Many of us who consider ourselves public intellectuals and outspoken voices feel compelled to follow all—or at least the most important—global developments and to have something meaningful to say about them. Few are as consistent in this endeavor as Princeton professor Richard Falk, who for decades has devoted himself to awakening both conscience and awareness of the suffering of the Palestinian people. Take a look at his bibliography, his personal blog, and his countless online appearances and debates. If anyone today deserves to be called a moral compass and an example of a public intellectual who speaks with moral clarity as well as academic and practical wisdom, it is Richard. More active and more lucid than many of us (who are no longer young ourselves, yet still feel like students in his presence), he addresses many important issues—international law, the nuclear threat, Ukraine—but Palestine occupies a special place in his work, and rightly so.
I would not have written this piece had I not been provoked by two separate events.
Yesterday, I gave a video interview to a Turkish journalist whom I had never met before. I do not even know how he found me. Yet I rarely decline requests for conversations, because the very least we can do in a world that seems to have lost its bearings is to raise the alarm, deconstruct propaganda and stereotypes, and search for ways out of what increasingly resembles a perfect storm.
Most of our conversation revolved around the upcoming NATO summit. But at the very end, off script, he asked me one more question—one that seemed unrelated to the previous topics, although only on the surface. He wanted to know whether international law still matters today, particularly in the contexts of Gaza, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran. We had only four minutes left for an answer. Somehow, my thoughts immediately turned to something Richard so often reminds us of: the problem is not with legal norms and principles themselves; the problem lies with those who violate them and remain unpunished for their crimes.
And then Istanbul came to mind—the city where last year we held the final session of the Gaza Tribunal, in which I had the honor of serving as a member of the Jury of Conscience. The originator of that remarkable civil society initiative, aimed at securing a moral condemnation of what is happening in Palestine, was none other than Richard Falk himself, who has supported me then and continues to do so today. As I spoke, the journalist—sitting behind the camera—quietly signaled his appreciation with a simple gesture, letting me know that my words had touched not only his mind but also his heart.
As warm and gratifying as that moment was, do you know how I spent the rest of the day? While carrying out ordinary household chores, and later even while spending a few hours cheering for my tennis hero Novak, there was a voice in the background relentlessly whispering and dragging me back to Gaza: Have you forgotten? Do you think your job is done and that now you can write about anything and everything? You know that genocide there is an everyday reality. You know that Gaza and the West Bank are facing collapse and annexation. Have you too fallen into the pattern of chasing events, theorizing, dispensing wisdom, while unconsciously surrendering to the belief that nothing can actually be done? Have you, in that way, normalized the Palestinian condition?
That was the price of those few minutes in the interview when Gaza entered the conversation.
Then I remembered that a few days earlier, I had probably betrayed Richard’s trust in my intellectual capacity. Commenting on one of my Substack essays, he sent me a draft of a new text entitled “Can Israel Be Saved? Toward Dialogue.” Naturally, anyone in such a position would pause for a moment and wonder whether they are worthy of serving as a reviewer of a mind like his. Such situations can be intimidating if one lacks sufficient confidence. Yet knowing that this was simply part of our ongoing exchange of ideas, I read the essay and timidly offered my thoughts on his proposals.
For those who have not read the text or who are unfamiliar with Richard Falk’s positions, it is important to note that his starting premise is always grounded in a condemnation of settler colonialism, Zionism, ethnic cleansing, and the genocide of Palestinians. On this point, he has no ambiguity whatsoever. He knows exactly who the perpetrator is, and who the victim is. This is both a moral and factual position, rooted in history. The “saving” in his text refers to the state of Israel within its current borders, but he presents as an imperative a profound transformation of the Israeli political regime, which he sees as deeply implicated in unprecedented crimes and therefore irredeemable in its present form. Although he does not prescribe a specific political formula—he does not choose between a one-state or a two-state solution, nor any looser constitutional arrangement—he argues that Israel, as things currently stand, has entirely lost its credibility and moral standing in the world and finds itself in a condition comparable, if not worse, than that of apartheid South Africa. The “salvation” he envisions is for people: for the normalization of relations through a process of confronting past crimes, reconciliation, and ultimately some form of coexistence within that complex regional mosaic. In a text of nearly four thousand words, written with extraordinary clarity, precision, and eloquence, Falk sketches not only his proposal but also the broader global context within which this central question must be understood.
Unlike me, who often find myself torn—sometimes quite literally—between despair and the determination to keep fighting, Richard remains firmly on the constructive side. He searches for solutions. He thinks constructively. Everything he proposes is rooted in what might be called a politics of possibilism. Wisely, he avoids the trap of choosing between optimism and pessimism. Yet for precisely that reason, he is often dismissed as a utopian, a man proposing solutions that few believe will ever be implemented. Not because they are impossible, but because there is neither the political will nor the vested interest to make them happen.
What was my response, you may wonder. Ah, that is a very difficult—and painful—question for someone coming from the former Yugoslavia. Someone who knows, perhaps not as directly as some of my former compatriots from the other Yugoslav republics, but who nevertheless has personal experience of internal conflict, scenes of immense suffering, and violations of international law committed by all sides, including the West/NATO. Perhaps I disappointed Richard with my response, because I am still learning how to embrace a politics of possibilism, while instinctively leaning more toward a certain kind of realism (although not in the sense of Mearsheimer and his followers; others may call me a doom prophet).
I drew on our Yugoslav experience: the scars that have still not healed, the frozen conflicts that remain unresolved, the growing levels of intolerance, non-forgiveness, resentment, and mutual recrimination. Yet at least we have state borders here (even if we remain Western colonies in many respects). Some of those borders are new, such as Kosovo’s; others are regarded as provisional, such as Macedonia’s. In short: an unfinished conflict and an unachieved peace. The international tribunal (controversial in itself and in the legacy it left behind) determined that genocide had occurred in one specific case, on a relatively small territory (Srebrenica). Even that finding continues to generate unease, rejection, and dispute. Thirty years after the Dayton Agreement and twenty-five years after the Ohrid Framework Agreement, the futures of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia are still considered uncertain.
Richard proposes that we look to the successful example of international pressure and the delegitimization of the apartheid regime in South Africa as a guide for the “saving of Israel”: a future in which Jews and Palestinians would live as equals, with their human dignity fully guaranteed. My response was more cautious. I suggested that perhaps—only perhaps—the political elites based on Zionism, settler colonialism and the continuation of genocidal policies toward Palestinians could eventually be forced to change course or make concessions. But what do we do about the enormous public support for the destruction of Palestinians that exists within Israeli public opinion? Indeed, a part of the public opposes Netanyahu, but often for reasons unrelated to Palestine. Israelis, by and large, show neither the desire nor the intention to condemn this brutal, sadistic, and dehumanizing treatment of civilians. Yet they are the electorate in a democracy, just as Americans repeatedly elect war criminals to the presidency.
And Palestinians know this. So how am I supposed to imagine “salvation”? I honestly do not know. Not long ago, despite massive protests across Europe (which is slowly beginning to awaken) Eurovision went ahead as planned: a music festival taking place in the midst of genocide. Israel nearly won. Of course, Eurovision is not the problem, it’s such a trivial thing. It is merely a symptom of a disease that has already metastasized.
Personally, for quite some time now I have paid close attention to what I buy, boycotting Israeli products, services, platforms, and anything else I can reasonably avoid. I do not want, even indirectly, to contribute to the Israeli economy. But my own country stands with Israel. So does our southern neighbor, Greece. We may have our own disputes with one another—over the name Macedonia and over our identity—but our governments bow before Washington in same style. Gaza and Palestine do not exist in their political vocabulary. Some of you may remember that I wrote an open letter to the Macedonian President. To no avail. She speaks often about children, yet apparently has never heard of Gaza. In her message this year marking Victory Day over Fascism, she mentioned—for the first time—the victims of the Holocaust alongside the partisans and resistance fighters who fell during the National Liberation War (1941–1945), recalling the deportation of Macedonian Jews to Auschwitz, from which none returned. That is entirely appropriate. But what about the flourishing interstate relations with Israel? What about journalists and public figures happily taking guided tours of Israel in the middle of a genocide?
Never mind. This is merely a small illustration, a reminder of the environment in which I live. What I find even more depressing is hearing Bernie Sanders (once a symbol of hope for a democratic renewal of the United States) argue that the creation of a non-Zionist state in Israel, one in which Palestinians and Jews enjoyed equal rights, would mean the end of Israel as a state. In other words, he would save Israel – yet unlike Richard – by any means necessary, genocide included. What, then, is the difference between Trump and Sanders?
That is why our conscience must never be allowed to fall asleep. This text is only a reminder—first to myself, and then to others.
Those who accept innocent victims in Gaza, or Iran, or elsewhere today are preparing the ground for a future in which no one will be safe from the same logic.