Very occasionally I write a piece about the state of politics. It’s often about UK politics but this time will extend to global politics with Farage following the Donald’s policies and no prospect of politicians addressing the climate crisis. To address Wes Streeting and doctor’s strike, David Lammy’s attack on trial by jury, Nigel Farage and Reform UK, Your Party and the Greens.
In response to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report published 4th November 2025, Nafkote Dabi, Climate Policy Lead at Oxfam, said:
“Just days before global leaders arrive in Brazil for COP30, this report is a blaring siren calling for greater climate action.
“Since the Paris Agreement, the richest 1% have used up more than twice the carbon budget of the poorest half of humanity. This inequality is more than unjust—it’s deadly. The extreme emissions of the richest people and countries are burning through the little remaining the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while avoiding climate disaster. Meanwhile, the poorest communities suffer the most devastating impacts.
“Governments cannot close the emissions gap without slashing the carbon footprint of the super-rich and addressing extreme inequality. COP30 must be a turning point. Global leaders must cut the emissions of the richest, tax rich polluters and their profits, and deliver a just transition—one that creates decent green jobs, builds resilient economies, and puts people and planet before profit.”
Oxfam’s recent report, “Climate Plunder: How a powerful few are locking the world into disaster”, presents new data which finds that a person from the richest 0.1% produces more carbon pollution in a day than the poorest 50% emit all year. If everyone emitted like the richest 0.1%, the carbon budget would be used up in less than 3 weeks.
The “UN Emissions Gap report: Off Target” finds that global warming projections over this century, based on full implementation of updated government climate pledges, are 2.3-2.5°C, while those based on current policies are 2.8°C.
This work is republished from Middle East Monitor under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The United Nations Committee Against Torture has found credible evidence that Israel is operating a “de facto State policy of organised and widespread torture and ill-treatment,” warning that such practices may constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and may meet the legal criteria for genocide.
In its concluding observations on Israel’s sixth periodic review, the Committee said it was “deeply concerned” about multiple and serious allegations of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians deprived of liberty, including children. It further described the situation as having “gravely intensified” since 7 October 2023.
READ: Report: Palestinian journalist raped, sexually tortured inside Israeli detention center
The UN report lists detailed allegations of abuse, based on testimonies from rights groups, medical experts, and detainees themselves. These include beatings with batons and rifle butts, kicks to the head and genitals, electrocution, including of the genitals and anus, waterboarding, prolonged stress positions, sexual violence including rape, molestation, forced nudity and sexual threats, the use of attack dogs, exposure to extreme cold or heat, including use of boiling water. Victims reported being urinated on, forced to wear nappies, or made to act like animals. Many were shackled at all times, blindfolded, and fed through a straw.
“The Committee expresses its deep concern over allegations of repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, waterboarding, use of prolonged stress positions, sexual violence, threats against detainees and their family members, insults to personal dignity and humiliation such as being made to act like animals or being urinated on, systematic denial of medical care, excessive use of restraints, in some cases resulting in amputation, the performance of surgeries without anaesthetic, exposure to extreme cold or heat, including boiling water” said the UN.
On its list of grave violations committed by Israel the Committee included, “denial of adequate nutrition and water, deprivation of clothing, sleep and access to hygiene facilities and products, including feminine hygiene products, deprivation of light or darkness, use of loud music and noises, denial of the right to freely practice ones religion, and the forcible use of hallucinogenic medication, in a discriminatory manner, against Palestinians, and for purposes including the extraction of information or confessions and as a means of exacting punishment, including collective punishment.”
The Committee expressed alarm at Israel’s use of the Unlawful Combatants Law to detain children, the elderly, and pregnant women without charge. It noted that many detainees were held in solitary confinement, denied access to family, legal counsel, education, or even basic hygiene, food, and water.
It further reported that 75 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody since 7 October 2023, many showing signs of starvation, untreated wounds, dehydration, and signs of torture. Families were often not informed, constituting enforced disappearance under international law. Despite these deaths, the Committee noted that no Israeli official has been held accountable.
The Committee concluded that acts of torture and ill-treatment committed against Palestinians deprived of liberty could qualify as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It referenced the UN Commission of Inquiry’s prior findings that such acts may form part of the actus reus of genocide—a Latin term referring to the “guilty act” or the physical component of a criminal offence, in this case the deliberate infliction of harm on a protected group.
The Committee called on Israel to immediately cease the use of torture and ill-treatment, grant unrestricted access to all detention facilities to independent monitors, establish an independent commission of inquiry, investigate and prosecute all responsible officials, including military and intelligence officers, and repeal or amend laws enabling arbitrary detention and ensure protection of vulnerable detainees, especially children.
READ: Rights groups: Electric shocks now ‘main tool’ of torture in Israel’s Gilad Prison
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work by Eko Ernada is republished from Middle East Monitor under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Human Rights Day, commemorated annually on 10 December, is intended to reaffirm the principles of dignity, equality, and universal protection enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Yet in the age of Gaza, these principles ring hollow. The world marks Human Rights Day with speeches and ceremonies, even as an entire civilian population endures bombardment, displacement, starvation, and the collapse of basic infrastructure—with almost complete impunity.
Gaza has become the starkest mirror of our time. It reveals a world in which “universal” rights are selectively defended, in which civilian lives can be extinguished during declared humanitarian pauses, and in which the international system proves unable—or unwilling—to enforce its own norms. The tragedy is not only that Gaza burns, but that it burns while the world insists it still believes in human rights.
The bitter paradox of Gaza is that even a “ceasefire” no longer guarantees safety. Israel announces pauses in fighting, yet strikes hospitals, refugee shelters, and residential blocks hours later. These are not accidents or isolated incidents; they signal a global shift. We live in an era where restraint has eroded, legality has weakened, and the protection of civilians has become politically negotiable. Each broken ceasefire broadcasts a dangerous message: the laws of war no longer function as limits for those powerful enough to ignore them.
Political theorist Carl Schmitt once argued that the sovereign is the one who decides the exception. Israel’s conduct in Gaza reflects this logic with unsettling clarity. By invoking “self-defence” without temporal or ethical boundaries, it asserts the authority to determine when international law applies and when it can be suspended. This produces a permanent state of exception—an elastic zone where lethal force can be justified regardless of circumstances, even during declared humanitarian pauses.
The post–World War II international order, built on the promise that war would be limited and civilians protected, now appears fragile and deeply inconsistent. The UN Charter and Geneva Conventions were meant to bind all states equally. Gaza shows that they do not. Instead, the enforcement of international law has become hierarchical and contingent on geopolitics rather than principles. Human Rights Day, intended as a celebration of universality, arrives as a glaring reminder of selective morality.
READ: Israel supported looters attacking aid convoys in Gaza, says French historian
The double standards reveal themselves with painful clarity. Violations of ceasefires in Ukraine generate swift Western condemnation and calls for accountability. When similar violations occur in Gaza, they are reframed as “security measures,” “precision targeting,” or unfortunate collateral damage. This asymmetry destroys the credibility of the so-called “rules-based order” and reduces human rights to political rhetoric. It exposes a disturbing truth: rights are vigorously defended for some populations and quietly disregarded for others.
Israel’s repeated breaches of truces must also be understood as a philosophical act. Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the state of exception—a space where the law is suspended while still invoked to legitimise violence—describes Gaza with eerie accuracy. Ceasefires are transformed from humanitarian obligations into strategic intervals: time to reposition forces, tighten control, and resume bombardment. The truce becomes a tool of war rather than a reprieve from it.
Layered onto this political and legal impunity is a new technological dimension of violence. Israel’s military operations increasingly rely on AI-assisted targeting, biometric surveillance, predictive analytics, and real-time data extracted from Palestinians. Warfare is merging with digital governance; civilian life becomes a set of data points, and killing becomes “efficient.” Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” has evolved into a digital form—violence rendered algorithmic, bureaucratic, and shrouded in technological inevitability.
This raises a profound question for Human Rights Day: can human rights survive in a world where death can be administered through algorithms, where narratives are weaponised globally, and where geopolitics shields one state from accountability? Gaza suggests that without radical change, the answer may be no.
The UDHR proclaims the right to life, dignity, medical care, protection from collective punishment, and freedom from arbitrary violence. Yet in Gaza, families are bombed in their homes, displaced repeatedly under fire, denied water and electricity, and deprived of medical treatment even inside hospitals. These are not mere violations—they are the unravelling of the moral foundation on which Human Rights Day rests.
READ: Polish city ends twinning deal with Israeli partner over Gaza war
The crisis is not confined to Gaza. The collapse of enforcement in one place accelerates the decay of norms everywhere. When international law becomes optional for one state, it effectively becomes optional for all. The precedent now being set—that mass civilian casualties can be justified through political alliances—will reverberate globally. Other states will follow the model of impunity, confident that geopolitical alignment can shield them from scrutiny.
The Middle East has already begun to absorb the consequences. Across the region, the publics witness the destruction in Gaza with a sense of moral injury and political disillusionment. Trust in the international system—already strained by decades of selective intervention and unfulfilled resolutions—has further eroded. The perceived hypocrisy of global powers deepens instability and fuels the belief that justice cannot be obtained through institutions supposedly designed to deliver it.
Human Rights Day, in this context, risks becoming an empty ritual. States will issue statements praising the UDHR while declining to defend its principles in practice. International organisations will call for accountability, yet they are structurally unable to enforce it. And global powers will continue to speak the language of human rights while acting in ways that betray them.
In the age of Gaza, the meaning of Human Rights Day must be re-examined. It cannot remain a commemoration of ideals disconnected from reality. It must become a call to confront the political, legal, and technological structures that have allowed rights to erode so dramatically. That means addressing the paralysis of the UN Security Council, the political shielding of certain states, and the growing use of digital systems that dehumanise the populations they surveil.
Ultimately, the question for this Human Rights Day is not whether Israel has crossed the limits of lawful conduct. That question has been answered repeatedly, with every bomb dropped during a ceasefire, every hospital struck, and every civilian family buried. The real question is whether humanity still believes that limits must exist at all. If the world continues to tolerate the destruction of Gaza under the language of security and self-defence, then universality—the core promise of human rights—will not survive.
In Gaza, a city burns. And with it burns the credibility of the global human rights order. Whether Human Rights Day remains meaningful or becomes mere symbolism will depend on how the world chooses to respond to this moment.
OPINION: The illusion of a “New Middle East”: History’s echo in a multipolar age
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
This article by Aseel Saleh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
Hamas warned in a statement issued on Wednesday, November 26, that Israel’s killing and arresting of its resistance fighters, who have been trapped in tunnels in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip for weeks, would jeopardize the ceasefire deal.
The Palestinian resistance movement considered the pursuit of the trapped fighters a “blatant violation” of the US-brokered ceasefire deal.
Hamas also clarified that it “made great efforts during the past month with different political leaders and mediators to solve the problem of the fighters, and secure their return to their homes by providing certain ideas and mechanisms” to address the crisis.
The statement was released one day after the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) announced that it killed four Hamas fighters and arrested two others, while they were getting out from underground tunnels in Rafah, within the Israeli-controlled “yellow-line” zone.
It is worth noting that around 200 fighters affiliated with Hamas have been trapped in Rafah since the ceasefire deal came into force on October 10. This is despite the fact that the Palestinian group as well as mediators have demanded a safe passage for the fighters to areas inside Gaza not controlled by Israel as part of the agreement.
On Sunday, November 30, family sources confirmed that Abdallah Hamad, who is the son of Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official and member of the movement’s negotiation delegation, was among the trapped Al-Qassam fighters that were killed by the IOF in Rafah.
Moreover, the IOF announced in a statement that same day that it has killed over 40 of those fighters inside the tunnels during the past week, but Hamas has not confirmed the claim yet. The Israeli military further stated that it will intensify efforts to demolish the remaining tunnels in eastern Rafah and eliminate the trapped combatants therein.
Israel’s continued pursuit of Hamas fighters constitutes one of at least 393 reported Israeli violations since the ceasefire took effect.
United Nations rapporteurs warned in a statement issued on Monday, November 24, that Israel’s flagrant infringements of the truce agreement resulted in the killing of 339 Palestinians, including more than 70 children, and the injuring over 870 others.
As Israeli violations continued in the days that followed the statement, the death toll increased to 352 based on the latest information provided by medical sources in Gaza, on Thursday, November 27.
These sources added that the tally of Palestinian fatalities since Israel’s genocidal aggression on Gaza began on October 7, 2023, has risen to 69,799, most of them children and women.
An Israeli official was quoted by local media on Thursday, declaring that his government had sent a proposal to Hamas through mediators last week, suggesting that the trapped combatants should hand themselves to the Israeli authorities if they want to avoid being killed.
Israeli media reports surfaced on Thursday, regarding talks on the implementation of phase two of the Gaza ceasefire deal.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz cited Arab and Palestinian sources familiar with the negotiations, saying that no progress in the talks is visible as Hamas refuses to disarm before Israel withdraws from Gaza and a detailed plan to hand over its weapons is brought forward.
Meanwhile, Israeli Channel 14 said it was told by an official at the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) for Gaza that first troops of the International Stabilization Force (ISF) are expected to arrive in Gaza next January.
The channel added that the “disarmament process” in the war-torn strip will be completed by the end of April.
This article by Aseel Saleh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.