[Prefatory Note: Interview text of responses to question]s posed by Naman Bakaç, an idependent journalist in Turkey. The interview was published by FOCUS, an independent online media platform. The link can be found at the link below:
https://www.fokusplus.com/roportaj/prof-dr-richard-falk-bm-ve-kuresel-hukuk-filistin-halkinin-haklarini-koruyamadi?s=09 ]
1. Let’s start with your book ‘Genocide in Gaza: Voices of Global Conscience,’ which you co-edited with Ahmet Davutoğlu and was published in June 2025. The book includes articles by more than 30 politicians, academics, diplomats, intellectuals, and statesmen from 17 countries. Who are the contributors in this book? What motivations led to the creation of this book? What message do you aim to convey to the global public through this book?
Response: As we explain in the Preface, the contributors were selected from a
much larger group of distinguished signatories of a Declaration of Conscience,
drafted by the former Prime Minister of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu and myself,
and issued in late 2023 not long after the October 7 events. The Hamas-led
attack was designed to be an anguished protest against the failure of
governments and the UN to bring what seemed to us almost from its outset
to be a transparent genocide carried out in real time and by digital
technology brought to the awareness of the eyes and ears of the world. The
issuance of our Declaration was met with unexpected enthusiasm from
frustrated citizens in many countries that resulted in the private funding of a
conference in London on 27 March 2024.
By coincidence, the conference was
held the day after the International Court of Justice made its historic initial
interim rulings in response to requests from South Africa that had submitted
a legal dispute with Israel as to whether Israeli violence was of a nature that
violated the International Convention on Genocide, as well as whether Israel
was legally obliged to stop obstructing the international delivery of
humanitarian aid to the civilian population of Gaza. Naturally, we were
encouraged by these ICJ rulings to the effect that Israeli indiscriminate
violence against the civilian population of Gaza coupled with the Israeli official
decrees prohibiting entry of food, fuel, and water made allegations of
genocide ‘plausible.’
As well, the ICJ in a second near unanimous judicial
ruling ordered Israel to stop interfering with the delivery of urgently needed
humanitarian aid. These ICJ rulings encouraged us to continue our effort to
mobilize civil society on the basis of a justice-driven interpretation of law to
engage with this unfolding human tragedy through the activation of
nonviolent solidarity initiatives.
If a single message emerges from such a multi-authored book gathering
between its pages distinguished public personalities from around the world
with diverse perspectives on global issues, yet united in condemning the
genocide, it is this: when the existing normative order of rules, procedures,
and institutions established by governments and international institutions,
especially those falling within the UN System, fails to meet an urgent
challenge to peace and human rights, it is time for the peoples of the world to
act in resolute opposition.
In our search for participants, we wanted to focus
on people whose view were similar to ourselves who were not presently holders of high
positions in governments or inter-governmental institutions but were widely
respected as moral authority figures. Our influence and ‘weapons’ were of the
mind, heart, and spirit that were best expressed by engaged citizenship, trust
in the guidance of conscience, and existential belief in the power of people in
the service of truth. We hope our book conveys that message, which includes
the conviction that conscience in extreme situations demands action as well
as rhetorical utterances. Words unsupported by action in the face of genocide
is an unacceptable form of silence. We regard our efforts as playing a small
but determined part in an emergent global solidarity movement of people in
support of the Palestinian struggle for basic rights, above all, the right of self-
determination.
From the London Conference devoted to exploring the implications of the
Gaza Declaration, the idea of a book emerged as a matter of course,
encouraged by a publishing commitment by Clarity Press. Our intention was to
have this varied collection of writings exhibit both shared values and diverse
policy judgments, and stimulate creative solidarity actions throughout the
world, thereby confirming the view that the Gaza Genocide is not just an
urgent challenge to all of humanity, but is also a test of whether the peoples
of the world can develop moral agency to challenge dark challenges to the
human future.
As far as the book is concerned, I think the range and quality of the
contributions exceeded our expectations, although admittedly its impacts on
human behavior remain unknowable, and even after 21 months such
initiatives have not extinguished the need for intensifying activism in support
of the Palestinian struggle.
2. In December 2023, you published a text calling for international justice and
conscience conference on Palestine was held in London. Could these civil initiatives you undertook out of a sense of responsibility turn into a global civil movement to enforce international law and order? Has it already turned into one? Can wesay that, while the UN and international law have failed in the face of the Gazagenocide, you are moving from words to action with this civil movement? Afterall, the unifying theme of the London Conference was that words are not enough and action is imperative., which included some of the names in your new book.
Response: Although we were motivated to make what contribution we could to
change the political atmosphere sufficiently to stop the genocide, we had no
illusions that our pleas for humane politics would be heeded in the short run. Yet
we felt that silence in its two forms was unacceptable, that is, refusing to name
the violence of the Israeli response as ‘genocide,’ given its clear intentionality as
further exhibited in its actions. Since naming gave rise to various forms of
punitive pushback, especially in Europe and North America during the months
after October 7, to name the violence ‘genocide’ was not only a word but
became an action in defiance of Zionist worldwide efforts to treat evidenced-
based criticism of Israel as a hateful form of antisemitism. As the genocide has
persisted now for more almost two years genocide as the accepted descripted
term has been somewhat normalized even in the mainstream media. It is still
true that few governmental or officials in international institutions of the West
speak of ‘genocide’ even when condemning the prolonged Israeli violence, and
even UN top officials while highly critical of Israel’s behavior continue to refrain
from characterizing the violence in Gaza as genocide.
It is notable that Francesca Albanese, the fearless UN Special Rapporteur for
Occupied Palestine has been admirably forthright when it coming to naming,
devoting three of her semi-annual official reports to different facets of genocide,
including the depiction of the Zionist Project as a prime instance of ‘settler
colonialism’ and complicit behavior of supporting governments and profit-making
corporations as integral to Israel’s criminal responsibility for genocide. It is not
surprising in view of this that Ms. Albanese has been singled out by the US
Government and sanctioned in her personal capacity, being denied entry to the
US and having her American assets frozen, a vindicative response to truthful
witnessing on behalf of the public good, illustrative of UN functioning with courage and effectiveness despite contrary systemic pressures according to the high ideals of the Preamble to the UN Charter.
As indicated in my response to your first question, the confinement of criticism of
Israel’s onslaught on Gaza to words of condemnation are insufficient in the face of
prolonged and transparent genocide, with cruel and aggravating tendencies for more than 22 months. Action must be proposed and acted upon, whether the actors are governments, institutions, civil society activist, or individuals and collectivities of
various sorts. The political suicide of Aaron Bushnell in 2023, an American airman in front of Israel’s embassy in Washington is illustrative of an extreme humanistic sacrifice or self-martyrdom, an enactment of the repudiation of
genocide as well as a desperate appeal to others to take action aimed at
stopping the genocide. The action of Madleen Freedom Flotilla mission
undertaken by Greta Thunberg and other brave and dedicated activists is
another example of anti-genocidal activism, with an emphasis on both highlighting and circumventing Israel’s disruptions of the international delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid, an initiative that combines a care-giving gesture in
the context of the humanitarian emergency in Gaza with an unspoken yet
powerful appeal to others to engage actively, given their personal situation,
in a variety of ways that involves truth-telling and solidarity with the victimized population of Gaza.
The importance of conscience as a motive for political action is gives rise to expressions of bravery in situations of risk without knowing whether controversial utterances will engender a response from those hitherto on the sidelines that might grow into a
movement with transformative capabilities valuable for their own sake. In that
sense, opposing genocide in Gaza is both an intrinsic reaction of conscience and
a distinct action that has political goals of motivating others to join the struggle.
In retrospect, it is obvious that from feeble solidarity initiatives early on, a civil
society movement of many distinct parts has grown to the point where Israel’s
legitimacy as a state is increasingly drawn into question, both symbolically and
substantively. One manifestation of this solidarity trend is the intensity of
growing calls for Israel’s suspension from UN activities, as well as proposals for
arms embargoes, denial of visas to Israeli citizens, boycotts of cultural and
sporting events, solidarity fasts and cutting diplomatic and economic relations with Israel.
Even though Israel has continued to follow its lawless, abusive path, its behavior and
identity has been slowly delegitimized by public discourse even in the most influential
civil society media platforms of the West, reflecting the symbolic defeat of Israel
when it comes to controlling the high normative ground of law and morality. As I
have argued in the past the side that wins the Legitimacy War fought over
symbolic entitlements of legality and morality tends to prevail politically in the end
despite being defeated on the battlefield due to inferior military capabilities. The
Palestinians of Gaza, with the help of global supportive solidarity and Palestinian
resistance and sumud, have clearly won the Legitimacy War despite the tragic costs
paid by participants in such anti-colonial liberation struggles. As with other anti-colonial
uprisings, the uncertainty is whether the Palestinians have the national stamina
to gain the fruits of such a victory, that is, national liberation embodying the realization of the ultimate human right, that of self-determination. Israel under the sway of Zionist ideology and the Masada Complex seems prepared to pay a far higher price in blood, treasure, and reputation than have been other recent settler colonial projects to exterminate opposition its goals of eliminating resistance by the native or homeland residents.
3.The Israel-Iran war raises many questions as to what kinds of changes will it
bring to the regional and global order? What do you think is the real reason
behind Israel targeting Iran after Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen? What do
you think are the geopolitical and the political goals of the Israel-US duo?
Response: Israel has made clear in its foreign policy pronouncements that it seeks to prevent any country in the region from becoming strong or bold enough to challenge Israel’s military preeminence. Its extension of the Gaza combat zone to several Middle Eastern countries signals its resolve to eliminate or severely weaken any Islamic non-state movement that is aligned with the Palestinian struggle for national liberation, the exercise of its long-denied rights of self-determination and perceived in Tel Aviv to pose a challenge to Israel’s strategic and hegemonic ambitions. The inflamed atmosphere caused by the prolonged genocide in Gaza give rise to a context in which rising global
discontent with Israel create incentives to strike at its actual and imagined
regional adversaries.
Iran above all is singled out as Enemy No. 1, in part to divert attention from the grim happenings in Gaza and the West Bank, to carry out its
long-time strategy of remaking the Middle East to its liking, and to address Iran’s
supposed security threat centered on its potential acquisition of nuclear
weapons. The Israeli justifications involve preempting security threats before
they can materialize or striking disproportionately (along the lines of the Dahiya
Doctrine) in response to behavior perceived as hostile to the Zionist game plan
that features the minimization of a Palestinian presence within an enlarged
reconfigured Israel that erases Palestine from the map of what Netanyahu likes
to call ‘the New Middle East’ or ‘Greater Israel.’ Such ambitions would compel the massive physical displacement and psychological marginalization of
Palestinians. It also seeks to coerce the most defeatist representatives of Palestine to agree to the surrender of national political goals, including the most basic rights embodied in international law, especially in relation to human rights.
The 12-day Iran War exemplifies this approach, with the proclaimed goal of
eliminating, or at least substantially delaying, Iran’s alleged threat to acquire
nuclear weapons. A secondary rarely openly acknowledged goal is to stimulate a restive
Iranian opposition to seize the moment to launch a campaign to achieve regime
change in Tehran. Underlying these, is an unspoken third goal of renewing fear
of Israel’s deterrent capabilities and preventive war mindset in a potentially hostile post-Assad Syria feared to emerge as a destabilizing presence in the Middle East. The attack on Iran also created an
opportunity that came to fruition to involve the US directly in the coercive administration of Middle East politics. Israel’s dependence on US supplementing its initial attacks by
enlisting B2 planes that the US alone possessed delivering Blockbuster Bombs on
underground Iranian nuclear sites demonstrated the strength of Israel’s leverage in Washington and the limits of Israel’s purported military dominance in the Middle East.
The Israel/US duo in the region has two imperial objectives. The first is assuring
friendly governments control the energy resources of the region. The other is to
contain the spread of Islam beyond the vital civilizational fault lines in the Middle
East. This second goal helps explain the blind eye that the Western liberal democracies turned toward the prolonged genocidal assault on the civilian population of Gaza while
actually exhibiting complicity in the commission of this crime. This crime
simultaneously denied the right to life, right to peace, and a rebuff of
fundamental individual and collective legal entitlements of national self-
determination to all peoples.
4.You previously served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine. Prof. Michael
Lynk, who served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine between 2016 and
2022, recently stated at Boğaziçi University’s conference ‘Rethinking International
Law after Gaza’ that international law alone cannot ensure Palestine’s liberation
and that there must also be international resolve. What concrete proposals do
you have for establishing the resolve to implement the principles and decisions of international law?
Response: I share Michael Lynk’s view about the inability of international legal authority to be self-enforcing in situations of defiant non-compliance that Israel has
manifested in all aspects of its relations with the Palestinian people and most
dramatically over the course of more than 22 months of a genocidal assault on
the civilian population of Gaza and the devastation of physical infrastructure of
Gazan society casting doubt of its viability as a place fit for human habitation.
This is especially the case, as here, where the violator enjoys geopolitical support
from the US and the European Union. There are several steps that can be taken
on levels of policy and others of a more systemic character.
Civil Society Solidarity Initiatives. There are variety of ways that people
can act to close the enforcement, accountability, and complicity gaps when the
UN and organized normative order fails, as it has in Gaza, and more generally
with regard to protecting the basic rights of the Palestinian people. The struggle
against the South African apartheid regime illustrates the impact of civil society
activism in the struggle to combat racist criminality. Such initiatives as the BDS
movement, featuring nationalist boycotts of cultural and sporting events by
refusals to perform in South Africa and mounting pressure to exclude
participation by South African performers and athletes elsewhere contributed to
anti-apartheid struggle, as well as seeking to discourage new investments and to
divest from past investments, and sanctions by way of arms embargoes and
other punitive actions were expressions of moral outrage directed at the South
African regime, and although unacknowledged, are widely thought to have
contributed to the unexpected and sudden decision by South African leaders to
abandon apartheid, free Nelson Mandela from prison after 27 years, and arrange
free elections of all South African inhabitants to select a new leadership and
establish a constitutional structure based on racial equality and human rights for
all.
There are a variety of other solidarity initiatives that can be mentioned: waging a
Legitimacy War to control public discourse, with the winner controlling the high
ground of law and morality; exertions of a variety of pressures on media and
government in complicit countries; protests by global voices of conscience
demanding arms embargoes; individual actions such as tax refusal and self-
martyrdom in protest.
Collective Governmental Coalition. The Hague Group, originally formed by
states of the Global South, provides a venue for opposing Israel’s Gaza genocide,
including a statement of purpose and the recommendation of action-oriented
measures intended to exert pressure on Israel in relation to its behavior in
Occupied Palestine. The Hague Group met in Bogotá at an emergency meeting
at the joint invitation of Colombia and South Africa. A Declaration signed by the
30 participating governments and the adoption of a commitment to impose a
series of anti-Israeli measure by 12 of the participating states. The event is an
important indication of the emergence of the Global South from a period of post-
colonial passivity and suggests a revival under altered circumstances of the
Bandung Spirit, which challenged the preoccupations of the Cold War by
giving priorities to liberation struggles and development priorities, and projecting a
different conception of global security and international legitimacy at the UN and elsewhere.
UN Reform. There are variety of UN Reforms that would enhance respect for
international law and enforcement/accountability prospects. The most promising
reforms to achieve a more effective UN that seek to serve global public interests
with respect to war prevention and global security include the following:
empowerment of the General Assembly via implementation of the Uniting for Peace Resolution and Responsibility to Protect (R2P), direct enforcement without recourse to
Security Council of ICJ judgments; elimination or curtailment of the right of veto
in the Security Council and in other decision points in the UN System; expediting
ICJ proceedings in emergency situations; renaming ‘Advisory Opinions’ of ICJ as
‘Authoritative Legal Judgments;’ adding layers of protections to the work of
Special Procedures to ensure political independence and immunity from
defamation and sanctions. Seldom discussed is the enhancement of status of UN
Special Rapporteurs, including more explicit responsibilities of the UN Secretariat
to offer protection extending to disallowing defamatory attacks by NGOs within
UN arenas of appraisal such as the Human Rights Council. Vesting increased war prevention authority in the office of the Secretary General.
New Pedagogical Paradigm. Legal education is deficient in its approach to
international law, especially in relation to core public order issues of conflict,
human rights, and development. It focuses on the vocational preparation of
students to be practicing lawyers within the confines of nation states.
International law is seen as a discretionary subject at the margins of the law
school curricula and is not well understood even within democratic societies
governed in accord with constitutional commitments to uphold the ‘rule of law.’
A pedagogy of international law that would be more supportive of a global normative order that was more geared to the realization of values associated with peace, justice, and sustainable development would view legal education as a vital source of civic
education in relation to engaged citizenship. The goals would be to require all
graduates of law schools and other law programs to grasp the relevance of an
effective just world order to human interests in overcoming global challenges.
Educational reform would also include course offerings on the history of
international relations. Courses would feature critiques of ‘political realism’ that
continues to be the shared operational code of planners and advisors that shape
the worldviews and foreign policy of almost all leading governments. The ‘group
think’ of foreign policy elites create an atmosphere in which strategic ambitions
and security calculations take precedence, limiting international law in its
regulative role to policy settings in which mutuality is seen to exist. With respect
to global security context the propaganda role of international law tends to be
paramount, serving as a foreign policy instrument for mobilizing opposition
against international enemies while dismissing international law when its
constraints are violated by the national government or its allies. Law is not law
that treats equals unequally as was the Global West’s appeal to international law
when dealing with Russia’s attack on Ukraine and its dismissal when responding
to more serious allegations of genocide made against Israel.
5.What kind of global order and international law was built after World War II such
that no power, mechanism, legality, or institution can stop Israel’s genocidal,
expansionist, and occupationist policies? If this inability continues, what kind of global order and international law awaits us? As an experienced scholar who has conducted academic and field studies in international law and practices for more than 40 years,and who has written books on the legitimacy of global order, legality, and the future of international law, how do you think the global order and international law will beshaped after Gaza? What kind of world order awaits us? How would you name this new order? Is it similar to past versions of Pax America?
Response: To some extent the last part of my response to the prior question
anticipates your concerns here. As suggested, the overriding of international law by
the political realist control of foreign policy results in world order being shaped by
power rather than by the restraints and procedures of law and the guidelines of
ethics and justice, at least in relation to global security and war/peace issues. More
specifically, what emerged from World War II was not a genuine war prevention or
global security framework as pledged in Preamble to the UN Charter. Instead, the
international normative order deliberately marginalized the UN, and international law
generally, although with certain potentially significant exceptions. The global
normative order that has evolved since 1945 was designed to give the winners in the
war against fascism freedom of action to pursue their strategic interests exempt from
the rule of law and international law by virtue of a right of veto given to the five
winners that also turned out to be the five countries allowed to acquire nuclear
weaponry.
Such a great power hegemonic world system was also evident in the war
crimes trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo, which only prosecuted German and Japanese
military and political officials, that is, the crimes of the losers in the war. No legal
scrutiny led to investigations, much less prosecutions of the major crimes of the
winners, including indiscriminate strategic bombing and the use of atom bombs
against two Japanese cities despite their scant military importance. A great liberal
show was made of the limited due process offered to these surviving high officials of
Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, but the one-sidedness of the legal proceedings
made a mockery of claims that a new of international criminal justice had commenced
at the war crimes trials. A further irony is that the agreement to establish these
tribunals were set by the Allied Power in London on August 8, that is on the day
between dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and a second bomb on Nagasaki, a
historic display of humanitarian insensitivity by the self-righteous winners of World
War II.
A second phase of such a hegemonic normative order emerged from the collapse of
the Soviet Union bringing the Cold War to an end in the early 1990s with victory by
the West. To fill the geopolitical vacuum that existed, the US proceeded to project its
power throughout the planet by becoming the first ‘global state’ enabled by a network
of hundreds of foreign military bases, naval units in every ocean, and an aggressive
space program to safeguard dominance on earth. By so acting, the US ignored the
possibilities at the end of the Cold War of achieving nuclear disarmament,
demilitarization, a justice-oriented approach to global policy, and prosperity resting on
an ecologically resilient approach to economic and social development. This missed
opportunity for global reform has generated chaos, violent conflict, wasted resources,
widening wealth/income gaps, the rise of chauvinistic autocratic rule in many leading
countries, and dangerous levels of ecological instability affecting adversely global
warming and food security.
Pax America is most accurately interpreted as an historic period of post-colonialism
that is best described as US dominated Western imperialism.’ It is also illuminating to
regard the interval between the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s and the
Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022 as an enactment of Pax America, with less Pax and
more America. It featured US armed interventions with the goal of achieving regime-
change, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by lengthy occupations committed to
state-building along capitalist, constitutional lines at great expense, and disappointing
outcomes given the motivations of the intervenors. Dubbed ‘wars of choice’ and
‘forever wars’ these attempts to impose Western models of pollical and economic
structures and alignments in accord with the postulates of neoliberal globalization
were not only carried out with scant attention to the constraints of international law
but resulted in political failures. The US experience in the Vietnam War is
paradigmatic: enduring political defeat despite battlefield dominance.
6.While the people of Gaza are living through a live genocide under bombs, hunger, diseases, and blockade, as a theorist in the field of global order and international law, how do you think this genocide can be resolved by Netanyahu and Hamas? Hamas and Netanyahu are not stepping back from their core arguments. How can this deadlock be overcome? What is your concrete proposal?
Response: To begin with, Netanyahu and Hamas are not equal or symmetrically
situated. Israel enjoys total military control of the political space and enjoys material
and diplomatic support from the NATO members of the UN Security Council, as well as
the backing of these countries in the West on such legal and moral issues as whether
Israeli use of force should be viewed as ‘genocide’ or ‘self-defense.’ All ‘two sides’
approaches to the Israel/Palestine past, present, and future are tainted by their tacit
acceptance of master/slave structures of interpretation and advocacy.
Hamas has few cards to play when it comes to diplomatic negotiations. The only
obvious one, and it is tenuous and contingent, is the retention of Israeli hostages
taken on October 7, some alive, some dead. In addition, Israel’s leaders have
manifested on many occasions that the return of the hostages is not a high priority
justifying significant concessions.
The only just way to manage conflict resolution is to balance a long-term ceasefire
against an assured path to meaningful realization of the long deferred Palestinian right
of self-determination in a form that is not another instance of Israeli/US ‘breadcrumb
diplomacy,’ exchanging Israeli territorial expansion for a demilitarized Palestinian
Bantustan put forward as the fulfillment of ‘the two-state solution.’ Palestinian
representation must be legitimate and endowed with agency at any day-after
diplomatic process seeking reconciliation. From a detached perspective, for a variety
of reasons, a single secular state with equal rights for both peoples seems like the
only durable justice-driven solution, but it is up to Israeli and Palestinians to arrive awhat now appears a ‘utopian’ solution.
7.Since October 7, 2023, if we ask you to analyze the stances and actions of the
following actors in the face of Netanyahu, Hamas, and the genocide, what picture
would you paint for us? The Mahmoud Abbas Government, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey
.
Response: —Mahmoud Abbas Government: At its best, a pragmatic adjustment to
the victimization of the Palestinian people living in the Occupied Territories of East
Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza, privileging a matter of getting on with daily life as
well as possible, while continuing to represent Palestine in international negotiations
and endorse to the ‘two state solution’; at its worst, collaborating with Israel in
maintaining security on the West Bank, supporting anti-Hamas tactics of Israel
including the punitive blockade on Gaza imposed in 2007 in reaction to the
unexpected Hamas electoral victory the prior year; failure to win support from most
Palestinians living in foreign countries as refugees or exiles; by and large, the
Ramallah government operates within the comfort zone of Israel and United States, as
does settler violence land-grabbing; in my judgment the Abbas government is not
playing a satisfactory role of international representation of the Palestinian resistance
focused on the exercise of basic rights, especially the inalienable right of self-
determination;
—Egypt: In keeping with the behavior of other Arab governments Egypt has verbally
criticized Israeli behavior in Gaza, but has carefully refrained from engaging in any act
that might provoke hostile reactions by Israel; in this sense, Egypt has remained
nervously on the sidelines, although resisting pressures to date to accept large
numbers of Palestinians forcibly displaced from Gaza; Egypt as aligned with the US
and Saudi Arabia exhibits hostility to Hamas as an extension of its domestic antipathy
toward the Muslim Brotherhood within its own borders. Compared to Nasser’s Egypt
the current government has lost popular support and regional respect, especially in
civil society circles of influence;
—Qatar: As a small country hosting a major US military base and vulnerable to hostile
action by other Gulf monarchies, Qatar has few choices, although it has maneuvered
skillfully to give itself the unique position of being the Switzerland of the Middle East,
useful to all sides in the multidimensional conflicts that have brought chaos and misery
to many countries in the region; Qatar’s leaders have been careful to appear neutral in
relation to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, although it has long provided a
safe haven for top Hamas leaders living in exile, and extended hospitality to other
Palestinian notables, such as Azmi Bishara, no longer to feel secure in Israel; in the
current high profile Gaza ceasefire negotiations only Qatar was considered suitable, providing security and facilities;
—Turkey: Only Turkey has played effectively a somewhat contradictory role. On the
one side Turkey, as much as any government in the region aside from Iran is second
to none in the fierceness of its denunciation of Israel’s behavior in Gaza since October
7, with its top leadership in Ankara not hesitant to categorize Israel’s violence as
‘genocide’ and to provide a domestic setting supportive of the Palestinian struggle for
basic rights, including such initiatives as the Gaza Peoples Tribunal scheduled to have
its final session in Istanbul at the end of October; at the same time, Turkey seeks to
maintain good economic and political relations with the European Union and the
United States. The Turkish government has also been criticized, and accused of moral
hypocrisy, due to its failure to shut down the pipeline supplying Israel with oil sent
from Azerbaijan and supposedly vital for its war effort.
8.In your book translated into Turkish as ‘Globalization and Religion: Humanitarian Global Governance,’ you list several reasons for your new idea of ‘Humanitarian Global Governance’ as follows: ‘Part of the appeal of religion is an antidote to the homogenizing effects of out-of-control consumerism and pseudo-universalism.’ You also state, ‘I have never gotten along well with the morality or knowledge system of scientific humanism in my approach to law and politics.’ Could you elaborate on your perspective that religion serves as an antidote? Also, why do you not get along well with scientific humanism? Which paradigm do you currently align with in your approach to law and politics?
Response: The book’s title and central idea are unfortunately mistranslated. In English the key word is ‘humane,’ not ‘humanitarian, which has a different meaning and resonance. Humanitarian or humanitarianism refers to acts of relief, undertakings designed to mitigate human suffering, or simply acts of kindness toward those in need. ‘Humane’ refers to a worldview animated by love, justice, fairness to all human beings, and an affirmation of the spiritual dimensions of reality. It can be coherently brought to reality or nurtured by certain patterns of governance that reflect shared societal values often transmitted by way of organized religion, but more often betrayed by repressive and corrupt governance and by despiritualized religious institutions and practices.
My ambivalence toward ‘scientific humanism’ is a consequence of its epistemological
stance, which devalues spirituality in all its forms, substituting rationality and scientific
validation of knowledge.
These understandable reactions to the shortcomings of
religion led to the liberation of superstition and marginalization of metaphysical
abstractions (such as ‘God’) from the workings of society, leading to the substitution
of the Enlightenment view of knowledge and to the rise of modernity in the West with
its vision of progress reliant on dynamic technological innovation. What was sacrificed in the process was a sense of human community including the ethics of empathy and a
politics of compassion, as well as the denial of spirituality. The aspirations of a
‘humane’ approach is to restore the virtues of the pre-modern without losing the
benefits of modernity as conditioned by the extension of human rights, the curtailment
of militarism and nuclearism, and care for ecological stability.
To reorient modernity to overcome these dangerous deficiencies is what I intend by
the stress on a ‘humane’ worldview. It calls for an ethics and politics of moderation,
enlivened by spiritual awareness and practices, reflecting a realistic appreciation of
global challenges. Among governance frameworks, the most congenial for me is that
of ecologically conditioned varieties of democratic socialism in a global setting finally
inclined toward denuclearization and demilitarization, as well as the repudiation of
predatory capitalism and the kind of excessive individualism that arises when the
market is entrusted with the promotion of human wellbeing in all its facets.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
