UN Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri joins TMR Senior Editor Lina Mounzer to discuss, among other things, whether international humanitarian law still has any meaning, if the UN has outlived its usefulness, why the General Assembly has still not voted Israel out, how starvation is always a political decision and what, if anything, we can do about all of this.
Lina Mounzer
I would really like to welcome all of our listeners and all of our readers, for everybody who’s tuned in for this interview. So I have with me here today Michael Fakhri who is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and he is a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, and let’s see here, it also says childhood best friend and overall beloved comrade of the Markaz Review’s senior editor Lina Mounzer, who would happen to be me. Thank you so much for being here. Michael, that’s a really beautiful bio that you sent over. Thank you.
Michael Fakhri
That’s my standard bio. Actually my pleasure. I wear my friendship with you as a badge of honor wherever I can.
Lina Mounzer
Likewise, and actually, all kidding aside, I really want to thank you so much for making time to speak to us. You and I have had these conversations a lot, but I think it’s very exciting to have other people be able to listen to what you have to say. And thank you also for making the time given that suddenly now everybody wants to talk to you, because suddenly now everybody is interested in the topic of starvation, which is something you’ve been actually warning about since pretty much October 8, 2023. But now suddenly it’s become a breaking news story that this long, slow thing called starvation is finally taking effect in Gaza. Before we get there, I just want you to briefly explain to everybody who’s listening what is a UN Special Rapporteur. I think now during the Gaza genocide, people have become very aware of what that title is, but I don’t know if people really know what the job entails, how one gets it, and what your mandate is exactly. So if you could just briefly explain that,
Michael Fakhri
Yeah, as you you mentioned, I’m the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, so my mandate is the right to food, but there are over 45 mandates. There’s Right to Food, Right to Water, Freedom of Assembly, Freedom of Religion, Violence Against Women, the list goes on and on. And so first, just to understand the UN structure, saying the “UN” doesn’t capture the complexity. The UN is actually a lot of different autonomous and semi autonomous organizations. But the best way to start thinking about the UN is the General Assembly. The UN General Assembly is in New York, and it’s one country, one vote. So imagine pretty much almost every country of the world. I think the membership is at 194 right now, and they each get a seat, and they each get a vote to pass these resolutions from the General Assembly. Then they decide who’s going to represent the world at the Human Rights Council. So the Human Rights Council is the political body in Geneva that addresses all matters regarding human rights for the UN system. So the countries vote by region. So the African states get a number of seats. The Arab states get a number of seats at the Human Rights Council, what’s called Western Europe and North America, the white people countries get a certain number of seats and–
Lina Mounzer
More than everyone else, or?
Michael Fakhri
Yeah, no, they try and keep it balanced exactly. But power plays a big role. And so then the Rights Council rotates, the members of the Human Rights Council. Countries campaign to be on the Human Rights Council. They will exit the Human Rights Council in a political huff to make a statement, et cetera. And that’s in Geneva, and you have from the civil servant side, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who’s appointed by the Secretary General, and all of that stuff. So the Human Rights Council gets together — they created these positions, these independent human rights positions. Now, technically, what we’re called are “special procedures.” It’s weird because it’s a weird part of the system. So the mandates are created by the world’s countries. They sit down, they decide: we need to focus on food. We need to focus on water. Sometimes they focus on country themed mandates, so, there’s a special rapporteur on Myanmar, there’s of course one on the Occupied Palestinian territories. There’s, you know, there’s thematic ones like me, there’s working groups, there’s countries… over 45, and we’re called mandate holders. So the mandate is given to us and we’re elected. So it’s as simple as I submitted an application. Actually, my position is up for grabs now, my tenure is is expiring. The applications are open. Anyone can go onto the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights website to find the application, and that’s what I did, five years ago today. You fill out a form, and you hit send, and then it goes off into the ether and people ask– So I applied because I was curious. I was curious, what’s a special rapporteur do? Exactly? And I thought the best way to learn is to apply, never thinking I would get it, and I applied. And people were like, are you campaigning in Geneva? And my response was, I don’t know what that means. I’m a tired, middle aged man in Eugene, Oregon. I’m not campaigning anywhere. And all the ambassadors in Geneva who are members of the Human Rights Council, they get to vote. So people try and convince them, you know, I’m the best candidate, etcetera. You get shortlisted for an interview. You do the interview with different ambassadors, and then they vote. And so I got elected to be the leading UN expert on all matters regarding hunger, malnutrition and famine, from a human rights perspective, for the UN system. So my mandate comes from the Human Rights Council, but also comes from the General Assembly. So that’s sort of how one gets it, but what’s the job? So first, it’s not a job. It’s entirely volunteer, no pay, it’s more than full time in terms of its demands
Lina Mounzer
And you don’t get paid. I’m just going to point that out. So that you don’t have any special bias, and nobody can accuse you of getting money from certain…
Michael Fakhri
That’s the argument. I think it’s actually, it creates inequity. Like, who can afford to do a job like this full time and still maintain another full time job as an income. It means you have to probably be an academic in an institution that has money and resources. Three, you have no children or significant child care, and, God forbid, you take care of anyone else in your life, or have a life. So it creates a certain inequality of who’s able to do this position. So, one argument is, yes, you’re not paid, it maintains your independence. But that reproduces certain inequalities of well, who can actually do this then? And so you’re given this mandate, and you are the leading expert, so you are picked because of your expertise, and you’re picked because countries want the most honest assessment of what’s going on. And so there’s very formal powers that come with the position. And then there’s what you make of it and what you do with it, so it’s malleable. So formally speaking, why is it a big deal? Why is it considered a big deal for many people. One, I write two thematic reports a year. One goes to the Human Rights Council, and one I submit to the General Assembly. I pick the topic, I decide whatever theme I want, which means I get to set the agenda. I get to do a big research report. I consult the leading experts of the world on the topic. I pick the topic. I consult with civil society folk, activists, I consult with ambassadors, parliamentarians. I talk to everybody for these reports. People want to talk to me because they want to influence these reports. I put out a call for input publicly so anyone can submit their ideas about these particular reports. And I have to sort of somehow compile everything, synthesize everything, and put forward my take on the topic. So the first power that comes with that, is I’m setting the agenda. I am forcing governments of the world to read about something, to set the agenda that they’re going to have to talk about this thing on the record. So when I go to Geneva, or I go to New York, I’m forcing the Human Rights Council to talk about starvation. Or I’m forcing the General Assembly to talk about corporate power, or seeds, or fishers, or whatever topics I pick, and it creates a formal political record. And governments use this as an opportunity to highlight what they’re doing well, to criticize other governments, to put statements on the record, to sort of shape the politics going forward. It’s very powerful to be able to set the agenda and to shape the conversation and to influence how people talk about something. So that’s that’s one element.
Lina Mounzer
Well, my question to you at this juncture then, is, for those of us who are watching from the outside, these are very inside baseball things which are super interesting, but for those of us who are watching from the outside, the question that everybody is asking is: okay, you wrote this report, right? People are talking about it. But we’re inside an emergency situation right now, which is a slow emergency. What’s crazy about it is, everybody is acting as if, I don’t know, like somebody is bleeding out, which they are, but the wound has been this slow motion knife coming down towards… that’s not the best metaphor. But what I mean is, it’s been this long, slow process, and we are now in an emergency situation. So it’s like, okay, we’re talking about the bureaucracies of the UN, we’re talking about reports and things like that, and people talking about it, but then what? What is to actually be done, what is it within the UN’s power to do? If you’ve been warning about this since the very beginning… I think since the genocide began you’ve had time to write two reports on it, if I’m not mistaken? At least one, that’s for sure. What happens… what happens, then? What is to be done, essentially?
Michael Fakhri
Usually nothing. I mean, to be very frank, usually these reports — think about it, over 45 mandates writing two reports a year, amongst many other UN reports. Often the reports are reproducing just the same language and the same ideas. It becomes almost meaningless, or they just become caught up in the bureaucratic, diplomatic scuffling of scoring points — this country got criticized, that country did well. That being said, many special rapporteurs have done some very exciting work, because then it’s what — who are you? You really have to ask yourself, who are you in this role, and what’s the voice that you want to use? Because you can play the role of the mandate holder in so many different ways. So you can be the expert. You can play, like, really hyperplay the expertise, which is you are speaking — because we are a voice of authority. So when I write a report, my reports, my tweets, have been cited in courts. My reports are cited as official, authoritative legal interpretations of the right to food in real time. So my reports are cited as authoritative conclusions that you can use in court, you can use in parliament, you can use in advocacy and you can say — and when I say “my reports” it’s all mandate holders, right? You can say, “ah, the special rapporteur has said.” That carries legal authority. We’re not quite the same as say, a judge, but we’re not just any old expert. So there’s this in between. So some people, the role they play is they say: “this is true because I’ve said it’s true.” Almost like an avatar. You almost operate like an avatar for that particular right. Others will play the role of technical report, — their audience is really the bureaucrats, the diplomats, to give them what they need to push a particular agenda forward. There’s always a mix of activism. So the Special Rapporteurs on the Right to a Healthy Environment for the last two mandates, for the last — so each mandate is six years, so for the last 12 years they were trying to get the right to a healthy environment recognized as a human right. And they succeeded. That was their goal. That was their 12-year goal, to say, yes, there is such thing as a right to a healthy environment. And they got it. That’s their victory.
Lina Mounzer
And then what?
Michael Fakhri
And then now you have another legal tool you can use. Right now it’s another tool. It’s another — they just invented something where someone can say, oh, well, if it’s a right to environment, let’s take that fight to climate change negotiations, and let’s change the conversation here, and let’s influence the agenda here. I mean, at the heart of your question is… the first question someone asked me, and I’m like, that’s intense, is, “What’s your theory of change?” Which is a fair question. I’m not a believer in, if you change the law, the world will change. Or if you change the law, more human rights makes the world better. I don’t really think if you recognize a new right necessarily that’s good or bad or whatever. The way I see change is: law plays a role in there, but it’s a mix of social and political power. So, let’s talk about Gaza more specifically. The argument I’ve been having with so many people is we don’t need any more new legal tools. Those of us that are fighting for Palestinian human rights, we have all won on the legal front. Okay, that’s significant, but how do you translate a legal victory into a political victory?
We don’t need more cases at the courts. Sure, we could use more arrest warrants to come out of the International Criminal Court, we can use more arrest warrants coming out of all criminal systems. We don’t have to wait for the international criminal system. We have very good decisions from the International Court of Justice, the two provisional decisions, and in the end we have the decision on finding the occupation, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967, illegal. And the good thing about that decision is — no surprise it’s illegal, we knew it was illegal. It was framed it as a matter of justice, reparations, human rights. It’s substantively important. So we have legal victories. We have reports by Francesca Albanese, by myself, but we have special rapporteurs on Health — this is Dr Tlaleng — Water, Housing and Internally Displaced Peoples… Violence Against Women. These are all mandate holders that have focused on Gaza and have situated it in a broader global struggle. We were the first to call it genocide, we were the first to call it starvation. To get the conversation going, because what a stupid conversation at this point, is it genocide? Is it starvation? That’s the wrong question, and we’d already answered it 20 months ago so we could get to the real question, which is, how do you stop this? How do you eliminate the risk of genocide? How do you eliminate the risk of starvation, etcetera, so the reports–
Lina Mounzer
But sorry, not to interrupt — please don’t forget that — but I was going to say, them asking that question, “is it starvation? Is it genocide?” It’s a deliberate tactic to obfuscate. It’s a very clearly deliberate tactic to get people lost in these swamps of bureaucracy. And it’s almost like throwing obstacles in people’s paths so that they can’t go forward, you know? So it’s a direct sort of obstacle in the path of what you’ve been working hard to clear, you and the other special rapporteurs.
Michael Fakhri
So, on that. Let me… you know, is it genocide? Twenty-two months later! That question started from the beginning, and we put out a press release in October 2023. We were first voices within the whole UN system to call it genocide. At that time, we said “risk of genocide.” Amongst the Special Rapporteurs, there was no consensus. Many did not think we were there yet. A small number of us said — it’s people that were from the region and from the global south that immediately said, this is genocide. This is genocide. Now, so what did that do? That meant that — and you know, the Secretary General hasn’t called it that, the High Commissioners haven’t called it that. What are the politics of the naming of genocide, right? So I had this debate with legal comrades who are Palestinian who have said, why? Who cares? Genocide is such a high standard. Let’s call it crime against humanity, or let’s call it a war crime, call it whatever, but let’s just get things moving. So not from a like, Oh, is it genocide? Like, yeah, it’s genocide. But let’s not, from a legal tactical position–
Lina Mounzer
Let’s not belabor the term.
Michael Fakhri
Let’s not belabor because they’re obfuscating and deliberately misdirecting and creating theoretical debates where in reality it’s clearly genocide. I took a different position, which is, let’s actually call it genocide quickly. Let’s call it starvation quickly, because it’s actually very clear, factually speaking, and get it out of the way and get to business. Because it is important. The power of naming. Because whoever names it has power over it, and whatever you name it determines how you’re going to overcome it, right? We’re talking about power, and in this case, we’re talking about evil, power. How you name power and evil. This is Ursula Le Guin. And Lloyd Alexander, if I’m to cite correctly. How you name something determines whether you have power over it or if it has power over you. And in legal terms, it determines the remedy. What’s the remedy? If we’re saying it’s a war crime, you can only charge individuals, “bad guys,” and put them in jail.
Lina Mounzer
Right, bad apples. Yeah, exactly.
Michael Fakhri
But that’s not what’s at stake here. It is Israel systemically causing these problems. Not bad apples. So what’s the remedy if you call it genocide? Ah, okay, to remedy genocide, it is realizing the right to self determination, and in the Palestinian case, the right of return. Those two issues get forgotten, two state solution, recognizing the state of Palestine, blah, blah, blah. And my argument is always — this is where a human rights argument is actually handy, which is, this is all political dressing. One state, two state, five states. And I’ve said this to the General Assembly: I don’t care. That’s not my job. Whatever state structure you determine… the question is, what system, structure, conditions, will fully realize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self determination and their right of return, as refugees since 1947. Go figure that out! Don’t start with “state solution,” blah, blah, blah. So to go back to where we started quickly, is that’s the power of the position, framing the argument. What’s the question? And once you get the right question in the political game, then let the diplomats figure it out. That’s their job. But we can help set the agenda, frame the question properly. And these reports are the authoritative voices and tools that can frame, reframe… So in my report on starvation in Palestine, I had a choice. Do I spend — I had exactly 10,700 words, not one word more. I’ve argued over semicolons with editors, it’s so strict. And I had to decide, it’s a political decision, what space to give certain ideas. Do I give more space in my report to an international humanitarian legal argument — laws of war and you can’t kill civilians and laws of occupation? Or, do I give more space in my report to history? I’m a legal expert, I actually went more on a historical narrative, because I thought that is actually more important. It tells you more of what you need to know. It identifies what’s at stake. And it’s a different question when you start with the fact that before the State of Israel, Zionist settlements from the beginning, from the late 19th century, were using food and farms as the tool of colonization and oppression and occupation.
Lina Mounzer
Can you talk a little bit about that? How were they doing that? From the start. Besides buying up farmland, and…
Michael Fakhri
Yeah, so it starts with buying — it’s late 19th century. It’s a British Mandate. It actually starts with the Ottoman Empire first. And the Zionist plan is, they choose Palestine and they want to take it. So you don’t start from scratch. You look at, how have people been colonizing? Ah, let’s look at the British and the French. So they looked around them, and they actually learned from French colonists in Northern Africa, which is, send farmers, send people who are going to not just take the land, but use the land, which makes it harder to pull them out. It’s literally setting roots down. And the relation —
Lina Mounzer
It’s what they call facts on the ground, now. It’s also what the settlers in North America, did, they sent people, homesteaders, essentially to…
Michael Fakhri
Exactly. Homesteading is, for $1 this land is yours to take. This land is your land, this land is my land. Some people think of it as this progressive anarchist… it’s this land’s your land my land for white people, go take it. Go take it. You know, when people in English, we say, you stake a claim, you literally put a stake in the ground and say, “this is mine.” So there’s the taking of land, right? It starts in the late 19th century, but really takes off during the British Mandate, because now, because of the Balfour Declaration, the British are aligning their interests with the Zionist project. And the first legal vehicle that the Zionists use are corporations. The Jewish National Fund, which still exists today, and another fund, whose name escapes me, and that second fund still exists today. And they would buy land. And then it becomes not just colonization, there’s a class story. They’re buying land from landlords, absentee landlords, often rich Palestinian absentee landlords. Maybe they live in Beirut, maybe they live somewhere else… They have their peasants who live on their land who’ve been living there for generations, who have tenure rights, separate from private property. So the Zionists then use the system of private property, displacing peasants from the land, pastoralists, herders, shepherds, that sort of thing, setting up their little farms using private property law. But there are other laws that were legitimate, that gave people tenure, access to the land, use rights, that lasted generations. They ignored all that. They set up their farms, and then little disputes would happen between the new Zionist farmer and the Palestinian shepherd. Before, the Palestinian farmer and the Palestinian shepherd had figured out a way to share this land. And the struggles between peasants and pastoralists is one of the oldest in our region. Cain and Abel: one was a farmer, one was a pastoralist. That’s a long — it’s always over land. It’s always over land. They start taking over land. Then they start creating kibbutzes. Before the creation of Israel, kibbutzes are agricultural cooperatives intended to create some degree of self-sufficiency and building a new citizen, building the new person through working the land in this communal way. But also, the kibbutzes were where the Zionists were organizing and recruiting [for] terrorist organizations and armed militias that later on become the armed terrorist organizations that attack Palestinians, pushing them off their land .
Then with the creation of Israel, we have the Nakba. Over 700,000 people become refugees, are made refugees, by the creation of the new state of Israel. Palestinians are now refugees and displaced or pushed out of the country or displaced internally within Palestine. And then you have what’s called the “question of Palestine” within the UN system. We have the creation of the UN, and one of the formative questions with the creation of the UN is, what do we do with Palestine? Palestine exists, it’s still in international law as a territory. Now part of that territory is the state of Israel, and part of that territory is now what we would call the state of Palestine. But the territory as a unit, is still the territory of Palestine. And the question is, how is this territory going to be governed, and by whom? So, you have a refugee problem, so the UN through the General Assembly, creates the UN Refugee and Work Agency for the people. — UNRWA — They create UNRWA in the late 40s, and in the charter of UNRWA, in the documentation, in the reasoning of why was UNRWA created by the General Assembly in 19, the late 40s, is starvation. Is the risk of starvation. They say the people of Palestine face a risk of starvation. This is ’47, ’48, ’49. Therefore, one of the main roles of UNRWA from the beginning, was to stave off starvation created by the creation of State of Israel. Because when you’re displaced from your land, especially in the ’40s, there’s a higher rate of rural communities and peasants and pastoralists and fishers and all people living off the land. When you’re displaced from your land, you immediately go hungry. Immediately you go hungry. So the refugee problem was, in and of itself, a hunger issue, because starvation is used as a tool, always, as a tool displacement, humiliation and death, of course. And displacement, to move populations from here to here. So that’s where the report goes, “Look, this not easy–“
Lina Mounzer
I’m just gonna add to that. In a way, it’s almost the most fundamental act of dispossession there is, because you’re being deprived of the land both as an abstract, theoretical national identity, and at the same time as a material thing, which is soil and water and seed and the thing that feeds you, and the thing you tend to, and where you build your home. And so that sort of land grab is a double… it’s on two levels, it’s it’s an act of dispossession that’s taking place.
Michael Fakhri
Exactly. So then, what are the implications of framing the narrative of today, of the fight today that’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem, right? What’s it mean to frame the issue so historically within this particular geography? It means then there’s so many arguments out there, it just gives you a different counterargument, different starting points, a different way of thinking. So, one argument is, it’s bad actors. It’s not bad, it is systemic. Another argument is, ah, this is Hamas, this is October 7. No, it did not start October 7. But we can go even further. They can say, well, yes, this started with the siege of Gaza. And some people say the siege started in 2007, it actually started in 2000. We can say yes, the siege of Gaza that started in 2000 and became more acute in 2007 is… What we’re experiencing is the speeding up of this 25 year siege. Yes. However, what is at stake? What’s at stake is not a humanitarian crisis. What is at stake is not just the occupation of Gaza itself. What is at stake is the Palestinian people’s right to self determination and the right of return, which remains unresolved. And until that is resolved, this is the context of what we’re talking about. Now, we do it through two states, sure! We do it through one state, why not? We do it through a federation, whatever. That is then a matter of second order, we negotiate that later. But let’s determine how we’re reframing it. So the reason I keep saying we don’t need new legal tools is that framing is still alive and well. In the International Court of Justice, in people’s reports, in the agenda set by the General Assembly. That broader agenda, that deeper agenda, is still alive, but people have to fight to keep that way of framing it alive.
Lina Mounzer
What would you say to people who say that this is not a productive way to be approaching the issue. That we have a humanitarian crisis, that right now, people are starving. There is a famine. And you know, one thing I’ve heard you say several times, in different interviews, is that we use the word famine as this passive thing. But there’s a verb behind it, which is starvation, like people are being starved, and the result of that is a famine, right? So we have people who are being starved, we have people who are in the middle of a genocide. We have people who are truly just running for their lives, from one area to another inside this ever-shrinking enclave. And then on the other hand, what you have is this giant bureaucracy, this machinery, this kind of incredibly slow gears that are moving and so, I mean, how do you reconcile those two senses of urgency, or to say… Because what you’re saying, you’re absolutely right. In the end, this is a symptom of a larger problem, the problem being the creation of the State of Israel… Its original sin, the original sin of its creation, created the wound of the Nakba. And, everything, you could argue that the entire history of the region has been shaped almost primarily through that act. So, yes, this is something that that we have to go back to, and something that had to be dealt with, but at the same time we have this extreme emergency situation. And so to me, it’s almost like two things taking place at completely different speeds, almost in parallel universes. And how do you even bring them together?… And I ask this also not just as a theoretical question, but as somebody also watching in extreme frustration. Everybody who’s watching: why can’t we do something? What is it that we could possibly do? You know, one of the things that was… Okay, if things go through the Security Council, we know that the US is going to veto them, right? But you were saying the General Assembly, one country, one vote. Why can the General Assembly not vote to kick Israel out? Why have we not seen real consequences? And this goes back also to a question that I wanted to ask you… and also, suddenly, now everybody has decided that the famine is a thing, and yet we’re still not seeing real consequences. Can you give us any insight into the behind the scenes of what’s happening, because everybody feels like they’re going insane watching this, you know?
Michael Fakhri
I mean you asked six huge questions. Let’s begin with the time, humanitarian, “time is of the essence” and… The way I’m gonna answer that will answer the more immediate, what is to be done and how… This is really, we’re at the heart of all the questions now. Okay, there’s two humanitarian arguments that are made. One is made in bad faith and one is made in good faith. And obviously, I’ll have different responses. So the argument made that this is a humanitarian issue and we need to deal with it by any means necessary, as quickly as possible, and then we can worry about all of this other stuff, history, human rights… There’s a fight over what counts as political. Sometimes people say human rights is political, sometimes they say it’s apolitical. And that’s a move you make, a rhetorical move one makes. Both are true. Human rights is political and apolitical, depending how you play it. [So they say] all this right of return and [whatnot] and land and Zionism and Palestine — there are people dying. This is the fastest starvation campaign in modern history. We need to focus on getting trucks in, working with whatever power structures that are there. The humanitarian mindset is: we are neutral. We don’t take sides. We just serve all people that need our help. Whether you’re the Red Cross or the UN, or whatever. And there’s a power in that. Okay, so that’s the good faith argument that says, let’s just focus on that. So my sort of sympathetic but critical response is: yes, but famine is never a natural disaster. It is a political problem. It is only solved politically. It always requires a political solution. And in fact, the humanitarian system that has been created over the last 10 years, to try and trigger action through the Security Council and through humanitarian means, it’s not working. There are formal mechanisms in place, specifically on starvation, to activate the Security Council to do something, the highest legal and political authority of the UN to do something. And in the last 10 years, it has not been used adequately. Not just Gaza, but in the last 10 years. Okay. So that’s my response to people who want to do good, but — and I have to say you’re not going to solve the famine. You might save a few lives, and that’s important, of course, do your job, but you have to be making choices within that broader context and with an understanding of food systems, not just humanitarian aid. Farmland, soil, fishing, olive trees, grapes… you have to understand history, culture, food in this broader sense, because that’s what’s at stake is people’s relationship with the land. That’s the right of self determination. Where are you procuring your food, World Food Program? Where are you buying your your resources? Are you buying it regionally? Are you buying wheat from Ukraine to support their fight against the Russians, and hypocritically saying the Russian invasion is illegal and we must fight against it, but doing nothing about Palestine? You can get into those weeds… So that’s how I respond to the good faith framing. Bad faith: the creation of the Gaza humanitarian foundation by Israel.
Lina Mounzer
Oh, my God, that’s not even bad faith. That’s just pure evil. That’s just absolutely pure evil.
Michael Fakhri
And everyone knew it. So–
Lina Mounzer
Cynical, evil, disgusting.
Michael Fakhri
And everyone knows it. Everyone involved knows it, because a lot of insiders, they kept quitting. The closer they got to it, they kept quitting, And they announced it, and they’re doing it. They’re doing it before our eyes. That’s an example where, it’s not humanitarian aid, it is the militarization, it is the privatization, the militarization and politicization of aid par excellence. We’ve never seen it done this viciously, aid used so brutally, as we’re seeing in this so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. So–
Lina Mounzer
It’s truly dystopian.
Michael Fakhri There’s no response other than, my god, what have you done? And then there’s the… ok, so that’s the critique. So what is to be done? What is to be done? And this is the operating on multiple speeds, right? There’s the emergency — there’s press releases that we’re doing, framing, reframing and this and that, from what we can do from our end. But this is the part where I have a foot in the system, and I have a foot outside of the system. The foot in the system is me and others, 40 people yelling at the top of their lungs as loud as they can, as often as they can, within the boundaries of institutional decorum and what counts as human rights… There’s institutional boundaries we still have to work within. And knowing… it’s like a giant ship in the sea, and you just want to move it, not even 180 let’s just move it 45 degrees. That’s all we’re trying to do. That takes a lot of work and a lot of time. So you have to think both in the immediate term and in the long term. You’re, you’re operating on two rhythms of time at the same time. So you have to have the background, to give you your sense of the future, and then you’re making your choices in the immediate term, both conscious of the day-to-day… So I have to track daily what’s going on. I have to speak to what’s going on daily, publicly and daily, while at the same time with this sense of history and geography and politics to get a sense of and… I’m not leading. And get a sense of, and there’s no political leadership, Palestinian political leadership to speak of. So I have to take my cues from… everybody. From activists, from comrades, from colleagues, from Palestinians, from international lawyers, from people I know in Gaza, from people I know in the West Bank… peasant organizations I work with, all of that. The people that are doing the best work in terms of international law, humanitarian relief and human rights are the flotilla folk. Today, the most important thing anyone can do is support the flotillas. No doubt in my mind. There’s an amazing video, one of the people that was on the most recent ship, Huweida Arraf. And I encourage everyone to find the video of her. She’s on the CB radio with the Israeli forces that are — they’re in international waters. International waters is the high seas. No one owns the high seas. All of us are allowed to be in international waters. No one claims sovereignty or absolute authority in international waters. This is the commons. This is the common ocean. Part of the ocean. There are territorial waters. Every sovereign state has parts of the sea and the ocean that counts as its sea, its ocean territory. Okay, they’re in the high seas. They’re in international waters, and Israeli forces are coming, and Huweida Arraf is making a legal argument. She’s yelling with her heart and her soul. A legal argument while waiting to be kidnapped, knowing what’s going to happen. And they’re having a legal dispute in the international high water, because their argument is, your blockade is illegal. You are in Palestinian territorial waters. You are an illegal occupying power. We are bringing humanitarian aid as civilians because governments aren’t doing their job. We are enforcing international law. We are doing international law. We are making international law real in a popular way, and they’re doing it with their bodies, with their ships, with baby food, with stuffed animals gifted from Italian children to the Palestinian children…. So the Gaza flotilla is the most powerful political, legal, activist intervention I see now, which is both short term — Imagine if they break through the blockade! Imagine if hundreds, people are trying to organize more and more ships. Imagine 20, 30, 40 ships sailing to break through that blockade. That is the most legal move one can make. You don’t just have to be in a court of law or write a UN report. This is how people are doing international law in ways I’ve never seen. I’ve never seen such a global, popular — I’m trying to find a better word than uprising. I can’t think — a global popular uprising, enacting and realizing international law in a way that is about justice.
Lina Mounzer 4
I saw actually this afternoon, I saw something where they said there’s actually going to be a flotilla of 44 ships that they have planned to move in the next week, or the next couple of weeks, something like that. So it’s going to be the largest organization, 44 ships coming from all over the world. And so… every, every argument given by a Zionist or Zionist supporter is purely disingenuous, constantly. I’ve gotten to the point where I barely skim the surface of them when I see them… anyway, so many of them are bots… but you know, the argument that a lot of them will make is, okay, yes, they’re being arrested in international waters. But it’s because they have the intention of entering the territorial waters of Israel, which is conducting a military operation currently. Can you tell us why this is pure bullshit?
Michael Fakhri
Yes, yes, that’s a legal term you’re using there.
Lina Mounzer
Of course, I learned from you.
Michael Fakhri
Yeah, because it’s Palestinian territorial water. Gaza is Palestinian territory. Undisputed. Occupied, at least — occupied since the creation of Israel. But not really… Occupied by the State of Israel since 1967 right? This is clear. This is indisputable. So the territorial water of Gaza, so many nautical miles off the coast, is Palestinian territorial water. So it is a civilian ship with humanitarian cargo, sailing through international waters and from international waters, their first entry point will be Palestinian territory, currently occupied and blockaded by the Israeli Navy in a way that is recognized as illegal. And serving a genocidal campaign, which is also a starvation campaign. Very simple, very clear, right? Two sentences. That’s all you need to respond to that. Done.
Lina Mounzer
And this might sound like a silly question, but is it legally recognized that their blockade and their starvation is an illegal thing that they are doing? Is it indisputably illegal?
Michael Fakhri
Yes. So, first, the International Court of Justice with its last decision on the legality of the occupation said, the occupation exists, has existed since 1967 and is illegal. Part of the occupation is the naval blockade, right? So the way Israel — Israel disputes it as an occupation, saying we have no military presence within Gaza. We didn’t have it, you know, before. We don’t have any Israeli officials governing Gaza directly as such. But the court and all — many legal experts have said, you can occupy in a lot of different ways. You don’t necessarily need physical boots on the ground. And the way Israel occupied Gaza is by controlling from the outside, by laying a siege. So, in 2005 Israel withdraws its military and removes its settlements from Gaza. And then they lay siege around it. Then they occupy by controlling everything, every [inch of it]. They were counting calories — every inch, thank you. They were counting calories. They were counting every calorie because they wanted to keep everyone just hungry enough to be weak, but not so hungry to raise humanitarian alarm bells. They know how to work the system. It’s still occupation. It’s still occupation when you control every aspect of life. What color are you allowed to paint your house? No coffee, no pasta, no coriander, no wedding dresses. How high can you grow your corn until it becomes a safety concern, because they’re worried about snipers. I mean, ridiculous stuff like that.
Lina Mounzer
Can you collect the rain? No, because it belongs to the State of Israel. Can you collect the rain for like, agricultural projects, or —
Michael Fakhri
Can you collect wild grasses? Can you — all of it is micromanaged down to the house, down to the room, down to what seeds can enter, and what seeds you know, the origins of life itself. This is occupation, and part of the occupation is a naval blockade. And to add to the illegality of the blockade, and it’s a blockade that is being used for, let’s leave genocide out, for starvation! Because Israel keeps telling us “we’re going to starve them.” Over and over, they announced it. October 9th they announced it, and then they did it. March 1st, Netanyahu announced it, and then they starved them completely — when I say starved, I mean they imposed a full blockade. They announced it on March 1st, on March 2nd 2025 till May 19, 2025 so approximately 78 days, nothing entered Gaza. No food, no water, no medicine, nothing. 78 days of a full blockade after 15 to 18 months of this horrific war and sped up genocidal starvation campaign. So that in the month of March 2025, when between March 2nd and the end of March, the rate of acute child malnutrition in Gaza increased by 80%. Almost doubled in one month. The speed, the speed! Because Israel created one of the most efficient hunger machines you can imagine over the last at least 20 years. So there is no doubt that the naval blockade is illegal, that this is Palestinian territorial waters. Again, the legal facts, the legal arguments are clear. So what we’re seeing, to go back to your question on human rights, you know, why bother —
Lina Mounzer
Well, I was gonna say… Sorry, I’m just struck, the thing that you’re saying is, it is also an industrialization of genocide. It is also another form of industrialization. Like, yes, they’re not building machines, but it’s a machinery in the in the end that is built to be very efficient.
Michael Fakhri
Exactly. And you know what I learned from Palestinian international lawyers, and Zeina Jallad makes this argument a lot, which is, and it’s legalized. It’s institutionalized. Like, if you look at the Israeli laws themselves, you see how they’ve constructed a system that is on its face, racist. On its face designed for displacement, oppression and occupation. It’s nothing hidden. But when you look at the legal system and the details of the legal system, it reveals that this is — by design, it is structural, it is systemic, it is longstanding, and it has its own momentum. That is, I think, a very powerful insight that I’ve learned in the last two years. And so you have that legal story within Israel and Palestine itself. Israel governs the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Gaza through military orders, so it’s the militarization of their occupation, right? That’s something so it’s only through military courts. They changed the age of of adulthood. So why are so many Palestinian children —
Lina Mounzer
You mean they’re only governed through military courts? There is civilian legal system that exists?
Michael Fakhri
There is but it’s not accessible to the Palestinians. Or it’s very difficult to access it. So they reduce the age of adulthood, so now I think it’s like 14 or something, and anyone above 14 is considered an adult, so they can try them as an adult. And so you have mass incarceration of children, of Palestinian children as a result.
Lina Mounzer
Yes. And also, when they’re killed, it’s not children being killed either. They are adult targets. They’re adult males.
Michael Fakhri
Exactly. So to go back a little bit: why human rights, international law– I have almost like two contradictory thoughts. One, when I stood before — the darkest period, there’s so many dark periods, I don’t want to rank misery at this stage. One of the most hopeless moments — and I don’t carry hope, I’m not a man who carries hope. But one of the most hopeless moments was in March of 2025, and we did a press release, me and several other special rapporteurs. It was Counter Terrorism… the mandates I’m listing the mandates: Counter Terrorism, Health, Water, I believe, Housing I believe, and Occupied Palestinian Territories —
Lina Mounzer
And Freedom of Expression?
Michael Fakhri
I don’t think she was there that day. Maybe she was, I can’t remember. We did the press conference, all of us together on Gaza, and the journalists there, I know them. We do regular press releases, and I’d spoken about Palestine — a year before that I’d been in Geneva… and I was getting the same questions, and I was giving a lot of the same answers, and I had no energy. I was just like… I was just reciting horror. Is what I was doing. It was almost… the opposite of a prayer. I am just describing horror yet again in terms that are — I’m repeating them. This is why… the ceremony — the dark ceremony of it was really, it was depleting my soul. I don’t know how else to describe it, [just] drained, drained at my core. And the journalist came up, and I know her really well, and I’m like, I don’t know what to say. She’s like, I didn’t know what to ask, we’re just doing the same thing over and over and over again. And the way I experienced that moment at the Human Rights Council, and when I was at the General Assembly earlier that year in October, the way I experienced it was, it’s like looking at… a rubbled landscape. Looking at something that has collapsed, a building… I’m looking at the remnants of the UN. It’s not that the UN is going to — it is failing, it is going to fail. It has failed and it has collapsed. Done. The UN, as we knew it, for better or for worse, is over. What we’re doing now, by doing international law, is we are sifting through the wreckage, seeing what tools we can repurpose and use in this moment, in real time. You know, in the midst of an earthquake or a fire, it’s not the time to say, I wish we’d moved the fire hydrant, over there would have been a better design. Or wallah, we should have this legal doctrine it wi a better argument. Now, you grab whatever you have and you use it in the most creative, powerful way possible. And that’s the part I am seeing. Just like the flotilla folk are taking international law from the institutionalized rubble, the people are taking it in their own hands. Are reorganizing themselves, are creating new relationships with each other. And there’s my theory of change: new relationships, new comrades, camaraderie. Friendships, collegiality, new relationships, taking existing legal tools, repurposing them and deploying them in incredibly, incredibly powerful ways. So I’ll add one more dynamic. I’ve never seen the United States exit international law like it has this time around. And I’ll explain what I mean by that. Israel has always used international law in a very narrow way. International law is a lot of sub-fields. There’s trade law, human rights law, laws of war, investment law, and everyone specializes in this and that. Israel always wants to avoid using human rights language and broad international legal arguments. Rather, they want to use the laws of war, or what’s also ironically called international humanitarian law, same, more or less.
Lina Mounzer
Can you explain a little bit like for lay people, yeah, sorry, you’re ahead of me.
Michael Fakhri
The laws of war and international humanitarian law are: war has rules. When is it a war? What counts? Is it a civil war, or is it an international war? And then those categories matter, because the laws of war is the laws of organized violence. Who am I allowed to kill? It is the laws that allow you to kill combatants. Thou shalt not kill — unless it’s an enemy soldier. That’s the laws of war. International humanitarian law is about protecting civilians. It’s the other side of the same coin, which is: you can kill soldiers. You can kill military installments. You can do all of that. What’s allowed, what’s not allowed. You can’t use poison gas anymore… those sorts of rules, because it’s indiscriminate, it’s cruel.
Lina Mounzer
So dumb bombs as opposed to smart or…. What about resistance fighters? Where do they fall in?
Michael Fakhri
So the fight is over, are they resist — is it armed resistance, or is it terrorism? It’s in this game. And Israel wants to keep it in the terms of the laws of war, because the laws of war allow for collateral damage. Military necessity: we were targeting this warehouse with armed vehicles for the enemy’s army. But we… it blew up and some civilians got killed, or some non military establishments got blown up. Military necessity. Our military goal was correct and allowed. We executed it in a way within the boundaries of the rules but —
Lina Mounzer
Unfortunately…
Michael Fakhri
Unfortunately, military necessity, collateral damage.
Lina Mounzer I’ve also seen arguments for proportionality, which really blew my mind. There’s philosophers that have argued proportionality in ways that I honestly, like this should not be a field that people can study. That is completely cynical and deranged.
Michael Fakhri
It’s the laws of how to kill. So I punched you in the face and I cut your head off with a machete. Which one was proportional? That’s the argument. So Israel wants to keep it within the boundaries of the laws of war and international humanitarian law, to argue necessity, collateral damage, proportionality… And then they’ll say, ah, it’s proportional, because the existence of Israel is at stake. And so when the existence of our entire state — it requires a significant response. Who is a combatant, who is an armed combatant, who’s not, who’s a fighter who’s not, who’s a terrorist, who’s not. These are all the laws of war — as expanded and reinterpreted through the war on terror that starts right back after 9/11. So this is a continuation, an expansion of the laws of war through the war on terror. That’s where Israel wants… and we can have our debates and disagreements, but they’re happy to keep it within that framing. So the way a friend put it, she’s like, it’s a trap. Get out of international humanitarian law, get out of the laws of war and keep it in all of international law to show the bigger story. To show the right of return, territorial waters, sovereignty, human rights, right to self determination, etc. So that’s Israel. That’s… there’s the US…
Lina Mounzer
No, I was just gonna say the US. Yeah, I’m very interested in what —
Michael Fakhri So Israel operates in this very small legal universe, and they keep wanting to shrink that legal universe in a particular way. United States, you know, has a reputation of not doing international law. They do a lot of international law, but of course, they’re going to do it their style, and because they are one of the most powerful countries in the United States, they’re going to use international law —
Lina Mounzer
In the world, you mean.
Michael Fakhri
Excuse me, yes, exactly.
Lina Mounzer
That’s a pretty good Freudian slip.
Michael Fakhri
So the United States is one of the most powerful countries in the world, and so we are going to see them ignore international law more… but they actually comply with it a lot, and they use it a lot. They’ve always used it. To the point that when the United States decided to make it a matter of national foreign policy, to allow for the torture of people in or from Iraq, or in and from Afghanistan… whether it was torture in Abu Ghraib or torture in Guantanamo, the United States justified it through international legal arguments. They still use international law, it’s very interesting. They they just say, well, this doesn’t meet the definition of torture under the the convention for the prevention of torture. They use — they felt they still had to justify waterboarding and what they called enhanced interrogation means through legal arguments, that within international law, we might disagree, but it was in the language and the boundaries of what is a legal argument. And we’ll say, no, you’re framing it wrong… But they still felt they had to justify it. I’ll add one more element. In fact, the president’s office asked for legal research memos from in-house legal counsel for the White House, on torture. But they were secret. They asked for secret legal justification of torture. And I’ve always wondered, why bother? Why bother asking your lawyer? — Yes! Why bother, exactly! — You are the world’s leading superpower. This is back when Russia’s still figuring itself out and China’s playing a more quiet game. So we’re still talking about a unipolar world at this point, in the times of Iraq and Afghanistan. Why would the unipolar, most powerful country in the world, feel that they needed to justify torture through secret legal memos that were never meant to be a public argument — it was a justification to themselves. I’ve wondered that a lot, and then research and people then revealed these memos… and the authors of those memos are now tenured professors in fancy US law schools. To be clear, they were rewarded for justifying torture through international legal arguments. The most I can come up with is, what work is law doing there? One, it’s to justify one’s sense of humanity. It’s — to dehumanize, to torture another human being, no matter what the starting point, it is awful. One can’t start from a cynical position. To torture another human being is to torture yourself. There’s no other way around it. [So] how can you justify torturing someone who is you, who is a human? You have to dehumanize them: they are not human, and you have to be a good person. You have to have no choice. You have to have a hero narrative. That’s the discursive part. And then, technically, law is a mechanism of coordination. To torture.
Lina Mounzer And then you can also reframe it as, well, not really torture —
Michael Fakhri
And it’s not really torture, and it’s I’m just doing my– and the people down the chain of command can then just do their job. They don’t have to make a moral — they are not presented with a moral dilemma. The moral dilemma is dealt with, pre-solved, pushed into the background, and made not a moral question, not a political question. It’s turned into a bureaucracy. It’s turned into a banality, to use the phrase, and… just do your job. It’s not torture. That’s the work that law is doing. That’s why they even have to justify it to themselves, using international law. This time around, so, the United States used the invasion and occupation of Iraq, they used international law to justify the invasion and occupation, even though it’s based on factual lies. They did this… Libya. The bombing of Libya, they used international legal arguments. Invasion of Afghanistan, they used international legal arguments. The support of Israel, the United States — and this started with the Biden administration — the United States starts to exit international law in a way I’d never seen before. They’re using less and less legal language. And what legal arguments they’re using is not to justify, but rather to defend, to counteract legal arguments. And they’re using obtuse arguments. [Meaning] within the the small college of international lawyers, it’s not that many, we create a consensus sometimes within the bounds of what is a good legal argument. One could say these are kind of obtuse, outdated, you’re not bringing your A game is how we all experience… American… and that starts with Biden. The exit from international — the American exit from international law starts with Biden, continues with Trump, of course, and then under the current administration, now there’s the significant financial and political withdrawal from the UN system as well. Added, an added component. What do we do with this fact? So some friends have said in international law, well, once the powerful players leave international law the game’s over. Like, why bother if they take their ball and go home, the game’s over. You need, yes, we need power, and we’ve been playing the game of resistance, but at least, the phrase is a site of contestation, at least in international law, you have oppression, but you’ve always had resistance, and it’s been a place of back and forth, a friction. And you can learn — engagement, right? — Engagement, struggle, you learn, you change, you adapt… It creates a a politics. At least there’s politics. If they exit, there’s no more politics, was the argument. No more politics, no more law, why bother. That’s a strong argument, and some days I believe it, some days I’ll say that. But my argument now is we’re winning in international law. We’ve won. They’ve exited. What’s it mean now to come from a critical tradition of international law, to be suspicious of international law, to understand the imperial origins of international law, which is the tradition I come from, to not think human rights is going to save us –says the human rights expert. What’s it mean then, where we’re not doing international law as resistance only, we’re doing international law as rebuilding the world, as building the world anew from the wreckage, from the collapse, from yet another end of the world for yet another indigenous people. Yet again, this is happening. The world has ended yet again. But this is the moment — US has exited and the world has rallied. The popularization of international law is unprecedented. That’s why I pointed to the the flotilla. And look at the flotilla, actions are growing, are expanding. They’re connecting with… different networks are coming together. That’s a solidarity movement built around international law. All the people that were on the… I think it was the Handala, the Handala ship where they held their passports before they sailed to show their citizenship. What a legal —
Lina Mounzer
Was it the second flotilla or the first? Because the first was the Madleen, and then it was the Handala.
Michael Fakhri
After the Madleen I think it was the Handala. There was pictures of all the people with their passports, saying, I am a citizen of France, Brazil, US, Palestine, whatever… And what I am doing is legal. What I’m doing is what my government should be doing. They’re falling… What Israel is doing is illegal, and as a citizen, my government has a legal responsibility to protect me from what we know is going to happen. I’m going to be kidnapped. I might be killed, etc, etc. So they were using their passports and their citizenship as legal action.
Lina Mounzer
Okay, that’s all very well and good, but we saw what their governments did. Absolutely nothing. We saw that. All of them had recorded, pre-recorded messages to their governments, saying, if you are seeing this, it’s because I have been kidnapped by the Israeli government under the mission of doing this. We saw that. We saw their governments do nothing, provide no statements. They didn’t even feel that they had to react to any of this. This is… this is the question. Okay, you’re mounting these arguments, you’re bringing these things forward… They don’t even feel the need to react. They don’t even feel like they need to respond anymore. — I disagree — To me, I really love that image of, here we are among the wreckage, and we’re sifting through the wreckage… the way that I see it, though, it’s almost like you’re… riding a bicycle that’s literally falling apart as you’re riding it, and you’re — like the wheel is falling off and the pedal is falling off and the seat is falling off.
Lina Mounzer
We’re gonna keep that in we’re not… anyway, so you’re riding this bicycle, it is completely falling apart, at what point does it stop being a bicycle at all — is it completely useless? And then, it brings me back to this question — because you said to remind you if — I’ve forgotten a lot, but the one question that stays in my mind because I’m so curious about the answer to it, is this idea of like, well, why is the General Assembly not voting them out? Why are they doing nothing? Right? So, and this is the thing, it’s like nobody’s reacting. Nobody’s acting. Flotilla members are holding up their passports, their countries don’t seem to care. I just, I don’t understand… and now suddenly we have this bizarre falling in line of them saying, Oh, well, if you don’t stop starving them, we’re going to declare the state of Palestine. I know why that’s happening, because it’s meaningless and it’s something they can do without losing… But what — is it that they are clinging to this old world order and they don’t know how to see the world in any other way, except through the imperialist lens? I know this sounds like a very naive question. I also know that there’s huge financial interest at stake. I’ve seen what Francesca Albanese’s report has been about… What the hell is happening at the General Assembly?
Michael Fakhri
Okay, so I’ll describe how I’ve experienced it. I think it’s the best way to do it. So when I started it in the beginning, like in the beginning in October, in October 2023, I happened to be in New York. I happened to be at the General Assembly presenting a different report.
Lina Mounzer
Yeah. Sorry, my electricity… it’s okay go on, the internet is not on that.
Michael Fakhri
You put two Lebanese people together, the electricity is going to go out. So I happen to be in New York at the General Assembly in October 2023 and we hadn’t put out our press release yet. We were racing to get our press release — that was going to be the first UN-affiliate statement framing it as genocide — and we were racing against the clock because we wanted to do it while I and other mandate holders were physically in New York, so that we could do two things. One, we could formally raise the issue of genocide in the General Assembly on the record, and that we could have informal meetings with ambassadors who are asking what’s going on, what’s to be done? In October, most countries were caught off guard. Which was, what does this mean, what is happening? That was the early debate, and many special rapporteurs played the role of informally briefing different ambassadors, like, this is the situation; Yes, it’s actually a risk of genocide, this is why we’re using the word.
Lina Mounzer
They announced it themselves. They said they were going to do it, they were very clear with their intention.
Michael Fakhri
The ambassador is now convinced. The ambassador is still an individual. The ambassador gets their instruction from their capital. They now… so step one, explain it to the ambassadors. That’s the ambassador’s job, to be the eyes and ears for their country at these particular situations. So now different ambassadors of the world reported back in October ’23 to their capitals, to say, we have been briefed by the Special Rapporteurs, and this is what they’re telling us. So now we’ve put that information into national bureaucratic machinery. That takes time. Meanwhile, people are mobilizing. People are marching in the streets now saying, this is genocide. Stop it. You must do something. So now there’s the bureaucratic stuff happening that we started, fast and early. There’s the social movements that are happening and growing, now forcing governments to have to do something. No government wants to do anything unless they have to. You always have to force their hand through multiple means. But now we had that two prong, one foot in the system, one foot out of the system. You have those of us — and you have civil servants within the UN system, raising the alarm, pushing the leadership, saying, leadership of the UN, head of the WFP, head of… the Secretary General, High Commissioner. Why aren’t you saying something? Why aren’t you doing something? Our colleagues are being killed. So you have civil servants… you have many of us pushing from within the system. You have people mobilizing in the streets, outside of the system — this is actually ideal. This is actually ideal. So then by the time — so I put out my report on starvation, generally, but with an emphasis on the Palestinian people’s food sovereignty. I presented that report to the General Assembly in October 2024 — a year later, I’m back in New York, and I’m before the General Assembly, and I told them, everything I’m saying today, I already told you. I told you so. We told you so. Shame on you, blah, blah, blah. But then we had a meeting of ambassadors, a closed door meeting, but ambassadors, generously hosted by the Indonesian government. We had over 30 missions there from all over the world. The more, I would say, the so-called Global North countries were quiet and sent their junior diplomats. The Global South sent ambassadors, or sort of people right under the ambassador, very high level. And we had the conversation. Of course, representatives from the State of Palestine were there, and they co-hosted, and we had a very honest conversation. And what they all said — and this was the stage where Israel was shooting at peacekeepers in Lebanon, Israel had named the Secretary General persona non grata, Israel was attacking different mandate holders, personally. They were attacking us, our families, ad hominem attacks, etc. They’d killed already a record number of UN staff, more than any war since the creation of the UN. A record number of humanitarian workers were killed, record number of journalists were killed.
October 2024. October… we’re sitting with the ambassadors, and all the global south were in agreement. And one of them said, when Israel attacks the UN they are attacking all of us. And there was this big nod of consensus. You felt the room go like, what are we going to do? And different conversations are being had. And also around what’s now called the Hague group. Global south countries, they tend to be left-leaning, coming together in the Hague saying, we want to implement international law. This is triggered by all of this stuff in Gaza. Their politicians claim they want to do something. So for me, it’s like, why isn’t Colombia doing something? Why isn’t Brazil doing something? And I’ve been in these capitals. I was in Bogota. I’ve been in Brasilia. I’ve talked to the people in capital that make these decisions. So the politicians want — claim, they say they want to do something. The people are mobilizing. The law is all there. What’s stopping them? Geopolitics. Fear. Fear. Everyone’s profiting from this genocide. Look at how much Brazil exports to Israel. Look at who buys weapons from Israel. How many? Look at Colombia’s purchase of weapons. Where do they buy weapons from? Look at biotech. Look at just tech in general. Look at oil, gas. Look at energy broadly, and look at the United States. Look at what the United States will do to you if you step up against Israel. They will punish you. The economic, the political economic — all countries are embedded in a political economic system that has enabled — that has allowed and enabled genocide to happen, not just in Israel, everywhere. It is more common than people think. Starvation is a tool used by all powers. Russia supported the starvation of the Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan just a few years ago. And the United States supports Israel, starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Now Russia and the United States —
Lina Mounzer
Saudi Arabia, UAE —
Michael Fakhri
You can talk Sudan, you can talk — exactly. All major powers. They might hate each other, but they all support starvation. Every member on the Security Council that has veto power has directly or indirectly supported some form of starvation. Okay.
Lina Mounzer
Is it because it’s such a cheap way to kill a huge amount —
Michael Fakhri
Cheap, effective and there’s a long tradition. You have the toolkit that starts under the imperial era, and it’s the same toolkit, just updated, sped up, and used more efficiently, as we see with Israel, for example. So everyone is now using starvation. No one wants to stop this as a tool, as a weapon. That’s the politics of starvation, separate from geopolitics… And then, as Francesca Albanese showed —
Lina Mounzer
Wait. My question is, wait, sorry, because maybe that’s what you’re saying. But just to clarify it. Essentially, you’re saying that countries who stand up against starvation as a weapon of war then have less cover for themselves when they want to use it later on, so it’s not in their interest to speak out about it in this way, they want to keep it on the table as something that they might want to be able to use against their enemies later on down the line. Is that correct?
Michael Fakhri
Exactly. That’s the logic of the laws of war. And I’ll do a quick detour in the laws of war and come back. The laws of war actually allow you to starve in this way. You are allowed under the laws of war to starve enemy combatants. I can starve your army. I can use starvation. I can cut your military supply chains in a way to starve your soldiers. Allowed. What I’m not allowed to do is use starvation to deny humanitarian aid or to deny civilians access to food. However —
Lina Mounzer
So, this is why they keep making that argument, the Israelis. They say, well, Hamas is going to take the food, and so we have to block food off to the entire strip, because we don’t want them to have food. And essentially, this is what happened also in greater Syria and Lebanon during the famine of 1916 which is that the French and the British blockaded — under the guise of not wanting the Ottomans to eat. And then essentially, something like 500,000 people starved, and —
Michael Fakhri
Military necessity. Thems the breaks of war. The fiction, the fiction of this legal — the law itself, is built on a fiction, which is, there is no separation in this modern era between military supply lines, humanitarian supply lines and civilian supply lines. If you block the military supply line, that’s the same as the humanitarian and civilian supply line. They’re one — there there are networks, enmeshed networks. So if you use starvation to starve your enemy combatants, you are guaranteed to be starving civilians. So law gives them the cover. Law actually makes it easy to create an argument to justify the starvation of civilians. International humanitarian law. That’s why we got to get out — that’s where law is a problem.
So politically — politically, everyone wants to keep starvation on the table because they want to be able to use it themselves and not be told you can’t use it. Legally, law, international humanitarian law, actually makes it easy for you to justify the starvation of civilians by saying, actually, I was using it to starve the military folk, but collateral damage. So the law enables starvation. And then economically. Economically, all these countries are tied in two ways. One, there’s the geopolitics of it, which is like I described, like the United States, oil, gas, energy, power. If you do something that is against the United States’s political economic interest, they will punish you. Somehow. They’ll raise tariffs. They won’t sign a deal. They’ll do a coup d’etat, whatever tool they use to pressure you. The United States will pressure you — you make your political statement, but you don’t actually act on it.
Lina Mounzer
Yeah. I mean we see how they have the Arab governments in their thrall in in that way, 100%.
Michael Fakhri
But then this is the part where to be specific to food. Food systems, the way food systems have been corporatized and industrialized, makes communities vulnerable to starvation in the first place, and this was the argument I was making in my report. If we frame it as a continuum, you don’t become vulnerable to starvation overnight. Again, it’s always a political problem. Why are over 24 million people facing starvation in Sudan, and it’s the largest situation of displacement ever in modern history in Sudan? Not because of today, not because of yesterday, not because of two years ago. I think a good place one could start — you could go back to colonial history, I think is actually the correct place to start, but you can go more recently. There was a popular uprising that undid decades of military rule in Sudan. It was a civilian uprising which was shut down by military leaders. This is a war of civilians. And so the peoples in Sudan have been weakened, their food systems have been weakened for decades. So that when these warring factions come in, they’re like, oh, their food system depends on trade, depends on fertilizers, depends on agribusiness, depends on having to purchase seeds on the international market. It depends on important export. They’re so dependent and fragile and weak we can use starvation, no problem. So the argument I made to many countries is: you’re next. You’re next. If you don’t strengthen your local food system, you are all vulnerable to starvation. So when the President of Colombia, President Petro, stands up and says, “We’re next,” it’s not just geopolitically. They’re next because the food system is designed to make their people vulnerable. So the best way — this is where you have to think more long term. The best way to protect yourself from the risk of starvation is strengthen your local food system. So that even if they want to starve you, they can’t. So what did Israel do? It’s not just that they blocked humanitarian aid, it’s they’ve been harassing fishers for decades. They’ve been harassing farmers for decades. They’ve been uprooting olive trees. They’ve been destroying orchards. They’ve been poisoning the land. They’ve been changing the landscape, getting rid of all the olive trees and the indigenous trees, and planting pine trees, which are now prone to wildfires. This is — when you look at the food system and when you look at the politics of hunger, that tells you that story. It shows you the systemic way, and it shows you the systemic way to resist and to avoid that risk of starvation. So most directly, a lot of people make a lot of money off of the current status quo. So even if Colombia — one of the strongest proponents sort of supporting political change — wants to do something, they have to change how they are situated in the current global political economy to be able to impose wide scale sanctions against Israel, which is the only way to create consequences and put real pressure on Israel. We have — this is about, of course, the Palestinian people, but it is about global governance… is even the countries — this is where I was saying “I disagree.” Countries are now — they want to do something. As of October 2024 at least, they want to do something. The politicians want to do something, the people want to do something. — That’s a year ago — That’s a year ago, because they have to reconfigure and change their fundamental geopolitical, political, economic relationship with the economy. Colombia needs to — okay they export coal to Israel. To say we’re going to stop exporting coal to Israel, which they’ve said… where are they going to export that coal to? Should they be exporting coal? The politics of climate change, etc, etc —
Lina Mounzer
But are they working behind the scenes now to figure out new configurations? Are we gonna see something come out? The way that I look at it, it feels like there has to be such a threat of internal unrest over this, where the government is forced to say, either our country falls apart, or we have to do something about this.
Michael Fakhri
And this is where social power is more important than ever. This is why people say, why bother why bother demonstrating? Why bother signing a petition? Why bother doing anything? And the answer is, because it’s working. Because that’s the force of change. And the argument I’ve made to — on Arab language, media, to Arab countries is: you’re next. The peoples in the Arab world are fed up, and all Arab governments — but all governments, all governments, especially European governments too. Their very legitimacy is at stake if they don’t do something to stop the starvation and genocide, Israel’s starvation and genocide of the Palestinian people. Governments will fall. They know this. They will lose elections. They will lose power. As long as that social mobilization continues. So we have to make it so that politicians will be rewarded for doing the right thing. Right now, politicians will be punished for doing the right thing. Only social power can change the rules of the game so that politicians are rewarded if they do the right thing. And then if they do the right thing, that changes the political system. And it’s slow. It’s unfortunately, in human terms, human life terms, it’s slow, but that’s why having a historical sensibility helps change. The only thing we know is change happens. It can be worse, it can always be worse, but it is alive today. It’s worth struggling today. How we fight today over Palestine and Palestinian human rights will determine the contours of the global order for generations to come. That is what’s at stake today. That’s why people have to continue to fight, and you don’t have to convince people. Why is it that people from all walks of life see their own struggle in the Palestinian struggle. They see their own oppression, exploitation and their own experience of occupation. You don’t have to convince anyone. Millions of people, said, I understand what that is. I recognize my own struggle, and I’m going to put my own — something on the line, my life, my job, my reputation. I’m going to sign a petition. I’m going to argue with my neighbors. Whatever anyone does counts. It’s all good based on how you’re situated. Because they see, yes, they believe in the Palestinian people, but they see their own struggle. They understand it’s in their self interest. It is in their self interest how they fight for this. And that’s where — that’s the dynamic of change that matters. We have the social power. We have the legal victories and the legal tools. So now that social force has to continue… and that is continually legitimized and strengthened by law, and that social power has to change the rules of the political game — which is happening. Hold those governments accountable that claim they want to do the right thing. You know, this creation of the Hague group, of this group of like-minded countries from the global south that want to implement international law. I support it on principle, but I’ll believe it when I see it. That means we can hold them accountable, even countries that are sympathetic. They need to be held accountable through social pressure, not just at the ballot box. Social mobilization, cultural events, etc, etc. So just like –
Lina Mounzer
Make a stink, essentially.
Michael Fakhri
Yeah. So just as this is the most horrific moment in the history of Palestinian… struggle for Palestinian Liberation, it is also the most powerful moment for solidarity for the Palestinian people. I never thought I would hear on the streets in North America — I live in Oregon, that’s why… in the United States and in North America, more broadly, free, free Palestine. Palestine, the territory of Palestine, has been popularized on the streets in North America. That generational shift is profound. We’re seeing it. We’re seeing it. We saw —
Lina Mounzer
Even just the anti-Zionist argument itself. There’s no longer this milquetoast thing of people saying, well, Israel, you know, has the right to exist, but also the two-state solution — no. Zionism is a colonial project it has been this from the beginning. What we need is one state with equal rights for all. And that’s what — this was never a mainstream thing that people talked about. It was like —
Michael Fakhri
Yeah, so what’s at stake is American, American politics itself, internally, American geopolitical power and the very existence and sense of identity of Europe. The idea of Europe is also at stake. So that’s what’s at play. That’s why the political battles in Europe and in North America are incredibly important, because the changes that are happening there will have direct impact on the Palestinian people and on Israelis as well, on Israelis as well.
Lina Mounzer
God, I want to believe you. I really want to believe you.
Michael Fakhri
It’s not — yeah, I mean it’s funny, I use the word belief. So people are like, sometimes they’ll say, I sound hopeful, and that’s why I’m like, I’m not a person with hope. It’s faith. It’s really a moment of what do you believe in? And, I mean, what do you believe in is a hard question. It’s a question of faith. And clearly, I believe in people’s ability to come together and organize themselves. That’s how change happens. New relationships. And new relationships have formed, and old relationships have changed. The world has already profoundly changed. Will it be for the better? It’s in play, and that’s a collective struggle to decide whether it will be better for the majority of us or worse.
Lina Mounzer
And we all have a part to play in that. And I think that that’s a beautiful place to stop actually, because I want to end on a hopeful note, which is such a — I feel like it’s such a compulsive thing that I want to have to do, and I’m trying to break myself of the habit of it but —
Michael Fakhri
Don’t be hopeful.
Lina Mounzer
Hopeful is the wrong word, because I don’t mean it in this empty way, necessarily, but if you want, it’s looking forward into the future with a light rather than —
Michael Fakhri
Find meaning. And it’s hard to find meaning in the face — or witnessing genocide, not face, while witnessing genocide. Genocide shuts down your ability to imagine any future as possible. That’s one of the effects of it, beyond the obvious, murderous ones. But it makes –there’s no more tomorrow. There’s only the present, and it is only one of pain.
Lina Mounzer
I think it’s a spiritual injury, it’s an actual spiritual injury that we are… I mean this is — I was having this conversation with a friend of mine who’s written about it a lot. And he had written something that elucidated something for me, and it’s this idea, the reason that it’s hard to make meaning is because we’re injured in the place from which we make meaning. And that’s why… that’s exactly where it has hurt everybody, and why it’s so difficult to kind of keep pushing forward. So yeah, I think —
Michael Fakhri
Yeah, we’ll often say existence is resistance, and this is more the politics of sumud, which is anything… just existing, being persistent, just being Palestinian is a form of… Going to school counts as resistance for the Palestinians, and I think for those of us that are not Palestinian, in this moment, I think persistence is resistance. Just stay at it, whatever form, everything counts. Stay at it. Stay — stay persistent, hopeful, not hopeful. But you know, we in this interview, it feels weird, we laughed. There are moments where you laugh. It’s not wrong to find moments of joy. That counts. Find moments of joy is what gives you the strength to keep at it, to be persistent. Joy often comes from a place of pain. Joy often comes from a place of valuing the other human being you are spending time with, and this experience has left me with that. I value every in-person interaction post-COVID. I value every new relationship. I value the deepening of many existing relationships. I’ve lost many friendships from — in these last two years because of this, but I’ve also made the deepest friendships and… even friendship doesn’t capture… the deepest connections with people in the midst of this particular struggle. Let us continue to make meaning. Let us find joy. Let us find pleasure in each other’s company, in the pain, through the pain, with the pain and the fear. And that’s how I think about it.
Lina Mounzer
Yeah, this idea of new relationships is such a beautiful way of putting it to me, because it’s new configurations that actually shift reality. And we have seen reality shift. I mean in awful ways, but also in ways that feel like there is a potential for something entirely new. Because people are speaking in ways where we haven’t heard them speak before. So yeah, here’s to new relationships, and here’s to old relationships, friendships. Thank you so much, Michael for this. Thank you so much for letting us record this and bringing people in, allowing everybody to get a a hint of your expertise, and to hear what you have to say. And I always find it so invigorating to listen to you, and I’m sure that everybody else feels the same way now after this. And thank you so much for your time.
Michael Fakhri
Thank you, Lina, that was a pleasure, and thank you for giving me the space to reflect. I don’t always get that opportunity. I’m often very formally on the record. So thank you for that — and to the Markaz Review for creating that space of reflection. I appreciate it.
Lina Mounzer
Thank you.
