On the Role of Federalism in Foreign Policy on Israel and Iran

As U.S. President Trump was drawing a line in the proverbial sand by stating repeatedly that Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, E.U. foreign commissioner (i.e., minister) Kallas warned the world that military involvement by the U.S. in the military spat going on between Israel and Iran would “definitely drag” the entire Middle East into the conflict.[1] Accordingly, she “made clear the European Union would not back America’s armed intervention.”[2] By the way she came to that public statement, the U.S. could take a lesson in how to optimally utilize federalism such that all of its parts shine, rather than just those at the federal level.

The E.U.’s foreign minister made her public statement after having hosted a video conference with state officials—one from each state government—who could represent their respective states in affairs beyond the E.U. She had also called her U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Rubio, who “emphasized that it’s also not in their interest to be drawn into this conflict.”[3] Any daylight between Rubio’s position, that of the U.S. National Security Director, and President Trump is not relevant here; rather, that Kallas reached out not only to her counterpart in the U.S., but also to state officials in the E.U. can illustrate how federalism can be utilized in the formulation of a foreign policy in a federal system of public governance. Instead of being left out entirely, the E.U. state governments played a role without eclipsing Kallas’ role in the E.U. speaking with one voice. Even if some state officials in the meeting objected to the federal foreign minister’s statement, discerning a consensus would be sufficient for Kallas in her role. As a result, the E.U. could enjoy the benefits abroad from speaking with one voice.

In cases in which consensus on an issue does not exist, and some state officials are at loggerheads, Kallas could simply have abstained from commenting because the E.U. would not speak with one voice. Qualifying this quietism, however, is the condition in which the E.U. has an important strategic geopolitical or economic interest in an issue in foreign affairs and the interest of the E.U. should outweigh the lack of consensus at the state level, for the union is more than the aggregate of the political units (i.e., states) within the union. This judgment too should rest with Kallas in her capacity as a federal official.

A risk in involving officials from each of the 27 states regards any one of them exceeding one’s role as a state official by speaking unilaterally for the union publicly. Kallas should thus have the authority to restrict such pronouncements for the good of the union. A benefit of holding a meeting with the state officials is that after a consensus has been discerned, Kallas could ask them for some analysis of the international problem. Once benefit of federalism is that a federal official can draw on the expertise of relevant state officials, both in the politics and in geopolitical analysis as foreign-policy experts.

For example, Kallas stated that no one would benefit from a widening of the conflict in the Middle East. This point may not be true. The plight of the Gaza residents under the thumb of the Israeli army at the time could benefit from Arab countries entering the fray because their armies could possibly assume control of Gaza to feed and protect its residents. Put another way, the genocide was so one-sided (it could hardly be called a war) that were the U.S. to engage militarily against Iran, other Muslim countries could also become engaged and, as a byproduct, provide some balance in favor of the Palestinians in Gaza. That the E.U. was arguably more pro-Gaza than the U.S. was at the time may have meant that Kallas had a political incentive to suggest to the Arab governments in the Middle East that they could possibly take advantage of U.S. involvement against Iran to step in themselves on behalf of Gaza. If the U.S. Government had been paying brides to Arab countries (or to key officials therein) to keep them from intervening militarily in Gaza, the military involvement of the U.S. against Iran could be a game-changer, in effect forcing the hands of the Arab states to take action even if it means less U.S. money. State officials meeting with Kallas could perhaps have supplied her and each other with such analysis that in turn could have improved the substance of her public statement in terms of any impact on the players and spectators in the Middle East.

Kallas’ consultations both abroad and with relevant state officials can be viewed as a strategic competitive advantage of the E.U. over the U.S. because American federal appointees have not been in the practice of consulting with state officials who may have expertise in foreign policy and could relay and reflect foreign-affairs positions of their respective states. As commander-in-chief of an army, the head of state of a U.S. state should include foreign affairs in campaigning for office, as well as in serving in office. The chief executive and head of state of Texas, for example, is the regular commander-in-chief of the Texas National Guard. Lest such an army be relegated as insignificant, California’s Newsom raised hell when the federal president of the union, Donald Trump, officially borrowed California’s army to engage against protesters in Los Angeles in June, 2025.

In short, Kallas’ utilization of the E.U. federal system may be more optimal than Rubio’s utilization of only federal officials in the U.S. on foreign policy, such that the latter could take a lesson from the former on how to optimize federalism in foreign policy by more fully engaging more of the parts of the system. To be sure, the involvement of state officials risks state governments diverging publicly from a federal policy and thus undercutting it. But such a tension is part of federalism. Being able to speak with one united voice yet while accommodating the differences that naturally exist within an empire-scale union is not cost- or risk-free, but I submit that federalism is the best system for such unions, which in scale and qualities are distinct from (early modern) kingdom-level states that have their own federal systems. The heterogeneity of culture and ideology within an empire-scale federal union dwarfs such differences that exist within a state thereof. Federalism is thus more of a benefit to the former than the latter.

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “US Action Against Iran Would Fuel ‘Broader Conflict” in the Middle East, Kallas Warns,” Euronews.com, June 17, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

The E.U. as a Bystander on the Global Stage: A Self-Inflicted Wound

Why has the E.U. been sidelined amid the military tensions in the Middle East? The answer lies with the E.U.’s federal system, rather than the size of its economy or of its population. The E.U. certainly could have more geopolitical sway abroad were it not for a vulnerability being exploited within its own federal system. The vulnerability stems from a refusal by some state officials to recognize and respect the qualitative and quantitative differences between the federal and the state levels of the E.U. Specifically, when the governor (i.e., chief executive and/or head of state) of a state operates as if a federal-level official, especially that of a federal president, the authority of the actual federal president is undercut, hence weakening that person’s ability to convince the heads of foreign governments to include the E.U. president or foreign minister in multilateral negotiations centered on the Middle East, for example. Even unconsciously, foreign leaders may say to themselves, why should we respect the president of the E.U. if she is so easily upstaged by the leader of an E.U. state who is acting as if he were president of the European Commission?  To speak with one voice, and to be able to speak for the E.U. rather than just one state thereof, an E.U. official must be the speaker. Macron of the E.U. state of France cannot speak for the E.U., but Von der Leyen could, provided her space is respected by the governors of the states. This is not to say that this is the only reason why the E.U. has been sidelined from negotiations on Middle East warfare; rather, my contention is that this reason is typically overlooked due to the Euroskeptic ideological delusion that the E.U. does not have a federal system of government even though since 1993, governmental sovereignty has indeed been split between the states and the Union. Perhaps the underlying question here is whether continuing to clutch at the anti-federalist ideology is worth the E.U. continuing to be weakened unnecessarily from within, and thus sidelined from international negotiations that do not center on Europe. Making such blind-spots transparent is indeed a valuable occupation, even if it can be infuriating to people whose interests and ideology are served best if societies look the other way.

The full essay is at "The E.U. as a Bystander on the Global Stage." 

Israel Kidnapping at Sea: On Absolutist National Sovereignty

In the dark of night on June 9, 2025, Israeli military forces intercepted The Madleen, a yacht operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), a political-activist group oriented to getting food and medicine to the residents of Gaza in Israel. Activists from the E.U., Brazil, and Turkey were on the boat until they were forced onto an Israeli boat and taken to Tel Aviv’s airport, where they were pressured to sign a document that they had entered Israel illegally and agreed to be deported. Once back in the E.U., its activist Greta Thunberg told reporters that Israel had committed “an illegal act by kidnapping us on international waters and against our will, bringing us to Israel, keeping us in the bottom of the boat, not letting us getting out and so on.”[1] She had agreed to give her written consent to be deported (even if that meant being permanently banned from Israel, she likely would have welcomed the stipulation), but she refused to admit that she had entered Israel illegally. She had, after all, been kidnapped in international waters. Being forced to enter a country by its government, whose officials reason nonetheless that the entrance is illegal, merits the spotlight on enquiry, as this actual mindset can be said to be pathological in nature. I submit that pathology with governmental sovereignty is never a good mix.

Of her kidnapping in international waters north of Egypt, over 100 miles from Israel, Thunberg humbly relativized her own plight by adding, “But that is not the real story here, the real story is that there is a genocide going on in Gaza, and a systematic starvation following the siege and blockade now, which is leading to food, medicine, water—that are desperately needed to get into Gaza—is prevented from doing so.”[2] Her priority in directing attention to the condition of the residents of Gaza is eminently valid; even so, I contend that it should not totally eclipse the glimpse afforded to us by the public response of the Israeli foreign ministry to Israel’s interception of the boat and abduction of its occupants.

As if Israel’s blockade off the coast of Gaza extended into international waters, the ministry “insisted the blockade,” and thus the interception of the boat, “was ‘consistent with international law.’”[3] Stating furthermore that “unauthorized attempts to breach” the blockade “were ‘dangerous, unlawful, and undermine ongoing humanitarian efforts,’” as if one small humanitarian effort would undermine others as if “collective justice” would mean that all aid would then be blocked, the foreign ministry was stating, in effect, that motive is sufficient for such a breach even while a boat is still in international waters, just north of another country rather than off Israel’s coast.[4] As against the international illegality of surrounding a boat in international waters, harassing its passengers, spraying them with a white irritant, and forcing them to leave the boat and be taken to Israel (as they were not yet even in Israeli waters), motive of intent to eventually violate Israel’s blockade by approaching Gaza from the sea means that Israel did not actually violate international law. Treating motive as an unauthorized attempt to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza even outside Israel’s waters is a misuse of the military doctrine of preemption, which in turn can be traced back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq two decades earlier.

Accusing the kidnapped of illegally entering Israel adds insult to injury. Furthermore, such a cognitive warping as, “I forced you here and you came here illegally” implies that the Israeli government had acted illegally, since that government’s action caused the illegal entry. In addition to twists of reason, the ministry’s statement reveals something heinous about the mental boxes of the powerful whose use is not subject to a higher authority and whose unrelenting, still unspent hatred toward another group warps perception and judgment as well as clear thinking. The resulting dissidence reflects back on extraordinary arrogance fed by over a year of de facto impunity internationally in decimating a captive population. “Drunk with power” is yet another way of characterizing the presumption of arrogance, which, sadly, is human, all too human. Yet even before the conflagration in Gaza, before the dreadful yet much more limited attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, an Israeli government presumed itself entitled to go into another sovereign country and kidnap Adolf Eichmann, so even though he, unlike the humanitarians on the boat, deserved his fate in court, the pattern of hyperextending beyond Israel’s borders to kidnap non-Israelis can be discerned, and this pattern suggests a sordid mentality of extenuated self-entitlement. Such a mentality running a sovereign government is problematic internationally, and thus this case reasonably comes under the purview of the international community.

From this case study’s glimpse of a problemed mentality of government officials in a foreign ministry, the absolutist interpretation of national sovereignty, which not only Israel, but the U.S., Russia, and China have held onto as if it were a sacred dogma, can and should be up for review. Absent any international coalition of willing countries to militarily enter Gaza to protect and feed the residents, and Israel’s ongoing naval blockade of food and medicine, which strongly suggests a motive to exterminate the population so Jewish settlements could repopulate Gaza, proposals to check national sovereignty at the global level, whether by removing vetoes from the UN Security Council, making resolutions by the General Assembly binding on countries, or establishing a rival institution capable of governance and enforcement to at least some degree should be considered. To Kant’s point that an international federation of countries would make peace merely possible but not probable can be added the crucial element of whether such a federation would have some governmental sovereignty of its own with which to act as a real check on abuses of national sovereignty by national governments.

In short, the kidnapping in international waters by a national government with impunity reveals for us a mentality that is dangerous when it can draw on national sovereignty to act out aggressively as a predator. That such a sordid mentality is able to enjoy Hobbes’ proverbial state of nature of “dog eat dog” (so life is short and brutish as there is no superordinate power) should be a sign that the post-World-War-Two world order was in dire need of serious reform or being replaced outright such that abuses of absolutist national sovereignty could be checked by limited yet effectual authority beyond the nation-state yet accountable to a super-majority, with minority rights protected by an international court whose rulings could be enforced against the resistance of guilty national governments.

The implications of the decision that was taken by the Israeli government as if its jurisdiction extended into international waters brings up more than merely that government’s legitimacy, for the world order itself could then be perceived as woefully inadequate, even broken. Constructing the UN in the wake of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and in the midst of the nuclearized Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not go far enough, and thus underestimated the depravity of human nature drunk with unlimited national sovereignty.

Indeed, the motives and actions of Israeli officials against the innocent residents of Gaza at the scale of an entire people to be moved or else exterminated answers the question asked in the wake of the Second World War of whether the world would learn its lesson. Evidently, Hitler did not sufficiently jolt humanity into engaging in sufficient political development internationally, for Netanyahu’s cadre can arguably be placed in the same class as the Nazis. In a way, the impunity enjoyed by Israel and its very likely ability to continue as a nation makes this case more dangerous than that of Nazi Germany from the standpoint of human rights, for the lesson going forward could be that crimes against humanity do pay off.

Even in refusing to go back to its 1967 borders, Israel as a country had been in violation of international law for decades, again with such blatant impunity that the country’s government went on the offensive against a subjugated and captive population of Muslims. The mentality is the same as that of kidnapping foreigners in international waters only to accuse them of illegally entering the country: Ignoring the violation of international law as to borders (as well as the rulings of international courts on the occupation of Gaza) only to go on the offensive in bombing and starving entire cities in Gaza. The mentality of aggression in this case is two degrees of separation from the normalcy of recognizing and atoning for one’s own previous actions. It is astonishing that the hubris of arrogance does not trip over itself as if running on stilts while throwing rocks. Such a mentality renders the absolutist version of national sovereignty not only dangerous, but deeply flawed from the standpoint of human nature.  

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1. Jaroslav Lukiv and David Gritten, “Greta Thunberg Deported, Israel Says, after Gaza Aid Boat Intercepted,” BBC.com, June 10, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.

Worse than Hell on Earth: Gaza

Each of us is so close to human nature that our perception of it may be blurry or partial. One of Freud’s contributions is the insight that we don’t even know ourselves completely, given the existence of the subconscious. This is also true of trying to comprehend human nature at a distance, as whether humanity is or is not by nature compassionate to people who are suffering greatly at a distance. The sheer duration of the extreme suffering of civilians in Ukraine and Gaza in the midst of ongoing military attacks by Russia and Israel, respectively, beginning in the early 2020s, and the sheer impunity absent any interventionist coalitions of countries from around the world combine to give a negative verdict on human nature concerning compassion from a distance. It can even be said that the ongoing passive complicity around the world impugns not only us, but human nature itself. While less explicit than in furnishing weapons to Russia or Israel, the complicity of human nature is more serious, for even as geopolitics change, human nature is static, at least in a non-evolutionary timespan. Given the extreme suffering in Gaza in particular, the lack of political will around the world to step in militarily and assume control of Gaza may mean that human nature itself is worse than hell on earth.

The director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, claimed in early June, 2025 that “humanity is failing” as it has collectively “watched the horrors” of the Israeli offensive that had rendered conditions in Gaza worse than hell on earth.[1] Given the leveling of towns and cities and the deliberate blocking of food and medical supplies for months even as 1.2 million residents could not leave the territory allegedly to make life untenable so the population would be exterminated, it is easy to heap blame on the Israeli officials for going too far in exacting revenge for the Hamas attack in which only 1,200 were killed and a few hundred Israelis were taken hostage. The fallacy, or excuse, of collective justice plus allowing the victims to exact it is a damning indictment on the Israeli government and even the state of Israel as deserving sovereignty. Such a verdict is easily made; it is much more difficult to turn a negative verdict on the rest of us as we and our respective governments around the world have passively refused to step in militarily.

“It has become worse,” Spoljaric said. “We cannot continue to watch what is happening. It’s surpassing any acceptable, legal, moral, and humane standard. The level of destruction, the level of suffering. More importantly, the fact that we are watching a people entirely stripped of its human dignity. It should really shock our collective conscience.”[2] I think it has, so the question is why there is such a gap between being shocked morally and deciding to take action and then actually doing so.

The International Red Cross is the custodian of the Geneva Conventions, which is the corpus of international law that regulates the conduct of war and is designed to protect civilians. The most recent version, the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, was adopted after the Second World War with the intention of preventing the killing of civilians “from happening again.”[3] This is of course an allusion to Nazi Germany, which had killed roughly 20 million Slavs in Eastern Europe and millions more, including Jews from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary westward. Ironically, Adolf Eichmann, who had managed the trains to and from the death camps, was convicted by an Israeli court because he had ignored Himmler’s direct order NOT to force Hungarian Jews to walk to a death camp in Poland; Eichmann could not claim that he was just following orders, and this is how he lost the case and his life.

As uncomfortable as it must be for Israeli officials to be likened to Nazi officials, the discomfort of the rest of us in being confronted with the verdict of our own passive complicity or at least our refusal to act on the basis of shocked conscience is surely much less. I suspect most of us reflect on the negative verdict on human nature as if reading a weather forecast of rain ahead. I contend that we are alienated from our own nature as a species, and that support for this and our lack of humane discomfort from having remained passive bystanders willing at most to go to a political protest is in the sheer impunity that both Putin and Netanyahu have been able to leverage in their respective one-sided military invasions.

If the dire verdict of our sordid human nature, which none of us can escape, is reasonable, then perhaps the question of whether our species deserves not to go extinct from the species-induced climate disequilibrium (i.e., the warming, over all, of the planet) can be revisited. Prior to 2022, and especially during the Coronavirus global pandemic, we could forgive our collective species for having polluted as if there were no tomorrow—that our penchant for instant gratification and outright greed are not enough to warrant extinction as if it were a divine punishment like Noah’s flood. After 2022, however, our calculous could be different—more dire for our species being worthy of survival from its self-induced and perpetuated ongoing and uncorrected climate crisis. The refusal of even democratic governments around the world to jointly step in as over a million residents of Gaza had reached a living condition worse than hell on earth is arguably morally worse than having refused to regulate carbon emissions sufficiently and then take drastic measures when the global average temperature reached 1.5C degrees. Leaving governments to enforce the Paris Agreement of 2016 themselves is bad enough; standing by while reports of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians, including babies, as a pastime and leveling even cities is much more unethical because of the extremity and scale of the human suffering. That even such a verdict being made explicit would not make any difference in practicality is a foregone conclusion that only confirms the sordid verdict. It is not as if no wiggle-room is in human nature, or that life is entirely deterministic, so we are indeed culpable both as individuals and as a species rather than being victims of our own innate nature. 

As sordid as selfishness is, even what Jonathan Edwards calls “compound self-love,” in which benefits are extended to other people rather than only to oneself, is not sufficient to save us from the damning verdict. As a Christian theologian in the eighteenth century, Edwards maintained that because God is love (ultimately of being in general assenting to being, and thus to us in so far as we exist), divine love, or agape, is ultimately unconditional. Yet from our limited vantage point, it is useful to wonder why a perfect being would love such a species as looks the other way as a people face worse than hell on earth on an ongoing basis. It is easy enough to believe that Yahweh will punish Israel for incessantly disobeying the Commandment against (mass) murder; it is much more difficult to come up with a rationale as to why God should love the rest of us even though God is love and thus cannot be otherwise. We most certainly can be otherwise. The question may ultimately be whether our species is worth being loved even by unconditional love itself.

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1. Jeremy Bowen, “Gaza Now Worse than Hell on Earth, Humanitarian Chief Tells BBC,” BBC.com, June 4, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Insulting Police in Georgia: Totalitarianism Criminalizing Politics

Whereas the Georgia in North America has been a member-state of the U.S. from that union’s beginning, the Georgia in Europe was still not annexed by the E.U. slightly more than 30 years after that Union’s beginning. Whether to join an empire-scale union of states is a political decision, as a union of states is a political animal. When a prospective state government criminalizes political protest and public discourse on that decision, such a government violates the federal requirement that the state governments adhere to democratic principles, which exclude criminalizing the political opposition. The government of Georgia in Europe crossed this line when a politician of the opposition was arrested for insulting the state police.

Just days after protests against the pro-Russian leanings of the ruling Georgian Dream group began in May, 2025, police detained Nika Melia, “one of the figureheads for Georgia’s pro-Western Coalition for Change” and who was in his car at the time rather than at a protest.[1] That “he was bundled away by a large group of people in civilian clothing . . . on charges of verbally insulting a law enforcement officer” undercuts the government’s claim that the arrest was of a criminal rather than a political nature.[2] Typically when a motorist is given a speeding ticket, a large number of people not wearing police uniforms does not deliver the ticket and haul the driver away.

As for the charge of verbally insulting a police employee, which is distinct from assaulting such an employee, not even municipal employees are gods (although generals on a battlefield may come close). In fact, Nietzsche’s expression human, all too human sadly applies all too often to police around the world because such power as in being legally permitted to use a club, taser, or gun is all too tempting for human pride and presumptuousness to abuse. In other words, police itself can be said to be a necessary evil because human nature itself is not strong enough to responsibly and proportionally use police power.

Continuing on the distinction between verbally insulting and physically assaulting someone, only the former can fall under free speech (i.e., political speech). Only the former brings to mind the thought police in George Orwell’s book, 1984. In other words, to make insulting a state functionary a crime comes dangerously close to making certain thoughts or beliefs illegal if they are verbally expressed. Even criminalizing publicly insulting a deity, which no police employee has been, is, or ever will be, essentially makes certain thoughts or beliefs, which are interior to a mind and thus inherently beyond the reach of the state, verboten. The contradiction is in making something inherently beyond the reach of the state to control subject nonetheless to such control. Totalitarianism itself may be said to end in such a contradiction.

Georgia’s chances of being annexed by the E.U. were thus being lessened by the criminalizing of verbally insulting police employees, who are, after all, taxpayer funded, and the detention of Nika Melia in particular. His criticism of the pro-Russian ruling Georgian Dream group was also a criticism of that government putting on hold the annexation process. Russia’s President Putin had made no secret of his strong preference that the E.U. not extend eastward, and the Georgian Dream group in Georgia’s government may have been doing Putin’s bidding in literally arresting pro-E.U. political beliefs. If in fact the vast majority of residents in Georgia were in favor of their state being annexed by the E.U., then the Georgian Dream regime was on tenuous grounds from a democratic standpoint not only in unilaterally bringing that process to a stop, but also in arresting pro-E.U./anti-Russian politicians. Interestingly, most of Serbia’s residents may have been opposed then to Serbia being annexed by the E.U. because of the higher prices and decrease in population (and increase in immigration) that had occurred in Croatia since it had become an E.U. state; and yet, Serbians tended to oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So being against annexation by the E.U. did not necessarily come from pro-Russia sentiment.

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1. Euronews Georgia, “Georgia Arrests Second Opposition Figure in Days as Ruling Party Faces More Protests,” Euronews.com, May 30, 2025.
2. Ibid.

Underneath the Rhetoric: Israel’s Hatred of Palestinians

Official public statements by a government’s officials obviously trade on rhetoric—manipulation by wording being a part of statecraft—but when the rhetoric is so self-serving and divorced from facts on the ground (i.e., empirically), wording can be indicative of the underlying mentality, which is real. I submit that the statements of Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu and Israeli foreign-ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein in May, 2025 amid the Israeli military offensive in Gaza reveal the surprising extent that hatred can warp human perception and cognition without the warping itself being grasped by the very people in its grip.

Facing pressure from the E.U. and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. in May, 2025, the Israeli government made a decision that the media described as lifting of the two-month-old Israeli ban on humanitarian food and medicine entering Gaza as over a million residents there were facing starvation and a lack of medical care. The so-called lifting of the blockade in actuality consisted in allowing in less than ten trucks on the first day, and between twenty and forty on the second day, with none being able to distribute through distribution centers. As a result, the food—a mere trifle spread over 1.2 million souls—did not reach any hungry mouths. Incredibly, Netanyahu admitted publicly that he was intent to allow in just enough food and medicine that would relieve the Israeli government of the pressure from its allies. Whereas during the ceasefire earlier in 2025 when Israel was allowing 600 trucks into Gaza per day, the “lifting” of the blockade would only permit a maximum of 100 trucks. In essence, the crime against humanity of exterminating a people was ongoing, given how far short 100 trucks’ worth of food (and the trucks also contained boxes of medicine and medical supplies) is in being able to feed 1.2 million people. Meanwhile, the Israeli military was upping its bombing in Gaza, with 100 residents killed on one day and 48 on the next day after the “lifting” of the blockade. In effect, the Israeli government’s cabinet was increasing the demand for medical supplies and medicine while intentionally minimizing the number of humanitarian trucks that could enter Gaza and making it very difficult for the trucks that did get in to unload at distribution centers such that the food and medicine could reach the actual residents of Gaza. Netanyahu’s stated goal of riding Gaza of Palestinians continued unfettered.

It is in that context that the E.U. took the decision to review the “wide-ranging trade and cooperation pact” with Israel “over its intensified offensive in Gaza.”[1] The E.U.’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas, stated on May 20, 2025 that the E.U. “would examine if Israel has violated its human rights obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which defines the trading and diplomatic relations” bilaterally.[2] That the Israeli military had already killed over 50,000 residents of Gaza over more than a year begs the question of what took the E.U. so long even just to review the agreement. The constitutional, or basic law, provision for unanimity on foreign policy in the European Council and the Council of the E.U. and that the E.U. state of Hungary had been serially exploiting its veto-power on the federal level is the obvious explanation.

Less well-known, however, is the sheer gradualism in the machinery of any government, federal or unitary, in reacting beyond words in ways that a strong enough to make a real difference “on the ground.” Aggressor regimes around the world benefit from the refusal of legislatures to off-set the inherent gradualism of government by enacting a fast-track option. Both in reacting quicker to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s bombing of Gaza, the E.U. could arguably have made a difference, whereas entrenchment is much more difficult to counter after a year.

Ongoing entrenchment has the benefit to the aggressor of being able to set the contours of debate concerning the militarization of an occupation or an outright invasion and extermination of a people. For example, in responding to the E.U.’s decision just to review the agreement, Marmorstein of the Israeli government wrote on social media that the “war was forced upon Israel by Hamas, and Hamas is the one responsible for its continuation. Ignoring these realities and criticising Israel only hardens Hamas position and encourages Hamas to stick to its guns.”[3] There a number of problems with this reply.

Firstly, whether or not Israel rejects the decision of the E.U. to review the trade and diplomatic agreement, the decision is solely for the E.U. concerning its own review, so this is not something for the counterparty to accept or reject. Secondly, not even Hamas—not to mention the 1.2 million residents of Gaza—forced Israel to kill over 50,000 and decimate entire neighborhoods. Nor did any counterparty force Israel to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza as people on a mass scale were starving. Behind the rhetoric is a warping of social reality in being incorrect in terms of being forced to make decisions, as if at gunpoint. Thirdly, the extremely disproportionate number of guns and bombs that Israel had over Gaza undercuts the claim that Hamas was “sticking to its guns,” and that this forced Israel to disproportionately bomb and kill in Gaza, especially during its offensive in May, 2025. Fourthly, the claim that Israel was militarily on the defensive is so contrary to the facts that, beyond the rhetorical use of the claim, it points to a rather severe cognitive and perceptual warping. I submit that hatred is the underlying culprit behind the cognitive and perceptional displacement.

Shortly after Hamas’s unjustified attack and kidnapping on October 7, 2023, the president of Israel said publicly that every resident of Gaza was culpable. Such over-reach of accusation, even considering that Hamas had democratic legitimacy in Gaza, bespeaks hatred, and is consistent with the UN’s finding of reason to believe that Israel was guilty of the crime of trying to exterminate a people, which is easier to prove than genocide. Furthermore, Netanyahu’s admission that he would allow only a minimum of humanitarian food-aid into Gaza in May, 2025 and only to satisfy the U.S. and E.U. points to an underlying hatred like smoke suggests the presence of fire. 

Also indicative of hatred in the Israeli government, Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, said at the time that the Israeli government was “rejecting” the E.U.’s decision to review the trade and diplomatic agreement: “A sane country does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a pastime, and does not engage in mass population displacement.”[4] This revealing glimpse both of the intent of Israel’s cabinet and what atrocities had been going on in Gaza strongly implies that hatred was a, or even the motivator, for what else other than sadistic pleasure could explain killing babies as a pastime. Furthermore, the statement belies the claim that Israel was being forced by its adversary to hit, and hit hard in Gaza. The refusal to take responsibility for one’s own decisions and even blame a counterparty as if it had made the decisions or forced them is suggestive of a sordid character and even delusion. It is probably that Israeli government’s officials have continued to be so angry and demeaning of a people deemed in effect (and ironically!) as sub-human that the policy of extermination has continued unabated even by the so-called lifting of the blockade of humanitarian aid that might keep the population from continuing to shrink as intended and desired by the Israeli officials. 

It is no wonder that the ICC has issued arrests warrants; it is more astonishing that the world has allowed the Israeli officials to continue to commit war crimes and a crime against humanity with only slight pressure to let some humanitarian aid into Gaza. While certainly not as culpable, the E.U.’s delay in even reviewing its agreement with Israel is astonishing. Is there a threshold of atrocity beyond which a coalition of countries would take immediate action against an aggressor-state? Given the impunity of not only Israel, but also Russia in Ukraine, it seems unlikely that there is such trigger even when a squalid, hateful, and over-reactive aggressor-character is on the loose as if it were in Hobbes' state of nature. 

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1. Euronews, “Israel ‘Completely Rejects’ EU Decision to Review Trade and Cooperation Deal,” Euronews.com, May 21, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Astha Rajvanshi, “Ex-Israeli General Hits Out at Government for ‘Killing Babies as a Pastime’ in Gaza,” Nbcnews.com, May 20, 2025.

Beyond Description, Atrocious, Inhumane: The New Normal?

“The situation for Palestinians in Gaza is beyond description, beyond atrocious and beyond inhumane.”[1] So wrote Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, on May 17, 2025. He could have been looking at films taken when the Nazi concentration camps were liberated in 1945 at the end of World War II. It was a shock to the world back then. The scale of the inhumane atrocity of over a million people living in rubble and starving by design in the next century raises the question of whether extreme inhumanity toward a group in searing hatred was becoming normalized, and thus tolerated by the world absent even a coalition of the willing to step in and counter what even democracy could inflict.

At the very least, the impunity enabled by Israel’s major ally pointed to a fatal flaw in the post-World-War II world order, including the United Nations. Ironically, the collapse of the Soviet Union made the world vulnerable, given the bias in there being one less superpower. “A policy of siege and starvation makes a mockery of international law,” the head of the UN wrote.[2] He added that annexation and settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal, and “nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” or, I might add, of any people.[3] Yet even such strong phraseology is but dry parchment while Israel killed over 100 residents of Gaza on next day—bombing a hospital no less in an attack called Operation Gideon’s Chariot.

To be sure, the Israeli government announced it would “allow a ‘basic amount of food’ to enter Gaza ‘to ensure a famine crisis does not develop’ after blockading the territory for 10 weeks.”[4] Lest humanity be presumed to be the motive, Israel’s IDF made the recommendation “out of the operational need to enable the expansion of the intense fighting” as Israel’s army expanded its presence in Gaza.[5] A similar logic may have been behind Eichmann’s frustration that there simply were not enough ovens so the number of people gassed daily had to be reduced. In both cases, group-identification led to viewing some humans as not human.

It is as if the world and especially the Israelis learned nothing from the disclosure of Hitler’s brutality, for by the 2020s, group-identification itself had still not come to be viewed as dangerous, especially when the obsession becomes reductionistic, and large-scale, planned-out atrocities in Gaza and Ukraine were allowed to go on. Eerily, were the Russian government successful in riding Ukraine of Ukrainians and the Israeli government successful in exterminating the Palestinians in Gaza, would the rest of the world blink? More likely, the tyranny of the status quo would turn a blind eye and go on as if nothing atrocious had happened.

I think it very likely that not even Guterres’s strong words would be enough to translate any political will into action to forestall the victimizers even by the UN. The lesson is perhaps that having strong allies can indeed enable a government to enact Nazi-level atrocities with impunity while the rest of the world looks on as if collectively helpless. What was shocking in 1945 may be viewed going forward as a precedent rather than a “never again,” line in the sand. Remembering past systematic atrocities by governments, whether of Hitler or Stalin, that were oriented to punishing or even eliminating a people out of hatred doesn’t help if such large-scale inhumanity is actually (i.e., de facto) to become precedent. In the midst of destructive, large-scale technology and the banality of efficient state organizing, the world could do worse than come up with a new world order in which having a powerful ally does not give victimizing governments a de facto veto over countervailing efforts to protect peoples from being exterminated out of sheer hatred.

John Locke knew that one rationale for government is that victims make lousy judges of their respective aggressors. That governments might view themselves as victims and leash out hyperactive vengeance may not have occurred to Locke, or even to Kant, who stated that a world federation would only possibly but not probably ensure world peace. It seems that political development beyond the nation-state needs to catch up to the modern reach and intensity of government being used as a tool of hatred. Even in 2025, Putin’s hatred of Ukrainians and Netanyahu’s hatred of Palestinians were of such intensity that both men should have been rendered unfit for office by international if not by domestic means.

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1. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, LinkedIn.com, May 17, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Wyre Davies and Rushdi Abualouf, “Israel Says It Will Allow Basic Amount of Food into Gaza, Ending 10-week blockade,” BBC.com, May 18, 2025.
5. Ibid.

Nationalism at Eurovision: A Lack of Vision

The inherent retentiveness of conservatism benefits a society because it need not “reinvent the wheel” in “starting from scratch,” as resort can be made to customs that have been efficacious. Unfortunately, conservatism can easily be in denial as to the need for adaptation to changes whether in geopolitical institutions or in culture. The advent of the European Union as a federal system of dual-sovereignty has been easy fodder for conservatism’s proclivity of denial with regard to very new things. Eurovision, too, was an invention beyond even the European Union, and thus also of the post-World-War-II history of integration meant in part as a check on the full-blown nationalism that had twice decimated Europe in the twentieth century. So it is problematic that the EBU, the organization behind the Eurovision Song Contest, has made so many category mistakes involving Europe in favor of nationalism.

The epitome of EBU’s bias and inconsistencies is the decision taken first to ban altogether and then relegate the E.U.’s flag while giving the state flags pride of place on stage, as if Eurovision were a political rather than an entertainment event. It was as if the EBU and the Swiss government were conveniently oblivious to the notion and instantiation of an empire-scale federal system of states. The notion that a person could be a citizen both of a union and one’s own state, and thus be under two flags at once, had been invented by political compromise in 1787. So, it was odd that in 2025, the performers who were E.U. citizens were to be denied the opportunity to show the E.U. flag, whereas bringing along the state flags was permissible.  It was, in effect, to say, you can vote for your representative in the European Parliament, but you cannot hold or wear the E.U. flag under which that parliament is instantiated as a legislative body. This inconsistency is at the very least consistent with the anti-federalist, Euroskeptic political ideology, and thus partisan in nature. Even worse, the decision fuels the sort of nationalism out of which two World Wars had destroyed Europe in the last century.

Even though Switzerland is not an E.U. state, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation announced in May of 2025 that performers would not be allowed to bring the E.U. flag on the main stage, the turquoise carpet, and even in the green room. In obfuscating the E.U. flag with those of “personal, cultural or regional identity,”[1] the Swiss government was making a category mistake, for to liken the E.U. flag with a gay-rights flag, for example, is to ignore the major difference between a cultural movement and a union that has executive, legislative, and judicial branches at the federal level. Neither was the E.U. “a network,” as David Cameron infamously said of the E.U. when Britain was a state thereof. In fact, Britain seceded in large part in rejection of the fact that governmental sovereignty had already been split between the state and federal levels. 

Lest Euroskeptics raise alarm bells, a federal union can exist in theory and practice without the federal level being recognized as a state internationally, for governmental institutions can indeed exist without constituting a state in the sense of having exclusive competency in foreign affairs. That governmental sovereignty can be divided does not necessarily mean that foreign policy and defense are completely federalized (i.e., E.U. exclusive competencies, or enumerated powers). Yet in terms of government, laws can be passed at both the state and federal level with binding legal force, hence the sovereignty enjoyed at the federal union level by executive, legislative, and judicial branches is distinct from the sovereignty retained by the states.

Therefore, that the “same rule applies to the Rainbow flag” as the E.U. flag “and the Palestinian flag” points to a logical inconsistency founded on a category mistake, but actually founded on a political ideology that is against the European Union.[2] Regarding the Palestinian flag, that Eurovision considered Israel to be European also represents a logical problem, for Israel is a sovereign state occupying Palestine in the Middle East, which is distinct from Europe geographically and culturally.

Furthermore, in refusing to exclude Israel from the competition, Eurovision was in denial, in effect, regarding the fact that the Israeli government had been blocking food and medicine from Gaza for more than a month as the 1.2 million captives in Gaza starved, as if each one had been culpable on October 7, 2023. In fact, on the day after the announcement on the E.U. flag being relegated to the background at Eurovision, essentially putting the state flags in front as if the states were still completely sovereign, Israel’s prime minister announced to the world that “full force” would be mustered against the inhabitants of Gaza.[3]

Also on the day after the Swiss announcement, lest the world of entertainment be assumed to be completely passive in the midst of the exterminating atrocity in Gaza, a “group of more than 350 international actors, directors and producers . . . signed a letter published on the first day of the Cannes Film Festival condemning the killing of Fatma Hassouna, the 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist and protagonist of the documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. Hassouna was killed along with 10 relatives in an Israeli air strike on her family home in northern Gaza {in April, 2025}, the day after the documentary was announced as part of the ACID Cannes selection.”[4] The letter pointed to the “shame” in the film industry’s “passivity.”[5] Passivity, as well as shame, can also applied to the EBU of the Eurosong Contest because it ignored a letter yet again in 2025 “calling for Israel to be banned from Eurovision” so the EBU would not be “normalizing and whitewashing” Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.[6] That the EBU had banned Russia even though at least part of Russia is in Europe sheds light on the rule by double-standards at Eurovision.

In such a condition, perhaps no flags at all should have been allowed in the vicinity of the song contest. Why open the door to explicit politics anyway, given that EBU’s handling of the political domain was itself so controversial, and, I contend, impaired even just from the standpoint of logic and consistency? I submit that the ideology of nationalism, which had given the world two major wars in the twentieth century and was allowing Israel to so abuse its national sovereignty, had become too engrained in the song contest. If the history of European integration after World War II, which includes Euroatom and the European Coal and Steel Cooperative, can be interpreted as a series of efforts to check nationalism, then the E.U. flag should be highlighted rather than relegated to the periphery if political flags are to be allowed at an entertainment venue at all, which itself is problematic and seems to incur a category mistake. Should Eurovision be assigned as a political or an entertainment event?  Passivity on even this basic question can be regarded as blameworthy.  

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “Eurovision Will Allow European Flag for Fans in the Audience but Not for Artists on Stage,” Euronews.com, May 13, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Gavin Blackburn, “Israeli Military to Continue Gaza Operation ‘With Full Force’ in Next Days, Netanyahu Says,” Euronews.com, May 14, 2025.
4. David Mouriquand, “More than 350 Stars Condemn Gaza ‘Genocide’ in Open Letter in Time for Cannes Opening,” Euronews.com, May 14, 2025.
5. Ibid.
6. David Mouriquand, “Eurovision’s Israel Contestant Yuval Raphael’s ‘Expecting’ Booing During This Year’s Competition,” Eurovision.com, May 13, 2025.

From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza

The uniqueness of the film, From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza (2024), goes well beyond it being a documentary that includes an animated short made by children and a puppet show. Footage of a Palestinian being pulled from the rubble twice—one with the head of his dead friend very close to him and the other with his account that he could see body parts of his parents near him—is nothing short of chilling. Perhaps less so, yet equally stunning, are the close-ups of the legs and arms of children on which their respective parents had written the names so the bodies could be identified after a bombing. That the kids had dreams in which they erased the black ink from their skin because they refused to fathom the eventuality of having to be identified is chilling in a way that goes beyond that which film can show visually. Moving pictures can indeed go beyond the visual in what film is capable of representing and communicating to an audience. The same can be said regarding the potential of film to bring issues not only in ethics, but also in political theory and theology to a mass audience.

The full essay is at "From Ground Zero."

On the Case Against Israel: The ICC and ICJ as Seeds

At first glance, the impotence of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice once an order has been willfully ignored by a government may seem overwhelming. The continued atrocities in Gaza and Ukraine even amid court challenges fueled the argument that might makes right. Even so, the willful sense of impunity of the perpetrators and their enablers in other governments may trigger enough of a public adverse reaction that the courts and international law itself eventually come out stronger.

In 2024, the jurisprudence on genocide was still new and has few cases. In its case against Israel, South Africa urged the International Court of Justice to order provisional measures that Israel would be obliged to take because an imminent risk of irreparable harm that is genocidal in nature exists in Gaza. Allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza is one such measure. With famine already in Gaza, South Africa asked the ICJ to direct Israel to do more in cooperation with the United Nations. Expanding the number of crossings for UN aid to enter the territory, and making that aid available at various points throughout Gaza are two examples of how Israel could cooperate with the UN, of which Israel is a member. The court issued such concrete orders as these two, even as the court had to consider the risk that Israel would violate the court’s provisional orders. In fact, in January, 2024, the court ruled that given the future risk of genocide, additional provisional measures were justified. This means that the court had found enough evidence of a risk of genocide—not that the court found evidence that genocide was taking place. This is a key distinction.

Moreover, the court had to ask itself whether the group being harmed—residents of Gaza—are a protected group?  The court found that the Palestinians constitute a national group. The court also had to assess whether there was destructive intent, meaning that Israel’s actions in Gaza were geared to eliminating the group rather than just killing individuals in the territory. South Africa charged Israel with four out of five types of acts that are genocidal in nature. By mid-April, 2025, Israel had been blocking aid trucks from entering Gaza for over 6 weeks. Crucially, the underlying action was being deployed against the group as a whole, as distinct from killing individuals by gun or bomb. Displacement, starvation, and destruction of medical facilities are the other types of acts that South Africa cited as being indicative of the Israeli government having a genocidal intent.

Even though Israel has ignored the court’s provisional measures, and in fact has gone in the opposite direction, such as by blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, that Israel has engaged with the court by sending a high-level legal team to argue before the court is a good argument for Israel being obligated to comply with the provisional measures. Why would the Israeli government engage at all with the court if doing so would make it more difficult to sneak out of any obligations? Israeli officials continued to believe that it is too hard for genocide to be proved in a court of law for the charge to gain traction at the court.

The arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Israel’s sitting prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, and a former Israeli defense minister is not for having committed genocidal acts because proving genocidal intent is more difficult than is pursuing charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Proof of cause of death is required in the crime against humanity of extermination, and the prosecutor was looking only at starvation, so the arrest warrant is not for that crime. Of course, crimes against humanity and war crimes are not exhausted by extermination, and are serious nonetheless.

It is significant, therefore, that in April, 2025, Viktor Orban, the prime minister of the E.U. state of Hungary, ignored its treaty obligation to the ICC and even E.U. law as per the Rome Statute by refusing to arrest Netanyahu when he was visiting the state. The court dismissed Hungary’s excuse that the state’s legislature had not yet enacted a state law that would enforce the treaty obligation. Simply put, a treaty has the force of law, so domestic legislation is not needed for a government to act as obligated in line with the language of a treaty. As for the Rome Statute, it has the status of federal law because the E.U. itself has been delegated enumerated powers, or competencies, that the state governments are legally required to observe. Furthermore, that Hungary was planning to leave the jurisdiction of the international court does not mean that the treaty obligations could legitimately be ignored prior to pulling out of the court’s jurisdiction.

I contend that both Israel’s willful violations of the international court’s rulings and Hungary’s refusal to recognize the arrest warrant by hosting Netanyahu risked undercutting the legitimacy of international law and courts such as the ICJ and ICC because the disrespect could become an international norm.

There is not yet an international, multilateral treaty on crimes against humanity; there is a treaty against genocide. That the latter is being applied to powerful states may result in less progress in negotiating a treaty on crimes against humanity. On the other hand, South Africa taking Israel to court based on international law has strengthened such law; even the court’s provisional measures have made a dent in the public consciousness around the world. Even in just telling victims that their rights are being violated is significant. It may be that governments will recognize an obligation to thwart genocide in progress around the world.

Moreover, in addition to how easy it has been for governments, including Hungary, Russia and Israel, to ignore the orders of international courts, that Orban has repeatedly violated E.U. laws and various states, including Germany, have serially violated the state-budget deficit limits of the Growth and Stability Pact undermines federalism as a viable system of basic law. Even the checks and balances at a federal level, as in a judiciary being able to curb excesses by an executive branch, were under threat in the U.S. when a federal judge found sufficient evidence that the Trump Administration was guilty of criminal contempt by ignoring certain court orders. The inability of courts to enforce their respective rulings is a vulnerability that was being exploited by governments at various levels of jurisprudence and governance. The danger of such intentional breaches becoming a norm was nothing short of the rule of law itself becoming too easily expendable.

To be sure, there were signs of seeds sprouting that could someday result in national laws requiring governments to take action against a power-aggrandizing government reaching the level of extermination and genocide. The ICJ was hearing South Africa’s case, especially after South Africa had been guilty of refusing to enforce an ICC arrest warrant in Africa, and Nicaragua had brought Germany to the ICJ on the charge of supplying weapons to a genocidal government in Israel. Although the case law was still limited, public interest in the rulings of the ICC and ICJ was growing globally in the early 2020s. It could be that the governmental attacks on the international courts by refusing to respect their orders were the last gasps of opposition before a global step forward in holding otherwise absolutist-sovereignty in check. Just as climate change had entered public discourse around the world, the obligation of governments around the world to stop one government from exterminating a people could represent a progressive step in our species’ political development.  

Tariffs as a Negotiating Tactic: Undercut by Wall Street Expediency

With all the economic and political turmoil from the anticipated American tariffs, it may be tempting, especially for financially-oriented CEOs and billionaires looking at quarterly reports, to call the whole thing off even though doing so would deflate the American attempt to renegotiate trade bilaterally with other countries. The concerns of the wealthy, whether corporations or individuals, have their place, but arguably should not be allowed to "lead the proverbial dog from behind, lest the dog run in circles and get nowhere." Moreover, the notion that any goal that is difficult and takes some time to materialize can or even should be vetoed by momentary passions at the outset is problematic and short-sighted. That U.S. President Trump's announcement of bilateral tariffs quickly brought fifty countries to the negotiating table is significant as a good sign for the United States, as long as that country's powerful business plutocracy (i.e., private concentrations of wealth that seek to govern) can be kept from vetoing the emergent trade policy, which at least in part is oriented to trade negotiation and ultimately to the notion that fair trade is conducive to increased free trade. 

As of 3:10 pm (CET) on April 7, 2025, the Euro STOXX 50 was down 5.27 percent, and the STOXX 600 lost 5.15 percent of its value. “The bloodbath is in full swing, and that’s exactly what you see when you look at the European markets. There is no safe haven; equity markets have entered a complete free-fall with no clear bottom in sight,” according to Zaye Capital Markets.[1] Meanwhile, the Dow Jones opened down 3.2 percent.[2] “The sheer volatility was enough to spook CEOs on that rainy Monday in New York. The Dow “briefly erased a morning loss of 1,700 points, shot up more than 800 points, then went back to a loss of 629 points.”[3] The S&P 500 “likewise made sudden up-and-down lurching movements”.[4]

U.S. President Trump had “announced a 20% across-the-board tariff on imports from the European Union, set to take effect on 9 April,” with steel, aluminum and cars being subject to a separate 25% rate; over all, over €380 billion in E.U.-made products could be affected.[5]

In that uneasy context, I contend that two markers are worthy of attention, only one of which is arguably productive.  E.U. President von der Leyen proposed to her counterpart, U.S. President Trump, that both unions cut their respective tariffs to zero; essentially, there would be a free-trade agreement on industrial goods. Just such an overture is in line with President’s intent that other countries get rid of their unfair trading practices, which, the president believed, had aggravated the U.S. trade deficits for decades. In this regard, President von der Leyen’s proposal can be viewed as an overture, which could lead to a counter-proposal that not only tariffs, but also non-tariff barriers of the E.U. be removed (or that the E.U. compensate the U.S. for those annually).

Adam Smith’s ideal of competitive free-trade rather than mercantilism presupposes trade that is free even of non-tariff barriers so comparative advantage can be a major factor in international trade. To be sure, national-security concerns are arguably legitimate constraints on Smith’s ideal of competitive advantage. Being dependent on China for computer chips would be risky for both the E.U. and U.S. because China could hold either or both unions hostage as Taiwan is invaded by China with impunity.

So von der Leyen’s response was in “the right direction,” if free and fair trade was among Trump’s goals in unilaterally imposing tariffs—that is to say, to the extent that the announcement of tariffs was geared to triggering real negotiations.

That the billionaire hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman, a supporter of President Trump, just one day earlier, had “urged the president to pause his sweeping new tariffs, warning they could economically devastate America if implemented, as planned,” can be likened to a driver unilaterally letting some air out of his own car’s tires just before a race.[vi] Ackman may have been rich, but his intelligence was lacking in his assumption that the tariffs would be permanent even though fifty governments were already willing to negotiate on trade with the American government. Also, his understanding of negotiation could have used a spare tire.

It is one thing for a republic to be an open society, and quite another for a dog to be led by its own tail, meaning for the U.S. Government to be led by greedy and short-sighted finance managers and CEOs of even major corporations. The enlightened self-interest of whom would be focused on the wealth that could be obtained from fewer trading obstacles in other countries, for the money that an American-based (and owned) company can possibly be made on exports from the U.S. is hardly nugatory. The capture of legislative and regulatory bodies by private companies and billionaires is a danger not only to democracy itself, but also to a country’s pursuit of its long-term strategic interests globally. A dog that is led by its hungry tail doesn’t get very far, and an argument can be made that such a dog doesn’t deserve to get very far, for weakness within a polity is hardly laudatory. Put another way, that elected offices in a republic have terms of years rather than, say, just a few months, is an important impediment to short-term passions in society seeking to get their way in policy. Sometimes long-term goals require momentary sacrifice even if the measures are erroneously assumed to be permanent rather than negotiating tactics.

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1. Angela Barnes, “European Markets Dive as Global Tariff Fears Shake Investor Confidence,” Euronews.com, April 7, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. The Associated Press, “Stocks Are Making Wild Swings as Markets Assess the Damage from Trump’s Trade War,” Apnews.com, April 7, 2025.
4. Ibid.
5. Jorge Liboreiro, “Von der Leyen Offers Trump ‘Zero-For-Zero’ Tariffs Deal on All Industrial Goods,” Euronews.com, April 7, 2025.
6. Lee Moran, “Billionaire Trump Backer Warns America of ‘Self-Induced Economic Nuclear Winter.” The Huffington Post, April 7, 2025.

Malcolm X on Gaza

Malcolm X (né Malcolm Little) visited the West Bank and Gaza during his lifetime, including many refugee camps, a hospital, and a mosque. He had talked on Palestine, and his trip “deeply transformed him.” He wrote a critique of Zionism shortly before he was killed. Black Nationalists in the U.S., including De Bois, had viewed the Jewish fight for self-determination and nationhood as a struggle like that of Black Americans in the United States. Malcolm, however, advocated for the Palestinians because of how the Jewish nation had materialized at the expense of Palestinians, as many had been thrown out of their houses with little or no notice when the state of Israel was founded. Former victims had become victimizers, and the UN had failed to oversee the transition, which could easily have been anticipated to be rough. As tempting as it is to discuss the atrocities being committed in Gaza in 2024-2025, the thread running throughout Malcolm’s political philosophy is also worthy of attention. I submit that the sheer extent of intentional civilian casualties and injuries both in Ukraine and Gaza render Malcolm’s political philosophy anything but radical in retrospect.

Malcolm’s political ideology had a lot to do with Black Nationalism. This resonated for him with the plight of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. He did not rule out armed struggle on either front. He “embedded” the Palestinian cause into Black identity; in fact, Black-Palestinian solidarity was a movement. Also, anti-Zionism was set as part of the anti-colonialism movement, which involved post-colonial states in Africa. African states and Arab states in the Middle East did not reconcile. Malcolm wrote against Israel’s efforts to drive a wedge between the Middle East and Africa. For example, decades after Malcolm’s life, in the 21^st century, Israel supported South Sudan to destabilize Sudan.

In short, Malcolm expanded his thinking and perspective to include internationalism in a way that dovetails with his positions (changed due to his trip to Mecca[1]) on civil rights in the United States. It was not lost on him that a formerly-oppressed group in Europe became a colonizing, racially-discriminatory state within its own borders, and that that state was even interfering with post-colonial states in Africa so they would not form a coalition with the Arab states in the Middle East. 

Ironically, the thread running through Malcolm’s domestic and internationalist political philosophy can be encapsulated by a saying that U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, ironically a Republican, often stated on the Senate chamber: “I’m for the little guy.” In the midst of the blatant, naked state aggression going on with impunity in the international arena especially in 2024 and 2025, the world needs fewer enablers of aggressors and more voices standing up for the little guys. This would hardly be as radical as Malcolm’s political philosophy has been characterized. Calls for the global community to resist Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Netanyahu’s crime against humanity of extermination by armed struggle could hardly be considered as radical, given the extent and depth of the intentional atrocities against civilians occurring with profane, damning impunity.

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1. It would be interesting to compare that transformation with the one while Malcolm was in Mecca. Interestingly, the “Mecca transformation” was hardly mentioned at a conference on Malcolm X at Yale in 2025. Nevertheless, I have included material from the conference’s session on “Malcolm and Gaza” in this piece.

Exploiting the E.U.’s Vulnerability to Enable an Atrocity Abroad

On April 3, 2025, Viktor Orban, prime minister of the E.U. state of Hungary, ignored not only the arrest warrant on Ben Netanyahu, the sitting prime minister of Israel, but also the E.U. law in the Rome Statute that requires the E.U. states to act on such warrants issued by the ICC (the International Criminal Court) by arresting people wanted by the Court. The provision in the Rome Statute of the E.U. requires all state governments to arrest people who are wanted by the ICC.  Orban doubtless knew that he could exploit union’s vulnerability with impunity because, like the U.S. in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the E.U. relied so much on the state governments to abide by and implement federal law and regulations. By ignoring the Rome Statute, he put the E.U. itself at risk.

The full essay is at "Exploiting the E.U.'s Vulnerability."

On the E.U.'s Initiative for Ukraine

In March, 2025 after the U.S. had direct talks with Russia on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the E.U. stepped up its game in helping Ukraine militarily. This was also in the context of a trade war between the E.U. and U.S., which did not make transatlantic relations any better. The E.U.’s increasing emphasis on military aid to Ukraine and the related publicity inadvertently showcased how federalism could be applied to defense and foreign policy differently that it has in the U.S., wherein the member states are excluded, since the Articles of Confederation, when the member states were sovereign within the U.S. confederation. Although both manifestations of early-modern federalism have their respective benefits and risks, I contend that the E.U.’s application of federalism to the two governmental domains of power is more in the spirit of (dual-sovereignty) federalism, even though serious vulnerabilities can be identified.

The full essay is at "The E.U. and U.S. on Defense and Foreign Policy."

The UN: Israel Guilty of Reproductive Genocide

On March 13, 2025, the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report based on evidence of incessant incidents and Israeli strategic bombings to the UN Human Rights Council. “Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination,” Chris Sidoti of the Commission stated.[1] This statement is oriented to particular incidents, albeit recurrent; the report goes on to charge the Israeli government with genocidal methods targeting the ability of the Palestinian population to sexually reproduce itself. Ironically, such methods may bring to mind the methods used in Nazi Germany, including those used by Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” to wantonly kill and strategically sterilize undesirables. It need not be a truism, however, that the descendants of victims become victimizers, though I suspect that studies on intergenerational psychology attest to the phenomenon. Also ironically, culpability with an intergenerational cause is also a theme in the Hebrew Bible. Thirdly, it is ironic too that Yahweh may have the last word on the Israeli transgressions, as this too is a recurrent theme in the Hebrew Bible’s faith-rendering of the history of Israel. It would be odd indeed were Yahweh behind a sort of rendering of justice against the Nazis by having Israel inflict severe pain on Palestinians in the occupied territories. Put another way, that justice did not catch up to every Nazi aggressor does not mean that excessive, and thus unjust, harming of innocents can complete the cycle of justice. In fact, both the literal “overkill” by Israel and Russia’s war crimes in invading Ukraine—both with impunity—raise the question of whether omnipotent Yahweh gives a damn, or even whether it is actually sheer fiction.

In the Commission’s report released to the UN on June 14, 2024, whose coverage includes the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023 and does not excuse Hamas for its atrocities against Israelis. Even so, the Israeli government ignored the Commission’s requests for information even on those crimes. That the UN had created the state of Israel must also be considered in assessing the refusal. The report also states that the attack by Hamas “and the subsequent Israeli military operation in Gaza must be seen in context. Those events were preceded by decades of violence, unlawful occupation and the denial by Israel of the right of Palestinians to self-determination”.[2] The “unlawful occupation” is especially relevant, as it attests that the political and military “playing field” was hardly level. The Israeli government had taken advantage of this macro advantage for decades, and the Commission’s report on the genocidal sexual and reproductive crimes against humanity following October 7, 2023 should be put in this context. In other words, those crimes were not part of an even “tit-for-tat” between two equal adversaries. Moreover, 45,000 to 55,000 killed or starved for 1250 Israelis killed on October 7, 2023 is so extremely one-sided that the slant in the underlying geo-political and military paradigm can be reckoned as being culpable, as well as the party enforcing it.

Therefore, it is vital to go beyond particular instances of the crimes. Even as the March, 2025 report includes incidents, the macro-level of genocidal sexual tactics is not ignored. Of the former, “two days of public hearings held in Geneva . . . featuring victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence and medical personnel who assisted them, as well as civil society representatives, academics, lawyers and medical experts” went into the report.[3] The report asserts that “forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault” were “standard operating procedure” of the Israeli Security Forces in Gaza.[4] Furthermore, the report maintained that “forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership.”[5] From a human standpoint, it is only natural that the anger of Gaza residents towards Israelis and Israel going forward must be such that any proximity, such as is an aspect of military occupation, is itself problematic and essentially infeasible. That such anger can be expected to be intergenerational also rendered continued occupation unfeasible. This is not to say that the residents of Gaza should be moved; a coalition of the willing globally could step in to see that no Israeli enters the territory, which, fortunately, shares a border with Egypt.

The report on the sexual and reproductive tactics also covers crimes against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and this also renders continued occupation untenable. Specifically, the Commission reported “that Israeli forces had systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza, including Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, Al Basma centre, in December 2023.”[6] Additionally, it was no accident, according to the report, that “(t)ank shelling destroyed about 4,000 embryos at the clinic that reportedly assisted 2,000-3,000 patients a month.”[7] According to Sidoti, “certainly, their commanders knew and the commanders would have known that there were tanks operating within that vicinity and firing on buildings and fired on a healthcare facility that was clearly marked.”[8] To be sure, it is possible that the Israeli government had intel that Hamas was using the clinic as a shield. Even if this were so, the report includes other instances of tactics of reducing the number of Palestinians in Gaza, such as direct attacks on maternity wards, “combined with the use of starvation as a method of war,” that have negatively “impacted all aspects of reproduction.”[9] Imagine the reaction were such a design and intent applied by an occupying power on Israel; it would not take long at all for the Israeli government to charge such an occupier with committing Nazi atrocities on the Jews. The asymmetry itself points back to the tilted playing field.

From its collection of evidence, the Commission could detect a systemic pattern. The report “finds that the destruction amounts ‘to two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”[10] The very notion of collective justice (and injustice) is based on the fallacy that there are no innocents in a population. Immediately after the Hamas attack, the president of Israel commited this fallacy and connected it with his stated determination that every resident in Gaza should suffer as a result of the Hamas attack. The reaction of governments around the world was to step back and let this fallacious reasoning be implemented on the ground in Gaza by embittered Israeli leaders and soldiers. It is as in Hobbes’ Leviathan in that a sovereign power can do whatever it wants. Yet even in Hobbes’ political theory, even though a country’s sovereign power has the last word in interpreting scripture, everyone is subject to God’s judgment.

The doctrine in Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in Zion,” is that the “time will come when fearfulness will surprise the sinners in Zion, because they will know that they are going to be cast into a devouring fire, which they must suffer forever ad ever, and which none can endure.” Edwards’ most famous (or infamous) sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is based on Deut. 32:35: “Their foot shall slide in due time.” This can be said of the Israelis who are culpable in ordering or committing genocidal acts well in excess of reciprocal harm in an eye for an eye. The Palestinians are largely if not all Muslims, so it cannot be believed that Yahweh would be in favor of the killing, starvation (e.g., blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza in 2025), deprivation of utilities (e.g., cutting off electricity), and reproductive abuse. It is not as though the deity were saying to Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu, Go and rid the Land of Israel of those people who worship other gods, as is the biblical story of Yahweh directing the Hebrews to circle Jericho seven times and kill even the women and children who worship Baal because they do not worship Yahweh. Rather, it seems that Yahweh would eventually punish Israel (i.e., collective divine justice) for having violated the Commandment against killing, especially if the magnitude is well beyond tit-for-tat.

For a God-fearing Israeli, and the rest of us, Yahweh once again punishing Israel for its transgressions is not something that any person can or should take on as if delegated by that deity to enforce divine justice. Indeed, such a horrendous assumption renders theocracies dangerous. We are all, human, all too human, and thus we don’t have the omniscience to be God’s enforcers. This is not to say that governments cannot or should not act to enforce international law, especially given the impotence of the United Nations, but absent this, there is faith that Yahweh will have the last word in holding Israel accountable here rather than only in the hereafter. Instead of willful arrogance, humility, self-restraint, and contrition are the appropriate attitudes of people of faith who have so violated divine (and international) law. It can even be said that serving rather than attacking one’s enemies unlocks the door to the kingdom of God, but even this is subject to willful intransigence out of jealousy and spite.

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1. “Rights Probe Alleges Sexual Violence Against Palestinians by Israeli Forces Used as ‘Method of War,” UN News, United Nations, March 13, 2025.
2. “Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including
East Jerusalem, and Israel,” Annual Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General, The United Nations. June 14, 2024.
3. Rights Probe Alleges Sexual Violence Against Palestinians by Israeli Forces Used as ‘Method of War,” UN News, United Nations, March 13, 2025.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.