Category World News

Last Friday, during an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, CNN commentator and former Obama adviser Van Jones claimed that Iran and Qatar are running a disinformation campaign to manipulate young Americans into caring about Gaza. To make his point, he crudely imitated what he said appears on their social media feeds: “Dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby.” The audience laughed.

The remark, a crass attempt at humour that juxtaposed mass death with celebrity scandal, laid bare the moral drift that has infected American commentary on Palestine. What should have prompted grief instead provoked laughter. A reality steeped in blood became a punchline. It was not merely a gaffe but a revelation of how far the conversation has strayed from moral awareness.

Jones’s apology came swiftly. He admitted the remark was “insensitive and hurtful”, insisting that his intent had been to highlight how foreign adversaries manipulate social media. Yet intent does not erase consequence. To repeat “dead Gaza baby” for rhetorical effect and to attribute the flood of such images to foreign manipulation campaigns is to trivialise authentic suffering. It transforms the murdered children of Gaza into props in a morality play about disinformation.

A true apology would have confronted the deeper problem: the instinct, common in US media, to distrust evidence of Palestinian pain unless it is filtered through Western validation. It is an impulse rooted in hierarchy, the same hierarchy that divides the grievable from the disposable, the innocent from the suspect.

The issue was not merely one of tone but of substance. Jones’s remarks, met with neither objection nor discomfort from his fellow panellists — Thomas Friedman of The New York Times and host Maher — stand as a textbook illustration of how Western commentators, when confronted with the documented suffering of Palestinians, reach for the well-worn inversion that recasts truth as propaganda. It is an instinct that trivialises atrocity and, in this instance, by turning the deaths of Palestinian children into a punchline, completes their dehumanisation.

Jones’s claim is absurd on its face. The world’s horror at Gaza’s devastation is not the product of Qatari or Iranian disinformation; it is the natural response of any conscience not yet cauterised. To those possessed of moral fortitude, the images need no narration; they speak a universal language of grief. Tens of thousands of children have been killed in verified strikes, their names catalogued by humanitarian organisations, their bodies pulled from the ruins by foreign doctors and reporters who bear witness with weary precision. To suggest that these images are fabrications of manipulation rather than evidence of atrocity is not analysis but moral cowardice. It is to participate in the very propaganda one claims to expose.

Jones’s remark reflects a deeper pathology. For decades, much of the US media establishment has treated Palestinian death as a matter of optics rather than ethics. It prefers to interrogate imagery rather than investigate accountability. When confronted with the question of whether Israel’s actions meet the legal threshold for genocide — a conclusion reached by leading human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and Al-Haq, as well as by the United Nations Human Rights Council, its Independent Commission of Inquiry, and the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory — it looks away. Instead of examining evidence, it frets about “misinformation” and “narrative control”. The effect is to replace moral analysis with moral evasion. The question of genocide becomes not a crime to expose and punish but a branding problem to manage.

The obsession with disinformation also betrays a certain arrogance. It assumes that young people who recoil at the carnage must have been duped by malignant foreign actors. They could not possibly have arrived at outrage through independent moral reasoning. Their compassion must be manufactured, their empathy the product of an algorithm. Such condescension mirrors the colonial logic that denies agency to the colonised and authenticity to those who stand with them.

To be fair, disinformation is real. Every conflict spawns its share of fabrications. But recognising that fact does not license scepticism towards verified atrocity. When the evidence of suffering is so overwhelming, the burden shifts: those who doubt it must prove their case. The reflex to reach for Iran and Qatar as explanatory villains is not analysis; it is evasion. It comforts the conscience by projecting moral disorder elsewhere.

There was a time when Jones embodied a different spirit, one animated by moral urgency. His work on criminal justice reform and racial equity once lent him the credibility of a voice of conscience. That credibility was not lost through mere carelessness, but through the craven instinct to conform and a readiness to be co-opted by the rhetoric of empire. Yet the failure is not his alone. It reflects the ecosystem that produced him: a media culture that rewards deference to power, values fluency in the slogans of empire over fidelity to truth, and exalts the cadence of talking points above the substance of justice.

The laughter in Maher’s studio was telling. It revealed a desensitised audience that could chuckle at the invocation of dead children because those children belonged to the wrong geography. Substitute “Ukrainian baby” or “Israeli baby”, and the same crass joke would have drawn gasps, not laughter. The double standard is the moral disease of our age: empathy rationed by passport.

In the end, this controversy is not about speech but about sight. The task is not to police what people say about Gaza but to compel them to see Gaza: to see the mass graves, the skeletal survivors, the bombed schools, the hospitals reduced to ash. To see is to know, and to know is to judge. The effort to obscure that reality behind the fog of “disinformation” is nothing less than a refusal to see.

Jones’s apology does not close the wound it exposed. Until the US media can name and confront suffering without qualification, its moral authority will remain threadbare. The children of Gaza are not dying from disinformation; they are dying from Israeli bombs, and from the US’s wilful blindness.

Israeli forces intercepted another aid flotilla sailing to break the siege on Gaza in the Mediterranean Sea, arresting over 90 activists. While those released from Israeli jails after the Sumud flotilla was seized spoke about their mistreatment.

Newborn and Premature babies in Gaza are being forced to share oxygen masks, says UNICEF. Bombed out hospitals are critically short of equipment and supplies, with shortages threatening thousands of newborns and children facing malnutrition and disabilities.

United States President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan offers some constructive proposals on hostages, humanitarian aid, and reconstruction. Yet it is marred by an unmistakable colonial framework: Gaza is to be overseen by Trump himself, with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other outsiders cast as trustees for Palestinian governance, while Palestinian statehood is deferred indefinitely.

This logic is not new. It repeats the century-long Anglo-American approach to Palestine, beginning with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, when the UK acquired the Mandate over Palestine, and continuing through successive US interventions, direct and indirect, in the region since 1945.

A real peace plan must eliminate the colonial scaffolding. It should restore Palestinian sovereignty by addressing the central issue: Palestinian statehood. The plan must empower the Palestinian Authority (PA) by establishing that it holds governance from the outset, that economic planning is exclusively in Palestinian hands, that no external “viceroys” intervene, and that a clear and short timeline is set for Israeli withdrawal and full Palestinian sovereignty by the start of 2026.

What follows is a truly decolonised alternative — a plan that builds on these principles. It retains the practical elements of Trump’s proposal but removes its colonial underpinnings. It places Palestinians, not foreign “trustees”, at the centre of governance and reconstruction. Crucially, it aligns with international law, including the 2024 ruling of the International Court of Justice, the recent resolution of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), and the recognition of Palestine by 157 countries around the world.

This revised plan preserves Trump’s core elements related to the release of hostages, the end of fighting, the withdrawal of the Israeli army, emergency humanitarian relief, and the reconstruction of the war-torn Palestine, while eliminating the colonial language and baggage. Readers may compare this version point by point with the original Trump plan available here.

The revised 20-point plan: The Trump plan with no colonial strings attached

1. Palestine and Israel will be terror-free countries that do not pose a threat to their neighbours.

2. Palestine will be redeveloped for the benefit of the Palestinians, who have suffered more than enough.

3. If both sides agree to this proposal, the war will immediately end. Israeli forces will withdraw to the agreed line to prepare for a hostage release. All military operations will end.

4. Within 72 hours of both sides publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.

5. Once all hostages are released, Israel will release life sentence prisoners plus Palestinians who were detained after 7 October 2023.

6. Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty. Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.

7. Upon acceptance of this agreement, full aid will be immediately sent into the Gaza Strip. At a minimum, aid quantities will be consistent with what was included in the January 19, 2025 agreement regarding humanitarian aid, including rehabilitation of infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage), rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, and entry of necessary equipment to remove rubble and open roads.

8. Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference from the two parties through the UN and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party. Opening the Rafah crossing in both directions will be subject to the same mechanism implemented under the January 19, 2025 agreement.

9. Palestine, and Gaza as an integral part of it, will be governed by the PA. International advisers may support this effort, but sovereignty lies with the Palestinians.

10. The PA, supported by a panel of Arab-region experts and outside experts as may be chosen by the Palestinians, will develop a reconstruction and development plan. Outside proposals may be considered, but economic planning will be Arab-led.

11. A special economic zone may be established by the Palestinians, with tariffs and access rates negotiated by Palestine and partner countries.

12. No one will be forced to leave any sovereign Palestinian territory. Those who wish to leave may do so freely and return freely.

13. Hamas and other factions will have no role in governance. All military and terror infrastructure will be dismantled and decommissioned, verified by independent monitors.

14. Regional partners will guarantee that Hamas and other factions comply, ensuring that Gaza poses no threat to its neighbours or its own people.

15. Arab and international partners, as per the invitation of Palestine, will deploy a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF) beginning November 1, 2025, to support and train Palestinian security, in consultation with Egypt and Jordan. The ISF will secure borders, protect the population, and facilitate the rapid movement of goods to rebuild Palestine.

16. Israel will neither occupy nor annex Gaza or the West Bank. Israeli forces will fully withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory by December 31, 2025, as the ISF and Palestinian security establish control.

17. If Hamas delays or rejects the proposal, aid and reconstruction will proceed in areas under ISF and PA authority.

18. An interfaith dialogue process will be established to promote tolerance and peaceful coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis.

19. The State of Palestine will govern its full sovereign territory as of January 1, 2026, in line with the September 12 resolution of the UNGA and the 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice.

20. The US will immediately recognise a sovereign State of Palestine, with permanent UN membership, as a peaceful nation living side by side with the State of Israel.

How our plan differs from the Trump plan

The revised 20-point plan, in short, is not radically different in form from Trump’s. It retains provisions for demilitarisation, humanitarian relief, economic reconstruction, and interfaith dialogue. The main difference lies with Palestinian sovereignty and statehood.

Palestinian sovereignty and statehood: Trump’s version deferred Palestinian statehood to some indefinite future, contingent on reforms and external approval. The decolonised plan sets firm dates: Israel withdraws by November 1, 2025, and Palestine assumes full sovereignty by January 1, 2026, 126 years since the Treaty of Versailles.

Colonial oversight removed: Trump’s proposal created a “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump himself, with Blair as a leading member. The decolonised plan eliminates this, recognising that Palestinians require no foreign viceroys. Governance rests with the Palestinians from day one.

Economic sovereignty: Trump’s plan announced a “Trump Economic Development Plan” to remake Gaza. The decolonised plan leaves economic planning to the Palestinians, supported by Arab experts, with outside proposals considered only at Palestinian discretion.

End of Anglo-American trusteeship: Trump cast the US as the guarantor and arbiter of the Palestinian future, with the support of the UK. The decolonised plan explicitly ends this 100-year model, affirming Palestinian and Arab leadership.

For more than a century, Palestinians have been subjected to external colonial control: British Mandate rule, US diplomatic dominance, Israeli occupation, and periodic schemes of trusteeship, as in Trump’s new plan. From the Balfour Declaration to Versailles to Oslo to Trump’s “Board of Peace”, Palestinians have not been treated as sovereign actors. This plan corrects that and recognises that the Palestinian people are a nation of enormous talents, and highly educated and experienced experts. They don’t need tutelage. They need sovereignty.

Our revised plan affirms that Palestinians, through their own authority, must finally and at long last govern themselves, make their own economic choices, and chart their own destiny. International actors may advise and support them, but they must not impose their will. The withdrawal of Israel and the recognition of Palestine’s sovereignty must be fixed and non-negotiable milestones.

A real peace plan must be aligned with international law, including the clear-cut rulings of the International Court of Justice and the UN resolutions. A real peace plan must be aligned with the overwhelming will of the global community that supports the implementation of the two-state solution. All parties to the peace plan should subscribe to this framework. This is the moment for honesty, global resolve, and moral clarity. Only practical steps that implement Palestinian sovereignty and statehood will bring lasting peace.