used Israeli suffering with the same ruthlessness. On 16th October 2023, Hamas released footage of Mia Schem, wounded and captive. Her mother, Keren, recognised her daughter’s fear and believed she could see Mia repeating what her captors had told her to say. Hamas had abducted her; now they controlled what her family could see of her. A Palestinian family’s bereavement could be used to generate pressure against the offensive, whilst an Israeli family’s desperation could be used to press for a deal on Hamas’s terms. Their control over the hostages gave them a way to prolong that desperation.

The bitter irony is that Israel had their own human stories from the first morning, and yet was unwilling, and many will argue, rightly so, to use those stories as an information war opportunity. Shani Louk was a 22-year-old German-Israeli tattoo artist who went to Nova to dance. Much of the world first encountered her through the footage of her body in a pickup truck, subjected to the humiliation her killers chose for her. Her family’s memorial website shows her drawings and offers her tattoo designs for others to use. There is work there which she made before anyone knew her name, and which people can still choose to carry on their skin. Her family have given strangers a way to know her beyond the manner of her death.

Killing Kids. The child’s stroller and personal belongings seen here seen on the road next to a car near Kibbutz Kfar Aza reveals the horrendous horror of an orgy of butchering young families while traveling on a country road. (Photo: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

The families of the observers at Nahal Oz have done something similar. Roni Eshel was 19 and loved Taylor Swift. Her parents planted fruit trees in her memorial park because she loved them. Her father, Eyal, has also spoken about the warnings she gave before the attack and the army’s failure to listen. Remembering Roni properly means making room for all of this. Her youth and enthusiasms belong alongside the responsibility she carried at the border, and her father’s anger at the people who were supposed to protect her.

These efforts by ordinary Israelis and their friends worldwide began early. The “Kidnapped” posters created by Nitzan Mintz, Dede Bandaid and Tal Huber put names and photographs on streets around the world within weeks of the massacre. Israeli officials spoke about the hostages too, including Kfir Bibas. The Israeli government failed to turn those scattered efforts into a coherent campaign, with the resources and continuity a prolonged information war required.

“No one will dare to tear down a poster of a dog, but of Jews? No problem”. Street artists Dede Bandaid and Nitzan Mintz (above), who together with Tal Huber started the viral hostage poster campaign, expressed shock at videos showing individuals tearing down the posters, viewing it as a blatant expression of antisemitism. (Photo: BFA)

In October 2025, former IDF spokesman Nachman Shai wrote that Israel still lacked a unified public advocacy structure that brought government and civil society together. He was right. Two years into the war, this was an extraordinary indictment of the government’s priorities. I would go further than Shai’s criticism of the machinery. Explaining why the IDF had struck a tunnel was necessary, but the explanation also needed to reach people who had no understanding of what it meant to live within reach of Hamas or the way in which they weaponised the suffering of their own people. The victims’ families could make that danger comprehensible in ways a military briefing could not.

The Nova exhibition shows what was possible. It opened in Tel Aviv in December 2023 and reached London in May 2026, bringing belongings recovered from the festival together with testimony from survivors and bereaved relatives. A friend of mine went multiple times with a variety of people from different backgrounds, and they all came away with a different perspective on 7 October and the subsequent war in Gaza. The organisers had been doing this work for years. Their achievement makes the Israeli government’s failure harder to excuse: people outside the state had already demonstrated how to give foreign audiences a sustained encounter with the lives destroyed on 7th October. Israel should have helped such work reach far beyond those already inclined to listen.

The audience is more hostile now. Pew’s June 2026 findings showed that 69% of British adults viewed Israel unfavourably, up from 61% a year earlier. Let us be real: anger at Israeli policy and the destruction in Gaza cannot simply be attributed to manipulation, and no poll tells us what a better Israeli campaign would have achieved. It does show how difficult it is to secure a hearing for Israel today.

Israel ceded the initiative while much of the world was forming its understanding of the war. Testimony can still change minds, but a family speaking now may first have to persuade an audience that their loss deserves a hearing at all. The opportunity to shape those first impressions has gone. Recovering ground will take more than belatedly discovering that the dead had names. The government should pay for translation and help willing families take their testimony abroad, without making support conditional on what they say. If ministers want the world to hear Roni Eshel’s story, they must accept that her father will also tell the world who ignored her warnings. They cannot ask for the authority of his grief and then edit out his accusation.

Butchering Babies. What Israelis fail to recover from and what most the world hardly saw and remain uninterested or are subsequently interested in seeing are images such as this of toys and personal items lying on a bloodstained floor of a Jewish child’s bedroom in kibbutz Beeri following the massacring by Hamas gunman. (Photo: Ronen Zvulu/Reuters)

No bereaved family should have to owe the state a PR campaign. Those willing to speak deserve its support, with the freedom to say things ministers would rather the world did not hear. Israel’s government should have understood this when families were putting up posters and pleading for help. By the time people lined the roads with orange balloons, those families had spent months asking the world to care. They should never have had to shoulder so much of that work themselves.



About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.







While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

ON THE WAY TO GAZA

Repeated visits reveal fresh insights, revelations and questions.

By Jonathan Feldstein

On the way to the Gaza border, my friend asked how many times I had been there since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and massacre.

I had to think about it.

I remember the first trip vividly. Several other trips were outstanding whether visiting soldiers and bringing supplies or preparing and providing food, one on one like the time with my friend Marziyeh (Marzi) Amirizadeh and seeing the devastation through the eyes of a woman who suffered the evil hatred of radical Islam growing up and living in Iran and identifying the evil we faced with the evil that she lived under for most of her life, or planning for and implementing our incredible Root & Branch program bringing Christian volunteers to harvest olives in Israel and along the Gaza border.

There were other trips with friends and donors, as well as relatives, media and more. In the car, I estimated that I had visited the Gaza border at least 30 times. In retrospect it’s probably more. Surely averaging once a month. Considering my travels, that’s a lot.

Some trips blur together. Some are memorable for different reasons. All are emotionally draining. Yesterday was no different. It had been a while since the last time.

Horrific Legacy. High school students from across Israel were visiting the sights where the massacre and killings took place three years earlier. (Photo: Jonathan Feldstein)

Along the roads from Routes 34, 232, 25 and more, I noticed the increased number of memorials along the side of the road. From once piles of stones with flags and photographs these have been “developed” to permanent and thoughtful memorials. In America and other countries, you see similar respectful homage where people have died in car accidents. The roads here have been repaved and show no signs of what happened that day anymore. But I remember the countless points where one would drive and see large dark spots on the road with a slight bump as you drove over them, burn marks from the high temperature flames where cars were set on fire. Torched with people inside.

Graveyard of Vehicles. A young school student engages at the Car Wall memorial near moshav Tkuma in Israel’s Gaza Envelope where over 1,500 burned, twisted, and bullet-riddled vehicles are stacked into the shape of a wall.  With each damaged ‘shell’ representing lives lost, the memorial functions as an educational and remembrance site for visitors, families, and delegations. (Photo: Jonathan Feldstein)

The roads no longer have the scars but the memorials along the side of the roads show the points where hundreds of people were shot and burned to death, their bodies and their cars littering the roads.

I looked at the piles of the shot up and burnt remains of the vehicles from that day. More than 1000 cars, many of which became death traps for their passengers. As we visited the site that also has been built up as a permanent memorial, first I noticed dozens of tour buses. Most were for Israelis for whom the site has become a pilgrimage. People wanting to see, understand, bear witness to the horrors of that day.

Murderers on Motorbikes. A piled heap of burnt motorcycles used by Hamas terrorists during the assault is displayed alongside the victims’ vehicles as physical testimony of the attack. (Photo: Jonathan Feldstein)

There are few tourists in Israel now so most of the guides and survivors telling stories of what happened that day were speaking Hebrew. What broke my heart, other than the memorial itself, was the prevalence of young people. It’s terrible that we must educate our children about this all and it’s part of the legacy we leave them. It’s not new but it is still sad. Many high school students. Some of whom got to practice their English in a spontaneous conversation with Marzi about her life and imprisonment in Iran. She connected the dots of the Islamic Republic and Hamas as the same evil. That we have the same enemy. That the Iranian people are not the regime that hijacked Iran 47 years ago and that the people support Israel.

Three years ago, they were early adolescence and three years from now they will all be serving in the army defending their country. I wondered if in 7 or 10 or 15 years, my own grandson’s will be part of this pilgrimage.

I saw a group of soldiers. Three years earlier they were the age of the high school students we encountered. They stood there with weapons over their shoulders, against the backdrop of piles of dozens of burnt remains of just some of the cars. Their weapons are used to defend us against the evil that perpetrated the crimes that we witnessed with the cars just as one reminder, listening to things they surely remember from three years ago when they were just students and Israel was at its most vulnerable.

Burden of Defense. Responsible for protecting Israel today, young IDF male and female soldiers at the Car Wall memorial, who were school students when the massacre occurred in October, 2023. (Photo: Jonathan Feldstein)

At the site of the Nova Music Festival where some 25% of the 1200 people killed that day were slaughtered, the memorials have become uniform and standardized, albeit with personal touches from the loved ones of those who were killed and mutilated there that day. I always describe it as a cross between Woodstock and Auschwitz. We spent nearly an hour there, but what’s really needed to understand the enormity and the scope of the loss is much more, even if you’ve been there multiple times before as I have.

Dance to Death. The site of the dance floor at the Nova Music Festival massacre where, Hamas terrorists raped, mutilated, beheaded, burnt, slaughtered and shot 364 of the attendees, party staff, police security, and medical service personnel. (Photo: Jonathan Feldstein)

In Sderot, we visited the powerful memorial at the site of the former police station in which all the police on duty that morning were killed and many others on the street. As hard as it is to think, amid the slaughter there was incredible heroism and it was a miracle that more people were not killed there that day. Of course, that’s no comfort for the survivors whose loved ones are no longer with us.

Poignant Pillars. ‘Pillars of Eternity’, the memorial built on the ruins of the original Sderot police station destroyed by heavily armed killer Hamas squads. The memorial features 18 tall, eleven-to-twelve-meter columns representing the fallen police officers and defenders, integrated with Hebrew letters symbolizing hope and energy. (Photo: Jonathan Feldstein)

I told the story of the Suisa family, the young parents, Odaya and Dolev, who were trying to flee Sderot in their car and were caught in an ambush and murdered in front of their two young daughters, leaving them orphans. It must be noted that the person who sacrificed his life trying to save the family was a Bedouin Arab, Amer Odeh Abu Sabila. A construction worker who was in Sderot early that fateful Saturday morning, Amer heard Odaya screaming after Dolev had been killed and got into the driver’s seat to try and bring Odaya and her two young daughters to safety at the Sderot police station. Not knowing that the police station had already been overrun by the terrorists, both Abu Sabila and Odaya were murdered, while the two kids, Romi, 6, and Lia, 3, lay on the floor of the car unscathed. There is harrowing video footage from that day that shows the two young girls screaming for help as police officers arrived.

Brutally Murdered. Odaya (33) and Dolev Swissa (34) who were murdered in front of their two daughters. The family tried to leave Sderot as sirens sounded but were attacked by Hamas terrorists and killed in their car.

Amer Odeh Abu Sabila’s story is not unique as many Israeli Arabs were killed that day, including a police officer inside the police station, but is important to recount as it reveals the reality of life in Israel of Arabs who tragically died alongside their fellow Jewish citizens.

Sacrificed his Life. Bedouin construction worker, Amer Abu Sabila (25), lost his life as he bravely attempted to rescue Dolev and Odaya Swisa’s two daughters near the police station in Sderot.

As the sun was setting, we made our way to one of the lookout points from which Gaza is visible. Despite international claims to the contrary, even with the naked eye one can see entire cities still standing. And even three years and a week after the inhuman Hamas attack and massacre, there was a jarring audible punctuation of the reality as we heard gunfire in the distance coming from inside Gaza, indicating that if these killers are not fought and pushed back, they will rise and try to attack us again and again.

The numbers alone do not sufficiently represent the enormity of the day. Each of the 1200 people, including Jewish and Arab Moslem and Druze Israelis, as well as many foreigners including Christians, is the loss of an entire universe for them and their loved ones. But there’s a national story as well, timeless in the sense that it’s an unfortunate part of the reality of Jewish history and the foreseeable future.

“The Day the Music Died”. Photo memorials of each of the murdered party-goers at the Nova Music Festival. (Photo: Jonathan Feldstein)

However many times I have gone to visit these sites, each time thinking that there’s nothing particularly new in doing so other than bringing people who have not yet witnessed it, I am sadly shocked at how there’s still so much to absorb and process and how such experiences are necessary.



About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Journal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.







While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

NAVI PILLAY AND THE HEDGEHOG TRAP

Why the Nobel Peace Prize sacrificed genuine peacebuilding for ideological reductionism and anti-Israel bias.

By Yoram Blumstein

By rewarding a rabid anti-Israel activist-jurist and chief peddler of baseless “genocide” and “apartheid” claims against the Jewish state with the prestigious Peace Prize, the Oslo Committee did not recognise peace – but weaponised lawfare and institutional bias against the Jewish people and Israel. The Nobel Committee, which lacks a moral compass, forms part of a coterie of ignoble institutions that espouse systematic animus towards the Jewish state and provide a fertile ecosystem for the normalisation of antisemitism.  Israel and the United States (U.S.) rightfully rejected the decision to award the coveted Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a South African ad hoc judge at the compromised International Court of Justice (ICJ) and former jurist on the International Criminal Court (ICC), as it is an affront to the Jewish people and rewards Hamas and Israel’s enemies. Conversely, the feckless South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, France, Iran, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Hamas praised the award as a victory for international justice.

Hands-on Hatred. Navi Pillay addressing the Nuremberg Forum in Nuremberg on 9 October 2026 following the announcement that she will be awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize has kept her hands on the ball on promoting anti-Israel bias. (Photo: Daniel Karmann/ Getty Images)

Fundamentally, the Oslo Committee (which bears sole responsibility for awarding the Peace Prize) betrayed Alfred Nobel’s (a genius, polyglot, and inventor of dynamite) stated conditions (as enshrined in his last will), which required the recipient to meet specific criteria for advancing international diplomacy, peace, and dialogue. Pillaydid not meet Alfred Nobel’s essential requirements to be elevated to the pantheon of great peacemakers such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, F.W. De Klerk, Henry Kissinger, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat and Elie Wiesel, amongst others, and is an affront to the Jewish people.

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

In his 1953 essay, “The Hedgehog and the Fox”, the British Jewish philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin asserted that:

 “…the fox knows many things, while the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Berlin borrowed the line from the ancient Greek poet, Archilochus. Berlin’s dichotomy can serve as a heuristic tool to expose confirmation bias and as a stark warning against singular, dogmatic thinking.  Metaphorically, hedgehogs are monists who reduce reality to a single, central vision or organising principle. By contrast, foxes are pluralists who relentlessly pursue different avenues, nuances, variety, and complexity without forcing everything into a rigid, singular vision. Berlin used the distinction to analyse Leo Tolstoy’s inherent personal contradictions, whom the British philosopher diagnosed as a “fox by nature”, but a “hedgehog by conviction”. Tolstoy, a cerebral writer, foresaw the infinite complexity of life, but he desperately tried to force it into a “grand singular theory of life.” In Berlin’s philosophical dichotomy, a hedgehog-like approach is not inherently bad, but political scientists like Philip E. Tetlock have repurposed the “fox-and-hedgehog” framework to warn analysts and policymakers against overconfidence, single-cause grand perspectives, and confirmation bias in expert forecasting.

THE NOBEL PEACE COMMITT’S HEDGEHOG TRAP

The Nobel Peace Committee’s diabolical decision fits the hedgehog diagnosis. The decision is inextricably linked to the current torrent of violent antisemitism and anti-Israel bias. It carefully reduced the criteria for the prize to a singular grand vision (as a purported fact), while filtering out complex realities about:

– the Israel-Palestine conflict

– the normalisation of antisemitism, and

– the role of terror networks such as Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah.

Politicizing a Prize. Would Alfred Nobel view the 2026 Nobel Peace prize to South African jurist Navi Pillay as a faithful fulfillment of his will or a weaponization of the award to legitimize anti-Israel hatred and prejudice?

Before the prize announcement, Pillay prodigiously used the label “genocide” and “apartheid state” to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. She supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and endorsed the UN Durban Anti-Racism Process, which set the tone for a notable uptick in modern antisemitism and institutional bias. In addition, she failed the neutrality test as an international jurist when she signed a joint letter accusing Israel of “domination and oppression” before heading the UN Commission of Inquiry into the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In September 2025, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry, chaired by Pillay, released a report concluding that Israel had committed “genocide” in Gaza. However, the ICJ has yet to rule on South Africa’s baseless accusations. The report took statements from individual Israeli senior officials out of context and recommended criminal prosecution for senior Israeli officials at the ICC. Pillay and the bodies she represents are structurally biased against Israel and the Jewish people. Even when the Oslo Committee notified her of the award, she continued to accuse Israel of “genocide”:

“The last thing I did was the report on Gaza naming what’s happening in there as genocide…Why would you need courage to speak the truth? You interpret the law. You look at all the facts, so it’s an impartial decision.”

Check your facts at the door, Pillay:

Your reporting shows no impartiality; your statements and opinions are steeped in tendentiousness. You are an ingloriously useful idiot!

Pillay was visibly surprised when she was announced as the 2026 recipient, as other deserving nominees, such as U.S. President Donald Trump, played a pivotal role in negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza, spearheaded peace talks between Israel and Lebanon, and agitated for a modus vivendi between Israel and Syria. Geopolitical optics do matter. Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, continues to use her office to frame Israel’s actions in Gaza and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) as “genocidal” while failing to acknowledge Israel’s defensive policies against a genocidal terrorist entity.  The September 2026 United Nations General Assembly debates focused almost exclusively on Israel. The United Kingdom’s recent import ban on “settlement” goods, sanctions frameworks, and arms export restrictions align with European and Western nations (such as Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, and France) in restricting trade with Israel following meritless advisory opinions from international legal institutions like the ICJ. In a different, yet crucial context, on October 4th, the Green Party of England and Wales adopted a preposterous policy at its annual conference, formally equating Zionism with racism. While the Green Party is a fringe party with a few parliamentary seats, the decision carries significant political and diplomatic weight. It will further galvanise the normalisation of antisemitism in Europe and beyond. On October 17th, during a local elections campaign rally in Rylands (Cape Town), a predominantly Muslim and Hamas-loving suburb, Ramaphosa emphasised South Africa’s ongoing genocide case against Israel and the African National Congress’ (ANC) steadfast support for the Palestinian cause. It is perplexing why a head of state would use a misguided foreign policy issue to attract Muslim voters when the focus should be on fixing service delivery failures in ANC-led municipalities.

Based on the above, the Nobel Committee fits the hedgehog framework with a singular, misguided vision. By betraying Alfred Nobel’s explicit wishes, the Oslo Committee has succumbed to the prevailing cosmos (which is dominated by narratives munificently bandied about by the “New Antisemites” – a violent neophyte species of state and non-state actors) that demonises and delegitimises the State of Israel. Hence, the said Committee has failed to uphold impartiality in awarding the peace prize to an individual whose career has been fixated on spreading disinformation about Israel. Regrettably, the Oslo Committee is afflicted with a growing pathology of institutional bias, as highlighted by incessant anti-Israel resolutions and declarations by the UN and its allied institutions.

Institutionalizing Antisemitism. Far from promoting peace and international law, the Committee’s selection of Navi Pillay exposes the double standards and deep-rooted hostility toward the Jewish state within international institutions.

A FOXLIKE COUNTERARGUMENT

Lamentably, the Nobel Committee exposed its bias in awarding the prestigious prize to Pillay by failing to consider:

– the prevailing facts on the ground

– alternative or contrarian perspectives

– Israel’s right to self-defense, and

– Pillay’s track record of vehement anti-Israel rhetoric.

These factors are inconsistent with the qualities of a peacemaker, which Pillay lacks. The facts speak for themselves. A fox would have determined that Israel did not commit genocide or war crimes, cause mass starvation in Gaza, or deliberately kill babies and civilians. In fact, Israel took reasonable measures, which are well-documented, to comply with laws of armed conflict and international humanitarian conventions.

The real danger lies in ideological monism, when international institutions (like the Oslo Nobel Committee) gravitate toward “hedgehog thinking” and compromise their role as neutral arbiters. By awarding the Peace Prize to Pillay, the Nobel Committee acted as the sole, supreme arbiter of peace, and the decision was biased, predetermined and influenced by the anti-Israel zeitgeist and extremist voices. The Nobel Committee’s decision is consequently alarming, as it facilitates the normalisation of antisemitism, which is disturbing to Jews as violent antisemitism sweeps across Western capitals.

Pillay is not a peacemaker and unworthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. She should have declined the award as she had not done enough to comply with Alfred Nobel’s wishes. The key state instigator of unfounded genocide allegations against Israel, South Africa, was the first to congratulate Pillay on her undeserved prize. Yet, the ANC’s reckless decision to take Israel to the ICJ provided the building blocks for antisemitism to thrive. Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, remarked in early October that South Africa’s ICJ genocide case against Israel led to an exponential increase in antisemitism and anti-Israel hostility.

Under the Shadow of Nobel. Ambassador Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism asserts that South Africa’s decision to make its ICJ case against Israel a centerpiece of its foreign policy is contributing to global antisemitism.



About the writer:
Editor’s Note: Yoram Blumstein is a nom de plume the author uses to protect their identity because of previous security threats.





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE OFFENSIVE

Hardly in pursuance of “peace” when an Islamist death cult applauds the announcement of the 2026 South African winner.

By Craig Snoyman

On 9 October 2026, the Norwegian Nobel Committee (“the committee”) awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem (Navi) Pillay for:

– her efforts to promote peace and international law”,

and announced that:

– “Peace requires justice”.

Humanitarian or Political? The decision to award the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to former U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay sparked fierce backlash from U.N. watchdogs for her longstanding anti-Israel bias and defending antisemitic rhetoric. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Image)

In Nuremberg, ironically, Pillay told a crowd celebrating her award: “The last thing I did is the delivery of the report on Gaza, naming what’s happening there as genocide.” In Oslo the committee said that it was “not taking a stance” on genocide, as “it’s her report”. Perhaps the committee should have made its announcement on 7 October, the day of the worst genocide of Jews since the Second World War, rather than two days later.

On 9 October 2009, seventeen years earlier to the day, the committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. Obama’s response, as his memoir records, was a question: “For what?” In 2015 the committee’s secretary disclosed that the committee chose Obama because it believed the prize would help him achieve his goals.

The will of Alfred Nobel’s will is quite clear what the requirements for the Peace Prize are. It is for those who, “during the preceding year”, have “conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”. It is for the person who has done “the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”.

The records of the favoured candidates were clear. Vanessa Nakate campaigned for the vulnerable communities affected by climate change. The volunteers of Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms were bringing food, medical help and evacuation to civilians in Sudan’s civil war. Yulia Navalnaya became the political voice of her husband, Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian Arctic prison colony.

Pillay’s record was not as impressive. Having signed South African  BDS petition to “Sanction Apartheid Israel” she had no qualms in chairing the singularly inappropriately named “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel”  She proceeded to conduct an investigation in which Israel refused the commission entry and the commission acquired its information from second-hand sources.

Ten weeks after she tendered her resignation, the commission published its results and conclusions, finding that the State of Israel was responsible for committing genocide, for failing to prevent it and for failing to punish it. In September 2024, it had recorded that  Hamas was  guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In its 2025 report to the General Assembly it absolved Hamas, mentioning it once, in a quotation from an Israeli minister. It declared that Israel had the intent to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza, as this was “the only reasonable inference”. It traced that intent back to “decades of unlawful occupation and unlawful settlement, with racial segregation or apartheid”. When asked whether the states that still supplied arms to Israel were complicit in genocide, Pillay answered: “Yes.”

Jaundiced Judgment. And how did judge Navi Pilay (center) react when fellow UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict member, Miloon Kothari  (right) expressed that social media was “controlled largely by the Jewish lobby,” she defended him saying he had been “deliberately decontextualized.” (Photo: Luke Tress/Times of Israel)

Her record as a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (“the tribunal”) is equally chequered. When the defence in the Media case applied for Pillay’s recusal, because she had already expressly pronounced on the guilt of the radio station RTLM in an earlier case, the chamber in which she sat dismissed the application. When a press report accused three judges of the tribunal of laughing while defence counsel cross-examined a rape survivor about how her attackers had undressed her, Pillay, as president of the tribunal, called the report “a mischaracterisation of the scene”, and in the same statement declared that it would not be appropriate for her to discuss the conduct of other judges in an ongoing trial. The survivors’ organisations Ibuka and Avega suspended their cooperation with the tribunal.

Her attitude has remained constant. When her fellow commissioner, Miloon Kothari, told an interviewer that the “Jewish lobby” largely controlled social media, Pillay stated that he had been “deliberately misquoted”, without saying how. Kothari subsequently apologised and wrote that it had been “completely wrong” for him to describe social media in that way. Pillay was not as forthcoming.

In the Rwanda tribunal, the Appeals Chamber annulled and replaced various decisions over which Pillay presided, because of her misdirection concerning conduct outside the tribunal’s temporal jurisdiction. In the Palestine commission matter it was easier. Her commission was to investigate violations “leading up to and since 13 April 2021” and was not limited by time issues. During the investigation, Pillay stated: “The occupation is as non-ending as our mandate.” This followed earlier prejudicial remarks, when Pillay told the General Assembly that “Israel’s occupation is now unlawful”. The evidence of her bias, and her (lack of) regard for natural justice, did not prevent her from sitting on either the tribunal or the commission.

The Appeals Chamber in the Rwanda tribunal reversed Pillay’s Media case decision on the basis that a reasonable trier of fact could not find conspiracy to commit genocide to be “the only reasonable inference” from the evidence. Pillay, not a great historian, repeated her conclusion when deciding on Israel’s conduct, with a greater paucity of evidence. But then, a report to the UN General Assembly has no Appeals Chamber above it that can set aside such a legal conclusion.

In September 2022, when the United Nations Association of Germany proposed to present her with its Otto Hahn Peace Medal, Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador in Berlin said:

“To have Navi Pillay investigate Israel is like asking Putin to chair a commission of inquiry into Ukraine.”

Proser on Pilay. “To have Navi Pillay investigate Israel is like asking Putin to chair a commission of inquiry into Ukraine,” said Ron Prosor, Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor. as Ambassador to the UN (courtesy)

The ceremony did not take place. In November 2025, when Sydney gave her its peace prize, the Premier of New South Wales declined to attend, and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry had said that the prize went to recipients “for having the ‘correct’ opinions, rather than for making a real contribution to peace.”

The Nobel committee wanted Obama to achieve in 2009, and it paid him in advance. In 2026 it wants Pillay’s report to achieve the definition of Gaza as genocide before any court has ruled, and it has paid her in advance as well. She is well positioned to pay it back, as she sits as an ad hoc judge in the Gambia v Myanmar genocide case and will no doubt work hard to change the definition of genocide.

The function of the Nobel Peace Prize committee was to ask what Pillay did in the preceding year for fraternity between nations, and what she did for fewer standing armies and for peace congresses. She ticks none of those boxes. She incites friction and animosity. She accused one nation of genocide and called the nations that arm it complicit. Nobody punished the committee for the Obama Peace Prize, and now the committee has taken another step further. It is no longer an award for anticipated fraternity; it is now an advance to persuade political opinion. Again, the committee goes unpunished. But this time the sin is more egregious. A political finding on genocide lets the committee ignore its own principles, and lets its members’ antipathy toward Israel translate the big lie of Israeli genocide into a Nobel medal.

Pilay’s Prize. By awarding to a recipient with an agenda of endangering Jews worldwide, has the Nobel Peace Prize -one of the five original Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel – been irreparably tarnished?

So, to you Ms Nakate, to you, the volunteers of Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, and to you Ms Navalnaya: speaking for the vulnerable, feeding civilians under fire or defying the Kremlin will not win you this prize. Better luck next year. President Obama asked “For what?”

The committee has now answered: the correct opinion, not peace.



About the writer:

Craig Snoyman is a practicing Advocate in Johannesburg.





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

REMEMBERING RAB

Jewish survivors of the Rab concentration camp form battalion to fight the Nazi German forces occupying Yugoslavia.

By Michel Levine

At the beginning of the WWII, without firing a single shot, the Jewish inmates of a detention camp located in Yugoslavia revolted and took control of the site. They then formed themselves into a battalion and took part in the partisan struggle for the liberation of the country. This curious and probably unique episode deserves to be better known.

In April 1941, the Axis forces seized the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

In their occupation zone, German troops carried out mass killings and deportations to extermination camps. In the zone controlled by their Bulgarian allies, Jews were handed over to the Germans and likewise sent to Auschwitz. In the Hungarian occupation zone, after the Novi Sad pogrom, which claimed 4,000 victims, the surviving Jews experienced a certain respite until the German occupation of Hungary in the spring of 1944, which in turn led to their deportation to the gas chambers. At the same time, the Germans created in Croatia a puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), led by the fascist Ante Pavelić, whose program was expressed in three fundamental points: kill one third of the Serbs living on its territory, expel another third, and assimilate the surviving third. To achieve this, concentration camps were opened in which thousands of Serbians, Jewish, Roma, and Croatian prisoners — opponents of the regime or merely suspects — perished. Its troops, the Ustaše, fought both the Communist partisans and the Serbian royalist Chetniks while carrying out numerous pogroms along the way. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1945, out of a Jewish population of 80,000 persons, more than 67,000 were murdered, one of the highest destruction rates in Europe.

Things unfolded differently in the occupation zones held by the Italian army (Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, southern Slovenia, and the Dalmatian coast), as well as in the territories directly annexed by Rome (Slovenia and Croatia).

Although living conditions for the populations subjected to this armed occupation were made extremely difficult by hunger and mistreatment, Italian occupation officers, supported in this by senior officials of their foreign ministry, refused to commit the mass crimes carried out by their German, Bulgarian, or Ustaše allies. The Italian army even went so far as to establish “protective camps” for Jews in order to shield them from Nazi fury, at Crikvenica, Kraljevica, Selce, Novi Vinodol, and on the islands of Lopud, Brač, Hvar, and Korčula, among others.

Seen here in July 1942, are prisoners under the control of an Italian official at the Rab concentration camp, one of several Italian concentration camps established during WWII on the Italian-annexed island of Rab.

Thus, in July 1942, 2,500 Jews captured during operations conducted by the Italian army against the Yugoslav partisans were transferred to the island of Rab (Arbe in Italian), located along the Dalmatian coast. There they discovered a vast complex of barracks and tents situated near the village of Kampor. The Arbe civilian internment camp (Campo di concentramento per internati civili di Guerra – Arbe) already held between 10,000 and 15,000 detainees, mainly Slovenes, Croats, and Jews. Although conditions there were dreadful for all inmates, with cold, famine, dysentery, scurvy, beriberi, and scabies rampant in these makeshift lodgings, Jewish prisoners enjoyed certain concessions, such as exemption from forced labor and a certain freedom of movement. A former Slovenian detainee, Anton Vratuša — who after the war would become Yugoslavia’s ambassador to the United Nations — summarized the situation as follows:

“We were all prisoners, but they were protected.”

He added: “We used their help.” What did he mean by this?

Among the Jewish prisoners, there was far from complete trust with respect to the Italian military authorities. Certainly, they had disobeyed orders by shielding them from the Nazis, but this trial of strength could at any moment turn disastrous: several examples were already known of camps where Italian soldiers had been forced by their German allies to hand over their Jewish prisoners.

It therefore became urgent to leave the island as quickly as possible.

A small group among them, including Viktor Hajon, a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party (and a famous polo player before the war), who had just failed in an escape attempt, established contact with a clandestine committee formed before their arrival. This committee included members of the People’s Liberation Movement founded by Josip Broz — soon to become known under his nickname Tito. Its armed branch, the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (Narodnooslobodilačka vojska, or N.O.V.), fought the occupiers. Unlike General Mihailović’s royalist Chetniks, Tito, a seasoned Communist apparatchik accustomed to clandestine work since 1934, had built a structured, hierarchical army highly suited to guerrilla warfare, whose headquarters constantly moved through the mountains of Bosnia and Montenegro. Its strength also lay in uniting within its ranks, on equal terms, Jews, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Roman Catholics, in a country where wars of religion were compounded by ethnic conflicts. At its height, his army numbered 800,000 fighters.

Failing in his attempted escapes, famed Jewish Yugoslav water polo player before WWII, Viktor Hajon made contact outside the camp with the People’s Liberation Movement founded by Tito.

Representatives of the Jewish group proposed supplying intelligence to the clandestine committee, taking advantage of their relative freedom of movement within the camp. Their information concerned guard schedules, contacts with the Italian headquarters on the mainland coast, and so forth. The clandestine committee decided to make use of this cooperation. The ultimate goal was to organize an uprising in the camp, but a serious problem confronted everyone: the lack of weapons. While waiting to acquire some, the two groups organized special courses given by doctors and nurses on emergency medical care for the wounded. These would prove extremely valuable in the events that followed.

History itself would come to the aid of the internees.

On 8 September 1943, news of Italy’s capitulation spread through the camp, giving the signal for action. The prisoners disarmed their guards without encountering any real resistance — it must be said that the guards themselves had only one desire: to return home as quickly as possible. This remains the only example of the liberation of a concentration camp during WWII that caused not a single casualty. But the Italian soldiers, aware that they themselves now risked capture and execution by their former German allies if taken prisoner, often chose instead to join the insurgents.

The Italian flag hangs over the Rab concentration camp on the island of Rab in the Adriatic Sea which was occupied by Italy and is now a part of Croatia. (Public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

Two days later, a large gathering took place in the camp’s “Square of Hunger”, during which the “Rab Partisan Brigade” was created. Numbering around 1,700 future fighters, it was incorporated into the 24th Division of Tito’s People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. For the Jewish internees, integration into this force posed no problem: they knew that within this partisan army — then the strongest and best organized in Europe — a number of leaders were themselves Jewish, such as Moša Pijade. They would therefore be recognized as Jewish fighters “in their own right.”

The Jewish Rab Battalion (also known as the 5th Rab Battalion), formed on the Adriatic island of Rab after the September 1943 armistice with Italy liberated the Rab concentration camp, is seen here marching in September 1943.

The Rab Island Brigade was structured into five battalions. The first four were mainly Slovenian, while the fifth consisted of 250 Jews, generally adolescents, together with a medical unit of around 35 Jewish nurses, some of whom would later be assigned to other battalions. The unit was commanded by David Deča Kabiljo, a reserve officer, assisted by Edvard Ehrlich, the political commissar, who would later be killed in combat.

Yet the joy of liberation was mixed with deep apprehension: German soldiers could land on the island at any moment to retake control. It was necessary to leave as quickly as possible. It was decided to leave behind 204 Jewish detainees who were in too poor a physical condition to be transported. Tragically, they would later be deported to Auschwitz when German troops regained possession of the island.

On 17 September 1943, after a short crossing, the brigade landed at Novi Vinodol, a port on the mainland coast, where it joined the partisans of the People’s Liberation Army. A long march then began northward toward territories controlled by the N.O.V.’s 7th Banija Division. For sixteen days, the fighters advanced through the mountains and dense forests of inland Croatia, passing through areas sometimes held by the Chetniks, with whom relations could be tense. The battalion’s men were then incorporated into the 7th Partisan Division, which had just suffered heavy losses against the Germans. They received accelerated military training and were deployed in the regions of Banija, Kordun, and Lika — three inland Croatian areas that were theaters of particularly intense operations, where the partisans had to fight both Wehrmacht troops and Ustaše forces, who did not hesitate to execute prisoners. More than one hundred members of the Jewish battalion fell in combat between the autumn of 1943 and the end of the war in May 1945.

Ustaše militants pose with victims during the war. The fascist Croatian nationalist group murdered tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Roma. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates the Ustaše killed between 77,000 and 99,000 people, including up to 20,000 Jews, at Jasenovac, a death camp the group ran itself. (Courtesy: Memorijalni Muzej Jasenovac)

After peace returned, Tito’s Communist regime, from the moment it seized power, granted a place of honor in its official pantheon to the struggle of the partisans, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Among the Jewish fighters, seven received the supreme distinction of National Hero — posthumously, with only two exceptions: Moša Pijade and General Voja Todorović, later appointed commander of the state’s land forces. In 1948, the year the State of Israel was created, the Communist authorities officially declared themselves hostile to Zionism, but Tito remained one of the few Eastern Bloc leaders to allow Jews to leave his country freely and emigrate to their new homeland.

Today, a memorial erected on the island of Rab commemorates the Jewish brigade, and each year gatherings known as Beyachad (“together” in Hebrew) bring together its descendants in remembrance. The memorial also serves as a reminder of the existence of the Italian concentration camps, for those inclined to forget. At the Shoah Memorial Museum in Paris, one may admire a striking photograph of the Jewish battalion of Rab Island cheerfully marching toward its future battles.

The battalion’s epic was also celebrated in song. In 1944, a young fighter, Shalom “Shani” Altarac, descended from a family of cantors from Sarajevo, composed in the Croatian forests of Kordun and Banija a Judeo-Spanish parody of the ritual songs of the Haggadah (the liturgical text recounting the liberation of the Jews under Pharaoh), which he called the Partisan Haggadah. The text reinterpreted the Exodus story to match communist ideology, viewing the insurrection of slaves against Pharaoh as a parallel to the proletariat uprising against capitalist and Axis oppressors. It famously begins with the line, “This is the bread of affliction that the Jewish partisans ate in the Croatian forests…”

Rather than being a one-time wartime artifact, Sarajevo’s Jewish community continued to recite this humorous parody at the very end of their community seders for decades after the war.



About the writer:

Michel Levine is a historian of Human Rights and the author of a work dedicated to the major cases of the League of Human Rights (Unclassified Cases. Unpublished Archives of the League of Human Rights, Paris, Fayard, 1973).
Further publications include a historical investigation on the repression of Algerian demonstrations in Paris in October 1961 (The October Ratonnades. A Collective Murder in Paris in 1961, Paris, Ramsay, 1985; reissue Jean- Claude Gawsewitch Publisher, 2001.)







While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

WORD HAS IT

Orwell at the UN General Assembly (UNGA 81) – Decoding the anti-Israel Diplomatic Bias.

By Yoram Blumstein

In the aftermath of October 7th, an alarming new reality has gripped global Jewry: a wave of antisemitism and anti-Israel animus. This has been fueled by the overlapping efforts of states, non-state actors, and multilateral organisations (the UN, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and other agencies). The 81st Session of UNGA bore testimony to the lies, manipulation of political language and distortion of truth for pure emotional intimidation, as leader after leader took to the UN rostrum to accuse Israel of “genocide”, “war crimes”, “mass starvation”, and creating conditions resembling a “concentration camp.” George Orwell, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, would have characterised the speeches of world leaders or their representatives (especially those of Brazil, Ireland, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Qatar, France, Malaysia, the Palestinian Authority,and South Africa) as corrupt language designed to obscure their real intentions using metaphors and imagery about Israel’s purported “genocidal” conduct in Gaza. Orwell’s written masterpieces (like Nineteen Eighty-Four) were prescient. In his 1946 essay, ‘Politics and the English Language’, Orwell aptly stated:
 “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

War of Words. George Orwell recognized that political power is sustained not just through physical force, but through the deliberate corruption of words, a stratagem in the armory of Israel’s multifarious enemies.

This article applies an Orwellian diagnostic approach to dissect the diplomatic rhetoric which was nonchalantly employed by anti-Israel delegates at UNGA 81, where calumnies about the only Jewish state were employed as political weapons to manipulate public perception, while distorting the facts and the objective reality in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), as well as Gaza. Such mendacities, especially if spewed from the rostrum of the world’s premier international organisation, against the Jewish state carry enormous weight in the court of public opinion and have real-world impact on the Israeli government and Jews.  In using Orwellian tools, this article seeks to decode the speech of the main state sponsor of Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood terrorism and genocidaire-in-chief, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. While other world leaders used similar anti-Israel canards, the singular honour must go to Erdoğan (who stands as one of Israel’s most vocal critics) since his speech was laden with political lies, devoid of legality, and nothing more than pretentious diction.  By deconstructing Erdoğan’s speech as pre-packaged lies, the article will extract specific speech acts used by the Turkish president in his invective against the State of Israel and juxtapose them with real-world facts grounded in legality and empirical observation.

Master of Malevolence.  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a long history of severe verbal attacks against Israel, frequently labeling the country a “terrorist state” and comparing its leadership to the Nazi regime. (Photo: Adem ALTAN / AFP via Getty Images)

DECYPHERING TURKEY’S LIES ABOUT ISRAEL

Instead of using the general debate to promote international peace and security initiatives (especially in the Middle East), Erdoğan devoted a large portion of his speech to spreading lies about Israel and promoting a clear domestic and international agenda.  In Orwellian terminology, Erdoğan’s speech was littered with metaphors, imagery, political theatrics, selective moral outrage, and terminology, while obscuring the truth to fill political bandwidth. Yet, the Turkish leader is guilty of the very baseless charges he levels against Israel and thus deflects self-scrutiny.

“Gaza is the most inhuman concentration camp of our time…” and “the world’s largest graveyard for children…”

This was a high-octane and emotionally charged statement by Erdoğan. As such, it was designed for maximum impact. It is palpable that references to “concentration camp” and “graveyard” are insensitive and invoke historical analogies with the Holocaust, when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (commonly known as the Nazi Party) killed more than six million Jews through gassing, summary execution and starvation. This is historical inversion and an affront to the Jewish people, the remaining Holocaust survivors and their families. Turkey is clearly creating a simplified good-versus-evil dichotomy, while purposefully ignoring geopolitical complexities and concealing Erdoğan’s hideous policies against the Kurds in northern Syria and Iraq.

How would Orwell relate to the above? Erdoğan is known for his double standards. He portrays himself as the leader of the Muslim world. Yet, he has:

– committed genocide against the Kurds in northern Syria and Iraq, as he will not countenance the creation of a Kurdish corridor or crescent (straddling northern Syria, Turkey, northern Iraq, and western Iran)

– armed and sponsored the former leader of the now-disbanded terrorist outfit Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and now president of Syria, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa (formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Julani), as a proxy against the Syrian Kurds

– supports Islamist movements in Libya and Sudan, and

– hosts Hamas leaders.

Hence, Erdoğan lacks the moral authority to lecture Israel on morality, and he should be treated as a diabolical, homicidal creature. The Turkish president’s specific utterance was not based on facts, but on weaponising language for political gain. The truth speaks for itself. Gaza is not a “concentration camp” or “graveyard” for children. It is an active combat zone; Hamas terrorists are doing the fighting, and Israel has taken extraordinary steps to minimise civilian casualties. In fact, the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) Coordinator for the Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has assisted Israeli, regional and international aid agencies with the erection of temporary tents. At the same time, what government, bent on confining people to a “concentration camp”, would coordinate with international agencies to launch a polio vaccination campaign, if the intention is to kill them? By using and inverting the Holocaust analogy of “concentration camps”, Israel did not put policies and resources in place to confine Gazans to a specific location to eventually kill Palestinians. Conversely, this is exactly what Adolf Hitler and his henchmen did against Jews in major concentration camps in Germany, Poland, Austria, France, Estonia, Latvia, and the Czech Republic. They intended to exterminate all Jews as part of Hitler’s “Final Solution”, which was carried out by Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.  It is inaccurate to portray Israel as having created a “graveyard for children”, as the IDF has taken reasonable measures, in line with international humanitarian law, to protect children in Gaza. The faux sultan, Erdoğan, willfully neglected to inform the General Assembly that Hamas used hospitals, schools and public facilities in Gaza as shields and weapons storage facilities in its terrorist campaign against the IDF and Gazans. Tragically, children died in the war, yet Turkey, which, along with Qatar, has enabled Hamas to build its own open-air prison, from which it launched its murderous campaign against Jews and Israelis on October 7th. Erdogan also omitted the fact that COGAT continues to coordinate with Israeli humanitarian agencies to distribute vital baby formula to Gazans, as Hamas has intercepted aid supplies. The double standard is clear: There is no condemnation that Hamas started the war against Israel and should bear responsibility for all fatalities in Gaza. Israel was under attack and responded in self-defense. Check your facts, Erdoğan!  

“Insatiable genocidal mindset…” and “state terrorism”

Erdoğan’s arsenal of egregious statements against Israel includes references to the Israeli government as inherently “genocidal” and engaging in “state terrorism.” He further asserted that:

 “There is no war in Gaza; there are no two sides. This is an invasion, a massacre, a genocide, a policy of mass destruction.”

Israel never committed genocide and only acted in self-defense. The IDF launched “Operation Swords of Iron” to rescue the hostages and target those responsible for the October 7th massacre. This was a legitimate response, in line with the law of armed conflict. Regrettably, Erdoğan seems to be inspired by South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. The threshold to prove genocide is exceedingly high, as it is often referred to as the “crime of crimes.” The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as “the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.” The accuser or the plaintiff must prove specific intent (dolus specialis) and the mental element (mens rea). Therefore, it is not enough to demonstrate massive civilian casualties, widespread destruction, or severe human suffering. In fact, Hamas is responsible for the implosion of Gaza, as it launched an unjustified attack on Israel. Erdoğan and his ally, the avaricious African National Congress (ANC), rely excessively on individual statements by a few senior Israeli politicians to prove “genocidal intent.” Israel’s legal team cogently argued that individual Israeli politicians’ statements were taken out of context and expressed in anger at the surprise October 7th attacks (the deadliest in Israel’s history since the Holocaust). The ICJ requires proof that political statements translated into official government policy that directed IDF commanders and soldiers to carry out “genocidal actions” in Gaza. This is a no-brainer since Israel did not display intent to kill and displace Palestinians. It is a figment of Erdoğan and South Africa’s imagination. The IDF’s actions were aimed at targeting Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure and leadership, and it put measures in place to ensure the safety of civilians in Gaza.  

In Orwellian terms, Erdoğan has failed to separate rhetoric from facts. As a matter of fact, Erdoğan should be hauled before the ICC and ICJ for war crimes and genocide committed against the Kurds, as his campaign was intentional and specific. He unleashed the full might of the Turkish army, intelligence and its proxies in northern Syria and Iraq to exterminate the Kurds, who rightfully deserve a state of their own. The Turkish government does not distinguish between Kurdish fighters (who have been instrumental in the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – ISIS) and civilians. Additionally, Erdoğan has exported his brand of Islamist fundamentalism to radical Islamists in Libya, Sudan and part of the Horn of Africa with political and material support, which continues to undermine regional stability and the peacemaking efforts of the African Union, Gulf countries and the international community.

BUILDING A RESILIENT, OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE ECOSYSTEM IN DEFENSE OF ISRAEL

As lies and propaganda against Israel and the Jewish people will continue unabated, it is important to reclaim the narrative battlespace. By its own admission, the Israeli government has done a terrible job in promoting Israel’s international image since October 7th. In his address to UNGA 81, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu correctly pointed out that Israel is fighting a battle on the eighth front: the battle for the truth.  Erdoğan and those of his ilk are the chief purveyors of false claims of genocide. The Turkish leader’s anti-Israel missive is nothing more than bullshit. In an entertaining little book, ‘On Bullshit’ (2005), Harry G. Frankfurt remarked that, “A person who undertakes bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as required, to fake the context as well.”

Rousing Rhetoric. Erdoğan speaks of the “ murderous ideology called Zionism” and said that “the genocide network has turned Gaza into the world’s largest cemetery for children.”

As Israel is central to Jewish identity, it behoves Jews to act as citizen-diplomats for the State of Israel and disabuse the liars of maligning the only Jewish state. The South African Jewish community, although Lilliputian in size (52 300, according to a recent study by the Kaplan Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town) compared to other diaspora communities, is the most Zionist in orientation, as evidenced by the indefatigable spirit of the leadership and volunteers of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) and Zionist Federation (SAZF), which continue to engage with the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) and the South African Presidency whenever unwarranted policies and statements are made against Israel. This is active citizen diplomacy, as South African Jews accept constructive criticism of Israel, but not when it pivots towards antisemitism, extremism and lies. The South African Jewish community, of which I am a proud member, has built an effective ecosystem in defense of Israel. Other diaspora communities should take a page from the South African Jewish community’s commendable pro-Israel efforts.



About the writer:

Editor’s Note: Yoram Blumstein is a nom de plume the author uses to protect their identity because of previous security threats.





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

PRETORIA’S HOUSE OF CARDS AT THE HAGUE

While creating a fine photo-op, 21 national  flags do not a verdict make.

By Shaun Schutte

On 22 September 2026, the International Court of Justice confirmed that Colombia had withdrawn its intervention from South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. President Abelardo De La Espriella’s government has also restored diplomatic relations with Israel and reversed other decisions taken by the previous administration, while  Nicaragua had already withdrawn its separate application to intervene in April 2025.

Colombia’s decision matters because it exposes something the ANC government has been allowed to blur since it filed the case on 29 December 2023. Pretoria repeatedly creates the impression that every country appearing in the proceedings has joined South Africa, supports its accusation and accepts that Israel committed genocide.

That is not what the court record shows.

South Africa is the applicant making the accusation. Israel is the respondent denying it. The other countries are interveners, and intervention does not automatically mean joining South Africa’s side or accepting that its allegation has been proven.

Under Article 63 of the ICJ Statute, any state party to the Genocide Convention may intervene when the interpretation of that Convention is in dispute. A country may explain how it believes genocide, genocidal intent and the duties of states should be interpreted without presenting new factual evidence, endorsing South Africa’s allegations or declaring Israel guilty.

Palestine and Belize also invoked Article 62, claiming a specific legal interest that may be affected by the eventual judgment. That gives them a different basis for requesting participation, but it still does not transform every government appearing in the courtroom into an independent witness for Pretoria.

“We continue to work closely with Türkiye……Türkiye has made its support for the case very clear,” said Ronald Lamola, South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation to reporters on the ICJ genocide case against Israel at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Foreign Ministers Meeting in Kruger National Park, South Africa, May 24, 2026.  (Photo: AA)   
 

THE COURTROOM ANALOGY

Imagine a prosecutor bringing twenty-one people into a courtroom and then walking outside to tell the public that all twenty-one are witnesses supporting the prosecution.

When their statements are examined, the picture changes. Some openly support the accusation. Others are merely explaining how they believe the law should be interpreted. One specifically avoids deciding the disputed facts, while four warn that the prosecution may be attempting to lower the standard required to prove the crime.

The prosecutor nevertheless points towards everyone inside the courtroom and presents them as one united group standing behind the accusation.

That is the impression Pretoria has created, and it is misleading.

THE COUNTRIES LEANING TOWARDS PRETORIA

Libya intervened on 10 May 2024 and left very little room for doubt about its position. It alleges that Israel’s acts and omissions are genocidal and were committed with the required specific intention to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group.

Libya is not simply discussing the meaning of the Convention. It has aligned itself directly with South Africa’s accusation.

Mexico followed on 24 May 2024, concentrating on the obstruction of humanitarian assistance, destruction of civilian and cultural infrastructure and the cumulative consequences of Israel’s military campaign.

Its submission advances a broader method of inferring genocidal intent and materially assists Pretoria, but it does not provide an independent judicial finding that Israel entered Gaza intending to destroy the Palestinian people.

Palestine intervened on 31 May 2024 under both Articles 62 and 63, claiming a direct legal interest in the eventual outcome. Its position openly supports the allegation that Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to genocide.

Palestine is directly affected by the war and has an obvious reason to place its case before the Court, but it cannot simultaneously be presented as an independent and neutral confirmation of South Africa’s accusation.

Spain entered on 28 June 2024 and argued that killing, serious bodily or mental harm, forced displacement and deprivation must be assessed collectively when determining whether genocidal acts and intent exist.

That interpretation could make Pretoria’s allegation easier to establish, but Spain is still presenting a legal argument about how evidence should be assessed. It is not arriving with proof that the final legal threshold has already been crossed.

Türkiye intervened on 7 August 2024 and strongly supports South Africa’s position, arguing that Israel’s conduct must be considered as a complete pattern rather than as isolated events.

That stance is consistent with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s openly hostile political posture towards Israel, and it is reasonable to ask how much of Türkiye’s involvement arises from independently assessed evidence and how much reflects an established geopolitical position.

Consistently hostile towards Israel and frequently seen at political rallies adorning a Palestinian keffiyeh over his shoulders, one questions whether Türkiye president Erdoğan’s position in supporting South Africa’s case against Israel is motivated by law or politics? (Photo: Reuters)

Chile filed its declaration on 12 September 2024, arguing that genocidal intent may be inferred from a consistent pattern of conduct and the surrounding circumstances.

This assists Pretoria’s legal argument, but it still does not establish the central fact that must eventually be proven:

that Israel’s purpose was to destroy Palestinians as a people rather than to destroy Hamas as a military organisation.

The Maldives intervened on 1 October 2024 and focused on civilian deaths, displacement, deprivation of essential supplies and living conditions allegedly calculated to cause physical destruction.

These are grave matters that must be examined, but the consequences of war and the specific intention to destroy a protected group remain separate legal questions.

Bolivia followed on 8 October 2024 and has openly supported South Africa’s case. Its government has also been politically aligned with the anti-Israel bloc for years.

Political alignment does not automatically invalidate its submission, but neither can that alignment be displayed as independent proof that genocide occurred.

Ireland entered the proceedings on 6 January 2025, concentrating on humanitarian assistance, collective punishment, civilian protection and the interpretation of the prohibited acts listed in the Convention.

Its arguments may assist South Africa, but Ireland did not arrive carrying a judgment that genocide had already been proven. It supplied legal interpretation, not a verdict.

Cuba intervened four days later, on 10 January 2025, and openly supports both the Palestinian position and Pretoria’s use of the Genocide Convention against Israel.

Cuba’s longstanding alignment against Israel and the United States is part of the political context and cannot simply be ignored. That alignment may explain its position, but it is not evidence of genocidal intent.

Belize filed on 30 January 2025 under both Articles 62 and 63, claiming a legal interest in the proceedings while supporting a broader interpretation of the Convention.

Its participation adds another flag to the coalition Pretoria displays, but an application to intervene remains neither evidence nor a finding of guilt.

Brazil intervened on 17 September 2025 and argues that the cumulative effects of Israel’s military operations must be examined when determining whether the Convention has been violated.

That is a legitimate legal argument for the Court to consider, but the Court must still distinguish between political condemnation, possible violations of humanitarian law and the very specific crime of genocide.

Comoros followed on 29 October 2025, supporting South Africa’s position and a broader interpretation of destructive conditions, deprivation and genocidal intent.

Comoros is also a member of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. That does not disqualify its submission, but it forms part of the political background when its flag is presented as supposedly independent confirmation of Pretoria’s claim.

Belgium entered on 23 December 2025 and supports judicial scrutiny of Israel’s conduct while advancing interpretations that could broaden the circumstances from which prohibited acts and genocidal intent may be inferred.

Once again, the submission may assist Pretoria, but it does not establish the one element South Africa must ultimately prove:

Israel’s specific intention to destroy Palestinians as a protected group.

Iceland intervened on 11 March 2026 and leans towards a broader interpretation involving displacement, deprivation, civilian harm and the circumstances from which intent may be inferred.

It is an argument about how the Court should examine the evidence. It is not independent factual confirmation that the evidence already proves genocide.

Namibia entered on 12 March 2026 and clearly supports South Africa, arguing that genocidal intent must be assessed through the complete context and combined pattern of conduct.

Namibia’s own history of genocide gives its voice moral significance, but historical experience cannot replace the evidentiary requirement to prove Israel’s intention in this particular war.

THE COUNTRY THAT HAS NOT PRETENDED TO DECIDE THE FACTS

The Netherlands intervened on 11 March 2026 and made an important distinction. Its government explicitly stated that its declaration does not determine the disputed facts or conditions on the ground. It confines itself to explaining how parts of the Genocide Convention should be interpreted.

The Netherlands argues that the available evidence should be considered comprehensively and that forced displacement or deprivation of humanitarian assistance may, in certain circumstances, contribute to proving prohibited acts or genocidal intent.

Parts of that interpretation may assist South Africa, but the Netherlands has not declared Israel guilty and cannot honestly be displayed as a country that confirmed Pretoria’s accusation.

THE COUNTRIES RESISTING PRETORIA’S APPROACH

Paraguay intervened on 3 March 2026 to defend the original, narrow meaning of genocide. It insists that the crime requires proof of a specific intention to destroy a protected group and warns against weakening that requirement.

Paraguay is formally involved in the same proceedings, but no honest account could count it as part of South Africa’s coalition.

The United States entered on 12 March 2026 and explicitly rejected the genocide accusation as false. Its submission argues that widespread civilian casualties, even on a horrific scale, do not automatically establish genocidal intent, particularly during urban warfare against an armed organisation operating from within civilian areas.

Its intervention warns that lowering the threshold would transform genocide from a precisely defined crime into a political label applied to any destructive war.

Hungary intervened on the same day and also insists upon a high evidentiary threshold. Its position warns against taking possible violations of international humanitarian law and simply re-labelling them as genocide without proving the additional and very specific intention required by the Convention.

Hungary is inside the same courtroom, but it is there to challenge Pretoria’s legal approach — not to support it.

Fiji’s intervention also demands strong proof of both the prohibited acts and the intention to destroy the protected group. It raises concerns about relying uncritically upon politically contested reports from international organisations and advocacy groups.

Fiji is involved in the case, but it is not there to endorse South Africa.

WHAT THE NUMBERS ACTUALLY SHOW

There are now 21 states formally involved as interveners. Sixteen broadly support, lean towards or legally assist parts of Pretoria’s approach. The Netherlands restricts itself to legal interpretation without deciding the facts. Paraguay, the United States, Hungary and Fiji defend a stricter interpretation that challenges South Africa’s case.

That is not an international verdict. It is not 21 independent bodies of evidence, 21 witnesses confirming genocidal intent or 21 governments arriving at the same legal conclusion.

South Africa is entitled to bring its case, and every state party is entitled to offer its interpretation of the Genocide Convention. What Pretoria is not entitled to do is convert legal participation into political endorsement and then present the number of flags surrounding the proceedings as proof that the accusation has already been established.

The International Court of Justice has not found Israel guilty of genocide. Its provisional orders were issued to preserve possible rights and prevent irreparable harm while the case continues. They were not a final judgment that genocide had occurred, yet that distinction has repeatedly disappeared from the political narrative.

THE WAR DID NOT BEGIN INSIDE A COURTROOM

On 7 October 2023, Hamas-led forces crossed into Israel and deliberately attacked civilian communities. Approximately 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were abducted and taken into Gaza.

Those civilians were not accidentally caught between two armies. Civilians were among the intended targets.

Hamas then returned to one of the most densely populated territories on earth with the hostages. It continued operating through an extensive military system built within and beneath civilian areas, with fighters, weapons, command facilities and tunnel entrances positioned in or near locations protected by their civilian function.

This did not remove Israel’s duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians. Civilian casualties are never irrelevant, and every credible allegation of unlawful conduct must be investigated.

It did, however, create a battlefield in which reaching Hamas would inevitably place civilians at risk, while every civilian casualty could be turned into political and strategic pressure against Israel. Hamas had constructed a war in which it could benefit from either outcome:

survive beneath the civilian population, or gain international support from the destruction caused when Israel came underground to find it.

The suffering in Gaza is real and devastating. Acknowledging that suffering does not require us to erase the organisation that started the war, murdered civilians, retained hostages and embedded its military machinery within the civilian environment upon which the war would be fought.

War crimes, disproportionate force and genocide are not interchangeable terms. Genocide requires proof of a specific intention to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group because it is that group.

Civilian deaths alone do not prove that intention. Destruction alone does not prove it. Political speeches, operational failures and even serious violations of the laws of war cannot simply be stacked together until they automatically become genocide.

The required intention must still be proven.

THE FLAGS CAN NO LONGER HIDE THE DIFFERENCES

Colombia has changed course and withdrawn. Nicaragua stepped back before it. Their decisions do not determine the case, but they prove that intervention is neither permanent nor beyond reconsideration.

The remaining governments must now clarify what their flags represent. If they possess independently verified evidence that Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian people, they must produce that evidence and stand openly behind the accusation.

If they intervened only to explain how the Genocide Convention should be interpreted, they must publicly reject any attempt by Pretoria to use their participation as proof that they endorsed South Africa’s factual claims.

If their involvement was driven primarily by ideological alignment, diplomatic pressure or bloc politics rather than independently assessed evidence, they should follow Colombia and withdraw.

The ANC government may possess the executive authority to conduct South Africa’s foreign policy, but it does not own the conscience of every South African whose name it carried into that courtroom. Neither does it own the flags of other governments merely because they entered the proceedings to speak about the law.

Pretoria cannot have it both ways.

It cannot count every intervention as support when addressing its political audience and then retreat behind legal technicalities when asked what those countries actually proved.

The choice facing every government involved is now clear:

● Stand behind the genocide accusation and produce the evidence.

● Clarify publicly that your intervention concerns legal interpretation and does not endorse Pretoria’s factual claims.

● If your flag is there only because political alignment placed it there, withdraw it.

Twenty-one flags may create an impressive photograph. They do not create evidence, they do not establish intent, and they do not amount to a verdict.



About the writer:

Shaun Schutte is a South African security professional, independent writer and founder of Black Knight Bodyguards. He served for eight years in the South African Defence Force before spending seventeen years in international close protection and security operations across conflict environments including Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola and Somalia. His writing draws on this operational background to examine asymmetric warfare, terrorism, protective security and the political narratives surrounding modern conflict. He writes from the perspective of a practitioner rather than an academic, combining publicly available evidence with lessons gained through direct experience in unstable and hostile environments.





SOURCES

International Court of Justice—declarations of intervention:
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192/intervention

ICJ confirmation of Colombia’s withdrawal and current list of intervening states:
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/icj-press-release-22sep26

International Court of Justice—complete case record:
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192







While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

A FAILURE OF A FILM

The truth is collateral damage in NAZA

By Rolene Marks

In the last two weeks, two Israeli-made shows have dominated the headlines. One is the massive hit, Fauda, which in its latest season that is centered on the horrors of 7 October, is laying bare the atrocities and trauma in as much excruciating pain that art imitating life allows. The show’s creators take viewers as close to that day that the boundaries of television permit. Fauda has managed to succeed where Israel’s public diplomacy has failed – and the results are evident as it soars to the top of the Netflix rankings, especially in the Arab world. At the time of writing this, Fauda was ranked 4 overall in global rankings. It already debuted at number 1 in Lebanon and is in the top 10 of Arab countries.

Fauda – Scenes from the series

The other is the movie, NAZA. The title is an Israeli military acronym derived from “nezek agavi”, Hebrew for collateral damage – but most people will reach for another analogy. You know the one.

The premise of the movie that is ironically backed by the notoriously anti-Israel publication, The Guardian, relies on anonymous testimony from 24 IDF soldiers who claim to have served in the elite intelligence unit, 8200, and claims that using AI (artificial intelligence) a planned strike that would result in 500 civilian deaths was approved.

Spain Again. Hardly surprising for a country historically antisemitic for its people to demonstrate support of the “NAZA” documentary film by Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor as seen at the 74th San Sebastian International Film Festival in the northern Spanish Basque city of San Sebastian on September 25, 2026. (Photo: Ander Gillenea/AFP via Getty Images)

Israel’s war with Hamas is the most scrutinized conflict in the world, and if there ever was an incident where 500 civilians were killed, it would definitely have dominated the front pages of every media outlet. The only strike where the number 500 was mentioned was on the 17 October 2023 when Hamas alleged that an Israeli airstrike had struck the Al-Ahli hospital, killing that many civilians. Faster than Hamas were miraculously able to count alleged civilian deaths, was the speed in which this made headlines around the world. When the facts were investigated, it was discovered that a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that had fallen short, hit the parking lot causing a small crater and sadly killed a handful of civilians. The lie had gotten out, put its trousers on and was gallivanting around the world – and the result was mass protests and attacks on several synagogues.

A similar analogy can be drawn with NAZA. The documentary has been screened and the headlines about its content have dominated media publications around the world, despite it not being thoroughly vetted for factual accuracy and everything that one hopes a subject matter of this importance should be subjected to.

The IDF have reacted very strongly to what has been shared. They have refuted the veracity of claims that the army use AI to determine targets and that a strike was carried out that killed 500. They also demanded a widespread, robust campaign that must include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and National Public Diplomacy Directorate.

In a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they called NAZA, “pure propaganda, created by radicals who serve the narrative of murderous terrorists. It is yet another element of the anti-Israel campaign that began after October 7, driven by the Red-Green coalition of the radical left and Islamist movements.” The Ministry took aim at the lack of verification, saying in their statement, “the “film” claims that the IDF approved a planned strike despite anticipating 500 civilian deaths. This is false. It never happened. Never. The IDF would never approve such an operational plan. But there is a reason – and a method – behind the dissemination of such an outrageous allegation. The method employed throughout this campaign, including in this “film,” is familiar: introduce a shocking falsehood, amplify it around the world, and allow it to shape headlines and public opinion. By the time the facts emerge and corrections follow, the damage to Israel’s image has already been done. Again and again, false accusations against Israel receive immediate global attention, while their subsequent collapse receives only a fraction of the exposure and impact. This film follows precisely the same pattern.

The same applies to another false accusation – that the IDF allows AI systems to make operational decisions independently of human judgment. This is simply false and fundamentally misrepresents how the IDF operates. Operational decisions are made within a defined human chain of command and are subject to human judgment and oversight. The IDF has developed extensive procedures intended to prevent and mitigate harm to non-combatants.”

Methods of warning to mitigate civilian casualties are conspicuously ignored. Methods include roof knocking, dropping pamphlets announcing impending strikes, SMS’s, phone-calls in Arabic and other methods that have been lauded by other army officials.

Rebutting NAZA. Freed hostage Omer Shem Tov p(right) pushed back against the directors  (left) of “NAZA” in Gaza, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed explaining that Hamas – not the Israeli military – used captives as actual “collateral damage” (The Hebrew meaning of NAZA).

Former hostage, Omer Shem Tov, in an op-ed written for the Wall Street Journal said:

 “One of my captors told me his mother had received a phone call warning her to leave her home because an Israeli strike might put her in danger. The call came from the Israel Defense Forces. Hamas knew where I was and left me to die. Israel didn’t know my location, but it knew where my captor’s mother was and called to make sure she wasn’t killed accidentally. There I was—kidnapped, starved and tortured by her son—while my army was trying to keep his mother alive.”

His op-ed continued:

 “Israel desperately wanted me home. But not at any price. There were Palestinian civilians between Israel and me. So Israel dropped leaflets, sent messages, made phone calls and ordered evacuations. It tried to minimize NAZA, or collateral damage.

I also saw what death meant to the other side. One day, my captors celebrated after Hamas fighters killed Israeli soldiers. The next day, Israel bombed the area where I was being held. The explosions came about 10 seconds apart. I was terrified. The terrorist beside me was delighted. To him, every explosion was proof of success: Look what we made Israel do. Look how much we hurt them. I understood something then. For Hamas, destruction itself could be victory. As long as there was death on either side, Hamas could win.”

Shem Tov is not the only former hostage who has lambasted the filmmakers. Eliyah Cohen took to his Instagram page and wrote, “”I understand that there is the law and we live in a free and democratic country and everyone deserves to say what they want, but we as a nation, not as a state, as a nation, cannot allow this to pass by unanswered,” he said. “We need to take to the streets, hang posters of them, and spread pictures of them through every medium so that when they walk on the street, they’re allowed to walk here, we won’t do anything that’s against the law, but when they walk on the street they will feel ashamed.”

Cohen also mentioned the soldiers who fought to free him from captivity: “In this country they (Avraham and Szor) cannot go and humiliate my brethren and my friends and the people who fought every day to bring me home and who fight every day so our families could live here, and they’ll go and spread lies… and what will we do? We’ll let it go?”

Dubious Duo. Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham are not only the Israeli directors of the controversial documentary NAZA but directors of intensifying the  global hate towards their own country. Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

Liri Albag, who was one of the female observer soldiers taken captive from Nahal Oz base, published a scathing response, “Hey… Do you know that although you only served for two weeks in the IDF and were discharged because of your political views, if you had fallen into Hamas captivity, they would have considered you a soldier anyway? And they would have tortured you for being a soldier. Don’t ask me how I know.

“Do you understand that if you had been in the Gaza border area on October 7, none of the terrorists would have stopped and said, ‘Hey, leave him alone—he’s okay; don’t hurt him’? Or perhaps you would simply have joined the ‘struggle to liberate Palestine’ and harmed your own people? “At first, I wanted to write ‘blood of my blood,’ but then I remembered that we most certainly do not share the same blood—and fortunately so! Ugh, disgusting. You sold out your own people for people who yearn for your death, and that is unforgivable. How do people like this have citizenship here?! They should be launched out of our country on a missile.”

A soldier who claimed to have participated in the movie, spoke to Walla, one of Israelis biggest news publications — and made serious allegations about how his testimony and casualty figures were obtained. He said his testimony was manipulated, and sources were financially incentivized to provide higher civilian-casualty figures. “I participated in this film, unfortunately, and they manipulated me so much,” he says. He continues, ““Numbers of 400 and 500 collateral damage don’t exist.” He claims participants were financially incentivized. Most significantly, he alleges that interviewees were financially incentivized to give increasingly higher figures, “They offer you ten shekels for every additional person you say: say 400, get 4,000; say 500, get 5,000.” He claims this caused participants to exaggerate: “People start exaggerating. They see the money and cash in front of their eyes.”

Why?  Why did these two Israelis who claim to call Israel home, produce such a damaging movie, aided by a publication that is notorious for its anti-Israel bias? Plaudits from peers? In this instance, a 25 minute ovation at the Venice Film Festival, ironically the same festival who gave the same accolades to Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s favoured celluloid propagandist. They claim it is concern for Palestinian casualty recognition.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a different opinion. The Ministry says, “The truth is the opposite of what the “film” seeks to portray. And yes, in Israel’s democracy, where freedom of expression is cherished, there are also radical Israelis who lie, distort facts seeking political goals and personal gains. The “film’s co-director, Yuval Abraham, is no neutral investigative journalist – he is a longtime radical anti-Israeli activist committed to demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.

As part of this method, the film creators deliberately omit Hamas from their narrative, erasing the terrorist organization whose actions are at the heart of this war. Hamas deliberately targets Israeli civilians, as it did on October 7, while embedding itself within Gaza’s civilian population and using civilians as human shields. Israel is fighting this bloodthirsty jihadist terrorist organization while the IDF operates in accordance with international law and takes extensive measures to minimize civilian harm.”

The filmmakers lack that ability of a truly perspicacious reporter and examine what their motives are. When questioned by a reporter on Israel’s Channel 12, Abraham simply could not verify any of the accusations and when pushed about omitting the atrocities of 7 October and Hamas’s role in the war, he testily responded with “go make your own movie.”

Israeli officials are debating what punitive measures they can take against the pair. The film has successfully united Israelis in anger. I would wager the hopes of the filmmakers to have their movie screened here would be met with a national temperature colder than the Arctic tundra.

Perhaps they need to binge watch season 5 of Fauda.




About the writer:

Rolene Marks is a journalist and commentator on Middle East affairs, co-founder of Lay of the Land and the National Spokesperson for the South African Zionist Federation.





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

THE FORGOTTEN PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

The time has come to re-evaluate why more aid is given to some refugees than others in need.

By Neville Berman

Today there are between 30-45 million Kurds in the world. They are mainly Sunni Muslims. They are the largest ethnic group in the world without a sovereign country. The Kurds live across a vast area of mountainous regions spanning Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. They are indigenous to the regions that they have inhabited for thousands of years. Depending where they live, they speak Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic and Persian. They are pro Western in political ideology, and helped to defeat ISIS. The Kurds have never fully united under one leadership. In 2017, the Kurds in Iraq organized a referendum. 92% voted for Kurdish Statehood. All attempts to form a Kurdish State have been brutally suppressed and never recognized by the United Nations. The Kurds have been attacked in every country that they live in, and have been robbed of their rights to the profits from oil produced in places that they once occupied in Iraq and Iran.

Robbed of their Rights. Never galvanizing the massive support like the Palestinians, a small number of the Kurdish diaspora gather on 2026/01/28 in Leicester Square to protest and call on the UK government to take action against the Syrian military’s offensive in Kurdish-held areas of northeast Syria. (Photo: Krisztian Elek/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ordered the killing and imprisonment of thousands of Kurds in Turkey and in Syria. All his actions have been ignored by the western world, the liberal press and human rights organizations.

The Kurds are undoubtedly one of the forgotten people of the world. The irony is that the Kurds have all the attributes of a State. They have land, their own language and culture, and are completely viable if they had control of the oil that is under their land.

Unfortunately, the world has never supported statehood for the Kurds. 

Free Pass. While President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s administration has conducted extensive military campaigns and a severe political crackdown against armed Kurdish separatist groups and affiliated politicians,  there are few international protests in support of the Kurds against the Turkish president.

Another group of people who have never been recognized as a State, are the Baloch people. There are over 12 million Baloch people in the world. The Baloch people are ethnic Iranian people, who are indigenous to the Balochi regions spanning Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. The areas that the Baloch people occupy in Iran and Pakistan are contiguous. They speak Baluchi and the language of the country in which they live.  Over eight million Balochi people live in Pakistan and between 2-4 million live in south eastern Iran. The Baloch also have a long history in Oman dating back centuries. Today over 1 million Baloch people live in Oman. Over 380,000 Baloch live in the United Arab Emirates. Despite having land, a unique language and culture, they have never been offered a State of their own. They have been brutally suppressed by the Iranian regime. Pictures have emerged of Baloch leaders hanging from cranes in public squares in areas that the Baloch occupy. The hangings are a warning to the Baloch people not to protest against the regime.

Baloch leader Executed. While mostly escaping global attention, protests break out in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi against the hanging in Iran of a militant leader Abdolmalek Rigi who was “… fighting for the rights of the Baloch in Iran.”

The world totally ignores the Baloch people.   

The Rohingya people lived in Myanmar for generations. They are a Muslim minority group living in a Buddhist-majority country.  In 1982, the Rohingya were denied recognition in Myanmar as an ethnic group, and faced persecution. Decades of discrimination boiled over in August 2017. Armed attacks and serious human rights violations forced hundreds of thousands to flee. Today more than 1 million Rohingya live in poverty in Bangladesh. The majority are living in the Cox Bazaar region that is now the home to the world’s largest refugee camp. The United Nations has described the Rohingya as “the most persecuted minority in the world.”  Obviously, the Jews are the most persecuted minority in the history of mankind, but the UN is never going to acknowledge this fact. The Rohingya refugees receive help from the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations. The help is minimal and the Rohingya are barely surviving. They face ethnic cleansing, and are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Their lives are total misery.  Not one wealthy Muslim country has offered to help their fellow Muslims.

The Rohingya are another of the world’s forgotten people. 

Rohingya on the Run. Where was the outrage for these dead refugee Rohingya adults and children killed after a boat capsized off Teknaf, Bangladesh on August 31, 2017 while trying to escape ongoing violence in Myanmars Rakhine state? (Photo: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

In 1962 Rwanda gained independence from Belgian colonial administration. In 1973 Juvenal Habyarimana became the second Hutu President of Rwanda. From October 1, 1990 a major Rwandan Civil war erupted between the government’s Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). On April 6, 1994 President Habyarimana was assassinated when his plane was shot down by the Tutsis. The assassination triggered the Tutsi genocide and in 1994 between 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis in Rwanda were killed by the Hutu majority in savage fighting. Approximately 75% of the Tutsi population were slaughtered in the course of 100 days. While France did not hold colonial rule over Rwanda, it maintained significant political involvement in the country during the 1990’s and armed and trained the Hutu army.  At the start of the genocide, France deployed troops to Rwanda to evacuate foreign nationals, and then left the Tutsis to their fate.  In 2021, President Macron of France acknowledged French responsibility for being “blind” to what was happening during the Rwanda genocide, and asked Rwanda to forgive France for its past behaviour. The Tutsis are without doubt one of the forgotten peoples of the world.

Blind to Barbarism. Visiting Rwanda in 2021, French President Macron acknowledged responsibility for being “blind” to what occurred during the Rwanda genocide when Tutsis were slaughtered in their thousands and the world and its institutions stood by. (Photo:Ludovic Marin / AFP)

In 2003, a catastrophic war in Sudan started when two rebel groups known as the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) launched a war against the government of Sudan. The Sudanese government responded by forming an armed Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, to crush the rebellion. The Janjaweed, together with the Sudanese Army, massacred between 200,000 to 300,000 non-Arab ethnic Sudanese. They created a massive humanitarian catastrophe by implementing a scorched earth policy that forced millions to flee. Tens of thousands of women were raped. An estimated 2.7 million people lost their homes between 2003 to 2005.

In 2023 the war in Sudan reignited. The war continues to this day.  The UN now estimates that over 14 million Sudanese have been displaced. Approximately 10 million have been displaced internally and 4 million have fled to neighbouring Chad, South Sudan, Egypt and other neighbouring countries. Widespread famine, lack of adequate health facilities, and basic human requirements, are now threatening the lives of ten million displaced people in Sudan. In 2025, the US Secretary of State, determined that members of the Sudanese government forces known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are committing genocide in Darfur.  No end to the war is in sight, with aerial and drone attacks becoming more common. The world has ignored the catastrophe in Sudan.

Slaughter in Sudan. This photo taken during a rally against genocide in the Sudan outside the embassy of Sudan in Washington, DC, captures the boredom and disinterest of much of the world.(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Basically, the world does not care about civil wars in Africa that have displaced and killed millions of people.

According to the United Nations (UN), there are 117 million people in the world in 2026, who have been uprooted by conflict, violence, or persecution. Instead of concentrating on the problems caused by the 117 million displaced people who are facing ethnic cleansing, widespread famine, and massive displacement all over the world, the world continues to invest more effort and financial aid to the Palestinian refugees than on any other refugees in the world. The one thing that is remarkable about this help, is how little it has improved the lives of the Palestinian people. What it has done is to make Palestinian leaders into either multi-millionaires or billionaires.

Selective Concern. Despite the over 117 million displaced people facing ethnic cleansing, widespread famine, and massive displacement all over the world,the ongoing situation with the Palestinians continues to command global attention as evidenced in the media and public protests. Seen here is a Palestine Action Group’s March in Sydney. (Photo:  Flavio Brancaleone/AAP)

The Palestinians have mastered the art of depicting themselves as victims, and the western liberal world, which is mainly in massive debt, continues to pour money into the Palestinian coffers. It is time for the world to re-evaluate its support for the Palestinians. Jordan is the name of a river. It was never a state.  In 1922, the British hived off 76% of the mandated area of Palestine and renamed it Transjordan. They then offered Transjordan to the Hashemites who had been kicked out of Arabia by Abdul Aziz, the head of the House of Saud. Transjordan was renamed as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Hashemites are not from Jordan. The Palestinians are the majority of the Kingdom of Jordan’s population. By both location and by being the majority of the population, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is in reality a Palestinian State. What the world should be looking at is why Palestinian refugee camps still exist in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and especially in Gaza. The whole question of why the world has ignored the plight of over a hundred million displaced people, and why the Palestinian refugees have not received citizenship in any of the 22 Arab states in the Middle East needs to re-evaluated.



About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award.  In 1978 he immigrated to the USA  to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel.  He is married with two children and one granddaughter.








While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).