policy lab april 2024

For decades, Israel has recognized the importance of information warfare in justifying the everyday violence of occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism. Now they are using the same tactics in overdrive to justify and facilitate genocide. In just six months, Israeli forces have killed more than 33,000 Palestinians and left most of Gaza uninhabitable. Meanwhile, Israel’s most powerful benefactors continue to largely ignore growing public calls for a ceasefire and accountability. This could not have been achieved without the complicity of western journalists across Europe and the US, who have manufactured consent for their governments’ unconditional support of Israel by uncritically parroting Israeli military disinformation and outright propaganda.

In this policy lab, Laila Al-Arian and Abir Kopty join host Tariq Kenney-Shawa to discuss the role journalists and the media are playing in shielding Israel from accountability, what journalists should be doing to effectively and accurately cover the genocide, and how the public can navigate the world of Israeli disinformation.

Laila Al-Arian is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and executive producer of the Al Jazeera English documentary series Fault Lines. She is also the co-author of...
Al-Shabaka policy member Abir Kopty, holds an MA in Political Communication from the City University, London, and is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute...
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Latest Analysis

 Politics
In March, Israel shattered the ceasefire in Gaza by resuming its bombing campaign at full force and enforcing a total blockade on humanitarian aid—ushering in a new phase of the ongoing genocide. In response to mounting international criticism, the Israeli regime introduced a tightly controlled aid scheme designed not to alleviate suffering, but to obscure its use of starvation as a weapon of collective punishment. Through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Israel has transformed humanitarian aid into a tool of control, coercion, and forced displacement. Israeli forces have additionally blocked UN and other aid agencies from accessing over 400 distribution points they once operated throughout Gaza. They consequently forced two million Palestinians to rely on just four GHF sites, most near its southern border in what appears to be a deliberate effort to push mass displacement toward Egypt. Investigations have also revealed how US-based private contractors are actively profiting from the GHF’s deadly operations. In this policy lab, Yara Asi and Alex Feagans join host Tariq Kenney-Shawa to discuss how the GHF fits into Israel’s genocidal strategy—and to expose the network of individuals and companies profiting from what has been a death trap masquerading as humanitarian assistance.
 Politics
​​The October 7, 2023, Al-Aqsa Flood operation aimed to revive Palestinian armed resistance and reassert the cause in Arab and global consciousness after years of marginalization. It dealt a major blow to Israel’s deterrence, rupturing its image as a secure colonial outpost entrusted with protecting Western strategic interests. It also exposed cracks in its militarized social contract that rests on the regime’s ability to protect its settler population. While the operation imposed new political realities on the Israeli regime, it has come at a staggering cost to Palestinian life: Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has unleashed one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory. Yet the anticipated wave of Arab solidarity following the operation failed to materialize or translate into concrete policy shifts. Instead, the moment laid bare the entrenched ties between Arab regimes and Israel’s settler-colonial project that are rooted in mutual interests, regime preservation, and a shared antagonism toward Palestinian resistance. This commentary argues that these alliances—sustained by repression and strategic-economic cooperation and reinforced by Western complicity—transformed a potential turning point for isolating the Israeli regime into an opening for intensified colonial expansion and regional dominance.
Al-Shabaka Tariq Dana
Tariq Dana· Jul 22, 2025
 Politics
The Israeli regime’s ongoing genocide in Gaza has exposed the failure of international legal frameworks to protect civilians, marking an unprecedented breakdown in the protective function of international law. While the Genocide Convention obligates states to prevent and punish genocide, and the Geneva Conventions establish protections for civilians under occupation, these mechanisms have proven powerless without the political will to enforce them. In this context, eight Global South states—South Africa, Malaysia, Namibia, Colombia, Bolivia, Senegal, Honduras, and Cuba—have launched the Hague Group, a coordinated legal and diplomatic initiative aimed at enforcing international law and holding the Israeli regime accountable. This policy memo examines the group’s efforts to challenge entrenched Israeli impunity. It highlights the potential of coordinated state action to hold states accountable for violating international law, despite structural limitations in enforcement.
Al-Shabaka Munir Nuseibah
Munir Nuseibah· Jul 8, 2025
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