Gaza: Trapped by the International Order

March 5, 2026 by
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The war in Gaza has given rise to unprecedented protests in the West and divided the international community between nations supporting and condemning Israel. It has also led to countries like South Africa and Nicaragua initiating legal action against Israel that has resulted in equally unprecedented indictments. But despite dividing Western societies and the international order in hitherto unimaginable ways, popular mobilisation against the war remains far greater in Western Europe and North America than elsewhere.[1] It is true that demonstrators in the West are Continue reading →

New Guidelines for Grieving

February 26, 2026 by
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New Guidelines for Grieving Christina Heatherton | October 3, 2025   Don’t be a burden Don’t you cry with your mouth open and your heart spilling out making it everyone’s problem just cause you’re sad   Don’t complain if you’re here as a courtesy –  on visa scholarship or asylum whether you’re a dreamer or just somebody’s dream Don’t complain Maybe try showing a little less attitude and a little more gratitude? Hm?   The country is at half-mast for all the people who want Continue reading →

Narrating the non-European nation-state

December 17, 2025 by
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Narrating the non-European nation-state[1] André Dao, Postdoctoral research fellow, Laureate Program in Global Corporations and International Law, Melbourne Law School In Antony Anghie’s Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, the chapter on the League of Nations’ Mandate System turns on a key analogy. ‘The great literature of modernity’, writes Anghie, was ‘preoccupied with mapping the interior, with tracing and examining the workings of an inner consciousness.’ Meanwhile, international jurists, including those at the League, ‘sensed that access to the interior of the state Continue reading →

From a Right of Self-Defence to the Fact of Conquest

June 7, 2025 by
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Peter Hallward[1] This article has been updated by the author with a new post-script, finalized on 17th June.* On 7 October 2023 some arguments began that continue to this day. Did the Hamas-led attack on Israel come out of the blue or was it a response to decades of domination and dispossession? Was it an incomprehensible act of savagery or a long-awaited prison break? A well-timed strike at a complacent oppressor or a counter-productive mistake? Were its intended targets military or civilian or both? Were Continue reading →

Majdal Shams and the Instrumentalization of Despair

November 6, 2024 by
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Majdal Shams has long been a heartbreaking place. Since June 1967, when Israel launched its blitz on the Golan Heights as part of the shock-and-awe campaign of the Six Days War, the village has been split in two. During the Naksa, thousands of local civilians were pushed north by the invading Israeli soldiers; the remainder steadfastly remained. As a consequence, today half of the community live, displaced, under unchallenged Syrian sovereignty, north of the 1967 ceasefire line; the other half of the community live just Continue reading →

Gaza, South Africa and the Return of the Third World: Towards a Postcolonial Humanism

September 23, 2024 by and
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Julie Billaud, Geneva Graduate Institute Antonio De Lauri, Chr. Michelsen Institute     Abstract : International law has historically been manipulated to render acceptable the suspension of liberal normative standards when it comes to violence and suffering perpetrated against non-Western populations. Yet the litigation initiated by South Africa against Israel at the International Court of Justice illustrates the Global South’s unwavering commitment to challenge the international world order through legal means. Can the case of Palestine propel the ‘return’ of the political project of the Third Continue reading →

A Part of Us is Dead

September 23, 2024 by
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“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.” Frederick Douglass – “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”   When the absurd is sustaining a slaughterhouse and we are witnesses. When our collective will to stop the slaughterhouse is met with imaginary structures built for us to fight with. A part Continue reading →

Discourses of Palestinian Disappearance

May 30, 2024 by
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Speaking to a group of Israeli high school students in 2022, Deputy Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana commented: “If there was a sort of button you could push that would make all the Arabs disappear, send them on an express train to Switzerland, I would press that button.” It has long been obvious, and has become more obvious since Israel’s campaign of annihilation in Gaza began last October, that most Israelis and many in the West wish, with Minister Kehana, that Palestinians—or what some refer Continue reading →

Reflections on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

March 21, 2024 by
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In the remarks that follow I want to focus on a few of the ways language is used to describe the violence unleashed by Israel on the Palestinians. We are all no doubt aware that language is related in complex ways to action – not only in describing and misdescribing reality but also in experiencing words and motivating action. I begin with a striking passage from an article by Brian Klug on the most recent Gaza massacre: “Sometimes it is better,” he writes, “to be Continue reading →

2023 Early Career Scholar Prize Announcement

March 13, 2024 by
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Humanity is pleased to announce a prize for the best essay published in the journal in a calendar year. The prize is open to graduate students or those without tenure track jobs at the time of submission. It’s our pleasure to announce the winner of the 2023 Early Career Essay Prize for Humanity journal: Howie Rechavia-Taylor. Howie Rechavia-Taylor, “German Colonialism In The Courtroom — Law, Reparation, And The Grammars of the Shoah,” Humanity 14, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 212-229. Abstract: In the quest to address the Continue reading →